Shopware commercial editions contract renewal

7 January 2024

Introduction

Shopware (the company) has introduced new commercial editions with a new pricing structure. This already happened in 2022, but existing customers with a Professional or Enterprise license are now being advised and offered a new contract. It should be weighed whether this will be taken advantage of. This document provides insight and background. This document does not provide specific advice on whether or not to re-contract or upgrade/downgrade to/from a particular edition, this should be considered on a situation-by-situation basis, in which we can of course advise.

Licensing model and editions

Shopware (the software) is basically an open-source (free to use) system. This is the Core or Community edition, which is maintained by Shopware (the company), but also by a community of professionals who contribute to it.

The recent core version of the package is version 6 and thus the source code is publicly available.

The community version can be extended with additional modules / plugins. These are developed by Shopware itself or by third parties. These modules are subject to different licensing terms and the source code is not open source.

Shopware bundles several of these self-developed additional modules in a number of commercial editions and attaches a license price to them. Previously there were the Professional and Enterprise editions; now there are the Rise, Evolve and Beyond editions. The structure of the editions is always complementary so Enterprise offered everything Professional offered and this is now also true for Beyond vs. Evolve vs. Rise, respectively. In addition to functionality, a commercial license also offers the right to support.

If a company wants to use (one of) the modules, it is therefore necessary to have a valid license for the commercial edition that includes the module in question.

What will (not) change.

The Professional and Enterprise editions (old editions) are discontinuing and will no longer be offered.In their place will come Rise, Evolve and Beyond (new editions).

No new functionality will be added to the old editions.

If it is decided not to re-contract to a new edition, the old contract with the existing support conditions will remain in force.Updates are expected for all existing functionality.This functionality will not be removed.

Shopware may decide to develop similar but more advanced functionality in a completely new module.This will then no longer be offered within the old edition but in the new one.This will thus prevent specific (newer, redeveloped) functionality from becoming available to customers with an old edition.

Re-contracting is a purely administrative matter, no software update or upgrade is required.

What (not) to do?

There is never an immediate operational impact, as long as a valid license for either an old or a new edition is held. The conditions for this are defined in the license agreement, check it.

Re-contracting to a new edition has the advantage that new functionality (and existing, redeveloped functionality) becomes available in the license and one can start using/implementing it.

Direct re-contracting may have the advantage that a discount can be negotiated over the regular edition price.

If there comes a time when the new editions contain functionality that one would like to deploy, then at that time there is still the consideration of re-contracting. Alternatively, the functionality in question can be realized via separate (3rd-party) plugins or via XSARUS customization.

Resources