Shopware

The Skeptic

The variant machinery is genuinely worked — parent-child inheritance, a configurator object over property groups, unlimited properties with filtering — and the payment architecture with synchronous and asynchronous handlers plus a redirect URL returned in the headless API response shows a checkout built to be extended. But I found no public information on bundles, guest checkout, promotions or vouchers, the only payment provider named anywhere is PayPal, and customer-specific prices surface only on the top Beyond plan — good machinery with the conversion features unproven on the captured pages. 5 6 1 2

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The Skeptic

What the developer pages document is a seam, not a service: an app can expose a tax endpoint that is called during checkout by priority with signed requests, and rates are configured by hand under Settings > Tax in the administration. Automatic VAT by destination and customer type, VAT-ID validation with reverse charge, OSS, and e-invoicing are all left to a provider the merchant must build or buy; I found no public information showing the platform handles any German legal case itself. 7 8

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The Skeptic

Plugins are Symfony bundles delivered as Composer packages that may declare dependencies, the Store API is a documented headless surface with decorator patterns and naming conventions, and the open-source core can be self-hosted, run on PaaS or SaaS — a real dependency model rather than a walled app store. The pages state plainly that plugins do not run on cloud stores, only apps do, and I found no public information on staging environments, documented rate limits, or upgrade paths for customisations. 9 10 1 6

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The Skeptic

The order model is the strongest evidence here: orders are denormalized and persisted independent of the catalogue, three state machines cover delivery states like Shipped partially and transaction states like Refunded partially and Chargeback, and a Documents module sits in the checkout guides. But states are not operations — no carrier is named, no label printing, no returns process beyond state names, no ERP or accounting interface is evidenced, and multi-inventory appears only as a Beyond-plan feature. 11 12 2 1

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The Skeptic

Self-hosting on an open-source core with a Community Edition at € 0 is structural ownership — the merchant can run the shop and its database themselves rather than trust a promise. But the documented Migration Assistant runs one way: connections, profiles, premapping, delta detection and media processing are all built to bring data into Shopware 6, and I found no public information on export completeness, documented deletion, or a migration path out. 1 2 14

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The Skeptic

The imprint names shopware AG registered at Amtsgericht Coesfeld with a Schöppingen address — a German contracting entity with published DPA terms based on the EU standard contractual clauses. But the European-datacenter claim is scoped to the Intelligence Copilot architecture rather than shop hosting generally, and I found no public information on a subprocessor list, named hosting infrastructure, or vendor ownership; SOC 2 Type II alongside ISO 27001 evidences audits, not where checkout data sits. 3 1 4

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The Skeptic

The ladder is public and honest about VAT — Community Edition at € 0, Rise "Ab € 600 /Monat exkl. MwSt.", Evolve "Ab € 2.400 /Monat exkl. MwSt.", Beyond "Individuell" — but every number that decides the invoice is missing: no transaction or revenue-share fees, no order or GMV limits, no hosting costs, no minimum term, and no stated basis for what pushes a "from" price upward. Nexus carries a "Kostenlose Einführungsphase" planned until 1 October 2026 with a non-binding review limit of 10,000 requests per customer and calendar month — a price signal with no price attached. 2 1 4

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