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They are not two versions — they are two products
Shopware 5 is Zend/Enlight with Smarty templates. Shopware 6 is Symfony with Twig, a Vue administration and a proper API layer. Nothing carries over automatically: plugins, themes and custom logic are rewritten, not upgraded. Anyone who calls this an update is selling you something.
Reasons to stay on 5 (yes, they exist)
The shop is profitable, heavily customised, stable, and your roadmap for the next 18 months is 'keep selling'. In that case a migration is a six-figure project that produces no new revenue on the day it launches. Keep it patched, keep it monitored, and spend the money on something that earns.
Reasons to move now
You need the API (app, marketplace, PIM, second channel). Your plugin vendors have stopped shipping SW5 versions. You cannot hire anyone who wants to touch Smarty. Or the shop has become so patched that every small change costs two weeks. Each of those is a real cost that grows every quarter.
If you move, move once
Do not port your Shopware 5 architecture into Shopware 6. Half the plugins you carry exist because SW5 could not do something the SW6 core does natively. Re-decide every extension, delete what the core now covers, and you arrive with a shop that is genuinely cheaper to run.
| Topic | Shopware 5 | Shopware 6 |
|---|---|---|
| Framework | Zend / Enlight | Symfony |
| Templates | Smarty, LESS | Twig, SCSS, Bootstrap 5 |
| Administration | ExtJS | Vue.js |
| API | Partial REST | Admin API + Store API |
| Headless | Not really | Yes, first class |
| Extension model | Plugins only | Plugins + apps + app scripts |
| Hiring | Shrinking pool | Symfony developers |
- A profitable, stable SW5 shop does not have to move this year.
- Migrate when the API, the hiring or the change cost forces you.
- Never port the old plugin stack across unexamined.
Frequently asked questions
Anything anyone quotes before seeing your shop is guesswork. Estimate it yourself: count your plugins and template overrides, and for each one decide whether the Shopware 6 core covers it, a new plugin covers it, it must be rebuilt, or it can be dropped. The rebuild column is your project. Design and data rarely move the number. Your custom logic does.
Not because a version number sounds old. If the shop is profitable, stable, heavily customised and your plan for the next eighteen months is to keep selling, a migration produces no new revenue on the day it launches. Keep it patched, keep it monitored, and spend the money on something that earns. Come back when you have a concrete reason.
You need the API — an app, a marketplace, a PIM, a second channel. Your plugin vendors have stopped shipping Shopware 5 versions. You cannot hire anyone willing to touch Smarty. Or the shop is so patched that every small change costs two weeks. Each of those is a cost that grows every quarter, and that is what makes a migration pay — not the version number.
No. Shopware 5 is Zend and Smarty; Shopware 6 is Symfony and Twig with a Vue administration. Plugins, themes and custom logic are rewritten, not upgraded — anyone calling this an update is selling you something. Treat it as an opportunity instead: half the plugins you carry only exist because Shopware 5 could not do something the 6 core now does natively.
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