Which VAT rate applies? A decision tree for cross-border selling
Domestic rate, reverse charge, One-Stop-Shop or zero-rated export — four outcomes, three questions. Plus a free calculator that picks the rule for you.
12 Jul 2026
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// Blog
Notes from people who ship this stuff
Shopware, Node.js, React, performance, AI, cloud and the boring B2B details nobody blogs about. No listicles, no reheated vendor marketing — only things we have actually done.
Agentic commerce: what actually changes when the buyer is a bot
Protocols, councils and press releases are multiplying. Underneath the noise, one thing genuinely changes for your shop — and it is not the checkout.
11 Jul 2026
Margin, markup and break-even: the numbers shops get wrong
A 50% markup is a 33% margin. Confuse the two and you have quietly given away a third of your profit on every product in the catalogue.
11 Jul 2026
Shopware vs. everyone: an honest comparison of 12 shop systems
Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, OpenCart, Odoo, Wix, Square, Zoho and more — measured against Shopware 6 on the things that actually decide a B2B project.
10 Jul 2026
Shopware 5 vs Shopware 6: should you actually move?
Not every Shopware 5 shop needs to migrate this year. Here is how to tell whether yours is a healthy earner or a ticking maintenance bill.
09 Jul 2026
AI wrote 40% of this sprint. Here is what it did not write
AI coding assistants genuinely changed how we work. They also cannot tell you why your customer's pricing rule contradicts itself.
09 Jul 2026
Shopware apps vs plugins: which one should you actually build?
Apps run outside the shop and survive updates. Plugins run inside it and can do anything. The choice decides your maintenance bill for years.
08 Jul 2026
Shopware 6 vs Shopify: speed to launch or freedom to build?
Shopify will have you live in weeks. Shopware will still be doing what you need in ten years. The honest trade-off, with the numbers.
07 Jul 2026
Your first Shopware app server: registration, webhooks, signatures
The app manifest is easy. The handshake, the shop secret and verifying every incoming request are where first-time app builders get burned.
06 Jul 2026
How to choose a shop system without writing a 90-page spec
Long requirement documents make everyone feel safe and tell you nothing. Three exercises that reveal more than any feature matrix.
06 Jul 2026
Shopware 6 vs Magento / Adobe Commerce: power at what price?
Two open, extensible, B2B-capable platforms. One of them needs a devops team just to stay upright. Here is what that actually costs.
05 Jul 2026
Extending the Shopware admin without owning the admin
The Admin Extension API lets an app add modules, action buttons and notifications through an iframe and a message bridge. Less power, far less pain.
04 Jul 2026
Shopware 6 vs WooCommerce: when a WordPress plugin is not enough
WooCommerce is the cheapest way to start selling and the most expensive way to scale. The exact point where that flips.
03 Jul 2026
Shopware 6 plugins: when to buy, when to build
Store plugins promise a lot and deliver about 70% of it. Here is the decision framework we use with clients before spending a cent on either option.
02 Jul 2026
App Scripts: custom prices, discounts and cart manipulation
App Scripts run inside Shopware's process but ship with your app. They are how you touch the cart without a plugin — and without an HTTP call per line item.
01 Jul 2026
Shopware 6 vs PrestaShop: the European open-source duel
Both are open, both are European, both are free to download. The difference shows up in the second year, not the first.
01 Jul 2026
Shopware 6 vs OpenCart: cheap now, expensive later?
OpenCart is light, fast to install and costs almost nothing. It is also the system we most often find holding a growing business back.
29 Jun 2026
Tax Provider apps: let a service that knows tax do the tax
Shopware lets an external endpoint calculate tax for the whole cart. For cross-border B2B, that is the difference between a rule table and an audit.
28 Jun 2026
Shopware 6 vs Odoo: is your shop a shop, or a module of your ERP?
Odoo gives you commerce inside the ERP. That solves your integration problem and creates a storefront problem. Which one hurts more?
27 Jun 2026
Shopware 6 vs Wix: the question is not which is better
Comparing these two is like comparing a van to a bicycle. The real question is what you are carrying — and how far.
25 Jun 2026
Shopware 5 → 6 migration: the checklist we actually use
Data migrates fine. It is the SEO URLs, the custom logic and the plugin gaps that kill migrations. A field-tested checklist from real projects.
24 Jun 2026
Shopware 6 vs Square Online: when the POS is the boss
Square Online exists to extend a point-of-sale into the web. Judge it as that, and it is very good. Judge it as a B2B platform and it is not one.
23 Jun 2026
Shopware 6 vs Zoho Commerce: the suite tax
If you already live in Zoho, its shop is tempting and integrated. That integration is exactly what you pay for later.
21 Jun 2026
Custom fields or custom entities? Modelling data in Shopware 6
Custom fields are a five-minute solution that becomes a five-month problem. Here is the line at which you must switch to a real entity.
20 Jun 2026
Shopware vs OXID vs JTL: the German shop-system question
Three German platforms, three different centres of gravity. If you are choosing between them, you are choosing an ecosystem more than a feature list.
19 Jun 2026
B2B pricing in Shopware 6 without losing your mind
Customer groups, scale prices, contract prices, rule builder — four mechanisms that overlap. Here is which one to reach for, and when.
17 Jun 2026
Shopware 6 vs commercetools: do you really need composable?
Composable commerce is real engineering, not a buzzword — and it is far more platform than most mid-market companies need or can staff.
16 Jun 2026
Custom CMS blocks: giving marketing bricks instead of tickets
Every landing page that needs a developer is a landing page that will not be built. Custom blocks turn your team into people who can ship.
13 Jun 2026
Headless Shopware: when the Store API is worth it
Headless is not automatically faster or better. It buys you freedom and costs you a whole frontend. Four questions that tell you if it pays off.
10 Jun 2026
Custom flow actions and rule conditions from the app system
Teach Shopware one new verb and one new condition, and your non-technical team can automate things you never anticipated.
06 Jun 2026
Flow Builder: the automation you already paid for
Most Shopware 6 shops use Flow Builder for order confirmation emails and nothing else. Here are the flows that actually save hours every week.
03 Jun 2026
The Store API in practice: auth, cart, checkout
Context tokens, sales-channel keys and the cart that lives on the server. The three things every headless build gets wrong on the first attempt.
30 May 2026
Node.js next to Shopware: the middleware pattern
Not everything belongs in the shop. A small Node service between Shopware and your ERP solves problems a plugin never will.
27 May 2026
The search criteria concept: Shopware's most underused feature
Most integrations fetch far too much data because nobody read the criteria docs. Filters, aggregations and associations, explained by example.
23 May 2026
React or Vue for a shop frontend? An honest comparison
Both are excellent. The right answer depends far less on the framework than on who maintains it after we leave.
20 May 2026
Importing 100,000 products without killing the shop
One request per product is a 28-hour import. Bulk payloads and the sync API turn it into twenty minutes — if you get the batching right.
16 May 2026
REST or GraphQL for your commerce API?
GraphQL solves over-fetching. It also hands your clients a loaded gun pointed at your database. When each one is the right call.
13 May 2026
Shopware Frontends: composable storefronts without the DIY tax
Building headless from scratch means rebuilding routing, SEO and checkout state. Frontends gives you those — at the cost of following someone else's shape.
09 May 2026
TypeScript in production: worth it, with conditions
Types do not prevent bugs. They prevent a specific, expensive class of bug — the one that reaches your customer's invoice.
06 May 2026
Why your Shopware scheduled tasks are stuck in 'queued'
Nothing is broken, nothing errors, and nothing runs. The message consumer is almost always the answer — and here is how to prove it in five minutes.
02 May 2026
Redis caching: the four patterns that matter
Redis is not magic. Used badly it serves stale prices to real customers. Four patterns, and how to invalidate without fear.
29 Apr 2026
Clearing Shopware caches properly (and why it 'came back')
There is no single cache. There are five, and the one you forgot is the one still serving yesterday's price.
25 Apr 2026
Elasticsearch for product search: the parts that pay
MySQL LIKE queries die at 50,000 products. Here is what Elasticsearch fixes, what it does not, and the fields that decide relevance.
22 Apr 2026
Phishing: the 21 seconds between the email and the click
Your firewall is fine. Your accountant, on a Friday afternoon, looking at an invoice from a supplier they know — that is the attack surface.
18 Apr 2026
TTFB: what actually makes your shop slow to respond
Time to First Byte is the number your CDN cannot fake. Five causes, in the order we check them on real Shopware shops.
15 Apr 2026
The expired certificate that closed the shop for six hours
Certificates expire on Sundays. Browsers block the shop entirely. And the renewal reminder went to an inbox nobody has read since 2023.
11 Apr 2026
CLS and Core Web Vitals: fixing the jumping shop
Layout shift is the vital that costs you conversions directly — buyers click the wrong button. It is also the easiest one to fix.
08 Apr 2026
A GDPR checklist for a shop that actually sells things
Not legal advice — an engineering checklist. The technical facts you must be able to state about your shop when someone finally asks.
04 Apr 2026
PageSpeed 100 is a vanity metric. Here is what to chase instead
We have made shops score 98 and convert worse. The score is a proxy; revenue is the target. How to optimise for the second one.
01 Apr 2026
E-invoicing: your PDF is no longer an invoice
Structured invoicing (ZUGFeRD, XRechnung) is becoming mandatory in B2B. A PDF attached to an email will not satisfy it — and your shop has to change.
28 Mar 2026
AI in e-commerce: what actually works in 2026
Product descriptions, search, support triage, forecasting. Three of those pay for themselves. We separate the working from the pitching.
25 Mar 2026
Vector search: finding meaning instead of matching letters
Your customer searches 'leaking pipe joint'. Your catalogue says 'compression fitting'. Keyword search finds nothing. Vector search finds the product.
21 Mar 2026
Building a RAG assistant on your own documents
The model is the easy part. Chunking, retrieval and the honest 'I don't know' are what separate a useful assistant from a liability.
18 Mar 2026
Getting your products into AI shopping answers
Buyers increasingly ask an assistant, not a search engine. If your catalogue is not machine-readable, you are simply not in the answer.
14 Mar 2026
30,000 product texts without 30,000 hallucinations
Generating catalogue copy with an LLM works — if you never let it invent a number. The pipeline we use in production.
11 Mar 2026
Funding your digitalisation project — without the buzzword bingo
Public funding can carry a meaningful part of a digital project. It can also eat six weeks and change nothing. How to tell which one you are in.
07 Mar 2026
Process automation: from fragile cron to reliable workers
The nightly script that 'usually runs' is a business risk. How to turn recurring work into something you can trust and observe.
04 Mar 2026
Why we build browser software instead of desktop applications
Deployment, updates, support and onboarding all collapse into one thing when the app lives at a URL. The exceptions are real, but rarer than people think.
28 Feb 2026
AWS for Shopware: what you need and what you don't
You can run a serious B2B shop on far less AWS than a consultant will sell you. The minimal architecture that scales.
25 Feb 2026
Teams, Zoom, VPN — and still no working remote setup
Buying tools is not building an infrastructure. Three mistakes we see in almost every mid-sized company that 'went remote' and never quite arrived.
21 Feb 2026
From FTP to CI/CD: deployments that do not scare you
If deploying is scary, you deploy rarely, so each deploy is huge, so it is scarier. Here is how to break that loop.
18 Feb 2026
What an app really costs: the three-year number nobody quotes
The build is the cheap part. Store fees, OS updates, device fragmentation and the second platform are what turn a €60k app into a €200k decision.
14 Feb 2026
Monitoring: know your shop is broken before your customer calls
Uptime checks tell you the server answered. They do not tell you that checkout has been failing for six hours. Monitor the business, not the box.
11 Feb 2026
Technical SEO for Shopware 6: the ten things that move rankings
Forget keyword density. In a B2B shop, rankings are won with URL structure, faceted-navigation control and pages that actually load.
04 Feb 2026
SEO or SEA: where should the next €10,000 go?
SEA buys traffic today and stops the moment you stop paying. SEO compounds and takes months. A framework for splitting the budget.
28 Jan 2026
Email automation for B2B: five flows worth more than a newsletter
Your B2B customers do not want a monthly newsletter. They want to know their reorder is due and their quote expires Friday.
21 Jan 2026
Tax calculation in B2B commerce: VAT, reverse charge and OSS
Get tax wrong and you do not get a bug report — you get an audit. The rules a B2B shop must encode, in plain language.
14 Jan 2026
Product text that sells to an engineer
Your B2B buyer does not want a story. They want to know whether it fits, when it ships, and what happens if it breaks.
07 Jan 2026
Where B2B commerce is actually heading
Ignore the metaverse. The real shifts are boring, already underway, and they will decide who your customers order from in 2028.
02 Jan 2026
Technical debt: how to explain it to someone who signs the cheque
'The code is messy' is not a business case. Translate debt into delivery speed, outage risk and hiring cost — then it gets funded.
17 Dec 2025
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