Wildcard environments
Frequently asked questions about the wildcard environments
What is a wildcard environment?
Wildcard environments offer you the possibility to create and easily configure development environments for your customer projects, including test licences. In this way, you can create ready-made installations with all the necessary extensions for your customers and present them to the customer as a demo without having to purchase the necessary licences in advance.
If you would like to migrate from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6 including the licences with the help of the wizard, you can find more information in our article Migration environment.
What can a wildcard environment be used for?
Within one environment, you have the possibility to create several customer instances. In each instance, you have full access to the Shopware Store and can prepare or recreate corresponding customer projects without having to license extensions or licences.
Who can create and use wildcard environments?
To be able to create a wildcard environment in your Shopware account, you must be a partner or an Extension Partner of extensions. If you are not yet, you can find all the information on how to become a Shopware partner here.
How do I create a wildcard environment?
If you do not yet have a wildcard environment, you can create one in your Partner area under Wildcard environment. To do this, click on the Create a Wildcard Environment button in the top right-hand corner. Then select the URL of your wildcard environment. This can be your domain, for example, and look something like this: myname.com
In order to activate your custom domain for the wildcard – please contact your partner manager.
After you have created the wildcard environment, you can use the Create wildcard instance button to create a wildcard instance for your customers and specify a project name and the desired Shopware version for this instance. The name can be e.g. project-dev.
The subdomain of the wildcard instance is then composed of the project name and the URL of the wildcard environment. In this case, it would be e.g. project-dev.myname.com
Each subdomain of your wildcard environment must contain one of the words test, dev, localhost, demo or wildcard. We therefore recommend that you use this directly in the URL of the wildcard environment. For example, dev.myname.com instead of myname.com.
Alternatively, you can of course include one of these words in each project name. For example, project-dev.
After you have created the Wild Card instance, you can add extensions and set up an installation for the customer on your server, and use this domain as a licence domain. In this way, all extensions that you have activated in the instance are available to you.
How do I add the individual extensions to a wildcard instance?
In order to be able to use an extension in your wildcard environment, it is necessary to add it to the respective wildcard instance beforehand. To do this, click on the desired instance (1) in the Wildcard Environments area, or click on the three dots (2) behind the project name and select Details.
In the instance details that then open, click on Add licence and select the desired extensions that you want to add to your wildcard instance. 
When all the desired extensions have been added, click on Save in the top right-hand corner to save the licenses in your wildcard instance.
You can add or remove extensions from the list at any time.
In order to get access to commercial features of Shopware plans – you should search and install “Shopware Commercial” plugin to your wildcard environment, by default it will give you access to all Beyond features.
How do I create an installation for the wildcard instance?
You carry out the Shopware installation on your own server. The customer server cannot be used for installations in wildcard environments. In order to access all extensions, it is necessary to store the subdomain of the wildcard instance in the shop.
Shopware6
In Shopware 6 you store the domain under Settings > System > Shopware Account as a licence domain.
After you have entered the subdomain, you will find the selected extensions under Extensions > My Extensions and can install them there.
Shopware 5
In Shopware 5 you store the domain under Configuration > Basic settings > Shop settings > Shops in the Host field.
You can then find the added plugins under Configuration > Plugin manager > My purchases and install them.
Can an instance within the wild card environment also be used as a staging for customer projects?
No. An environment/instance can only be used to reconstruct or prepare customer projects within your domain. It can’t be a live environment or a customer domain environment.