Shopware was founded in 2000 by Stefan Hamann, who started building e-commerce software in his parents’ basement in Schoppingen, a small town in northwestern Germany. His brother Sebastian joined soon after, and together they grew the company into one of Europe’s most-used commerce platforms.
The platform is built on PHP with Symfony components and Vue.js for the admin interface. Shopware 6, the current major version, introduced a headless-capable architecture with a full REST API alongside the traditional storefront. The open-source Community Edition is free, while commercial editions add features like B2B capabilities, advanced CMS, and dedicated support.
Shopware raised $100 million in a growth round in 2022 from investors including PayPal Ventures and Carlyle Group. That investment valued the company at approximately $1 billion and accelerated its international expansion beyond the German-speaking markets where it’s dominant.
The Shopware Store has thousands of plugins and themes. The platform’s Rule Builder lets merchants create complex business rules — pricing conditions, shipping restrictions, promotional triggers — through a visual interface without coding. Flow Builder automates operational workflows like order processing, notifications, and inventory updates.
Shopware powers more than 100,000 online stores, with particular strength in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The company has grown to about 600 employees. The Hamann brothers still lead the company as co-CEOs.
