JTL-Shop vs Shopware

JTL-Shop

The evidence gives me 'unlimited articles' and 'Integrationen zu allen beliebigen Payment-Anbietern', and that is the entire catalogue-and-checkout story — not one word on variants, bundles, tiered pricing, guest checkout, promotions or vouchers. Payment integrations exist, so it is above the flat-list floor, but silence on everything else caps it well below the standard-checkout anchor.

Shopware

The variant model is the real thing — self-referencing parent-child products with a configurator that assembles property groups and variants, hierarchical categories, unlimited property groups for filtering, and products addressable across multiple sales channels. Payment breadth is thin in the captures: PayPal is the only provider named, and I found no public information on bundles, promotions and vouchers with rules, guest checkout, or invoice and direct debit as payment methods. The checkout itself is documented as customisable without a rebuild via the Store API, payment handlers and the state machine, which is what lifts it above the standard tier.

JTL-Shop

All I have is a 'Tax powered by' module name and a DSGVO/GoBD compliance claim for finance processes — no VAT-by-destination, no OSS, no reverse charge, no VAT-ID validation, no XRechnung/ZUGFeRD, nothing on mandatory checkout elements. For a German mid-market vendor this should be the strongest section, and the evidence evidences almost none of it; a compliance slogan is not tax correctness.

Shopware

What the developer pages evidence is a tax framework, not maintained correctness: settings under Settings > Tax, and since version 6.5 an app interface where external tax providers are called by priority during checkout, with signed requests, a five-second timeout, and tax sums taken as given by the provider. That delegates German VAT correctness to whoever builds or buys the provider — I found no public information on automatic VAT by destination and customer type, VAT-ID validation with reverse charge, OSS tracking and reporting, e-invoicing, or the mandatory checkout elements on the captured pages.

JTL-Shop

The only API in evidence is the JTL-Wawi REST API, marked Beta and priced at 199/99 € per month as an add-on — an API behind a paywall is a revenue line, not a developer surface I can build a five-year maintenance commitment on. Partner apps, extensions and interfaces are claimed, but there is no mention of themes, template editing, webhooks, staging, local development or version control anywhere; a closed template story is a future migration, and here I cannot even confirm templates exist.

Shopware

This is where I could live for five years: plugins are Symfony bundles shipped as Composer packages that can declare dependencies — a real dependency model — the Store API is documented down to route decorators and service conventions, the core is open-source with a free Community Edition and self-hosting on my own infrastructure, and even the Migration Assistant is extensible. Two reservations keep it short of the top: the plugin documentation states plugins are not compatible with cloud stores, so moving to cloud means rewriting that customisation path as apps, and I found no public information on version control for themes, CI support, or upgrade paths that carry existing plugins forward.

JTL-Shop

This is the one criterion where the evidence is dense: multichannel sync that 'reduziert Überverkäufe', 30+ marketplaces without extra licences, WMS with mobile warehouse devices, bank reconciliation, and a named accounting bridge via JTL2DATEV powered by JERA. It falls short of the top anchors because shipping labels are literally 'Coming soon', and dropshipping, supplier flows and partial returns/refunds are silent despite a Returns module name appearing.

Shopware

The order model is workflow-oriented and denormalised so line items and calculated prices persist independently of the catalogue, with state machines that natively cover partial shipments, partial returns and partial refunds across three machines started per order. Multi-inventory appears only in the top Beyond tier, and beyond a generic integration surface for CRM, payments and shipping I found no public information on named carrier integrations with label printing, automated fulfilment routing, dropshipping flows, or maintained interfaces to ERP and accounting systems.

JTL-Shop

'Lokal – Auf eigenem Server' is the one structural ownership fact, and it matters — self-hosting beats a promised export. But the evidence says nothing about export completeness, database access, or a documented path out; the only 'Migration' mention is about migrating INTO the platform, not leaving it, and the beta paid REST API is a poor extraction route.

Shopware

Ownership here is structural rather than promised: the open-source Community Edition at € 0 with self-hosting on my own infrastructure means the shop and its data sit where I control them, and GDPR data-portability tools are claimed. The Migration Assistant is documented in one direction only — into Shopware 6 — and I found no public information on outbound export completeness including media and order documents, database-level export tooling, or a contractual data-return commitment.

JTL-Shop

The pipeline scored this 0 on unknowns, but the imprint is unambiguous: JTL-Software-GmbH, Amtsgericht Mönchengladbach HRB 12450, German VAT ID, German address, external DPO appointed — a German contracting entity, not a non-EU vendor. It stalls at 4 because data residency and the subprocessor list are absent even though named partners (Dealavo, JERA, GREYHOUND) sit inside the product chain; the local hosting option is a partial mitigation but not evidence of a named, European chain.

Shopware

The imprint is unambiguous about the contracting entity: shopware AG at Ebbinghoff 10 in Schöppingen, registered at Amtsgericht Coesfeld under HRB 11471, VAT ID DE261679493 — a German stock corporation — alongside a data processing agreement on the EU Standard Contract basis, published ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, European datacenters named for the Copilot architecture, and a self-hosted option that puts the shop entirely under my control. For sovereign end to end, I found no public information on a published subprocessor list or named hosting infrastructure for shop data, and the captured pages leave data residency for the platform itself unconfirmed.

JTL-Shop

Genuinely better than the category norm: order-limit overages are priced per tier (0,22/0,16/0,11 € per extra order), order packages, module add-ons like the REST API and production modules, the annual discount and Wawi Cloud pricing are all public. It cannot reach 8 because Enterprise is 'Auf Anfrage' — a sales conversation — payment transaction rates, VAT treatment and minimum terms are not stated, and only the Advanced tier's headline price appears in the captured evidence.

Shopware

More is public than with most: Community Edition at € 0, Rise ab € 600 /Monat exkl. MwSt., Evolve ab € 2.400 /Monat exkl. MwSt., add-on prices such as Shopware Intelligence+ at € 19 /Monat exkl. MwSt., and the VAT treatment stated outright. But Rise and Evolve are starting-from prices, Beyond is priced Individuell, the Nexus add-on sits in a free introductory phase running to 1 October 2026 with a non-binding review limit of 10,000 requests per customer month — and I found no public information on transaction or revenue-share fees, hosting costs, order or revenue limits, or minimum terms, so the real annual invoice is not computable from the page.