Get ready for the big news: Shopware 6.5 has arrived! It’s time to say hello to new improvements and innovations. What technical changes can you expect? Which new features can you look forward to? What do merchants and developers need to know? You’ll find out all of this here.
Please note that Shopware 6.5 is a major version that includes breaking changes.
Shopware 6.5 comes with many technical improvements
Performance boost
With the latest Shopware version, you can benefit from massive performance improvements on the platform:
5x faster order performance
4.5x better median response time across all pages
3x higher request throughput uncached
How is this possible? We've outsourced tasks from the database to Redis, reduced the load, removed database locks, and improved caching strategy.
But that’s not all. The administration is now 200% faster!
This is because we've reduced file sizes by up to 600%. We've also implemented lazy loading, which loads content such as images and videos only when they are actually needed.
In summary, you can look forward to a smoother, faster, and more enjoyable experience using Shopware.
Other Improvements
We've cleaned up the software code, got rid of unnecessary ballast, made meaningful additions and updates, and much more:
Improvements in core and admin
Integration of Open Search (Elastic Search still supported)
Symfony update brings additional features and a new message queue
New updater for better compatibility between plugin-system based apps
Dependencies cleanup
Optimized design
Improvements in the storefront
Update to Bootstrap 5
Removed jQuery
Optimized design
You can read more details about the technical innovations in the developer news.
Delivery not possible to a certain country? Let your customers know in advance
In today’s world, quick and easy deliveries are more important than ever to your customers. It’s crucial to communicate any potential delivery restrictions well in advance.
That’s why we've adjusted the notices that appear for customers when delivery to a particular country is not possible. The notices are now visible at various touchpoints and at an earlier stage of the customer journey. For example, customers are notified directly during the registration process and not just before checkout. This not only increases transparency, but also helps reduce bounce rates and cart abandonments.
Different address formats: You decide how addresses are queried and displayed
Countries and regions differ in terms of typical address formats, especially when it comes to postal codes.
As a merchant, you know the requirements of your target markets best, which is why we give you the freedom to customize and validate address formats according to your needs.
Choose between our default validation or an advanced validation that you can customize.
Customize address formats: Add fields or separators and easily move them via drag and drop.
This way, you can define your desired address layout for different countries and regions. This layout will appear to you and your customers in all places where addresses are displayed and queried:
In the storefront
In the administration
In documents with address information
Rule Builder: More clarity when you create rules
Our Rule Builder empowers you to create custom rules based on conditions. Whether you're looking to set up promotions or calculate shipping costs, there are numerous possible conditions and use cases. However, not all conditions can be used in every context. For example, an existing rule may interfere with a new one you are trying to set up.
To help simplify rule creation, we have introduced explanatory fields that provide clarity on why certain conditions or rules may not be assignable. This makes rule creation even easier and more understandable.
Improved usability for order management
Creating, maintaining, and managing orders: All of this is possible in the corresponding module in the administration. To make daily work around orders even easier, more appealing, and more organized for you, we've revised the module.
What’s new:
Whether it’s customers, products, or options: All information is now clearly divided into different topics. This way, you can find what you’re looking for more quickly.
When you create orders manually, you can preview them before you save and place them. In this step, you can review all data at a glance.
For all commercial plans (Shopware Rise and higher), there is now a new tab that facilitates return management. More information on this is available in the commercial feature & service news.
Too complex tax regulations? Simply add external tax services
In Shopware, you can effortlessly manage and tweak tax rates by country, product, and customer group, giving you an edge in the global market.
However, navigating the complex tax systems and rules in countries like the USA can be daunting. That’s where external tax services like TaxJar, Vertex, or Sovos come in. These services are designed to simplify the tax process for you. To make it even easier to connect and calculate taxes using these tools, we've introduced a new interface for tax providers. At checkout, Shopware automatically connects with the active external tax services, so you can see the final shopping cart value, based on valid tax calculations.
You can read more about this in our documentation on tax providers.
Customer centricity: New conditions for Shopware Rule Builder and Flow Builder
Customers should be the focal point of your business strategy for long-term success. To help you leverage efficient automation tailored to your customers, we’ve added new conditions to the Shopware Rule Builder and Flow Builder.
The new conditions can include:
Customer age
Last login date
Last order date and product ordered
Use of an affiliate or campaign code
Whether the customer was manually added to the system
City or region of the customer’s billing address
Active or inactive customer status
You can use these conditions, for example, to display various marketing content to customers based on their age or to reactivate customers who haven’t placed an order in a while. With these new conditions, you now have even more ways to put your customers at the center of your business!
Watch the summary in the release video
Watch the release video to see the new features in the Shopware administration. Rachel informs you about the changes in this major release.
This is about features that are not included in the Community Edition. Take a look at our overview to compare the different Shopware plans.
Now available for Shopware Beyond: Flow Builder | delayed actions
Trigger flows from the Flow Builder with delayed actions – for perfect timing, with little effort. For example, set up a flow that automatically starts 7 days after an order is shipped and sends an email requesting a product review or recommend additional products. There are numerous scenarios where you can plan and automate processes in advance with delayed actions.
This new feature for Flow Builder is only available for Shopware Beyond.
Returns management for Shopware Rise, Evolve, and Beyond
Returns management is now available for all commercial plans. So if customers want to return a product, you can manage the return directly in the administration. Enter it directly in the order, specify the quantity, and optionally add a comment (such as the reason for the return).
For all orders for which you've created a return, you will now also find an additional tab. Here you can see all the important information about the return, for example, the return status, the shipping costs, and much more. This way, you always have an overview.
To learn more about how to create a return, see our returns management documentation.
Advanced Search not yet compatible
Advanced Search is not yet compatible with the first release of 6.5.
What are the reasons for that?
We want to make the search cloud compatible
We want to refactor the plugin to create a new technological basis for diverse new developments
What does that mean for merchants who want to update to 6.5?
We'll deliver the most important search functionalities with an iterative approach, so that most used features are ready as soon as possible and merchants who are using the Advanced Search are able to switch with the functionality to 6.5 as well.
Shopware 6.5 is a new major version that includes breaking changes. In this release, these changes may impact community extensions, including apps based on the plugin or app system.
There is an in-depth blog post detailing all changes introduced in the release candidate. Here is a compact summary:
The most important changes for developers
Some of the most important changes include breaking changes in the structure of the "manifest.xsd" file used by app-system-based apps and in the admin order module.
With the removal of support for Internet Explorer 11 and the update of Bootstrap to version 5.5, there were numerous important changes like the removal of jQuery as a dependency.
The admin performance and appearance have been improved, and now allow for the usage of content from custom entities in the CMS. Also, adding rules through Apps becomes more comfortable.
There are a lot of additional changes like changes to the queue system and the management of dependencies from plugin-system-based apps through Shopware's composer file.
Additionally, there is another blog post regarding the changes on how app dependencies are managed and the consequences emerging from those changes.
Jonas Elfering, Principal Software Engineer at Shopware, has also clearly summarized the most important changes through Shopware 6.5 for developers in his speaker deck.
Tested DB and PHP versions
We tested this Shopware version on
PHPv8.1 and PHPv8.2
MariaDBv10.4, MariaDBv10.5 and MySQLv8.0
Don't forget: Some features will only be unlocked after you've activated Shopware Commercial. Here you can read more about Shopware Commercial.
Thanks to all GitHub contributors for their pull requests we could merge into this version!
