Does Shopware replace Magento in the small business sector?

Magento has been the dominant store system for the last 4 years. In Europe, and especially in Germany, many smaller agencies have specialized in Magento and TYPO3. Their solutions often consist of both products and offer customers a wide range of sophisticated functionality at comparatively low costs.

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More and more agencies are switching to Shopware

What I have learned in recent months from conversations with owners of smaller agencies: More and more of these agencies are turning their backs on Magento and working with Shopware. On the one hand, Magento is more complex for these generally smaller teams to integrate and maintain, which is largely due to Magento itself. On the other hand, Shopware can be set up with much less effort, which leads to lower prices for the merchants.

Costs as an important factor for SMEs

Costs were and still are an important factor in the SME market. While large companies usually base their budgets on the expected return as part of an investment calculation, a budget for smaller customers usually depends on a variety of things: Comparisons with investments in similar areas, whereby similar can sometimes also be an internal “mail server”, the current gut feeling of the person responsible for finance, of course also an investment calculation, but simply also the statement of the godchild of a board member, yes exactly, this is the same godchild who can also implement the corporate website in 4 languages for 8 countries in 2 days in WordPress.

Enterprise! Enterprise!

Magento has made strong inroads into the enterprise sector in recent years. And what many did not necessarily think at first, it has also worked. We at AOE regularly win large eCommerce platform projects with Magento Enterprise. The competitors to Magento are the classic enterprise eCommerce solutions such as Hybris, Websphere, Demandware, etc. The acceptance of Magento among large companies has never been higher. This is mainly because many requirements are much more elegant and easier to solve compared to competitors. But it is also a decisive factor that Magento is cheaper in terms of licenses.

Forget where you come from

With this positioning towards the enterprise in recent years, Magento has sometimes forgotten that it has its roots in the SME sector. It was this sector that made Magento’s rocket-like rise possible in the first place. It was the large SMEs that first bought the Enterprise Edition and it was the many thousands of small merchants that helped to bring a lot of innovation to the product. The fact that the commercial and communicative focus was then placed on Enterprise was what made the breeding ground for other solutions such as Oxid or Shopware possible in the first place. This may not be true for the USA, but it is for DACH. In the meantime, Magento has again launched initiatives dedicated to the SME sector. For example, the whole SMB area with a blog.

SMEs, who cares?

Now, from Magento’s point of view, you couldn’t care less. There wouldn’t be much to gain in terms of license sales in the SME sector anyway, and yes, that may well be true. However, this view falls far too short. Because it is precisely this large base of small customers that brings innovation to the product. And as I have often experienced, a customer who may start out small grows quickly and later develops into a full-blown enterprise mandate.

Large customer base is product driver No.1

In general, a large customer base is a guarantee for more innovation in the product. Provided, of course, that you listen to your customers. Varien did an excellent job of this, Magento Inc. has continued down this path on a smaller scale, and eBay is still trying.

You can see how difficult such processes are, especially with the large enterprise providers. Without a large customer base, feature sets are usually created that are over-designed. Or important small functions are missing. In tenders, you win against Hybris and the like precisely because of little things like this.

Shopware

I like Shopware’s successes. I think they are doing a really good job. And there is certainly enough room for coexistence. The fact that the Shopware Community Day had over 1500 visitors and was stylized by some participants as a kind of awakening experience shows that something big is going on. Especially in terms of marketing. Sometimes the image of the total savior is painted (keyword: “emotional shopping on any device”). In the enterprise environment, however, Shopware has not yet been able to meet expectations.

I keep hearing from some clients (and agencies) that typical international projects (many languages, many countries, overlapping product ranges) are not really easy to realize. Others vehemently deny this! But I think it is precisely because Magento offers good concepts and solutions for such requirements that it has been able to rise to the enterprise level. But perhaps it is precisely this weakness that is preventing Shopware from losing touch with the base. We will see.