In short: The decision is simpler than the pricing page looks. Rise (from 600 €/month) pays off for growing B2C stores that want vendor support and the Intelligence features. Evolve (from 2,400 €/month) has exactly one killer criterion: the B2B Components - if you run serious B2B, you almost inevitably land here. Beyond (price on request) is enterprise territory with 24/7 support. And below all that, the Community Edition remains for everyone under 1 million € GMV with a technical partner. Important: the "from" prices scale with your GMV.
What separates the plans
- Rise (from 600 €/month): the entry into the commercial world - with Shopware Intelligence (AI features), 3D/spatial functions, unlimited sales channels and basic support (8h response time, Mon-Fri). Audience: growing merchants for whom community support is no longer enough.
- Evolve (from 2,400 €/month): everything in Rise plus the B2B Components (quote management, budgets, roles and permissions, order lists), Advanced Search and Dynamic Access. Support with 4h response time and phone. Shopware's stated audience: ambitious brands with growth targets in B2B and B2C - translated: anyone serious about B2B.
- Beyond (on request): Evolve plus Digital Sales Rooms, Multi-Inventory, subscriptions, 24/7 priority support with 1h response time, a personal account manager. Enterprise requirements, enterprise price.
Across all plans: Intelligence+ as an AI add-on, and GMV-based classification - your annual revenue determines the concrete price tier within a plan (how Shopware measures GMV is explained here).
The one criterion that almost always decides: B2B
From my project experience, the plan question is a B2B question in 80 % of cases. Rebuilding the B2B Components - quote processes, customer budgets, approval workflows, customer-specific catalogs - costs a multiple of the plan difference in custom development. Do the math yourself: the jump from Rise to Evolve costs about 21,600 € per year. A solid B2B suite as custom development costs several times that - once, plus maintenance forever.
The reverse also holds: if you do not need B2B, look very closely at whether Evolve offers anything worth the surcharge. Advanced Search is good, but for many stores a clean Elasticsearch/OpenSearch configuration achieves something comparable.
The honest decision questions
- Do you need B2B functions beyond price lists? Yes → Evolve. No → question 2.
- Is vendor support business-critical? If an outage costs you four figures per hour, guaranteed response times are insurance, not an expense. Yes → Rise (or Beyond for 24/7 needs). No → question 3.
- Are you under 1 million € GMV with a technical partner? Then CE plus targeted development is often the most economical - and you keep maximum freedom.
- Are you above 1 million € GMV? Then the question is no longer "whether a plan" but "which one" - the Fair Usage Policy requires the switch anyway once you use Account and Store. Negotiate actively instead of waiting.
My advice from practice
Do not buy a plan for the roadmap - buy it for what you will use in the next 12 months. I regularly see stores paying for features that were never activated - and conversely, stores laboriously building B2B processes around CE while spending more than the Evolve plan would have cost. Both are avoidable: with a sober inventory of what your business actually needs. That is exactly what I do - vendor-neutrally, because I earn from your development, not from a plan commission.