The Community Edition, or CE for short, is the open source basis for Shopware AG's paid plans. It is developed and maintained by the Shopware AG development team together with the community of numerous enthusiasts - freelancers, agency employees or shop owners.
Shopware 6 CE is released under the MIT licence. This means that it can always be used free of charge by anyone. An online shop based on Shopware 6 CE is therefore always a good and, above all, future-proof investment.
It's not just for everyone in the sense of "anyone can use it". What I really mean is: The benefits are mutual for all kinds of users.
Small and medium sized shop operators benefit from the technology developed for the big players. With the CE, modern high-end technologies such as Redis, RabbitMq or ElasticSearch are now available to every shop operator, (almost) regardless of their budget. And larger companies benefit from the 'mass testing' of the system in the field.
The new features and security fixes developed by the community benefit every shop owner. And freelancers and agencies will benefit from more and new business opportunities.
The truth is: If necessary, you can spend thousands of euros a month on high-end hosting. For small and medium-sized businesses, however, we can offer high-performance hosting in the cloud, e.g. with Digital Ocean or Hetzner, for a monthly budget of 100 to 200 euros.
Even though the developers have gone to great lengths to make the system simple: The architecture of Shopware 6 - and therefore the requirements for customisation and hosting - is significantly more complex than that of Shopware 5.
This is due to the ever-increasing demands on the usability of the system - think of the integration of AI, for example. But also the performance and scalability of a modern shop system.
On the technical side, the recipe for success is a high level of automation - combined with learning and open sharing in the community. Modern processes, technologies and tools enable us to meet even the most complex requirements of a Shopware 6 project at an affordable cost and in a short timeframe.
For Shopware 6 users, this means they need a good, i.e. competent and reliable agency - or freelancers or employees. And they need a realistic budget for installation and support. On the other hand, they will be rewarded with an extremely customisable, scalable and sustainable shop system.
As a freelancer, I'm often on my own or have to change teams frequently. The community is to me what the coffee shop is to a permanent employee. We help each other and have a lot of fun together. I appreciate the open, sharing and supportive interaction in the community!
And I love the diversity of the community: developers with very different backgrounds - backend vs. frontend, freelancers, agency employees. Gamers, techies, nerds, freaks. Questioners and answerers. People from all over the world. They make my life richer!
