A request for a Shopware 6 store found me on Fiverr last week: a list of storefront bugs and performance problems, and a Black Friday campaign on the way.
Over two days I sent my approach, a full Shopware store audit scope and a phased plan built backwards from Black Friday. Then the buyer told me they’d hired someone else. I wished them luck and said to reach out if anything came up. Not every proposal turns into a job, and that’s fine.
What I keep thinking about is the shape of the exchange. It looked a lot like plan fishing: collecting detailed plans from experienced developers for free, then reusing them in a quote to someone else. If that’s what happened, the merchant who owns the store is the one who pays for it.
The brief read like a real merchant’s
The first message listed the problems clearly: a mix of storefront bugs, performance and tracking work. It also said “we are not looking for a new store build”, which is exactly what the owner of a working but fragile shop says.
So I answered properly. My first step would be a read-only pass on the Shopware version, plugin list, theme overrides and error logs. Then I’d reproduce the worst bug on a staging copy with the profiler on.
The next message brought a full job description. Before setting up a meeting, the buyer wanted:
- A fixed scope for the audit, and what it would cover
- A delivery time and my earliest start date
- A range for the repairs after the audit
- A monthly support plan with hours and response times
I sent all of it. Then a cheaper, phased version with dates through to the campaign.
The signs of plan fishing
Looking back, a few signals fit the pattern. None of them proves anything on its own.
- The replies took the plan and asked for more. Plenty of people write with AI, and that’s fine. What stood out was that each reply handed my own points back to me (“your intention to inspect the system safely before touching production”) and then asked for more detail, without a single question about the plan itself.
- The sender wasn’t who the brief implied. The brief spoke as the store, but the profile looked like a junior developer whose background wasn’t in Shopware. Agencies relay client briefs all the time. This one never said it was relaying anything.
- “Long term” came first, then a second plan. “We need someone reliable and someone who can be with us long term” was followed one message later by a request for “the most economical phased approach.” Asking for a cheaper option is normal. Here it also meant a second, more detailed plan with dates.
- The conversation ended once the plan was complete. The phased plan went out, and a polite goodbye followed the next day.
My guess is the buyer was a middleman, passing the plans on to the real store owner. I can’t prove it. Maybe they simply found someone they liked more.
Middlemen aren’t the problem. Agencies subcontract all the time, and I’ve worked inside agency teams myself. When that’s done properly, the agency pays for the audit and hires the person who wrote the plan, or at least someone who can carry it out. Some free planning is part of selling too: a proposal should show how you think. Plan fishing keeps asking for more until the proposal becomes the work, then gives the work to someone else.
If that’s what happened here, the person most at risk is the store owner who never saw any of this.
Why a repair plan is the easiest thing to copy
A good repair plan from a Shopware store audit packs years of fixing the same problems into a few paragraphs: which bug to chase first, where that kind of bug usually starts, what to check before blaming the server, and what must never be tested on the live store.
Writing that takes experience. Pasting it into someone else’s quote takes a minute.
The plan doesn’t fix anything, though. Carrying it out means reading a theme you didn’t write, tracing a Store API response through Twig and JavaScript, and telling a cause from a symptom.
So a merchant can end up with a quote that reads like senior work and a developer who can’t deliver it. You find out once the work starts. Four weeks before Black Friday is the worst time to find out.
What a safe Shopware store audit covers
Here’s the audit I proposed for that store, minus the prices. Hold any plan you receive up against it.
- Nothing changes on the live store. Read-only admin access, read-only access to the theme and plugin code, and viewer access to analytics.
- Bugs are reproduced on a staging copy. Shopware documents how to create a staging instance, and a serious audit starts there.
- Each bug is traced end to end. From the Store API response through the layout, theme and JavaScript, with the profiler on, to find exactly where it starts.
- Bugs get a root cause. Patching one symptom by hand leaves the cause in place, and the same bug turns up somewhere else.
- Slow pages and timeouts are checked against evidence. Cache setup, plugins, slow requests, import timing and server logs, before anyone suggests a bigger server.
- Tracking is inventoried. Which analytics, pixels and consent tools are installed, and what’s missing.
- The report prices each fix. Root cause per issue, hours per fix, and the order to do them in.
- Every fix has a way back. Staging first, a backup and a rollback plan, then a code freeze before the campaign.
Performance work follows the same rule: measure first, then fix. On a store with 530,000 SKUs, I cut the import from 33 hours to under 3. More of that work is in my case studies.
Five questions that show who wrote the plan
You don’t need to read code to test this. Ask the person who will do the work, and not only the person who sent the quote.
- “Pick one issue and tell me what you think causes it.” Whoever wrote the plan has a guess and can explain it. A copied plan gets read back to you.
- “Why this order?” The order of fixes is a decision, and whoever made it can defend it.
- “What won’t you touch on my live store?” The answer should be a specific list of things that only happen on staging.
- “Show me a live Shopware store you worked on, and your exact role.” “I built it alone” and “I did backend features in an agency team” are both good answers. Vague ones are a warning.
- “Who will do the work, and who is responsible if it breaks?” A good agency or freelancer answers both without hesitating. A vague answer to either is the warning.
Price is the other half of hiring. I wrote about that in what the cheapest Shopware developer really costs.
Planning a Shopware audit back from Black Friday
Black Friday is on 27 November this year. Count backwards from it:
- A code freeze about a week before. No deploys while the campaign runs.
- About a week of testing before the freeze.
- The fixes, priced from the audit findings.
- The Shopware store audit, which needs staging and access on day one.
From late October that’s about four weeks for all of it. If access takes a week to arrange, the plan is already tight.
If your Shopware store has a list like this and a campaign date on it, send me the list. I’ll tell you what I’d look at first, and you can ask me any of the five questions above.
