What hosting Shopware 6.7 needs (PHP 8.2 to 8.4, MySQL 8.4, Redis, OpenSearch), how self-hosted, PaaS Native, and SaaS compare, and what hosts from maxcluster to Hetzner cost.
Shopware 6.7 needs PHP 8.2 to 8.4, MySQL 8.0.17 or later or MariaDB 10.11 or later, plus Node.js 20 or later for the build and, optionally, Redis 7.0 or later. A basic shared hosting plan rarely meets these requirements because it lacks worker processes, cron jobs, Redis, and enough PHP memory.
For most merchants, managed Shopware hosting with a specialized provider in Germany is the right choice. Based on our experience, it costs €50 to €100 per month for small stores, €150 to €500 for mid-sized businesses, and €500 to €1,500 for B2B and cluster environments.
Shopware PaaS Native and Shopware SaaS take operations off your plate, but pricing is only available on request. PaaS Native runs on AWS in Frankfurt and suits teams with in-house development. SaaS only allows apps, not plugins.
The wrong hosting rarely shows up at launch. It shows up under load, during updates, or in an outage, and then it costs you revenue. This article is for store owners running their own Shopware store and for ecommerce managers who want to set up a new store or switch hosts.
After reading it, you’ll be able to choose the right operating model, evaluate hosting offers with a checklist, and estimate the right server size for your store.
Before founding solution25, we ran our own online store and know what an overloaded server costs on a promotion day. Since 2017, we’ve been building Shopware projects and supporting their operation, from the first managed server to load-balanced clusters.
This article is based on Shopware’s official requirements, the providers’ pricing pages, and experience from our projects. All prices as of October 2026, excluding VAT. Where a provider only lists gross prices, we’ve noted it.
There are three ways to run Shopware 6. Your choice determines who is responsible for the servers, which extensions are possible, and how you pay.
| Criterion | Self-hosted | PaaS (Shopware PaaS Native) | SaaS (Shopware Cloud) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure | Host of your choice, you or your agency are responsible for operations | Shopware runs the platform on AWS in Frankfurt | Shopware runs everything |
| Extensions | Plugins and apps | Plugins and apps | Apps only |
| Updates | You or your agency | Your team, Shopware patches the platform | Automatic, handled by Shopware |
| Plans | Community Edition, Rise (bookable online), Evolve, Beyond | Rise, Evolve, Beyond through sales | Rise, Evolve, Beyond through sales |
| Hosting costs | €50 to €1,500 per month (based on experience) | Based on infrastructure needs, on request | Included in the plan, price on request |
| Best for | Merchants who want control over code, data, and costs | Teams with in-house development or an agency that deploys regularly | Merchants without developers and with standard processes |
With self-hosting, you rent a server or a managed hosting plan and install Shopware on it. You have full access to code, database, and server, can use any plugin, and can switch hosts whenever you want. The prerequisite is that someone takes responsibility for updates, backups, and monitoring: you, your agency, or the host.
Self-hosting is also the only operating model where the Rise plan can be booked directly in your Shopware account, and the license-free Community Edition is only available self-hosted. According to Shopware’s pricing page, a certified hosting partner handles the initial installation for free.
Shopware PaaS provides a managed infrastructure on which your team develops and deploys the application itself. There are two versions: Shopware PaaS Native, Shopware’s own platform, and Shopware PaaS on Upsun, the product from Platform.sh.
According to the Shopware documentation, PaaS Native runs on Kubernetes in the AWS region eu-central-1 in Frankfurt. It includes a managed MySQL database, S3 object storage, OpenSearch, Valkey as a cache, and Fastly as a CDN with a web application firewall.
Deployments run through Git and the sw-paas command-line tool. There’s no FTP. Shopware is responsible for availability, platform patches, and backups with seven-day retention. Your team is responsible for plugins, theme, Shopware updates, and load testing. Pricing depends on infrastructure needs and is quoted individually. Learn more in our article on Shopware PaaS on Platform.sh.
In the SaaS version, Shopware runs the entire environment, including automatic software updates, hosting, and infrastructure maintenance. You configure the store, and Shopware takes care of the rest.
The limits are in customization: extensions only run as apps, and classic plugins with custom PHP code aren’t possible. Shopware doesn’t name a data center location on the product page, only compliance with European standards. Ask about the region and the data processing agreement during the sales call.
Shopware 6.7 has been the current version since June 17, 2025. The previous version, 6.6, receives security updates until February 2028. The version requirements for PHP, database, Node.js, and Redis come from the Update Guide for Shopware 6.7. Settings like memory_limit and OPcache, as well as the minimum versions for Elasticsearch and Varnish, are listed in the system requirements for Shopware 6.6. There’s no newer information on these.
| Component | Minimum requirement Shopware 6.7 | Our recommendation for production |
|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Linux or another Unix system, Windows servers are not supported | Current Debian or Ubuntu LTS |
| PHP | 8.2, 8.3, or 8.4; memory_limit at least 512 MB, max_execution_time at least 30 seconds | PHP 8.3 or 8.4 with PHP-FPM, OPcache 256 MB or more, APCu 128 MB or more. PHP 8.2 loses security support at the end of 2026 |
| Database | MySQL 8.0.17 or later (not 8.0.20 and 8.0.21) or MariaDB 10.11 or later (not 10.11.5 and 11.0.3) | MySQL 8.4 LTS, supported since Shopware 6.6.3; max_allowed_packet at least 32 MB. MySQL 8.0 has been out of support since April 2026 |
| Web server | Apache 2.4 or later with mod_rewrite or nginx, configuration templates are also available for Caddy | nginx with HTTP/2, with Varnish 6 or later or a CDN in front |
| Node.js | Version 20 or newer, only for building the Administration and Storefront | Build in the CI pipeline instead of on the production server |
| Redis | Optional, version 7.0 or later | A must from mid-sized stores up: for cache, sessions, locks, and number ranges |
| Search | Optional: Elasticsearch 7.8 or later or OpenSearch 1.0 or later | OpenSearch, as soon as the catalog has several thousand products |
| Message queue | Default is the database as transport | Workers via CLI and cron, for high volume Redis or RabbitMQ as transport |
| RAM | Shopware doesn’t specify a number for production servers, 8 GB for developer machines (16 GB recommended) | Based on experience: at least 8 GB for a single server, 16 to 32 GB with OpenSearch |
Shopware 6.7 supports PHP 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4, and according to composer.json, the current development branch already allows PHP 8.5. According to endoflife.date, security support for PHP 8.2 ends on December 31, 2026, for 8.3 at the end of 2027, and for 8.4 at the end of 2028. If you’re setting up today, go with 8.3 or 8.4.
The 512 MB memory_limit is a minimum. For large imports, indexing, and image generation, we regularly see 1 GB in the CLI context in our projects.
The excluded versions in the table have known bugs. MySQL 8.4 LTS has been supported since Shopware 6.6.3 and is the sensible choice for new servers, because according to endoflife.date, extended support for MySQL 8.0 ended on April 30, 2026.
In its performance tips, Shopware recommends MySQL over MariaDB because MySQL handles filtering, sorting, and aggregating JSON fields better. MariaDB 10.11 still works and is maintained as an LTS version until February 2028.
Shopware 6.7 doesn’t need Node.js 20 or later at runtime, only to build the Administration and Storefront, using Vite instead of Webpack since 6.7. Node doesn’t have to run on the production server if the build happens in a pipeline, as we describe in Shopware CI/CD. Composer 2, Git, and SSH access are required in any case. Without them, you can’t run Shopware 6.7 properly.
Redis is officially optional for Shopware, but in practice it’s a must from mid-sized stores up. Shopware recommends Redis for sessions, the application cache, delayed cache invalidation, locks in a cluster, and, with high order volumes, for number ranges.
Elasticsearch or OpenSearch replaces MySQL search and speeds up listings, filters, and search. According to the developer documentation, connecting it pays off once a project has several thousand records. Learn more in Elasticsearch in Shopware.
The message queue handles indexing, emails, imports, and Flow Builder actions in the background. For production, Shopware recommends disabling the admin worker and running messenger:consume and scheduled-task:run via cron about every minute instead. That’s exactly what many basic shared hosting plans can’t do.
Shared hosting plans with a Shopware logo start at around €10 per month. They’re fine for a test store, but not for selling. They usually lack four things:
You can recognize a host that takes Shopware seriously by how they answer specific questions. We ask about these ten points for every offer:
Even with managed hosting, Shopware updates, plugins, and the theme stay with you or your agency. We describe how we take on this task on our Shopware Hosting page.
This overview only lists prices that were publicly available on the providers’ websites on October 28, 2026. Otherwise, it says “on request.” Entry prices apply to minimum configurations, which often aren’t enough for a production Shopware store.
| Provider | Model | Starting price per month | Location | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| maxcluster | Managed hosting and cluster | On request | Frankfurt am Main | Shopware Platinum Hosting Partner; Redis, Varnish, Elasticsearch, and RabbitMQ preconfigured; 99.99% uptime; ISO 27001, PCI DSS, ISAE 3402 |
| creoline | Managed server and cluster | €49.99 (2 vCPU, 6 GB RAM) to €179.92 (8 vCPU, 16 GB RAM) | Frankfurt am Main | Shopware Platinum Hosting Partner; Shopware 6.7 preinstalled; OpenSearch and Redis as add-ons; 99.99% uptime; ISO 27001 |
| Profihost | Managed hosting and managed server | €49 (Shopware Hosting plan, VAT not specified); managed server on request | Oberhausen | Shopware Gold Hosting Partner; daily backups, five-day retention; support Mon to Fri 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; ISO 27001 data center |
| Timme Hosting | Managed vServer, managed server, ScaleServer | €66 (managed vServer, plus €59 setup); €149 (managed server, plus €69 setup); ScaleServer from €62.50, billed by the hour | Germany | OpenSearch from managed vServer, Redis; ten-day backups; free migration with new orders; 14-day trial |
| Mittwald | Managed vServer in mStudio | From €21 | Germany | Container hosting, Redis, and Node.js; business customers only |
| Hetzner Cloud | Self-managed cloud server | From €42.99 with dedicated vCPUs, from €6.49 with shared vCPUs | Falkenstein, Nuremberg | No Shopware support; prices for dedicated vCPUs significantly higher since June 15, 2026 (smallest instance up from €15.99 to €42.99) |
| IONOS | VPS with root access, unmanaged | VPS L+ (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM): €22 including VAT, promotional price €7 for three months | Germany (EU) | Installation and operation on your own; backups from 6 cents per GB extra |
In its hosting partner directory, Shopware lists creoline and maxcluster as Platinum Partners and enerSpace, Profihost, and rackSPEED as Gold Partners. Partner status doesn’t replace the checklist, but it shows that the provider runs Shopware stores on a regular basis.
The difference between a €21 vServer and a €180 managed server rarely lies in the hardware. It’s in the scope of service: preconfigured services, 24/7 monitoring, administrators with Shopware experience, and contractually guaranteed uptime.
With Hetzner and IONOS, you get computing power for a fraction of the managed price, but no Shopware operations. Operating system updates, PHP configuration, Redis, OpenSearch, backups, firewall, monitoring, and responding at three in the morning are all on you.
Do the math honestly: four hours of administration per month at €100 cost more than the premium for managed hosting. Self-managed makes sense for agencies with their own DevOps team or for merchants who already run several systems anyway.
Shopware doesn’t give a hardware recommendation for production servers because plugins, product count, and traffic determine what you need. The following values are based on experience from our projects, not a guarantee.
| Store size | Typical metrics | Recommended environment | Managed hosting per month (based on experience) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Up to 1,000 products, up to 50 orders per day, few plugins | One server with 2 to 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, NVMe SSD, and Redis; MySQL search is enough | €50 to €100 |
| Mid-sized | 1,000 to 20,000 products, 50 to 300 orders per day, ERP integration, multiple languages | 4 to 8 vCPU, 16 to 32 GB RAM, Redis, OpenSearch, staging environment, optionally Varnish | €150 to €500 |
| B2B and enterprise | Over 20,000 products, variants, customer-specific pricing, campaign peaks | Cluster: two or more app servers, separate database server, Redis, OpenSearch cluster, Varnish or CDN, load balancing | €500 to €1,500, clusters from €1,000 |
Two tips from practice: the database benefits more from RAM than from CPU, and OpenSearch needs its own memory. If you run OpenSearch on an 8 GB Shopware server alongside MySQL and PHP-FPM, you get three slow services instead of one fast one.
Plan for peaks. A newsletter to 50,000 recipients brings many times the normal load within minutes, and hosts with cloud infrastructure scale up resources much faster than providers of dedicated hardware.
For the beauty brand Saltedbeauty (case study), we carried out the migration to Shopware 6 in phases: data mapping, plugin compatibility checks, and step-by-step testing. According to the case study, the switch happened with zero downtime.
The new setup is designed for high traffic during promotions, along with optimizations for load time, checkout speed, and mobile display, plus automated testing on all devices. After launch, the metrics showed faster load times, longer sessions, and lower bounce rates. The case study doesn’t give percentages.
For your planning, that means: size for the biggest promotion of the year, not the average, and test every migration in a staging environment before you switch DNS.
Hosting is a small line item in the overall cost of a Shopware project. In our article on Shopware pricing, we estimate €80 per month for the starter store, €250 for the mid-sized store, and €600 for the B2B store. In all three examples, that’s less than 4% of the first-year costs. Still, the entry price is rarely the final price.
Shopware doesn’t publish prices for Shopware PaaS Native or Shopware SaaS. Both are only available through sales, starting with Rise.
Our take: For merchants with less than €1M in annual revenue, we almost always recommend self-hosting with a specialized provider, because it’s the most affordable option and allows any plugin. In our experience, PaaS only pays off when a development team deploys several times a week. SaaS fits when no developer is involved and apps from the store are enough.
The Tideways Performance Benchmark Report for the first half of 2026, with data from more than 300 Shopware 6 stores, shows how big the differences between stores are. The fastest 10% deliver a product page in 223 milliseconds of PHP time, the median is 607 milliseconds, and the slowest 10% need 1,279 milliseconds.
The range is even wider for the homepage: 41 milliseconds for the fastest versus 1,215 milliseconds for the slowest 10%, nearly a factor of 30. Same software, but different servers, different plugins, and a different configuration.
A good host delivers these settings preconfigured. A very good host explains which ones they’ve set and why. We describe how to find bottlenecks with k6, Blackfire, and New Relic in Shopware Performance.
Figure: The chart shows how far apart response times are with identical software; server, plugins, and configuration decide which end of the range your store lands on. Source: Tideways, Performance Benchmark Report H1 2026 for Shopware 6 (more than 300 stores), published 10/01/2026
Three questions are enough for an initial assessment:
Our recommendation for most merchants with up to €1M in revenue: managed Shopware hosting in Germany, PHP 8.4, MySQL 8.4, Redis, a staging environment, and a clear contract about who installs updates. We’ve put together what else should be set up in the production environment separately.
A few metrics show whether your hosting is a good fit. The thresholds for utilization and backup tests are based on experience. The other values come from the linked sources.
A Linux server with PHP 8.2 to 8.4, MySQL 8.0.17 or later or MariaDB 10.11 or later, SSH access, Composer, cron jobs, and worker processes. Redis and OpenSearch are optional, but they make sense from mid-sized stores up. Basic shared hosting plans rarely meet these requirements.
Managed Shopware hosting in Germany starts at around €50 per month. Based on our experience, expect €50 to €100 for small stores, €150 to €500 for mid-sized businesses, and €500 to €1,500 for B2B and cluster environments. Shopware PaaS and SaaS are only available with a custom quote.
Shopware Cloud is the umbrella term for the SaaS and PaaS versions run by Shopware. With SaaS, Shopware handles hosting, updates, and maintenance, and extensions only run as apps. With PaaS, Shopware provides the infrastructure, and your team develops and deploys the application itself.
It’s not legally required. The GDPR requires a data processing agreement and an adequate level of protection. A data center in Germany or the EU saves you from having to assess international data transfers. All managed hosts in our comparison and Shopware PaaS Native host in Germany.
The Community Edition is license-free, Rise starts at €600 per month, Evolve at €2,400, and Beyond is priced individually. On top of that come hosting, implementation, extensions, and maintenance. You’ll find a complete breakdown with three sample budgets in our article on Shopware pricing.
When it comes to hosting, the two are fundamentally different: Shopify is SaaS only, and hosting is always included and can’t be chosen. Shopware lets you choose between your own server, PaaS, and SaaS, with full access to code and data. For merchants with their own processes and integrations, that’s usually what tips the scales toward Shopware.
Shopware 6 is open-source ecommerce software from Germany, built on PHP and Symfony with an API-first architecture. It can be self-hosted or run as PaaS and SaaS by Shopware, and it’s aimed at merchants from mid-market to enterprise, in both B2C and B2B.
With self-hosting, yes: a migration consists of files, database, and media, and with a staging test and DNS switch it usually takes a few days. Several managed hosts handle the migration for free when you place a new order.
Planning a new Shopware store or unhappy with your current hosting? Get in touch and we’ll recommend the right environment based on your product range, order volume, and integrations. We’ll also tell you if a smaller server is enough.
Already running a store? Our free store audit checks load times in addition to conversion and visibility and shows you where you’re leaving revenue on the table.
Learn more about how we work, our certifications, and our locations on the Shopware agency solution25 page.
Besnik Bilalli is the founder and CEO of solution25, the Shopware agency based in Bremen. Before founding the agency in 2017, he built his own online store and grew it to more than 500 orders per day. Since then, he has supported merchants with Shopware projects, from the first cost estimate to ongoing operations. He’s happy to answer questions about this article personally: Get in touch.
Responsible for content and updates: Besnik Bilalli. Last updated: October 2026. Next content review: January 2027.
