What does an online shop really cost? The biggest expenses often arise only after go-live. This article explains which costs are frequently missing from project proposals and why a complete TCO assessment over several years is essential.
 

Hyvä has been open source since November 2025. We’ll show you how Magento stores can benefit from improved performance, lower licensing costs, and greater control, and when it’s worth making the switch.
 

Slow product pages, a sluggish checkout process, rising bounce rates—and your monitoring metrics are still in the green? APM powered by Tideways shows you exactly where time is being wasted in your store, so you can pinpoint and fix performance issues.

Data protection in an online shop doesn’t have to slow down efficiency. This article shows you how to implement GDPR requirements in a practical way and avoid common pitfalls.

With local mc, your local development environment gets closer to real production conditions. We’ll show how the DDEV integration works, which problem it solves, and why production-like development helps you spot issues earlier—before they hit production.

Why technical SEO in e-commerce doesn't work without fast servers, stable availability, and a clean hosting infrastructure—and what role performance plays in crawling, indexing, and rankings.

How backups, offsite copies, and reliable restore processes ensure that your shop gets back online quickly after an outage.

ROAS often gets lost after the click. With targeted personalization, consistent messaging and stable performance, you can address exactly this point and measurably improve your campaign results.

Mage UnConference 2025 in Cologne: Inspiring conversations, fresh ideas, and true community spirit – our recap of an unforgettable weekend.

At the 2025 Partner Day, the focus was on personal exchange – two days full of insights, expertise, and shared ideas for the future of e-commerce.

Is your shop fast—but not fast enough? Is your hosting running smoothly—but only until the next traffic peak? Then it's time to check whether your provider is still right for your growth.

From customer needs to real solutions – Aleksandra Perko-Klomfass shapes features with passion, precision and a personal touch.

Loading time = revenue: In this article, we show you how targeted PageSpeed optimization can help you achieve higher revenue, better rankings, and more satisfied customers.

You know the basics of GDPR – but it's in practice that things get really exciting. What happens when agencies, tracking tools, or international providers come into play?

SCUC25 brought Shopware enthusiasts and community lovers together in Cologne for a weekend of intensive exchange, new ideas, and good conversations.

In our interview, Luca Iezzi talks about what he has learned from two decades of e-commerce, the challenges facing agencies, and why working with maxcluster gives him a real competitive advantage.

As Partner Manager at maxcluster, Jan Ahlers not only brings technical know-how to the table, but also a genuine interest in people.

Maximum flexibility, performance and an outstanding user experience - this is possible with Shopware 6 and headless storefronts. Find out why this approach is the perfect choice for sophisticated online stores and what is important in a headless storefront project.

Loading times have always been one of the primary success metrics of any website. However, the implementation of really fast websites, especially when it comes to more complex systems, is often complicated, time-consuming or expensive.

E-commerce companies must comply with EU accessibility law by June 2025.

This blog post explores what accessibility means for online shops, why it is essential, and provides tips on making your online shop accessible.

Given the rising threat of cyberattacks, it is crucial to safeguard your online store with targeted security measures.

Twice is already a tradition: our maxcluster Partner Day 2024 was like a land of milk and honey for tech nerds, networkers and LEGO enthusiasts – a celebration of ideas, encounters and good food 🙂

Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly central role in modern e-commerce. Companies of all sizes are recognising the potential of these technologies to optimise their processes, reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction. AI can be particularly helpful when it comes to maintaining product data and content.

The central challenge in marketing isn't just attracting visitors to your website, but also converting those visitors into paying customers. This is where the art of conversion optimization comes into play.

In the fiercely competitive world of e-commerce, downtime is unacceptable. Therefore, high availability is essential for hosting online shops.

Online stores are the backbone of modern retail. Any downtime or data loss can have catastrophic consequences, both financially and for a company's reputation. This is where backups come into play – an essential component of every e-commerce company's IT strategy.

Almost daily, you hear about new security breaches where sensitive data is stolen or misused. In this context, it is crucial that you understand the significance of patches and updates as indispensable tools for ensuring IT security.

With a touch of Paderborn's zest for life, the doors open to an insight into the life of Julia Müseler, a passionate Product Owner at maxcluster.

In an era marked by the exponential growth of online shopping, the significance of privacy compliance for e-commerce establishments cannot be overstated.

The release of PHP 8.3 marks a significant milestone in the evolution of the popular scripting language. Packed with a wealth of new features and enhancements, this version offers even more performance, features, and bug fixes for developers worldwide.

In today's e-commerce landscape, data-driven decision-making is invaluable. The year 2024 brings forth a plethora of innovative analytics and reporting tools, enabling shop owners to optimize their online store's performance and better understand their customers. From advanced AI analytics tools and platforms to user-friendly reporting dashboards, these tools are changing the rules of the game for companies in digital commerce.

The e-commerce landscape is constantly evolving, and companies and agencies are always looking for powerful solutions to optimise their online presence and better serve their customers. We'd like to tell you about one particularly exciting piece of news: Shopware released many new updates in January!

In the fast-paced world of E-commerce, efficient hosting and cost-effectiveness are the VIP passes to the success of any online business.

Shopware 5 expires in 2023! Version 5 of the open source shop system "Shopware", which has been in use for many years, was continuously provided with bug fixes until July 2023.

On the last weekend in September, the Magento community met in Cologne for the Mage UnConference 2023. Together with e3n we supported the event as the main sponsors and want to share our impressions with you in this review.

Anyone who runs an online shop and processes sensitive information such as personal customer data in it should give the topic of IT security a high priority. In this article we show how efficient patch and update management helps to minimise security risks in the application.

The use of software in e-commerce is usually not limited to a shop system. In this article we reveal how technology management supports traders to be successful in the long term.

PIM systems support the collection, management and distribution of product data in e-commerce. In this article we explain the functionality and advantages of the digital experience platform Pimcore.

August 2024 – and with it the "end of life" of Shopware 5 – still seems a long way off. However, experience shows that the deadline comes sooner than expected. Co-initiator Carmen Bremen reports in an interview on how the community initiative safefive can support shop operators in terms of security after the EOL of Shopware 5.

On 8 December 2022, PHP 8.2, the new minor version of the PHP scripting language, was released. In this blog post, we show which innovations and changes are contained in PHP 8.2.

Early birds catch the worms. But if you want to have access to an extensive shopping assortment around the clock, you should rather become a LateBird.

The Mage UnConference has been an integral part of maxcluster's event calendar for many years. In 2022, we were not only on site with a team of seven employees, but also supported the event again as one of the main sponsors.

The larger the product range in the online shop, the more data has to be managed and updated on a daily basis. A PIM system like Akeneo can reduce the effort involved and bring great added value.

Our digitized world is based on an ever-growing mountain of data. Database management systems such as MySQL act as a central tool for storing and managing these data volumes.

After the SCD 2020 and 2021 took place exclusively online, this year the community could (finally) meet again live in Ahaus. We were there with a team of seven. All news, trends and highlights of the SCD22 can be found here in our review!

In over ten years of maxcluster, we have not only gotten to know the _UnConference_ event format, but also come to love it. Our anticipation was all the greater after the news that there will be a Shopware Community UnConference for the first time in 2022. We were there as one of the main sponsors!

Visit the online shop, find the desired product, buy the product - put simply, this is the ideal customer journey in e-commerce. But what should be done if the online shop loads too slowly and visitors leave it prematurely? Operators of online shops based on Shopware 5 and Shopware 6 will find answers in this article.

According to the platform Gründerpilot, 80% of all start-ups fail in the first three years. maxcluster is not one of them. On 28.12.2011 the company was registered in the company register and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

On 25 November 2021, almost exactly one year after the major release of PHP 8.0, the latest version of the scripting language, PHP 8.1, was released. This release also brings with it a whole host of new features and improvements. But when and under what conditions does it make sense to switch to PHP 8.1?

In e-commerce, it is of great importance that online shops run fast and efficiently even with a lot of traffic. We show you how to optimally exploit the performance potential of your online shop with the full-page cache Varnish.

Simon Sprankel from CustomGento has been part of the Magento cosmos for over ten years. In the community and in meetups he shares his extensive knowledge, co-develops solutions and is an active contributor.

Shared Hosting? Cloud Hosting? Colocation Web Hosting? Managed hosting? When looking for the right hosting solution, the range of options for store owners can be confusing and raise many questions.

The e-commerce agency 7thSENSE has specialised in the creation and implementation of e-commerce solutions for over ten years. Its clients include well-known companies such as [Kärcher](https://www.7thsense.de/case-study/detail/kaercher-haendlershops.html), [WMF](https://www.7thsense.de/case-study/detail/wmf-relaunch.html) and [VAUDE](https://www.7thsense.de/case-study/detail/vaude-b2b-und-b2c-onlineshop.html).

Faster, more efficient programming and thus more time for finding solutions to exciting and challenging problems in e-commerce? Probably the dream of every (Magento) developer.

Performance problems with Magento 2 online shops? The frontend theme loads loads of JavaScript? The new Hyvä theme by developer Willem Wigman could provide a remedy.

Just in time for the release of PHP 8.0, the SaaS provider Tideways has launched its latest version. This means that customers can also rely on Tideways' proven performance management, exception tracking and profiling with the new major release of PHP.

A few years ago, "Black Friday" was merely the day after Thanksgiving and thus a bridge day for many Americans, but in recent years it has become the prelude to the pre-Christmas shopping season - and not only in the USA.

For online shop operators, the topic of "Progressive Web App" is increasingly coming to the fore. The symbiosis of responsive website and app offers consumers a high user experience and thus a strong tool for customer loyalty for online shop operators.

As with the millennium change on 31 December 1999, many horror scenarios were painted for the Magento 1 EOL on 30 June 2020 - which then came to pass just as little as the information technology super-GAU on the aforementioned New Year's Eve twenty years ago.

Are there still arguments in favor of expensive and elaborate Extended Validation (EV) certificates?

Buying a new laptop on the bus, finding inspiration for the living room design on social media channels on the train and quickly ordering the ingredients for dinner from the supermarket in the café. According to [Statista](https://www.statista.com/topics/779/mobile-internet/), around 74 % of Germans use their smartphones to access the internet for these activities.

If you type "sustainable hosting" into Google, the search engine throws up 940,000 entries within 0.55 seconds. Whether it is due to the "Fridays for Future" movement or the general increase in awareness of ecological issues - sustainable hosting is increasingly coming into focus. But what is actually meant by this and what measures are we taking at maxcluster to give our customers a clear green conscience? We explore these questions in our blog post.

In April 2020, we conducted the first interview with Nils Preuß. At the time of the interview, GastroHero's PWA store was already live, except for a few storeviews. Since October 2020, the live walk has now been completed - time for us to ask again if there are any new insights and experiences.

What is managed hosting and what are the advantages of this model for users? We explore these and other questions in the blog and explain the different models to you.

Online shops that have many visitors generate many shopping baskets, from which sessions are generated. The sessions can be stored in different ways. In the first part of the blog series on Redis, we summarised the advantages that the NoSQL database Redis offers in the area of sessions and application cache for the performance of Shopware and Magento.

Nowadays, data centres have to meet the highest German security standards so that the customer can be guaranteed the best possible quality and reliability at all times. maxcluster goes one step further: we guarantee that the data is located exclusively in Germany and that you can access it at any time. The multi-level security concept is even used by banks with very high requirements.

Three of the most important profilers in e-commerce are Blackfire IO, Tideways and New Relic APM. The comparison clearly shows where the strengths of the individual tools lie.

Tideways is a tool for profiling, monitoring and tracking in PHP. Using examples and screenshots, the second part of the [blog series](https://maxcluster.de/en/blog/2017/04/identifying-bottlenecks-profiler-blogseries) explains the functions and areas of application of this profiler. [Update: 23.8.2018]

In this blog series we present the three most efficient profiling tools for e-commerce: Blackfire IO, Tideways and New Relic APM.