Hourly rates of £100 to £180 for agencies and £70 to £120 for freelancers, budgets by project type, fixed price, time and materials and retainer pricing models, partner tiers, and a worked example for comparing proposals.
Specialised Shopware agencies charge £100 to £180 per hour. Freelancers charge £70 to £120, and nearshore teams in Southeastern Europe significantly less. The hourly rate alone says little about the project price.
For the agency work on a small store, budget £20,000 to £35,000, for a mid-market business £40,000 to £120,000, and for B2B £120,000 and up. On top of that come maintenance retainers of £400 to £2,500 a month.
Proposals only become comparable once you put hours, roles, assumptions, and exclusions side by side. The cheapest proposal is rarely the cheapest project.
Proposals for the same store can be tens of thousands of pounds apart, and without a common basis it’s hard to tell which one is realistic. This article is for executives and ecommerce managers in the UK who are collecting agency proposals for a new Shopware store, a relaunch, or a migration, or who already have them on the table.
After reading it, you’ll be able to judge whether an hourly rate and project price are in line with the market, compare proposals line by line, and choose the right pricing model for your project.
Before founding solution25, we built an online store ourselves, so we know what an agency proposal feels like from the client side. Since 2017, we’ve been writing these proposals ourselves, for starter stores as well as for B2B systems with ERP integration.
Licensing, hosting, and total budget are covered in our article on Shopware pricing. All prices as of October 2026, excl. VAT. Ranges from our own project experience are shown in pounds; third-party figures such as Shopware licences and Freelancermap statistics remain in euros, as published by the provider. The market data refers to Germany, Shopware’s home market.
When people search for “Shopware agency cost,” they usually mean three different things: the hourly rate, the price of the entire project, and the monthly fee for ongoing operations. The table puts all three in context.
| Service | Typical pricing model | Typical range |
|---|---|---|
| Development, consulting, design | Hourly rate by role | £100 to £180 per hour (specialised agency), £70 to £120 (freelancer) |
| Discovery phase | Fixed price or workshop package | £2,000 to £8,000 |
| New store or relaunch | Fixed price with requirements spec or time and materials with a budget cap | £20,000 to £35,000 (small), £40,000 to £120,000 (mid-market), £120,000 and up (B2B) |
| Single extension (plugin) | Fixed price based on specification | £3,000 to £15,000 |
| Maintenance and support | Monthly flat fee or block of hours | £400 to £2,500 a month |
| Ongoing development | Retainer with a fixed block of hours | 10 to 20% of project costs per year |
The ranges are based on experience from our projects and match what other Shopware agencies in Germany publish. The freelancer rates are also backed by data from Freelancermap, more on that in a moment.
The agency is only one cost block. On top of that come the Shopware licence (€0 for the Community Edition, from €600 a month for Rise, from €2,400 for Evolve, according to Shopware), hosting, extensions from the Store, and payment processing. In our article on Shopware pricing, we calculate how these add up to a total budget for three sample stores.
Here, we focus on the question that only comes up briefly there: how does the price on an agency proposal come about, and how can you tell whether it’s fair?
The hourly rate is the best-known number and at the same time the most misunderstood. Here’s the market situation in Germany, with sources where they exist.
| Provider | Hourly rate (net) | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Specialised Shopware agency | £100 to £180 | From experience, matches public figures from other agencies |
| Generalist web agency | £80 to £140 | From experience |
| Freelancer specialising in Shopware | £70 to £120 | Freelancermap: €50 to €120, average €80 across about 970 Shopware profiles |
| IT freelancers in general | about €90 to €103 | Freelancer-Kompass 2026: €103 across all freelancers, about €90 in software and web development |
| Nearshore team in Southeastern Europe, managed from Germany | £40 to £80 | From experience with our team in Prishtina |
| Offshore without local management | £25 to £50 | From experience, usually without German-speaking project management |
The Freelancer-Kompass 2026 from Freelancermap, with around 5,400 self-employed participants, reports an average hourly rate of €103, down from €104 the previous year. In software and web development, the median is €90. Around 970 freelancers are listed on Freelancermap’s Shopware page, with hourly rates from €50 to €120 and an average of €80.
Reputable agencies don’t charge a flat rate, but bill by role. The following ranges are based on experience for specialised Shopware agencies.
Many agencies quote a blended rate across these roles in their proposal. Ask how it’s made up.
What matters is how many hours a team needs for a task. A developer who knows the plugin structure, the Rule Builder, and the data models of Shopware 6 often needs only a third of the time a generalist would for the same task.
Here’s an example: Agency A offers £95 per hour and estimates 450 hours, Agency B offers £140 and estimates 280 hours. A costs £42,750, B costs £39,200. The more expensive hour results in the cheaper project, and B’s store will probably go live sooner.
An hourly rate of £130 looks high compared to a developer’s salary. But every billed hour also pays for project management, sales, certifications, tools, and the hours that can’t be billed. With billable utilisation of 65 to 75%, in our experience the margin ends up in the single digits to low double digits.
Then there’s the labour market: according to Bitkom, 79,000 IT jobs in Germany were unfilled in 2026. Experienced Shopware 6 developers are a small slice of that market, and their price reflects it.
How an agency bills affects your risk more than the hourly rate. Four models are common.
The agency quotes a total price for a defined scope of work. This requires a solid requirements specification or a paid discovery phase. If the scope is unclear, the agency prices in the risk, typically with a 15 to 25% markup.
Every change after the contract is signed becomes a change request with its own price. Merchants regularly underestimate how many of these come up in a store project.
You pay for the hours actually worked at the agreed rate. With an open scope, this model is more honest and usually cheaper, but it requires oversight: a monthly budget cap, time records per task, and sign-off before a new task is started.
You book a fixed block of hours per month, such as 20, 40, or 80 hours, at a reduced rate. This works well for maintenance, ongoing development, and continuous optimisation after go-live. Check whether unused hours expire or roll over to the following month.
Agencies that work in an agile way offer sprints of two or three weeks with a fixed budget. The scope of each sprint is prioritised together, and the total budget stays capped.
One variant is team extension: one or more developers work exclusively for you at a monthly price. At 160 hours and £100, that’s £16,000 per developer per month, and correspondingly less with a nearshore team.
| Model | Good fit when | Risk for you | What to watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed price | Scope clearly described, requirements spec available | Change requests, 15 to 25% markup | Assumptions and exclusions in the proposal |
| Time and materials | Scope open, requirements emerge during the project | Budget overruns without oversight | Monthly cap, time records |
| Retainer | Store is live, ongoing maintenance and expansion | Expiring hours | Rollover, notice period, response times |
| Sprint budget | Larger project with phased prioritisation | Scope keeps shifting endlessly | Definition of done, sign-off per sprint |
| Team extension | You have your own product management | The management effort is on you | Seniority, backup coverage, knowledge retention |
Our take: For most store projects, we recommend a combination of a paid discovery phase at a fixed price, implementation on a time and materials basis with a budget cap or in sprints, and a retainer afterward. That way, you don’t pay a risk markup for unclear requirements and still keep control of the budget. What this process looks like with us is described on the our Shopware process page.
Some agencies now offer implementation and operations as a subscription. In our store subscription, our team builds, populates, and runs the store starting at £299 a month, with no setup fee and a 24-month minimum term; after that, the store is yours. The model fits small and growing stores with standard requirements. For custom integrations or B2B logic, a project proposal is still the right way to go.
The following ranges refer to the agency work, meaning discovery, design, development, data migration, testing, and go-live. Licensing, hosting, and Store extensions come on top. Hours and timelines are based on experience from our projects.
| Project type | Scope | Agency budget | Effort and timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small store | Customised standard theme, standard processes, one language, product import via CSV, payment methods from the Store | £20,000 to £35,000 | 170 to 300 hours, 6 to 10 weeks |
| Mid-market | Custom design, ERP or inventory management integration, data migration, multiple languages, custom extensions | £40,000 to £120,000 | 330 to 900 hours, 3 to 6 months |
| B2B and enterprise | Customer-specific pricing, approval workflows, multiple sales channels, PIM, complex integrations, load testing | £120,000 and up, open-ended | 900 hours and up, 6 to 12 months |
| Migration from Shopware 5 to 6 | Data transfer, new theme, plugin replacement, SEO redirects | £20,000 and up (small), £40,000 to £120,000 (mid-market) | same as a new project |
| Single plugin | Custom logic, admin interface, tests, update safety | £3,000 to £15,000 | 25 to 120 hours |
Very lean starter projects without integrations and with an unmodified standard theme are also possible for £10,000 to £20,000. Below £10,000, a specialised agency usually won’t deliver a finished implementation, just an installation with basic configuration.
Migrating from Shopware 5 isn’t an update, it’s a new project with data transfer; details are on our page about migrating from Shopware 5 to 6. Our article on Shopware pricing breaks down what individual items such as ERP integration, data migration, or custom plugins cost.
The most expensive item doesn’t appear in any proposal: unclear requirements. They’re hidden in every other line item, and a paid discovery phase for £2,000 to £8,000 usually saves many times that.
Our relaunch for HelloBody, a D2C beauty and skincare brand, shows how a complete project breaks down into line items. According to the case study, the old storefront suffered from slow load times, an inconsistent brand presence, and many drop-offs before checkout.
It started with an analysis audit that uncovered conversion leaks, UX hurdles, and slow-loading components. That was followed by a custom UI/UX system instead of adapted templates, a fully custom theme, performance optimisation, a new category and filter structure, a simplified checkout, data migration including order history, customer profiles, and SEO metadata, and A/B testing.
The result according to the case study: significantly higher conversion rates, especially on product detail pages and in the checkout, and drastically better performance. For your proposal comparison, that means each of these services is a separate line item with its own effort, and whatever is missing from the proposal comes back later as a change request.
A £60,000 proposal on two pages is a red flag, and so is one on 60 pages without any hours. These points belong in every proposal, regardless of the pricing model.
If one of these points is missing, ask about it. If three are missing, stop comparing the proposal and have it revised.
Shopware maintains a directory of its partner agencies, with around 230 entries as of October 2026, and awards four tiers. The tier depends mainly on the number of certifications the agency’s employees have earned at the Shopware Academy. Shopware explains what the tiers mean on every partner profile.
| Partner tier | Requirement according to Shopware | Support from Shopware |
|---|---|---|
| Bronze | Entry level of the partnership | Self-service portal, test environments for demos |
| Silver | at least 4 certifications | Partner manager from the Integration Partner team |
| Gold | at least 10 certifications | Partner manager from the Integration Partner team |
| Platinum | at least 20 certifications | Dedicated Shopware partner manager |
Certifications are awarded by the Shopware Academy after online proctored exams for developers, business analysts, and project managers. The Academy Pass with access to all certifications costs €999 per person per year. So an agency with 20 certifications has demonstrably invested in know-how.
The tier proves that an agency has Shopware expertise on its team and is supported by Shopware. Its limits: it says nothing about who specifically works on your project, how the agency runs projects, or whether it has experience with your industry or your ERP.
Still, use the directory as a filter: you can narrow it down by project budget, from under €5,000 to over €100,000, and by services such as integration development, store migration, or technical support. An agency that excludes projects of your size rules itself out.
solution25 is listed there as a Platinum partner. For your decision, though, the questions in the next section matter more than the tier.
What to look for in the developers themselves is summarised in How to choose the best Shopware developers.
Three proposals from three agencies usually look so different that the total says nothing. Six steps take you from the request to a well-founded decision.
A merchant with 3,000 products, two languages, and an inventory management integration gets two proposals. Agency A charges £95 per hour, Agency B £130 for development and £110 for project management. The numbers are a simplified example.
| Line item | Proposal A | Proposal B |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | not included | 40 hours, £5,200 |
| Design and theme | 120 hours, £11,400 | 90 hours, £11,700 |
| Inventory management integration | 80 hours, £7,600 | 110 hours, £14,300 |
| Data migration | “time and materials” | 50 hours, £6,500 |
| Testing and go-live | 20 hours, £1,900 | 60 hours, £7,800 |
| Project management | included in hourly rate | 45 hours, £4,950 |
| Proposal total | £20,900 | £50,450 |
| Realistic final total | £35,000 to £45,000 | £50,000 to £55,000 |
Proposal A looks almost £30,000 cheaper. In reality, discovery and data migration are missing, 80 hours is a tight estimate for a bidirectional integration, and 20 hours of testing isn’t enough for two languages and an inventory management system. In the end, both proposals are close together, except that with B you know from the start what you’ll pay.
Figure: The chart shows that the seemingly cheaper Proposal A ends up close to Proposal B once the missing line items are added; so compare line items and hours, not totals. Simplified example from this article, based on solution25 experience, as of October 2026
Go-live marks the start of the part of the partnership that costs the most over the years. Shopware publishes patch releases every few weeks and a new minor version about once a year, and every update needs a test on the staging environment.
| Model | Included | Typical price | Good fit for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic maintenance | Security updates, monitoring, backup checks, minor bug fixes | £400 to £800 a month | Small stores with few plugins |
| Maintenance with a block of hours | Basic maintenance plus 5 to 20 hours for changes | £800 to £2,500 a month | Mid-market, regular changes |
| Support with SLA | Guaranteed response times, on-call, prioritisation, minor updates included | £2,500 and up a month | B2B, high revenue, multiple channels |
| Ongoing development | Retainer for new features and optimisation | 10 to 20% of project costs per year | All stores that are meant to grow |
Check three things in every retainer: whether minor updates such as the jump from 6.6 to 6.7 are included, what response time applies if the store goes down, and whether small things like copy changes are deducted from the block of hours. A version jump with theme and plugin adjustments is rarely included and, in our experience, costs £1,500 to £8,000 depending on the number of extensions.
Whether a proposal was fair only becomes clear during implementation. You should agree on these metrics with your agency; the benchmarks are based on experience from our projects:
The type of provider you choose affects price and risk more than choosing between two agencies of the same type.
| Option | Hourly rate | Strengths | Limitations | Good fit for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | £70 to £120 | Direct contact, flexible, affordable for clearly defined tasks | No backup, rarely covers design, testing, and operations in one person | Plugins, customisations, small stores with their own project management |
| Generalist web agency | £80 to £140 | Design and marketing from a single source | Often lacks Shopware depth, more hours per task | Content-heavy stores with simple processes |
| Specialised Shopware agency | £100 to £180 | Integrations, updates, scaling, team with backup coverage | Higher hourly rate, minimum project sizes | Mid-market, B2B, migrations, ERP integration |
| Nearshore team with German management | Blended rate £70 to £120 | Capacity, price, same time zone | Quality depends on management | Larger projects, ongoing development |
| Offshore without local management | £25 to £50 | Lowest hourly rate | Communication, time difference, liability, data protection | Only with your own technical product management |
A rule of thumb: the more integrations and the higher the revenue, the more important it is to have a team rather than one person. A freelancer at £90 is the right choice for a plugin, but for an ERP integration with a fixed go-live date, they’re a risk without backup.
Models with a nearshore share, like the one we run with our teams in Bremen and Prishtina, deliver good results when project management, architecture, and quality assurance sit in Germany and development works in the same time window. Our article on Shopware agencies in Europe gives an overview of agencies and their focus areas.
Specialised Shopware agencies charge £100 to £180 per hour, depending on the role. Freelancers charge £70 to £120, with an average of €80 on Freelancermap. Nearshore teams with German project management cost a blended rate of £70 to £120.
A small store with a customised standard theme costs £20,000 to £35,000 in agency work, a mid-market store with ERP integration and custom design £40,000 to £120,000, and a B2B project £120,000 and up. Licensing, hosting, and extensions come on top.
The licence costs €0 for the Community Edition, from €600 for Rise, and from €2,400 for Evolve, according to Shopware. Agency support adds £400 to £2,500 a month, depending on scope and response times. Hosting and Store extensions aren’t included.
For individual plugins, customisations, or small stores with their own project management, an experienced freelancer is often the more economical choice. As soon as integrations, design, testing, and a fixed go-live date come together, you need a team with backup coverage. In both cases, what matters is proven experience with Shopware 6.
A Shopware agency is a service provider that plans, designs, develops, migrates, and runs online stores based on Shopware. Many agencies are certified Shopware partners and also cover hosting and integrations with ERP and marketing systems.
There’s no single best agency, only the right one for your project size, industry, and integrations. Check Shopware 6 references of your size, the partner tier in the Shopware directory, the quality of the proposal, and the questions the agency asks you. An agency that doesn’t ask questions hasn’t understood your project.
The tiers are based on the number of Shopware certifications on the team: at least 4 for Silver, 10 for Gold, and 20 for Platinum, with Bronze as the entry level. The tier proves Shopware expertise and support from Shopware, but says nothing about the specific project team or industry experience.
A small store goes live in 6 to 10 weeks, a mid-market store with integrations takes 3 to 6 months, and B2B and enterprise projects 6 to 12 months. The timeline depends less on the agency than on how quickly you deliver data, content, and decisions.
Do you have a proposal on the table and want a second opinion, or are you planning a new store and need a number you can work with? Get in touch: we’ll estimate the effort based on your requirements and also tell you which line items you should question in other proposals.
Already running a Shopware store? Our free store audit shows where your tech, performance, and conversion stand today and which measures are worth it before you approve budget for further development.
Learn more about how we work, our certifications, and our locations on the solution25 Shopware agency page.
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: October 2026. Next content review: January 2027.
