Kaizen or Shopware? Built for how Europe sells.
Kaizen is an online store platform made for selling in the EU, run for you rather than hosted by you. The legal parts, the extra ways to sell and the numbers you steer by are part of the product.
Why store owners choose Kaizen
Eight reasons, each one something you can look for in the admin. Where a comparison with Shopware is fair, it says what Shopware offers itself and what comes from an extension.
The legal side of EU selling is built in
VAT follows the buyer's country, with OSS and IOSS figures ready for your accountant. Legal invoices and credit notes come in a gap-free series. You also get the 14-day withdrawal function, the 30-day lowest-price indication, product safety information, and customer-data export and erasure. Shopware has invoices, credit notes and a withdrawal form in its core. The lowest-price indication is an extension.
Sell more than parcels
Appointments, stays, rentals, subscription boxes and downloads share one catalogue, one cart and one checkout with ordinary products. Let outside hosts list their own stays and rentals for a commission, with the DAC7 report included. On Shopware, rentals and marketplaces are extensions.
An AI manager that works from your own data
Ask about orders, stock or sales and it answers from your store's numbers, with the arithmetic done in code. It drafts product texts, translates the whole store and builds pages from a short interview. Anything that changes your shop, emails customers or spends money waits for your yes. Use Kaizen's AI or bring your own provider.
Know why your numbers move
Profit by order and product, customer lifetime value, cohorts and a monthly forecast, with alerts and a plain-words account of what changed. Send reports to your accountant on a schedule.
Made for Nordic shops
Book and print labels with Bring, Porterbuddy and Helthjem, offer pickup points from Bring, PostNord and Helthjem, and let customers pay with Vipps and MobilePay. Look up a Norwegian company in Brønnøysundregistrene and send your books to Tripletex. Shopper-facing texts are written by hand in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and English. On Shopware, Vipps, MobilePay and Bring come from plugins, and the listings we read name older Shopware versions.
Your data stays in Europe
Your store's database and servers are in Dublin, and every service we add is chosen to keep customer data in the EU. Staff sign in with two steps, roles limit who sees what, and an activity log records who changed what. Self-hosted Shopware runs where you choose. Shopware's managed SaaS runs in Frankfurt, according to its data processing agreement.
Grow without an app bill
Wishlists, refer-a-friend rewards, loyalty credits, product reviews, back-in-stock emails, pre-orders and tiered or volume discounts are part of the product. On Shopware, wishlists, reviews and quantity pricing are in core. Loyalty, referral, back-in-stock notices, pre-orders and scheduled reports are extensions.
Run several stores, and move in easily
See every store you own in one control center, copy a store with its content, and show your products inside a WordPress site while checkout stays in Kaizen. Bring your products over from a CSV file and keep old links working with redirects. Shopware's sales channels serve several storefronts from one Shopware instance.
Kaizen and Shopware, line by line
Where Shopware needs an extension or a higher plan, the right-hand side says so. What we say about Shopware comes from Shopware's own help pages, documentation and listings. A line is left out where we could not verify what Shopware does.
Selling in the EU
Legal invoices and credit notes
Kaizen. Issued for every paid order and refund, in a gap-free series, as PDF and on a page the customer can open.
Shopware. Built in. Shopware creates invoices, credit notes and cancellation invoices from the order, with number ranges you configure and PDF output, and supports the ZUGFeRD e-invoice. We did not verify gap-free numbering or a credit note made automatically on every refund.
30-day lowest-price indication
Kaizen. Kept for every price and shown only on a real reduction.
Shopware. An extension. A community forum reply of February 2025 says the core has a regulation-price field but no price history. Pixup Media's extension is listed at 18.90 EUR a month.
Right of withdrawal
Kaizen. A two-step function for customers, the 14-day clock from the recorded delivery, exclusions and a digital-content waiver, with refunds and returns in one queue.
Shopware. Built in since version 6.7.9.0 (April 2026): a withdrawal form and a confirmation of receipt. Shopware says the merchant still checks deadlines and exclusion grounds by hand.
Product safety information (GPSR)
Kaizen. Fields on the product, shown on the product page.
Shopware. Custom fields can be shown in page blocks since version 6.6.9.0, which Shopware presents as a way to handle product safety information. Dedicated plugins exist.
VAT across the EU, reverse charge, OSS and IOSS
Kaizen. VAT follows the buyer's country. A business buyer's VAT number is checked before VAT is left off, and OSS and IOSS figures are ready for your accountant.
Shopware. Tax rates per country with validity dates are built in. An OSS plugin from alphanauten is listed at 24.99 EUR a month. The core checks the format of a VAT ID and applies B2B tax-free treatment when the account has a valid one. Checking against VIES comes from third-party extensions.
Selling more than goods
Appointments, stays and rentals
Kaizen. Part of the catalogue, with opening hours, capacity, seasons, deposits and calendars.
Shopware. An extension: Rental Products is listed at 69.50 EUR a month, for daily, overnight and hourly rentals.
A marketplace with outside hosts
Kaizen. Hosts list stays and rentals, get paid through their own Stripe account, and you take a commission.
Shopware. An extension: Webkul's Multi-Seller Marketplace is listed at 36 EUR a month, for versions up to 6.5.6.1.
Several stores under one owner
Kaizen. One control center for every store you own.
Shopware. Built in as sales channels, each with its own language, currency, payment, shipping and domains.
Growing the shop
Loyalty and rewards
Kaizen. Credits that customers earn and spend, with expiry reminders.
Shopware. An extension, listed at 19.99 EUR a month.
Refer-a-friend
Kaizen. Customers refer customers, with a welcome discount and a reward in credits.
Shopware. An extension, listed at 29.90 EUR a month.
Wishlists
Kaizen. Built in, for signed-in and guest customers.
Shopware. Built in.
Product reviews
Kaizen. Verified-purchase reviews with moderation and structured data.
Shopware. Built in.
Back-in-stock emails and pre-orders
Kaizen. A notify-me list on sold-out products, and pre-orders with a release date.
Shopware. Both are extensions: back-in-stock notices from 19.99 EUR a month and pre-orders from 3 EUR a month.
Tiered and volume discounts
Kaizen. Part of the discount rules.
Shopware. Built in as scaled prices by quantity.
Scheduled report emails
Kaizen. Reports sent to you and your accountant on a schedule.
Shopware. An extension: a daily report mail is listed at 3.99 EUR a month.
Nordic shops, AI and your data
Vipps and MobilePay
Kaizen. Offered at checkout.
Shopware. The official Vipps MobilePay plugin is built by WEXO and downloaded from GitHub. Its documentation names Shopware 6.5.
Nordic carriers and pickup points
Kaizen. Bring, Porterbuddy and Helthjem labels, and pickup points from Bring, PostNord and Helthjem, chosen at checkout.
Shopware. A Bring plugin from WEXO is listed for Shopware 6.4 to 6.6.6.1, last updated in September 2024.
An assistant that runs the shop with you
Kaizen. An AI manager in the admin that answers from your store's own data and asks for your yes before it changes anything.
Shopware. Shopware's Copilot is a chat assistant in the admin on all plans. Its data insights and agent features need the paid Shopware Intelligence+ add-on.
Where your data is kept
Kaizen. The database and the servers are in Dublin.
Shopware. Self-hosted: you run hosting, updates and security. Managed SaaS runs in Frankfurt on AWS, with Datadog, a US company, named as a subprocessor.
What it costs
Shopware's Community Edition is free and open source (MIT licence). Since March 2025, merchants above 1 million EUR in yearly sales must subscribe to a paid plan to keep access to Shopware's account and store, and Shopware says it has no immediate restrictions. Paid plans are priced from 600 EUR a month (Rise) and 2,400 EUR a month (Evolve), excluding VAT, depending on sales and other factors. The pricing page states no transaction fee. Hosting, a developer and extensions come on top.
Kaizen has no extension bills for what this page describes. The plans and the fee per sale are on the pricing page.
Where Shopware is the better fit
Kaizen is not the right choice for everyone. Choose Shopware if:
- You have a development team and want an open-source, API-first platform you can host and shape yourself.
- You sell to businesses and need Shopware's B2B components: roles and permissions, quotes, budgets and approvals, on its Evolve plan.
- You want a choice of hosting: self-hosted, managed PaaS or SaaS.
- You sell mainly in Germany and want the German legal tooling in core, such as ZUGFeRD e-invoices.
- You want one instance serving many storefronts with their own languages, currencies and domains.
If your customers are in Europe and you want the legal parts, the extra ways to sell and the numbers in one product, Kaizen is built for you.
Who Kaizen is for
Shops selling in the EU
You sell to consumers in more than one EU country, you carry the VAT, invoices and withdrawal rights yourself, and you would rather have them handled in the product than in several add-ons.
Businesses that sell time, space and subscriptions too
Salons and studios with a booking calendar, a cabin or a bike rental, a farm with weekly boxes, a shop that also sells downloads: one store, one checkout, one set of figures.
Agencies and owners of several stores
One control center, copies of a store, roles with per-section permissions, two-step sign-in, an activity log, and collaborator access that ends on a date you set.
Moving over from Shopware
- Import your products from a CSV file, with a dry run that shows what will be created and what is wrong before anything is saved. Kaizen reads Shopify's product layout and its own.
- Shopware exports products as CSV through its import and export profiles. A direct importer for Shopware is not built yet, so arrange the export in Kaizen's layout first.
- Bring your old addresses over as redirects from a CSV file, so links and search rankings keep working.
- Use your own domain when you are ready. Nothing you export from Kaizen is locked in: orders, customers and reports download as files.
Questions
Can I move my Shopware store to Kaizen?
Your products and your old addresses, yes, through CSV files and a dry run. A direct Shopware importer is not built yet, so you arrange your product export in Kaizen's file layout first. Your theme does not move, because Kaizen's pages are built in its own page builder.
Do I need extensions or a developer?
Kaizen has no extension store and you do not host or update anything. What this page describes is built in, and Kaizen connects to Slack, Zapier, Make, Tripletex and the carriers named above.
Where is my data kept?
The database and the servers are in Ireland, and every service we add is chosen to keep customer data in the EU.
Does Kaizen give legal advice?
No. Kaizen provides the tools, and starting texts for terms, privacy, returns and shipping pages in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and English, each marked for review. Have a lawyer read them before you publish: you are responsible for what your shop says.
What does it cost?
The plans and the fee per sale are on the pricing page. There are no separate subscriptions for what this page describes.
Try Kaizen with your own products
Shopware's features, plans and prices change. What this page says about Shopware comes from Shopware's own help pages, documentation and listings, last read on 6 October 2026. Prices are list prices on that day, in the currency shown, and prices of extensions and apps are the listing partners' own. Check Shopware's pages for today's.