JTL-Shop and Shopify split this panel by criterion, not by product. JTL-Shop leads operations (mean 7.3 vs 4.7; 6 judges to 0), sovereignty (3.7 vs 1.5; 6–0), tax and legal (2.3 vs 1.3; 5–0 with one tie) and data control and exit (4.5 vs 2.7; 5–0 with one tie). Shopify leads extensibility (6.0 vs 3.7; 6–0), catalog and checkout (4.2 vs 3.2; 4–0 with two ties) and pricing transparency (6.7 vs 5.7; 4–0 with two ties). Weighted totals: four judges to JTL-Shop — merchant, B2B seller, operations lead, data protection officer — one to Shopify, the developer, with the skeptic tied at 3.6 to 3.6. Scores also spread inside criteria: JTL-Shop's data control and exit runs 4 to 6, Shopify's 1 to 4. The attributes list JTL-Shop's legal entity jurisdiction as Germany; Shopify's as Canada, with data residency US by default and subprocessor exposure US CLOUD Act.
Choose JTL-Shop if
You run marketplace and warehouse operations — the operations lean is 6 judges to 0 for JTL-Shop (mean 7.3 vs 4.7), and the verdict credits synchronised selling on 30+ marketplaces without extra licences, WMS with mobile warehouse devices and shipment tracking.
Your review prioritises European tax handling — tax and legal leans 5 judges to 0 for JTL-Shop (2.3 vs 1.3, one tie); the verdict credits GoBD-conformant finance processes, while the criterion's own scores run 2 to 3.
Your team weighs a self-hosting option — data control and exit leans 5 judges to 0 for JTL-Shop (4.5 vs 2.7, one tie), where judges weighed the 'Lokal – Auf eigenem Server' hosting option.
You report to a data protection officer — sovereignty leans 6 judges to 0 for JTL-Shop (3.7 vs 1.5), and that judge's weighted total is 4.4 vs 3.3.
Your procurement requires a German legal entity — the attributes list JTL-Shop's legal entity jurisdiction as Germany, against Shopify's Canada.
Choose Shopify if
You build on an app ecosystem and headless tooling — extensibility leans 6 judges to 0 for Shopify (mean 6.0 vs 3.7), with more than 21,000 apps, the Hydrogen headless toolkit and API rate limits published per plan in the verdict.
You need published subscription pricing — pricing transparency leans 4 judges to 0 for Shopify (6.7 vs 5.7, two ties), with tiers of 27 €, 79 € and 289 € per month on annual billing public alongside per-plan card fees; the verdict notes the top tier's own price is not public.
Your storefront work centres on catalog and checkout — catalog and checkout leans 4 judges to 0 for Shopify (4.2 vs 3.2, two ties), where JTL-Shop's verdict calls the criterion thin beyond payment integrations and unlimited articles.
You are a developer — the developer judge's weighted total is 4.4 for Shopify vs 3.7 for JTL-Shop.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The B2B Seller
Sells to businesses across the EU: net prices, VAT-ID validation, reverse charge, customer-specific price lists and payment on account. Reads a shop that shows gross prices to a trade customer as one that has not met a trade customer.
JTL-Shop
This judge's pick
Shopify
Criterion by criterion
Catalogue & checkout
JTL-Shop
Unlimited articles and integrations to all popular payment providers are the only merchandising facts on the evidence; the checkout itself is never evidenced. Nothing on variants, bundles, tiered or customer-group pricing — as a trade seller I see no net-price or customer-specific price list story at all, which tells me this page has not met a trade customer.
Shopify
Customer-specific price lists exist as B2B catalogues — capped at three on every standard plan, unlimited only on the top tier — and a guest checkout is referenced in the conversion claims. Beyond card fees I found no public information on payment methods such as invoice or direct debit, nor on variants, bundles, tiered pricing or promotion rules, and checkout customisation is described as limited on all plans except the top one.
Tax & German legal correctness
JTL-Shop
The tax evidence is accounting adjacency — GoBD-conform processes, a DATEV booking service and a 'Tax powered by' module name. No VAT-ID validation, no reverse charge, no OSS, no gross/net display per customer group: the checkout tax engine this criterion needs is simply absent from the evidence, and I cannot put a B2B shop on that silence.
Shopify
I found no public information on VAT determination, VAT-ID validation, reverse charge, OSS or the mandatory German checkout elements; B2B catalogues and localised selling via Markets are the only adjacent signals. A shop whose public pages cannot evidence net-price display for business buyers has not met the trade customer.
Extensibility & developer surface
JTL-Shop
Schnittstellen, partner apps and extensions are confirmed, but the REST API ships as a paid beta add-on at 99–199 €/month — an API you rent, still in beta. No webhooks, no headless storefront API, no theme language or staging story appears anywhere in the evidence.
Shopify
The developer surface is real and visible: a headless toolkit named Hydrogen, headless storefronts granted per plan, API rate limits published per tier, and an app store with more than 21,000 apps. I found no public information on staging environments, theme version control or webhooks, so ownership beyond themes-and-apps is only partly evidenced.
Order operations & back office
JTL-Shop
Clearly the strongest area: 30+ marketplaces with oversell protection, WMS with mobile devices and shipment tracking, a returns module and the JTL2DATEV accounting interface, plus an AI BI dashboard driving reorder and discount decisions. Held below 8 because shipping labels are only 'coming soon' and no named carriers, partial shipments or supplier/dropshipping flows are evidenced.
Shopify
Multi-location inventory is concrete (ten locations standard, two hundred on the top plan), marketplace order synchronisation is free for the first fifty orders a month, Collective covers sourcing, and over two hundred real-time reports are claimed. I found no public information on returns handling, named carrier integrations with label printing, or maintained interfaces to ERP and accounting systems.
Data ownership & exit
JTL-Shop
A genuine 'Lokal – auf eigenem Server' option plus stepwise migration give structural rather than promised control. But the evidence is silent on export completeness, documented deletion and any data-return commitment — local hosting only counts as ownership if the catalogue, customers and order history can leave intact.
Shopify
Leaving is priced in retention terms: store information is kept for two years after closure before deletion begins, with deletion or anonymisation promised and a right to transfer data to another provider. I found no public information on export completeness for catalogue, customers and order history; the subscription bundles hosting and I found no public information on self-hosting or a documented migration path.
European sovereignty
JTL-Shop
The imprint is unambiguous — JTL-Software-GmbH, Hückelhoven, Amtsgericht Mönchengladbach, DE VAT ID — so despite the pipeline marking jurisdiction unknown, the contracting entity is plainly German. But data residency is unstated and no subprocessor list exists anywhere in the evidence, so I cannot verify who sits in the checkout path even though a local hosting option exists.
Shopify
The vendor is a Canadian company; for EEA, UK and Swiss users the receiving entity is the Irish subsidiary, but the policy itself places the company in Canada and data is then passed on to locations including Canada and the USA, safeguarded by SCC-equivalent clauses and approved BCRs. Subprocessors appear only as categories — cloud hosting, content delivery, data analysis among others — with no named providers, and I found no public information confirming where customer and order data are hosted.
Pricing transparency
JTL-Shop
The metering is unusually public: per-order prices tiered at 0.22/0.16/0.11 €, order packages, and priced add-ons like the REST API, Workbench and production modules. But the Start and Pro tier prices are missing from the captured evidence, Enterprise is 'Auf Anfrage', payment-gateway rates are unpriced, and neither VAT treatment nor minimum term is stated — the invoice is close to computable, not computable.
Shopify
Unusually complete: annual prices of 27, 79 and 289 euros per month, card fees per plan down to Amex rates, external-provider transaction fees from 2 to 0.2 per cent, marketplace order fees with a monthly cap, the POS add-on at 79 euros per month per location, no setup fees, and a stated one- or three-year commitment on the top tier with cancellation any time below it. What stays unknowable from the page is the cost of the apps most shops will need and whether the published prices include VAT.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
JTL-Shop
Shopify
Legal entity
Incorporated in DE
Incorporated in CA
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.