Getting started with Shopware SaaS

With this article we would like to simplify the start with your SaaS-Shop and show you the first important steps after the installation. You will also find detailed documentation for each step, which you can access via the respective link.

Checklist

Once your SaaS shop is created, you can start editing in the admin interface. You can access the administration of your SaaS shop by adding a "/admin" behind your shop domain. So e.g. https://my.shopware.store/admin

In the dashboard you will first see a checklist to help you prepare your shop for the GoLive.

Create your categories / Add first products

In the first step of the checklist you can create a category by clicking on the context menu (1) of an existing category and select one of the menu items New category before,New category after or New subcategory.
Afterwards a mask will be displayed in the menu at the appropriate place, in which you enter the name of the new category and confirm with the check mark.

There are a number of predefined categories. First you should add categories for you products, these should be nested under home (2). These categories are important to give a customer an quick overview of the products that you are offering.
The footer menu (2) is defined as the entry point for your footer menu that's located on the storefront. Unlike the categories for you products these categories have a informational layout assigned to them. These pages are used to provide the customer with the legal and informational text.
If you want to provide the customer with more information just add a new subcategory under legal or information.

Our article categories offers an in depth overview of all the options that are available for categories.

Next you should create your products. Click on Catalogues > Products. Here you can create a product by clicking on the Add new products button.

After clicking add product you are forwarded to this screen. Here you can enter all product details and click save once done.

Our article products offers an in depth overview of all the options that are available for products.

Use your own branding

By clicking on the menu item theme you will be forwarded to the themes. There you have the possibility to adapt an existing theme (Standard Theme) or to create your own theme.
It is recommended that you create your own theme for your SaaS shop and use it so that the theme remains unchanged after updates. To do this, click on the "Shopware default theme" on the "..." button and then on Create duplicate.

You will then be shown the edit mask of your newly created theme.
You can find further and detailed explanations of the theme configuration in our Wiki article Themes.

You can create and manage a layout for content pages such as landing pages, store pages and category pages via the menu item Content > Shopping experience.

Fulfill legal requirements

This button takes you to the imprint, this is one of the predefined categories layouts that are nested under legal in the category tree.
After you are doing editing the page make sure to click save located in the top right.

All layouts can also be found under Content > Shopping experiences, here you will find the predefined layouts, these can be modified by clicking on them.
Make sure to check all layouts that are nested under legal and information in the category tree and update these accordingly.

For more information on what you can do with Shopping experiences, click here.

Define shipping and payments methods

You can find the shipping methods in the administration under Settings > Shop > Shipping. Here you can create any desired shipping method (1) and tell your customers which shipping methods you offer, how much these costs and which delivery countries are allowed or blocked.

You can find more information on the setting options and setting up the shipping methods in our shipping documentation.

Finally, you can set up the payment methods for your shop by clicking on Set up payment method in the checklist.
By default you can choose between cash on delivery, prepayment and invoice.

In our docs article on Payment methods, you will find more information on the set-up and essential tips.

Further first steps

Importing products

You can maintain your content in Shopware 6 in a very simple way via imports. The contents, such as articles, can be imported in the admin under Settings > Shop > Import/Export.

How the import works in detail and what you should pay attention to, you can read in our article Import/Export.

Several languages

Internationalization is an important topic in order to serve target groups in other countries. This initially includes the creation of additional languages. You can create these in Admin under
Settings > Shop > Languages. Some languages, such as English, are supplied as standard. In this menu item you can not only create new languages, but also edit existing languages.

If you want to set up other countries and currencies in addition to other languages, you must have booked a higher plan (Shopware Rise, Shopware Evolve, Shopware Beyond).

Document creation

In the document settings under Settings > Shop > Documents you can configure the templates for the documents generated by Shopware, such as the invoice.

In the standard system, Shopware already provides global templates for delivery note, invoice, credit note and cancellation invoice. You will find these already in the overview. If you click on the button with thethree points (1), the context menu opens, where you can choose between Edit (2) and Delete (3).

Information about the configuration options can be found in the article about the documents.

In the document module, documents and receipts can then be generated for the corresponding order. You can find the receipt module in the order details of an order by selecting the desired order and clicking on the button with the three dots and then clicking on Show in the context menu.

Here you can, for example, create an invoice by clicking on the button Create new and click on Invoice.

After you have created the document, you will find it in the document overview.

System settings

Use your own domain

If you want to use your own domain in your SaaS environment, you can configure it in Admin under Settings > System > Domains.

To create a new domain, you must first click on Connect domain (1) and then enter the domain (2) in the window that opens. For security reasons, only domains with https:// are used by default. Domains with http:// are automatically forwarded to https://.
You can find detailed instructions on how to set up additional, own domains in our article Domains.

The automatically generated URL defined when you created your SaaS shop will still remain and cannot be removed, so that your shop always has at least one accessible domain.
The number of domains you can add depends on the plan you have booked.

Maintenance mode

You can activate the maintenance mode of your shop by selecting your sales channel and then activating the maintenance mode under Status. The whitelist for IP addresses allows you to define exceptions for the maintenance mode. For example, you can enter your own IP address here if you still want to view the storefront of your shop.
When activating the maintenance mode, please note that it can only be activated if you have already booked a plan.

Migration

You can migrate from an existing Shopware 6 installation to a second Shopware 6 version. This may be necessary, for example, if you want to switch from a Shopware 6 installation to the Shopware 6 SaaS.You can find more information about migration here.

Open storefront despite construction mode

As long as your SaaS store is not yet live, the visitor of the store is shown a page that it is still in progress. So that you as an admin can take a look at your finished store, a cookie is set in the browser. This cookie is set as soon as you are logged in as a user in the administrator.
So you can open the storefront simply via the URL of your store. For you the store is then visible, while for other users it is still in construction mode.

If you are in private/incognito mode in your browser, you cannot log in this way for security reasons.