Adobe Commerce vs Shopware

Adobe Commerce costs are paid to Adobe under a commercial agreement, and the price depends on the edition, deployment model and contract terms, so request the figures in writing from Adobe or your reseller. Licensing is typically recurring, and it is often bundled with hosting when you choose Adobe's cloud infrastructure. Costs rise with store volume, the number of environments, premium support and the Commerce-only modules you enable, such as B2B features. Costs fall when you audit which paid modules you actually use before renewal. In a quote, ask for the license term, what is included in cloud hosting, the number of staging and development environments, support tiers, and any renewal uplift.

Shopware's paid plans are priced monthly and are required once shops linked to an account generate more than 1 million euros in gross merchandise value over the preceding 365 days. According to the Shopware pricing page, the Rise plan is listed at 600 euros per month with AI-assisted content and an 8-hour support response, and the Evolve plan at 2,400 euros per month with B2B quotes and approvals and a 4-hour response. The Beyond plan is custom-priced with 1-hour 24/7 support. Shopware states that plan pricing also depends on gross merchandise value and other individual factors, so confirm the current tier and terms on the Shopware pricing page before budgeting.

Self-hosted infrastructure is paid to your cloud provider or data center, and it recurs monthly. The main components are application servers, database, search, caching, object storage for media, backups, staging environments and content delivery. Costs rise with traffic peaks, catalog size, the number of environments and the redundancy you require for uptime. They fall with autoscaling, right-sized databases and a single well-run staging environment. Ask your hosting provider or internal platform team for a monthly estimate per environment, including backup retention, data transfer and the cost of a second region if you need one. If you choose Shopware's own cloud or PaaS, ask what infrastructure is included in the plan instead.

Extensions and themes are paid to their publishers, usually as a one-time purchase, an annual license or a subscription. On Magento, you may replace Adobe Commerce-only features with third-party or open-source extensions, and each one brings its own license, compatibility checks and upgrade cycle. On Shopware, some features sit inside paid plans, while others come from its extension marketplace. Costs rise with the number of integrations, custom theme work and the need for extensions to match each new platform release. Costs fall when you reduce customization and choose extensions with active maintenance. Ask each vendor for license scope, renewal pricing, support terms and the platform versions they certify.

Developer time is paid to your in-house team or an implementation partner, and most of it is one-time during migration, with ongoing work for changes and fixes. Work includes mapping attributes and categories, rebuilding extensions and theme logic, replacing B2B workflows, testing checkout and running parallel stores. Effort rises with customization depth, the number of integrations (ERP, tax, payments, shipping) and the volume of historic orders you need to preserve. It falls when you reduce custom code and document the current store first. DeployOpen plans and implements fixed-scope engagements, with scope, deliverables and timelines agreed in writing before work starts. Request a written scope and ask each bidder to list the assumptions behind its effort estimate.

Patching and upgrades are recurring costs, paid to your internal team or a support provider, and they include testing, staging runs and release management. On Adobe Commerce, you follow Adobe's release and support timelines. On Shopware, the Community Edition relies on community support only, while paid plans include vendor support response times. Costs rise with the number of extensions to retest, the size of the custom codebase and the frequency of major version upgrades. They fall with automated test suites and a predictable release calendar. Ask for the support tier that covers security fixes, response times, and the process for testing vendor and extension updates before production.

Data migration is mostly a one-time cost, paid to the team that extracts, maps, cleans and loads products, customers, orders and URLs. Effort rises with catalog complexity, attribute counts, historic order volume, image libraries and the number of redirects you must preserve. It falls when product data is clean before extraction and when migration tests run against a copy of production. After cutover, recurring costs are limited to reconciliation, data quality fixes and any extension data that still needs syncing. Ask the bidder to specify which entities are in scope, how URL redirects are handled, how many test migrations are planned, and what rollback looks like if cutover fails.

The effort depends mostly on how much custom code, how many extensions and how much B2B logic the current store carries, not on the platform names alone. A store with a standard catalog, few extensions and a stock theme is a much smaller job than one with custom checkout rules, ERP connectors and negotiated pricing. Start by counting the modules, integrations and custom templates you actually run, then map each one to a Shopware feature, a plugin or custom work. That inventory sets the scope that a written proposal can price.

A team with Shopware experience, PHP or Symfony skills, and time to rebuild the theme and integrations can often do much of the work itself. Teams without that experience usually need help with data mapping, URL preservation, payment and checkout testing, and cutover. Be honest about staff time: the same people who run the current Adobe Commerce store will also need to test, document and support the new one during the transition. Many organizations split the work, keeping data migration and integrations in-house and buying help for the parts they have not done before.

Plan to provide four things before any build starts. First, a clean catalog export with products, categories, attributes, customers and orders, including the fields your business relies on. Second, a complete extension and integration list, with the purpose and owner of each item. Third, written B2B rules covering company accounts, price lists, quotes, approvals and purchase orders, since these rarely map one to one. Fourth, named staff for product, finance, operations and QA who can approve mappings and test orders on staging.

Shopware's pricing page says that shops linked to an account generating more than 1 million euros in gross merchandise value over the preceding 365 days need a paid plan instead of the free Community Edition. Below that level, the Community Edition is free to use, but it comes with community support only. Above it, your recurring cost becomes a plan fee that Shopware says is based on gross merchandise value and other individual factors. Track your trailing 365-day GMV before choosing a plan, and ask Shopware how growth in GMV would change your tier.

No. Shopware can run as SaaS, as PaaS on managed infrastructure or self-hosted, according to its pricing page. Self-hosting gives you control over data location, hosting choices and upgrade timing, but it also makes you responsible for servers, patching, backups, monitoring and scaling. A managed option moves some of that work to the provider. The right choice depends on your data residency rules, your internal operations capacity and the level of support you need, so decide it before you compare plan costs.

Confirm the plan name, the monthly fee, the GMV basis used to set it and how that basis is measured. Ask which hosting models the plan covers, what support response times apply, and whether B2B quotes and approvals are included at the tier you need. Check the terms for AI-assisted content features, data processing location and exit options, and ask for the export format if you ever leave. Get every commitment in writing and compare it with the features your current Adobe Commerce store uses today.

Most Magento extensions do not carry over, because Shopware uses its own plugin system and data model. Plan to find a Shopware equivalent or rebuild each feature. Shopware's paid plans list B2B quotes and approvals, which may cover part of your Adobe Commerce B2B use, but company accounts, shared catalogs and purchase orders need to be checked feature by feature. Where no equivalent exists, the work becomes custom development, which should be written into the scope before the project starts.