What does open source actually buy a merchant?
Not primarily cost. Hosting, updates, security patching and module licences add up, and a well-run self-hosted shop is rarely dramatically cheaper than a managed plan once someone’s time is counted.
What it buys is the exit. A shop on a proprietary platform that raises its price, changes its terms or discontinues a tier has to be rebuilt; a shop on an open core can be moved to different hosting with the same code. For a business whose revenue runs through that checkout, that difference is the whole argument.
It also buys inspection. You can read what the platform does with customer data rather than relying on a data processing agreement, which for some regulated merchants is the deciding factor.
What does self-hosting actually require?
Hosting sized for your traffic, with a staging environment — deploying an untested update straight to a live shop is how open source earns its bad reputation. Backups that have been restored at least once. And someone responsible for applying security patches within days rather than quarters.
PrestaShop is the most forgiving of the five: managed hosting providers offer one-click installs and handle much of this. Shopware and Sylius assume more capability. Saleor assumes a Python operational stack.
The honest question is not whether you can self-host but who will, and what happens when they leave.
Is the open edition crippled?
It varies, and this is the thing to check before committing. Shopware’s Community Edition is production-grade, with the B2B suite and support in the paid editions. Sylius’s MIT core is complete, with enterprise features in Plus. Saleor’s core is the same software as its cloud.
Odoo is the one to look at hardest: several features merchants expect sit in the Enterprise edition rather than the community one. That is a legitimate business model, not a criticism — but assume nothing and check against your actual requirements.
