What a managed host takes on for Shopware, where its responsibility ends, how to read an SLA and what managed Shopware hosting costs per month.
Managed Shopware hosting means the host runs the server and you or your agency run Shopware. The provider installs updates for the operating system, PHP, the database and services such as Redis or OpenSearch, monitors the server around the clock, backs it up daily and steps in when hardware or the network fails. The large providers explicitly exclude Shopware updates, plugins, themes and custom code.
The premium over a self-managed server is smaller than many people expect. At creoline, the managed level costs 30% of the server price, capped at €50 per month. At maxcluster, managed packages range from €60 to €350 per month plus hardware. In return, you save the hours an administrator would otherwise spend on patches, monitoring and incidents at night.
It pays off for almost every shop without its own operations team. Self-managed servers only make sense if someone in-house can run Linux servers securely and is reachable at night when something breaks.
This article is for shop owners, e-commerce managers and IT leads who run or plan a Shopware shop and want to know what a managed host actually takes on. You will learn where the host’s responsibility ends, how to read SLA figures, what managed hosting costs and which questions to ask before you sign. The technical requirements of Shopware 6.7 and a provider comparison are covered in our article on Shopware hosting.
The basis is the service descriptions and SLAs of creoline and maxcluster, both Platinum Hosting Partners of Shopware, and our experience running Shopware shops since 2017. All prices as of November 2026, excluding VAT.
Managed Shopware hosting is a server or cluster that a host prepares for Shopware and operates on an ongoing basis. You are not just renting computing power, you are buying a service: the provider keeps the system software up to date, monitors it and repairs it when something fails.
maxcluster describes managed hosting as the provider managing not only the hardware but also the operating system and system software. That includes configuration, patch management, round-the-clock monitoring, firewalls and protection against DDoS attacks. What exactly the provider owes you is defined in the service level agreement.
When an offer promises “managed Shopware”, first ask which of these three levels it means. The answer decides whether you also need an agency or your own developer for operations.
Shopware offers two operating models of its own, PaaS Native and SaaS. With PaaS, Shopware runs the platform on AWS in Frankfurt, and your team is responsible for plugins, theme and Shopware updates. With SaaS, Shopware also handles the software updates, but extensions run as apps only. Managed hosting is the third option: you choose the host yourself, keep every plugin and can switch providers without leaving the platform. Read more in our article on Shopware PaaS.
The most important question with managed hosting is not the price but where responsibility ends. The table below shows the typical split for a managed server. It is based on the service descriptions of creoline and maxcluster and on our projects. Individual providers differ, so the list belongs in every sales conversation.
| Task | Managed host | You or your agency |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware, network, data centre | Yes | No |
| Operating system security updates | Yes, usually within hours | No |
| PHP, database, web server, Redis, OpenSearch | Operation, updates and configuration | Choice of PHP version, coordination of major updates |
| Server monitoring and alerts | Yes, around the clock | Own monitoring of shop functions |
| Server and database backups | Yes, daily with fixed retention | Checking that restores work |
| Initial Shopware installation | Included with many providers | Shop configuration |
| Shopware updates | No | Yes |
| Plugins, apps, theme, custom code | No | Yes |
| Workers, cron jobs, message queue | Providing the services | Setup that fits the shop |
| Load tests before campaigns | Adding resources on request | Planning, running, evaluating |
| Shop errors, such as a failing checkout | Only if the cause is the server | Yes |
creoline states the boundary very clearly: maintenance, updates and security of web applications, including their plugins, themes and extensions, are not part of managed support. That applies regardless of the support level chosen and even if creoline installed the application. The initial Shopware installation is included, ongoing maintenance is not.
This is not a drawback but a sensible division of labour. A Linux administrator at the host knows the kernel, PHP-FPM and MySQL, but not your plugin combination or your ERP interface. For the application, you need someone who knows Shopware.
Behind the word “managed” are concrete routines. The two Platinum partners show well what they look like.
At creoline, security updates are applied as quickly as possible, even outside maintenance windows. Minor updates run daily between 1:00 and 6am Central European Time. Major version upgrades are applied automatically by default on new managed servers, but you can switch this off in the customer centre. maxcluster installs operating system updates monthly on the first Tuesday, with security updates as needed.
For you, this means a PHP or MySQL update will not come as a surprise, but it will come. Ask whether the host announces major upgrades in advance so you can test the shop on a staging environment.
maxcluster says it monitors more than 50 parameters per server. If a shop is unreachable for at least four minutes, support starts troubleshooting on its own. Managed packages include round-the-clock phone access to Linux administrators. creoline runs an emergency hotline 365 days a year; at the managed level, an emergency call outside service hours costs a flat €29.
Daily backups are standard. maxcluster keeps them for 14 days and does not charge extra for restores, while creoline backs up the full server and offers snapshots. A host’s backup is still no substitute for your own check: ask whether the database and media files are backed up separately and how long a full restore takes.
Firewalls, DDoS protection and regular malware scans are part of the package at managed hosts. They protect the server, not the application. A security hole in an outdated plugin remains a hole, even on the best server.
Even with managed hosting, you need someone to look after Shopware. These tasks come up in every shop:
Based on our experience, plan for two to six hours of Shopware support per month for a mid-sized shop, and considerably more in months with a major update. Whether you handle it in-house, with a freelancer or with an agency comes down to availability: a security update should be live within a few days, not after the next holiday.
A service level agreement is the document managed hosting should be measured against. Three figures matter, and all three come with footnotes.
99.9% on an annual average allows around 8.8 hours of downtime per year, 99.99% about 52 minutes. In its general SLA, creoline commits to 99.9% on an annual average, and to 99.99% for hardware and network on its managed Shopware cluster. maxcluster cites 99.99% on an annual average for network and server hardware.
Watch for the words “hardware and network”. That commitment does not mean your shop is reachable 99.99% of the year. If the shop goes down because of a faulty plugin, that does not count against the host’s availability.
creoline’s SLA excludes downtime caused by customer software, agreed maintenance and urgent maintenance to close security holes. The fixed maintenance windows are Sunday 11pm to 4am and Wednesday 11pm to 4am Central European Time. For most shops this is not critical. If your customers order at night, for example from other time zones, you should know about it.
Response time means someone starts working on the problem. It does not mean the problem is fixed by then. At creoline, the standard response time is 24 hours for minor and moderate incidents and 6 hours for major ones, the latter also on Sundays and holidays. With Extended Support Enterprise, it drops to 30 minutes for major incidents. At maxcluster, the guaranteed response to critical incidents is 90 minutes in the Basic package, 30 minutes in Business and 15 minutes in Enterprise.
Compensation is almost always a credit on the hosting fee. At creoline, it is 5% for availability between 99.90% and 99.98% and 10% below that, capped at one monthly fee per year in total. No credit covers the revenue of a day of downtime. An SLA is therefore mainly a sign of how seriously a provider takes availability, not an insurance policy.
Managed hosting has two parts: server resources and an operations fee. Some providers show them separately, others quote a package price.
| Provider and model | Price per month | What the price covers |
|---|---|---|
| creoline managed server | €49.99 to €179.92 for 2 to 8 vCPU | Server with Shopware preinstalled |
| creoline managed level | 30% of the base price, max. €50 | Operating system and services, monitoring, backups |
| maxcluster managed packages | Basic €60, Business €150, Enterprise €350 | Operations and support, hardware billed on top |
| creoline managed Shopware cluster | €542.10 (stage 1) to €3,311.20 (stage 3) | Load balancer, several app servers, HTTP cache, database, search |
Stage 1 of the creoline cluster includes one load balancer, two app servers for the storefront plus one for the administration, two HTTP caches, one database, one application cache and one search node. That shows why cluster hosting costs more: it is not bigger servers, it is more servers.
A hypothetical shop with 5,000 products and around 100 orders a day runs on a server with 4 to 8 vCPU and 16 GB of RAM. The hardware costs about the same on a managed and a self-managed server; the difference lies in operations.
In both cases, Shopware support comes on top, roughly four hours a month. For server operations alone, managed hosting saves around €280 per month in this example. A self-managed server only pays off if the admin hours are already there, for example with an in-house DevOps team that looks after several servers.
How hosting fits into the total budget of licence, implementation and maintenance is calculated in our article on Shopware costs.
The decision depends less on the size of the shop than on who responds when something breaks. Four typical situations:
A shop with two to ten employees, supported by an agency. Managed hosting is almost always right here. Nobody on the team should be restarting a MySQL service at 3am, and the agency should spend its hours on the shop, not on kernel updates.
IT runs the ERP, the network and the workstations, but rarely web servers under load. Managed hosting takes that off their plate and clarifies who is responsible. Make sure IT keeps limited access, for example to connect the ERP system through a VPN.
Customer-specific prices, imports from the ERP and interfaces to a PIM or CRM create load in the background, not just in the storefront. Managed hosting with a cluster option makes sense here because you can later move the database or the workers to their own servers without changing providers.
If you already run several servers, keep configuration as code and have an on-call rotation, you can run self-managed servers at lower cost. Even then, the question remains whether the rotation is covered when someone is sick or on holiday.
Managed hosting is less suitable if you only need a test shop or a development environment. maxcluster offers an inexpensive Dev package for €20 per month for that, explicitly not intended for live shops.
A managed host processes your customers’ personal data. That makes it a data processor, and under the EU’s GDPR you need a data processing agreement. Reputable providers offer it as a standard document.
These points should also be written into the contract:
UK GDPR applies to your shop. The UK recognises the EU and the EEA as providing adequate data protection, so hosting with a provider in Germany is permitted; you still need a data processing agreement. The prices in this article are in euros and exclude VAT. For B2B services from an EU host, you normally account for UK VAT yourself under the reverse charge. In the shop, you work with VAT rates of 20%, 5% and 0%. If you ship to customers in the EU, plan for customs declarations and EU VAT rules, which Shopware can map with separate tax rules per country. Support hours of 9am to 6pm Central European Time correspond to 8am to 5pm UK time.
Send the following questions to two or three providers and insist on written answers. Marketing claims such as “worry-free” do not help you decide.
Moving a self-hosted Shopware shop means moving files, the database and media files. Many managed hosts handle the move when you sign up. Still plan a test on the new server, a short DNS time to live a few days ahead and a maintenance window outside your peak sales hours. We describe the process step by step in our article on Shopware hosting.
With unmanaged hosting, you get a server with root access and run everything yourself. With managed hosting, the host maintains the operating system, web server, PHP, database and services, monitors the server and backs it up. Shopware itself stays with you or your agency in both cases.
Usually not. creoline explicitly excludes updates of web applications, plugins and themes, even if the host installed Shopware. For Shopware updates, you need an agency, a developer or a maintenance contract.
For a single managed server, expect around €50 to €180 per month, and from around €540 for a cluster. With providers that list operations and hardware separately, server resources come on top of the package price of €60 to €350. All figures exclude VAT.
Only if the server is big enough and you have tested the load beforehand. Talk to your host about a temporary increase in resources and test the shop with a load test on the staging environment.
Yes, usually with limited rights. Managed servers generally do not come with root access, because the host could not otherwise guarantee the state of the system. Deployment, Composer and Shopware’s command-line tools still work.
We are not a host. We are the part that is often missing with managed hosting: looking after Shopware itself. As a Shopware Platinum Partner based in Bremen, Germany, we have worked with merchants and their hosts since 2017. We help you choose the right package, set up staging, deployment and workers, and take on updates, plugin maintenance and application monitoring.
You can read what that includes on our page about Shopware support and maintenance. If you want to know whether your current server fits your shop, get in touch. We will also tell you if a smaller package is enough.
Besar Bilalli is co-founder and Co-CEO of solution25, the Shopware agency based in Bremen. Before founding the agency in 2017, he and Besnik Bilalli built their own online store without any startup capital and grew it to more than 500 orders a day. Since then, he has guided merchants through Shopware projects, from platform selection to day-to-day operations. He’s happy to answer questions about this article personally: get in touch.
Responsible for content and updates: Besar Bilalli. Last updated: November 2026. Next content review: February 2027.
