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What Shopify is genuinely brilliant at
Time to first order. Hosting, security, PCI, CDN, checkout conversion and payments are solved and someone else is on call for them at 3 a.m. The app store is enormous, the checkout is among the best-converting on earth, and a small team can run a serious D2C business without a single developer. We say this as a Shopware agency: that is a real achievement and it is not marketing.
Where B2B hits the Shopify wall
Customer-specific price lists synced from an ERP, credit limits, order approvals across a buying team, quantity-break pricing per contract, net/gross switching per customer group — you can approximate all of this, and every approximation is an app, a workaround, or a Shopify Plus conversation. Shopware treats these as core concepts. That is the whole difference.
The cost conversation nobody has upfront
Shopify's price is a subscription plus a percentage of what you sell, plus the apps. At €200k monthly revenue that percentage is a real line item, and it grows precisely as you succeed. Shopware costs a licence plus hosting plus developers — high at the start, flat as you scale. Do the three-year arithmetic at your projected revenue, not today's.
Choose Shopify when… choose Shopware when…
Shopify: your prices are the same for everyone, you want to launch this quarter, you have no in-house tech, and you sell direct to consumers. Shopware: your price depends on who is logged in, an ERP owns your data, you need to change the system's behaviour, or your data must stay in Europe under your control.
| Criterion | Shopware 6 | Shopify / Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Time to launch | Months | Weeks |
| B2B pricing depth | Native | Add-on / limited |
| Source code access | Full | Themes & apps only |
| Transaction fee | None | Yes, % of revenue |
| Hosting & ops | Yours | Included |
| Data location | Your choice | Shopify's cloud |
| Exit cost | Low — you have the code | High — rebuild |
- Shopify buys speed; Shopware buys control. Pick the one you need.
- The revenue percentage grows exactly as you succeed.
- Login-dependent pricing is the line where Shopify stops.
Frequently asked questions
Not in general — only for a specific job. Shopify is faster to launch, cheaper to start, and someone else is awake at 3 a.m. for it. Shopware wins when your price depends on who is logged in, when an ERP owns your data, or when you need to change how the system behaves. For straightforward D2C, Shopify is the better buy.
Products, customers and orders export cleanly enough. What does not come with you is everything built in Shopify's world: apps, Liquid templates, checkout customisations and any data an app owns. Budget for rebuilding those, not moving them. Plan the URL redirects early — that is the part that costs rankings if it is left to launch week.
Because part of the price is a percentage of what you sell. Subscription plus that percentage plus the apps means the bill rises exactly when the business succeeds. Shopware's structure is different: licence plus hosting plus developers — high at the start, then largely flat as revenue grows. Neither is cheaper in the abstract. Do the three-year arithmetic on your projected revenue, not today's.
You can approximate it. Price lists per company, quantity breaks, approval chains and net/gross switching per customer group are all reachable with apps, workarounds or a Plus conversation. The question is whether you want your core commercial logic living in third-party apps. In Shopware these are core concepts, maintained by the platform. That is the whole difference — not a checkbox on a feature list.
We do this for a living — Shopware, Node.js, React, ERP integration and automation for B2B.
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