Selling your products or services online, calls for an online shop. Of course, choosing the right open source eCommerce solution depends on the amount of daily website visitors, the number of transactions, your wide range of products, and the type of products you want to sell.

Obviously there is a huge difference in system and server requirements between selling configured glas vases or digital video downloads. Please ask yourself, what special requirements your online shop needs to serve.

Open Source eCommerce solutions cover an extensive range of relatively cheap basic functionality up to custom-made enterprise editions. This is why it’s so essential to define your company and also your customer requirements first. Linked to that is also the question of budget and how much you want to invest. Moreover it’s important to know in advance who will do the online shop maintenance tasks. Does this person need extended coding skills? To sum it up, the right choice of a shop system is a big decision and has to be a sustainable and project based one.
This articles introduces you to four excellent Open Source eCommerce solutions and their characteristics.

Overview of Opensource eCommerce Solutions:

Magento

Let’s start to talk about the eCommerce super hero for mid-sized and big companies: Magento. This open source platform offers everything needed for an online shop with unlimited extension possibilities.

  • Easy and intuitive article management with own attributes
  • An integrated Content Management System (CMS) to edit text and images
  • Flexible extension possibilities
  • Huge community
  • and more

Magento is suitable for different shop systems. It’s easy to adapt for your individual needs. At the same time you should consider, that the system server requirements are quite sophisticated. In addition the backend design is very complex and adaptations and extensions are cost intensive in comparison with other solutions.

Magento offers an Open Source and an On Premises edition. Second option provides more possibilities but it’s also significant more expensive. Magento is suitable for the German market. This means the shop system is available in different languages and currencies.

To implement the shop we recommend a professional agency service.
Companies like Fraport, Mont Blanc and Christian Louboutin trust in Magento.

Shopware

One of the most used eCommerce Solutions was developed in Germany and offers comprehensive functionalities in the standard version. It’s easy to extend the online shop system Shopware and adapt it considering your changing needs and growth.

Shopware is available in four different editions. An upgrade to the next version is very simple. This means Shopware is a eCommerce solution growing with your business without big issues.

The backend is well-structured. For the setup we recommend an experienced agency as well.

Shopware customers are for example Euronics, L’Oréal and Gaastra.

Oxid

The shop system Oxid is tailored for the German market. Oxid focus on omnichannel strategies. That system suits for different shop versions (B2B- and also B2C-Shops). With support of the appropriate moduls, it’s easy to adapt and scalable.

We want to highlight the available interfaces for ERP-systems, and logistic- and fulfillment providers, that ensure an optimized order processing.

Moreover Oxid allows you to create and manage different Sub Shops. Oxid has an own shop offering a variety of extensions. Many of that extensions are for free.

Also for this open source eCommerce solution we recommend the support of a professional agency.

Oxid customers are for example Porsche Design, Deutsche Post and Mercedes Benz.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a plugin for the Open Source Content Management System WordPress and the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress. Until today it was downloaded worldwide more than 40,5 million times.

It’s simple to integrate, too. In addition this shop system is easy to extend and scalable as well. To make it short: the eCommerce system grows with you.
Another advantage is that WooCommerce is even extendable to a mobile app. On the WooCommerce website numerous extensions get offered – some of those even for free.

The special WooCommerce German Market plugin ensures the legal security for Germany and Austria. The plugin includes templates for delivery costs, right of revocation, terms and conditions and imprint. All of those texts are mandatory in Germany. Furthermore there are some additional features like delivery for free based on a defined sales price or shipping cost notes for non-EU-countries.

WooCommerce customers are for example All Blacks, Luvd, Xeroshoes, Zanerobe, Weber, Tokki and Pro4mance.

Conclusion

Of course, there are more then four eCommerce Solutions on the market but those are the most popular ones with an Open Source edition. Moreover the above mentioned shop systems Magento, Shopware, Oxid, and WooCommerce are the most common solutions on the German market.

Whatever eCommerce solution you choose, in the end it matters to evaluate all relevant factors in advance.
It’s definetely important to create a well-performing, scalable and extendable system. Finally you invest money, time, and work in your project and it’s really annoying to realize after a while that you experience strict limitations. For example you identfy new needs or higher sales rates and need to update your system. So, we recommend you to be selective and take care of every individual functunality in detail. That process takes time but in the end your result is a system able to grow with your business. Changing your shop at a later stage might cost ressources and nerves.