Shop systems compared: the choice follows the range, not the trend.
Shopify, WooCommerce or Shopware — the question is put wrongly as long as range, processes and ERP integration are not on the table. A supplier-independent comparison along the criteria that count after go-live.
Key points
No system is «the best» — each has a field in which it is the stronger choice.
The total cost arises in operation, not in the project: licences, extensions, updates, people.
ERP integration is the hardest criterion — it decides how much manual work each order costs.
If you are switching now, treat the data migration as a sub-project of its own.
Shopify: buy speed and you rent the limits with it.
Shopify takes hosting, security and updates off your hands entirely — in return you work within the limits of the platform. For standard ranges with a manageable number of variants and international selling, that is the fastest and often the most economical answer.
The limits show with Swiss particulars, with complex pricing logic (customer groups, tiered prices) and with deep ERP integration: much of it is possible — but through apps and additional costs that add up.
WooCommerce: the licence is free, the responsibility is not.
WooCommerce turns WordPress into a shop — open source, no licence costs, with the greatest freedom in design. For ranges closely bound up with content, and for companies already running their website on WordPress, it is the obvious choice.
The price of that freedom is responsibility: hosting, updates, security and how the extensions work together are yours or your supplier's. Left unmaintained, a WooCommerce shop becomes a risk faster than any rented platform.
Shopware pays off once the standard becomes too tight.
Shopware is at home in the German-speaking market and brings much of what is needed there: variants, customer groups, B2B functions, sound routes to ERP integration. For merchants with a complex range and their own warehouse it is often the most durable basis.
In return, getting started takes more effort than with Shopify and the community is smaller than WooCommerce's. Shopware pays off when the requirements justify it — not as a status symbol.
The margin is decided by the ERP integration — not by the home page.
Whether a shop runs economically is not decided on the home page but on the question of how an order reaches the ERP: automatically and logged — or keyed in. Before choosing a system, check which routes to your ERP exist and what they cost to run.
A rule of thumb: the more complex the range and the pricing logic, the more the middleware question matters — and the sooner it is worth looking at the whole system rather than at the shop alone.
The best shop system is the one whose limits you know.
Recommendations for practice
Start with your range, your pricing logic and your processes — only then with the names of systems.
Cost three years of operation, not just the project: licences, apps, updates, people.
Check the ERP integration before the system decision, not after it.
Plan the data migration as a sub-project of its own, with a trial run.
Distrust any comparison at the end of which the same system always wins.
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