Migrating from Shopware 5 to 6: process, costs and pitfalls

Migrating from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6 isn't an update you click through in an afternoon – it's a rebuild of your shop on a modern technical foundation, and that's exactly why it needs to be planned properly. With us, a migration like this starts at €3,900. The most important reason to act now: Shopware 5 has had no official support and no security updates since the end of July 2024 – every month you stay on the old version is a growing security risk. In this article you'll get the full process, realistic costs, and the pitfalls that would otherwise cost you your Google rankings.

Which version you are migrating to: "Shopware 6" is a moving target — the 6.7 line is current as of 2026. Pin the exact target version at the start of the project, because it determines plugin compatibility, the PHP version on your server and which migration tooling applies. Migrating to a version that is already superseded means paying for the next upgrade right after.

Why you shouldn't wait any longer to move from Shopware 5 to 6

"Shopware 5 end of support" isn't a distant threat anymore – it's been reality for a while. Shopware stopped developing Shopware 5 at the end of July 2024. Since then:

• No more security updates. Newly discovered vulnerabilities won't be patched by the vendor. For a shop that processes customer data and payment information, that's not just a technical problem – it quickly becomes a legal one (think GDPR).
• No bug fixes, no official support. If something goes wrong, you're on your own. There's no going back to the vendor.
• Plugin vendors are pulling out. More and more providers are discontinuing their Shopware 5 extensions. What still works today stops getting updates tomorrow – and at some point a payment or shipping integration simply breaks.
• Your environment ages along with it. Shopware 5 relies on outdated PHP versions. Once your host switches those off, your shop may not run at all.

There are commercial offers that keep shipping security updates for Shopware 5 – the best known is SafeFive, a paid initiative by several agencies that has continued long-term support for Shopware 5 since August 2024. That's a sensible bridge if you want to cover a migration you've already planned, but it isn't a destination: you're paying to keep a dead system artificially alive instead of investing in a foundation that will carry you for years. Migrate now and you do it calmly and on your own schedule. Wait, and you'll do it under pressure at some point, because something broke.

What fundamentally changes between Shopware 5 and 6

The most common misconception: "5 to 6, that's just one number up." In reality these are two completely different systems. Shopware 6 was rebuilt from the ground up. You should understand that before you try to estimate the cost:

• New architecture. Shopware 6 is built on the Symfony framework and an API-first structure. The frontend (the "storefront") and the backend are cleanly separated. That makes the shop faster, more flexible and more future-proof – but also fundamentally different under the hood.
• Plugins are not compatible. Not a single Shopware 5 plugin runs in Shopware 6. For every extension you use today, you need either the matching Shopware 6 counterpart or a custom rebuild. That's one of the biggest cost drivers – and the point where quotes start to diverge wildly.
• The theme has to be rebuilt. Shopware 6 uses Twig and Bootstrap, a different templating stack than Shopware 5 with Smarty. Your old design can't be carried over; it gets rebuilt on the new foundation or rethought from scratch.
• Different data structure. Products, categories, customers and orders sit differently in the database in Shopware 6. That's why moving your data is a real migration with mapping – not a simple export/import.

In short: you're not moving house, you're building a new one – with your data and your knowledge as the foundation. That sounds like a lot, but it's also a chance to shed old baggage. The same logic sits behind every larger system replacement, by the way – we've written it up in more detail in our article on replacing legacy software.

What you migrate with: the Migration Assistant, and where it stops

Shopware provides a free tool for the move, the Migration Assistant. You install it in the new Shopware 6 shop, it connects to your old Shopware 5 shop over an interface and pulls the data across. You pick beforehand which data areas you want to bring over, and you can run the process repeatedly – test migration, fix, repeat.

What it usually brings across: products including variants and categories, customers, order history, media, manufacturers, properties and the SEO URLs.

What it can't do – which is exactly what makes up the price:

• Theme and templates. Your Shopware 5 design doesn't come along. It gets rebuilt on the new storefront or rethought.
• Plugins. Not a single Shopware 5 plugin is carried over (more on that in a moment).
• Data in plugin tables. The assistant knows Shopware's standard tables. Whatever an extension stored in tables of its own – reviews, configurator data, custom fields from a third-party plugin – has to be moved separately. This is where migrations quietly break: the assistant reports success, and three weeks later the data is missing.
• CMS and landing pages. Legal pages, guides and campaign pages get rebuilt in Shopping Experiences. You can assign the URLs manually while doing it – which matters for your redirect plan.
• B2B Suite data from Shopware 5 can't be carried over.

So the assistant is a tool, not a project plan. It handles the mechanical part reliably; the work that costs money sits around it – inventory, features, theme, redirects, sign-off. And a reconciliation is always part of it: item counts, customer counts and order totals have to match before and after, otherwise the step isn't done.

Plugins without a successor: drop, replace, rebuild

"Not a single Shopware 5 plugin runs in Shopware 6" sounds like a technical footnote at first. In truth it's the biggest cost block in your migration – and the point where quotes differ the most.

Go through your plugin list and sort every single one into one of four drawers:

1. There's a Shopware 6 counterpart from the same vendor. The easiest case. Just check whether the feature set is really the same – some vendors deliberately slimmed things down in version 6.
2. Shopware 6 can do it out of the box now. A lot of what needed a plugin in Shopware 5 is part of the standard or of Shopping Experiences today. Every plugin you drop that way also saves you future update costs.
3. There's a different vendor. Then the question is whether the data from the old plugin has to come along – see above, custom tables.
4. There simply is no successor. This happens above all with niche features and with vendors who never made the jump to Shopware 6.

For case 4 you have three options, and we recommend them in this order: drop it, replace it, rebuild it. Dropping is the right answer surprisingly often – almost every old shop carries plugins nobody has used in years. If the feature stays business-critical, we rebuild it as a plugin of your own; a compact feature starts at €990, more complex ones with their own admin area and an integration at €2,900. Why that often works out better than a subscription plugin is something we've done the math on in our article on having a plugin developed instead of paying a subscription.

The advantage over the old situation: the rebuilt plugin belongs to you, costs no licence fee, and can't be abandoned at the next Shopware jump by a vendor who lost interest.

What happens to your Google rankings – and how to protect them

The most legitimate fear in any shop migration: "will I lose my rankings?" The short answer: with a badly executed migration, yes; with a clean one, no. Google doesn't drop your positions because you switch systems – it drops them because URLs disappear, load times explode or content goes missing. Shopware 6 partly generates different URL structures than Shopware 5, and pages the Migration Assistant doesn't bring along – landing pages, guide content – simply don't exist at their old address anymore.

These three levers protect your visibility:

1. Complete 301 redirects. Every old URL points to its new target via a permanent redirect. That way the authority a page has built up carries over to the new address.
2. Bring your content and metadata along. Product copy, category copy, title tags and meta descriptions all need to come with you. Lose half your descriptions during the migration and you lose rankings too.
3. Use the technology instead of wasting it. Shopware 6 is faster than Shopware 5 out of the box. A good migration turns that into better Core Web Vitals – a ranking factor you get for free if you do it right.

A short, controlled "dip" right after go-live is normal – Google has to crawl the new shop first. After two to four weeks, positions should have recovered. How to get Shopware in shape for search engines beyond that, we've covered in detail in our article on Shopware SEO.

Typical pitfalls in a Shopware 6 migration

We see these mistakes over and over in practice – and every one of them costs unnecessary money or revenue:

• No redirect plan. The classic. The new shop looks great, but half the old URLs land on a 404 page. Rankings gone, ad links dead.
• Trying to rebuild everything 1:1. The migration is the perfect opportunity to get rid of unused plugins and tangled processes. Copy everything over stubbornly and you're paying for baggage.
• Underestimating integrations. ERP systems, shipping providers and payment providers often sit deeper in the system than you'd think. Those dependencies belong on the table very early, not at go-live.
• Not testing enough. If you don't check the checkout process with real test purchases across every payment method, you'll find out the payment is broken from your first real customer.
• Going live without a buffer. A go-live on a Friday afternoon before the weekend is an invitation for trouble. Plan the switchover with time for follow-up checks.

How long does a migration really take?

That depends heavily on size and complexity, but as a rough guide: a manageable shop with standard features and clean data is realistically migrated in four to eight weeks. Add lots of custom plugins, deep ERP integrations or an elaborate custom design and you should plan for three to six months. The biggest time sink is almost never moving the data itself – it's rebuilding the features that don't exist 1:1 in Shopware 6. That's exactly why analysis comes first for us: so you get a number you can rely on and no nasty surprises.

Migrate, or rebuild from scratch?

A question almost everyone asks us: "is the migration even worth it, or should I just build new?" The answer depends on the state of your current shop.

A real migration makes sense if your Shopware 5 shop works well at its core, you're happy with the structure and product range, and above all you want to bring along a lot of order history, customer data and hard-earned rankings. A fresh start makes sense if your shop has grown organically over the years and become unwieldy, nobody can keep track of all the plugins anymore, or the design is showing its age regardless.

In practice the truth is usually a mix: we bring over what's valuable (data, URLs, proven processes) and deliberately leave behind what was just baggage. That's exactly what we clarify in the analysis at the start – honestly, so you don't pay for things that get you nowhere.

What does migrating from Shopware 5 to 6 cost? Worked out by shop size

Concrete numbers instead of "it depends" – here's how our pricing works:

• Migration from €3,900 – for a clean move to Shopware 6 with data transfer, a redirect plan and a working standard shop.
• Shop Start from €5,900 plus a €1,900 migration block – the route when you're rebuilding the shop anyway and bringing the data from the old one.
• Shop expansion from €11,900 – if you want to use the migration for custom features, your own plugins, a tailor-made design or deep integrations.
• Ongoing support from €199/month – for updates, security, monitoring and a real contact person, so the end-of-life issue never catches you again.

Where your shop lands in that range depends far less on the number of products than most people assume. Whether 500 or 20,000 items run through the Migration Assistant barely changes the effort – the number of plugins and integrations very much does. As orientation:

So three questions decide your price, and you can answer them yourself before you ask anyone for a quote: How many plugins do you genuinely still use? How many external systems hang off the shop? And does the design have to be rebuilt 1:1, or is it allowed to be new? Walk into a conversation with those three answers and you get a number you can rely on instead of a range with an asterisk.

You'll find an overview of our packages on our pricing page, where you can add the migration in the configurator directly. What sits behind our Shopware development is on the service page. And if you want to tackle the design while you're at it: what a custom theme costs and when it pays off is in our post on Shopware theme & design. How a complete shop adds up overall is broken down in what an online shop costs.

Bottom line: turn the obligation into an opportunity

Shopware 5 is at the end of its life cycle – it's not a question of whether you migrate, but when. The good news: a clean migration to Shopware 6 isn't a necessary evil, it's the chance to get a faster, safer, future-proof shop that belongs to you again and grows with you. What matters is getting the analysis, the data and above all the SEO move with redirects right – then you keep your rankings and gain technically on top.

Still on Shopware 5 and wondering what the move would mean for you? Let's take a look at your shop together in a free initial consultation – we'll tell you honestly how much work your migration really is, what it costs, and how we'll protect your visibility along the way. No obligation, no sales pressure, straight talk.

Frequently asked questions