Shopware vs Magento: What is the better solution?

Shopware vs Magento: What is the better solution?

Having an eCommerce store is a viable business opportunity for many businesses looking to serve their customers in a better way. The two core advantages of a well chosen eCommerce platform are engaging the user and providing a buyer-centric online experience. But with the choice of so many platforms, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Some of the common platforms are Magento, Shopware, WooCommerce, ZenCart, osCommerce, OpenCart, PrestaShop, X-Cart and Drupal Commerce. And you need to choose from them.

In this article, we will discuss on the two first two, and deciding which one would be more suitable for your project – Shopware or Magento, both written in PHP.

Magento is an open source ecommerce platform empowering thousands of brands and retailers, with amazing flexibility and scalability options. Several volunteers at Varien, Inc, a US private company headquartered in Culver City, California, originally developed it. The initial release of the platform was on March 31st, 2008.

Magento is a giant in the field of eCommerce. Being a well known enterprise player, it can easily handle massive amounts of data and traffic. It can cater to 4 million page requests and 50,000 orders per hour, making it one of the most robust platforms globally. The world’s leading brands and huge enterprises rely on this platform to fulfil their requirements.

Shopware is a trend-setting platform that helps you build responsive and beautiful online stores. It is also Germany’s growing platform, and has the most number of live stores in Germany. It has been in the market for 17 years already, and has 60K satisfied customers, according to their website. The core values of the platform according to founder, Stefan Hanman are openness, authenticity and vision.

Now, for the comparison

1) Type of business each is suited for

Magento is more suitable for medium to large scale enterprises. Examples would be Burger King, Mothercare, Nike, Rosetta, Ford Accessories, Eastwood, Tractor Tool, Sisley Paris, TractorTool. The maximum number of users, according to Builtwith Trends are located in the US and UK. Germans are more prone to using Magento when compared to the other platform, with 13 463 live Magento stores Vs. 7 848 active Shopware stores in Germany alone.

Shopware is more suitable for medium to small scale businesses. Examples would be Grohe, L’Oreal, Philips, Discovery Channel EU Store, Frosch, Lufthansa Cocktail, Rausch, HAIX, Arktis, Brita, M&Ms, Mercedes Benz Museum, etc.

Winner: Depending on preference

2) Cost factor

Magento’s Community Edition is free. You can download and use it. The Enterprise Edition, EE starts from €14,620 a year. For Magento 2 Enterprise solution, the cost is €17,870 per year.

Download Shop Community Edition for free. The Shopware Professional Edition is at €1,925 for a one-time free, while you get the Professional Plus Edition for €5,995 as one-time fee.

Winner: Magento is more expensive, so if you are planning on a small online store, go for Shopware

3) Ease of use

Magento provides advanced features, including connection to Admin panel. This gives you access to where data is stored, to make changes as and when required. The platform is very complicated through, and the administration part was very tricky for a very long time. Actual set-up and customisation process may take up time.

Transparency and simplicity are two of user-friendly features in the Shopware platform. They can take advantages of the umpteen features like access to the backend of the demo shop, collect data about the customers and sales, making changes to the shop directly, facilitating the administration process, etc. The platform is approachable to both store owners and customers.

And it relieved a number of problems for the developers in the initial setup. They need to spend less time on the backend, thanks to its drag and drop and double click features.

Winner: Depending on user, Magento 2 is much more advanced than Shopware 5.

4) SEO optimisation and Marketing tools

Magento provides a number of advanced features to help store owners make their store a conform to SEO standards. Features include image optimization, product & pages metadata, canonical tags for products and categories, edit of robot.txt files, SEO friendly URLs to guarantee increase of SERP.etc. Google just loves this platform, and with the newest version, Magento 2.x new SEO optimised features have been introduced.

There exists a large library of extensions in the Community store of Shopware. It aids in sales promotions.

Winner: Magento is far superior

5) B2B Vs. B2C

Business to Business or B2B business model sells directly to the merchants, and the platform already features in the Internet Retailer B2B eCommerce Top 300 list. The platform provides the following features – making and tracking inventory for business clients across multiple warehouse locations, create scheduled deliveries and track inventory, offering negotiated pricing terms for business buyers, etc.

Business to Consumer or B2C business model sells directly to the customer. Shopware concentrates solely on the B2C market, i.e. the small or medium sized market. It is however, robust and scalable, and you can build a professional looking store.

Winner: Both are good enough, depends on user

6) Lead in the market

Magento is undoubtedly the leader in several website categories like shopping, clothing, art and entertainment, business and industry, and about 235 other categories.

Shopware is yet to get a lead in any website category. But it has started showing marked improvements in the Advertising & Marketing, Consumer Electronics and Publications industries.

Winner: Magento is the clear winner

Conclusion

An ever increasing number of web savvy customers have turned to buying goods online. The best experiences can be provided online by choosing an effective online platform. By deploying either one of these solutions, based on the size of your project, you can easily gain a competitive edge and gather a larger pool of customers in your niche industry.

However, it is very important to note that Shopware is getting an improved market share, with users migrating to it from a number of other platforms. A lot of them are moving to Shopware from Magento, followed by osCommerce, VirtueMart and PrestaShop. The main target is the German market, with 3.76% market share, and still growing, but it still has to get a lead in any country. Magento presently has 8.15% .

Interesting Articles:
Detailed differences between Magento and Shopware
Shopware vs Magento, best comparison by shopping cart

Picture Source: Flickr.com/ Steven/ Clare

The author: Reema Oamkumar is engaged as a thought leader at www.Software-Developer-India.com which is a part of the YUHIRO Group. YUHIRO is a German-Indian enterprise which provides programmers to IT companies, agencies and IT departments.