Why Aimeos?
Build full-featured, ultra fast online shops, marketplaces or complex B2B applications incl. drop-shipping or affiliate systems with the most widely used, cloud-native and API-first Laravel ecommerce platform that scales from 1 to 1,000,000,000+ items! Aimeos works perfectly on AWS, Google, Azure or any Kubernetes-based clouds.
Multi vendor, multi channel and multi warehouse capable
Build market places, complex B2B applications and reseller/affiliate systems with the Aimeos sites extension, which offers tree-like multi-tenancy out of the box. Create sub-sites for regional or niche marketplaces, for vendors or country specific portals as you need.
Bundles, events, vouchers, virtual, configurable, custom and group products
All product types you need in your shop and you can combine them with paid downloads, (priced) configurable and custom input attributes. Create complex product types and manage them with different dataset templates.
For shops from one to 1,000,000,000+ items that render in 20ms
Grow to a bigger e-commerce platform than Amazon with the #gigacommerce extension. Use ElasticSearch to scale infinitely regarding the number of products on your platform.
Turn every product into a subscription with recurring payment
Sell products, services or virtual goods in arbitrary time intervals and let Aimeos capture payments from the payment provider when subscriptions are renewed automatically.
Connect to 100+ payment gateways - Open Source & free
Use the Omnipay PHP library to authorize and capture payments from the worlds major payment service providers like PayPal, Stripe and many others.
Multi-tentant SaaS solutions for eCommerce out of the box
Host an unlimited number of full-featured online shops in one installation for your merchants without additional costs. Each shop has own products, inventories, payment/delivery options and order management.
World class JSON REST & GraphQL API
Build custom frontends, progressive web applications (PWA) and native mobile apps using the Aimeos JSON REST API based on the industry standard jsonapi.org specs. Manage your shop content easily by using the GraphQL admin API.
Top scores at Google Lighthouse
Optimized for Google Lighthouse, Aimeos achieves full scores in performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO disciplines. Analyze your shop and convince yourself about the unmatched quality and speed of the Aimeos platform!
Aimeos is used world-wide by thousands of companies for online shops, marketplaces and B2B systems from different segments including fashion, leisure, living, industry and media. Below is a small selection of Aimeos showcases. Discover more Laravel showcases:
The simplest way to Laravel ecommerce
Get your your own shop in less than 5 minutes by simply executing the following command. It will create a fully working Aimeos installation including demo data which you can customize according to your needs.
- # Aimeos Headless
- composer create-project aimeos/aimeos-headless myshop
- # Aimeos Standalone Shop
- composer create-project aimeos/aimeos myshop
Build your custom Laravel ecommerce easily
- use \Aimeos\Shop\Facades\Product;
- $items = Product::uses(['text', 'media', 'price'])
- ->category(123)->text('sneaker')
- ->sort('name')->slice(0, 48)->search();
- use \Aimeos\Shop\Facades\Catalog;
- $catalog = Catalog::uses(['text', 'media']);
- $tree = $catalog->getTree();
- $list = $catalog->getPath(123);
- use \Aimeos\Shop\Facades\Basket;
- use \Aimeos\Shop\Facades\Product;
- $item = Product::uses(['price'])->find('abc');
- $cart = Basket::addProduct($item)->get();
Aimeos Laravel eCommerce FAQ
Is Laravel good for eCommerce?
Laravel is a powerful PHP framework that offers a robust foundation for building modern web applications, and it’s particularly well-suited for eCommerce projects. Its elegant syntax, modular architecture, and strong ecosystem make development faster and more maintainable. Features like routing, caching, and built-in security measures help building complex eCommerce platforms. Laravel’s active community and frequent updates ensure long-term support and a rich pool of packages and integrations, which are critical for adapting to evolving market needs.
When paired with Aimeos, the high-performance eCommerce package for Laravel, the framework becomes the perfect option for most online shop projects. Aimeos adds a fully-featured, scalable, and extensible eCommerce engine with support for complex product catalogs, multi-vendor setups, advanced filtering, and high-speed search capabilities. Its headless-ready architecture fits well with modern frontend stacks. Together, Laravel and Aimeos offer a powerful combination that enables developers to build fast, customizable, and enterprise-grade online stores.
Is Aimeos an application or a library?
Aimeos is both — a complete e-commerce solution and a set of modular components that can be used in different ways depending on your project needs. For Laravel developers, Aimeos is available in three main forms:
Laravel Shop Distribution: This is a full-featured, ready-to-deploy Laravel application with Aimeos preinstalled and preconfigured. It includes both the front-end and admin interface, and supports multi-vendor setups out of the box. It's ideal for developers who want a quick, complete Laravel e-commerce system built on the latest Laravel LTS version, without spending time on setup or configuration.
Laravel Headless Distribution: Tailored for headless architectures and API-first development, this distribution exposes all e-commerce functionality via RESTful APIs. It’s perfect for projects where the frontend is handled separately—using JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, or Svelte, or mobile apps. Like the shop distribution, it’s built on Laravel LTS and optimized for fast, scalable deployment.
Laravel E-commerce Package: The Aimeos Laravel package is designed specifically for developers who already have a Laravel application and want to seamlessly add e-commerce functionality to it. Instead of starting from scratch or adapting a full distribution, you can integrate the package directly into your existing codebase. This allows you to retain your app’s structure, routing, and business logic while enhancing it with a powerful, extensible e-commerce engine.
Is Aimeos Open Source?
- Aimeos Core: Licensed under the LGPLv3 (GNU Lesser General Public License version 3), which allows you to use, modify, and distribute the software — even in commercial applications — provided that any changes to the core itself are also made available under the same license but this doesn't apply to your own extensions.
- Laravel Integration: The Aimeos Laravel integration package is released under the more permissive MIT License, giving you even greater freedom. You can incorporate, modify, and redistribute it in your own projects without the requirement to disclose your source code.
- You can use Aimeos in both personal and commercial projects for free.
- You can customize the platform to suit your needs.
- You're allowed to distribute your modified versions, as long as you comply with the license terms (e.g., sharing changes to LGPL-licensed components).
- You're not required to open-source your entire application or your Aimeos-related extensions when using the Laravel e-commerce platform.
How much does Aimeos cost?
Nothing! Aimeos is completely free. Whether you're building a small online shop or a large-scale e-commerce platform, you can integrate Aimeos into your Laravel projects without paying any licensing fees. It’s open-source software, which means you're free to use, modify, and extend it to suit your specific business needs.
There are a few commercial extensions available that cater to more complex use cases. These include advanced features for B2B commerce, multi-vendor marketplaces, and for scalable #gigacommerce. These extensions are developed and maintained by the Aimeos company and are available for purchase separately. They're ideal for businesses that need enterprise-level capabilities or highly customized functionality.
In addition to these premium extensions, the Aimeos company offers professional support services. If you require personalized assistance or want to ensure smooth integration, their paid 1:1 developer support can be a valuable resource. This can be especially helpful for complex implementations or when you need expert guidance to optimize your setup.
Furthermore, Aimeos provides long-term support (LTS) for its software versions. With LTS, you can receive updates, security patches, and technical support for up to five years, giving you peace of mind and stability for mission-critical projects.
Why Choose Aimeos Over Magento?
Aimeos is significantly more lightweight and efficient than Magento. The Aimeos Laravel eCommerce framework consists of only about 20% of the codebase compared to Magento's core—yet it delivers a similar, and often more modern, feature set. Thanks to its streamlined architecture and highly optimized data structures, Aimeos achieves exceptional performance, with cached components rendering in as little as 20 milliseconds—without relying on the brittle full-page caching mechanisms required by Magento.
Scalability is another major advantage. While Magento performs adequately with catalogs of up to 50,000 products, its performance tends to degrade beyond that point. In contrast, Aimeos is designed for massive scalability: it can seamlessly integrate ElasticSearch or Solr as drop-in replacements for the default storage or search backend. This makes it possible to build Laravel-based online shops with over a billion products—without compromising performance—by leveraging the Aimeos #gigacommerce extension.
Additionally, Aimeos is built on Laravel, which is widely regarded as the most modern and developer-friendly PHP framework. Unlike Magento, which is based on the aging Zend Framework, Laravel provides a clean, expressive syntax, extensive documentation, and a vibrant community. This translates into faster development cycles, better maintainability, and easier onboarding for new developers. The Laravel ecosystem also offers a wide range of tools and integrations that accelerate project delivery and reduce technical debt.
What are the benefits of Aimeos over Wordpress (WooCommerce)?
Aimeos excels in speed, scalability, and extensibility, making it an exceptional choice for businesses aiming to build large or rapidly expanding online stores. It is specifically engineered to handle massive product catalogs—scaling effortlessly to billions of items—and sustain high traffic volumes without compromising fast response times or user experience. Thanks to its modular and flexible architecture, Aimeos supports a wide range of e-commerce features out of the box, including multi-vendor setups, complex product configurations, and advanced search capabilities. This combination of performance and versatility makes it ideal not only for startups poised for growth but also for medium-sized businesses and large enterprises that require a robust, future-proof platform capable of supporting complex operations and evolving market demands.
In contrast, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin designed for simplicity and ease of use, which works well for small businesses or stores with limited product ranges. However, as stores grow beyond a few hundred products or face increased traffic, WooCommerce can suffer from slower performance. Maintaining speed often requires additional plugins, caching, or server optimizations, complicating management and increasing maintenance efforts. While WooCommerce offers a vast plugin ecosystem for extensibility, it doesn’t provide the same out-of-the-box performance and scalability as Aimeos, especially for complex or large-scale e-commerce environments.
What are the benefits of Aimeos over Bagisto?
Aimeos and Bagisto differ significantly in terms of speed, extensibility, and scalability. Aimeos is built for high performance and can handle billions of products and heavy traffic without compromising responsiveness. This makes it ideal for fast-growing start-ups and medium to large-scale businesses. Its optimized architecture, caching, and data handling allow for smooth scaling in demanding environments.
Aimeos also features a modular system that lets developers easily add or replace components through well-structured extensions. This flexibility supports a wide range of use cases, from custom workflows and APIs to multi-vendor systems. With clear separation between frontend, backend, and core logic, Aimeos ensures maintainability and long-term adaptability.
Bagisto focuses more on quicker deployment for small companies and doesn't scale well in terms of traffic and number of products compared to Aimeos. Customization in Bagisto is also more difficult due to its monolithic structure and tighter coupling between components. Adapting the frontend requires solid VueJS knowledge, which can be a hurdle for teams looking for a simpler setup.
Does Aimeos support multiple languages and currencies?
Yes, multi-language and multi-currency are the DNA of Aimeos. The Aimeos platform supports an unlimited number of languages. It also has full support for right-to-left languages like Arabic in frontend and backend. Additionally, Aimeos included translations for 30+ languages.
Contrary to other solutions, Aimeos also has full multi-currency support. Where competitors only support one currency with fixed conversion rates, you can add individual prices for all currencies in Aimeos. Thus, your Aimeos shop can display 4.99€ instead of 5.04€ if your original product price is $5.99. Furthermore, you can combine multiple currencies with multi-level tier-pricing / block pricing for all product types supported by Aimeos.
Does Aimeos support multi-vendor setups?
Yes, you can use Aimeos to host an unlimited number of vendors within one Aimeos installation. Vendors will have their own frontend and backend so you can create Laravel ecommerce SaaS platforms similar to Shopify for example.
There's also a Laravel marketplace extension available to build (multi-level) marketplaces in Aimeos. Then, vendors manage their own products and all these vendor products are aggregated into one or more marketplaces. Customers can buy products from different vendors just like they can do at Amazon.
Does Aimeos support B2B setups?
Yes, Aimeos is capable of handling complex B2B setups using the extensions from the Aimeos company: https://aimeos.com/extensions.
- Several portals using product data inherited from a common product database
- Products, prices and/or other data only shown to some customers and groups
- Dropshipping of products by vendors with different prices
- B2B marketplace setup
Is my required payment gateway supported?
Aimeos uses the Omnipay PHP library for payment handling and there are more than 100 Omnipay drivers for connecting to different payment gateways. There's an official list of supported payment gateways at the Omnipay site but there are more drivers available. Just use Google to search for "omnipay <payment service provider name>" to see if there's a driver available if it's not listed in the official list.
Please note that the quality of the drivers can vary and some are not fully compliant with Aimeos or are only available for older versions.
Does Aimeos offer a JSON REST API?
Aimeos provides a fast and efficient frontend JSON REST API based on the JSON:API standard. This API enables seamless interaction between the frontend and backend for tasks like product search, filtering and checkout. Its lightweight and efficient architecture ensures minimal server load while delivering rapid response times, even under heavy traffic. The JSON REST API's flexibility allows developers to easily integrate Aimeos with various frontend frameworks and third-party services, making it ideal for businesses looking to offer a smooth, responsive user experience..
Is a GraphQL API available?
Aimeos offers a GraphQL API specifically designed for administrative purposes. This API allows developers and administrators to efficiently manage and interact with the backend of Aimeos. Through the GraphQL interface, users can perform tasks such as managing products, categories, orders, and customers, all with a high level of flexibility. The API's design allows for efficient querying by fetching only the required data in a single request, improving performance and reducing server load.
Is the Aimeos frontend SEO optimized?
Yes, the Aimeos frontend is fully SEO optimized and regularly tested against the Google SEO recommendations. You can also add your own meta tags for each category and product. Additionally, all products are machine-readable due to the included schema.org markup for structured data. Thus, Google and other search engines know your products, their names, images prices and stock level.
Can Aimeos be customized?
Yes, Aimeos is incredible flexible and can be fully customized according to your needs. There are more than 2,500 settings available to configure Aimeos. In addition, you can add, remove and overwrite any functionality in Aimeos in your own extension, so updating Aimeos is easy.
Is the Aimeos frontend SEO optimized?
Yes, Aimeos uses Vue.js in the admin backend. It offers Vue.js components for a large number of building blocks which can be reused in custom panels easily.
If you want to create a frontend based on Vue.js, Aimeos offers a world class JSON REST API for retrieving and managing data. The API allows to you build a Vue.js frontend with the same feature set as the HTML based frontend.