Shopware optimization focused on performance, user experience, and strategic consulting.
Optimization of Your Shopware Store
An existing Shopware store can become slow or hard to maintain for many reasons: too many plugins, inefficient queries, heavy templates, weak caching, poor image handling, unclear data structures or technical decisions that made sense years ago but now slow the project down.
I support Shopware optimization with a technical, pragmatic approach: identify the real bottleneck, prioritize what matters and implement changes that improve the system without creating the next maintenance problem.
What I Typically Check
- server response behavior and cache usage
- database queries, indexes and expensive listings
- plugin overhead and unnecessary event subscribers
- template output, storefront assets and image handling
- category, product and CMS page structure
- technical SEO basics that are affected by implementation
- update risks and technical debt in custom code
Optimization Is More Than Speed
Performance is important, but a good optimization also makes the shop easier to understand and safer to extend. I look at what slows the system down, what makes maintenance difficult and which changes are worth doing now instead of creating unnecessary project noise.
If the issue is mainly visibility and indexation, see Shopware SEO. If the bottleneck is a custom extension, Shopware plugin development may be the better fit.
Process
- Describe the symptoms: slow pages, errors, poor Core Web Vitals, backend problems or unstable processes.
- Measure and inspect: visible frontend behavior, code, plugins, database and configuration where access is available.
- Prioritize: quick wins, risky areas and deeper refactoring are separated clearly.
- Implement: changes are made in a controlled way and documented for handover.
How I work
Three principles that apply in every project
Understand before building
First the short technical assessment: what is the actual problem, where is the lever, what makes economic sense? Then the implementation.
Build instead of forwarding
You talk to the developer who does the work – no handover chain, no black box, clear status updates and early warning about risks.
Hand over instead of holding on
Code in your repository, tests, documentation and a deployment process your team understands. No vendor lock-in – your system does not depend on me afterwards.
Background
Experience at a glance
- Today
- Senior freelancer in ongoing Shopware projects of several agencies and merchants – at home in foreign repos, processes and deadlines.
- Since 2021
- Self-employed as Stefan Pilz Ltd. – remote for merchants and agencies: Shopware 5 and 6, Symfony, migrations, maintenance.
- 2015 – 2021
- E-commerce backends: inventory, PIM and Amazon/eBay integrations for around 3.5 million products, then the Drillisch mobile-carrier web stores.
- Since 2012
- Full-time web developer – first at an agency: websites and stores with Joomla, xt-Commerce and Shopware.
- 2002
- Completed vocational training as a software developer (C/C++). First own PHP websites from 2004.
See current and completed projects Career and stack in the CV
Good fit
Works well when...
- you have an existing Shopware system with a concrete technical issue.
- you need direct PHP/Symfony support without agency overhead.
- you expect clear analysis, clean implementation and traceable handover.