In short: A Shopware migration for small stores with a standard theme often costs a mid four-digit to low five-digit amount, medium stores with custom design and 10-20 plugins considerably more, and complex B2B projects with ERP integration sit far above - agencies typically quote 10-15 k€, 20-35 k€ and 35-50 k€+ for these categories. The honest truth: any number before analyzing your store is a guess. What can be named seriously are the cost drivers - and they are right here.
Why the price ranges are so wide
Shopware 6 is a complete redevelopment compared to Shopware 5: no plugin and no theme carries over unchanged. Your migration cost is therefore, at its core, the answer to one question: how much customization is in your store? A store close to the standard migrates cheaply. A store with 30 plugins, a custom checkout and grown data structures pays for each of those decisions once more now.
The five real cost drivers
- Plugin landscape: for every plugin there are three paths - a SW6 successor exists (cheap), the function is now in the core (free!), or it must be redeveloped (expensive). The upfront inventory decides your budget.
- Theme and design: a 1:1 rebuild of an old design is almost always more expensive than a clean new theme on a current base - and worse for the business.
- Data quality: customers, orders and products travel well via the Migration Assistant - grown legacy (duplicates, broken variants, free-text attributes) travels along unless cleaned up first.
- SEO legacy: URL structures change. Without a clean redirect concept, a migration burns years of accumulated rankings - the most invisible and most expensive trap.
- Integrations: ERP, PIM, payment providers, marketplaces. Every connection must be re-checked, adapted or replaced.
The process that has proven itself
- Analysis and inventory (the most important step): plugins, customizations, data quality, integrations, SEO state. Only after this is there a serious number.
- Test migration with the Migration Assistant on a staging environment - the real problems show themselves here, while they still cost nothing.
- Rebuild: theme, plugins, integrations on Shopware 6.
- Redirect concept and SEO protection - every old URL gets a destination.
- Delta migration and go-live: final data transfer, controlled switch, short parallel observation.
- Stabilization: the first weeks after go-live are part of the project, not goodwill.
How I implement these phases concretely is on my migration service page.
Freelancer or agency - and the truth about saving
As a freelancer I usually come in well below agency quotes for the same scope (95 €/h, transparent) - not through magic, but because no project management and sales costs run alongside. Where you should not save: analysis, test migration and redirects. Those are exactly the items cheap offers leave out - and that cost you double later. The best saving lever is a different one: declutter before migrating. Every plugin you do not take along, every data corpse you delete beforehand, saves real money.
By the way: if your store still runs Shopware 5, the question is no longer whether but how controlled you switch - here is why. And if you are coming from a different shop system (Magento, WooCommerce, JTL), dedicated articles are coming to this blog in the next weeks.