Aimeos is an MIT-licensed, API-first e-commerce platform built on Laravel that ships an integrated online shop for teams that need ultra-fast storefronts, scalable marketplaces and complex B2B commerce running on infrastructure they control.
What it is
Aimeos is a full-featured e-commerce package that lives in the Laravel and PHP ecosystem. This repository is the standalone shop distribution: a Laravel application with the Aimeos e-commerce framework already wired in. It is described as ultra-fast, cloud-native and API-first, and it runs on PHP 8.2 or later against MySQL 5.7.8+, MariaDB 10.2.2+, PostgreSQL 9.6+ or SQL Server 2019+, behind Apache, Nginx or the integrated PHP web server. Alongside the standalone distribution, the project offers a headless variant, aimeos/aimeos-headless, with API-only operation and JWT authentication pre-configured, and a package, aimeos/aimeos-laravel, for adding commerce to an application that already exists.
The concrete problem it solves is the volume of custom code a Laravel team would otherwise write and maintain for catalogue, cart, checkout, pricing and administration. Rather than building a cart, product model, payment integration and back office from scratch, or bolting an unrelated shop system alongside a Laravel application, the platform supplies a modular structure that can be adapted, extended, overwritten and customised. The standalone distribution is the whole application; the aimeos/aimeos-laravel package is the same commerce layer added to an existing codebase in minutes.
Key capabilities
- JSON REST API based on jsonapi.org, plus a GraphQL API for administration.
- Headless distribution
aimeos/aimeos-headless pre-configures API-only operation with JWT authentication for single-page and progressive web applications.
- Multi-vendor, multi-channel and multi-warehouse operation, with a marketplace extension for millions of vendors and support for multi-tenant SaaS with unlimited vendors.
- Product model covers bundles, vouchers, virtual, configurable, custom and event products, plus subscriptions with recurring payments.
- 100+ payment gateways, block and tier pricing, customer and group based prices, discounts and vouchers, and a flexible basket rule system.
- Fully SEO optimised output including rich snippets, translation into 30+ languages with AI-based text translation, and full RTL support in both frontend and backend.
- Scaling from one to 1,000,000,000+ items, with response times down to 20ms, and a stated fit for AWS, Google, Azure and Kubernetes based clouds.
Who uses it and how
- Marketplace operators running many vendors, using the marketplace extension and the multi-vendor, multi-channel and multi-warehouse capabilities.
- B2B sellers that depend on customer and group based prices, block and tier pricing, and the flexible basket rule system.
- SaaS teams building multi-tenant e-commerce with unlimited vendors on a single installation.
- Teams building SPAs or PWAs that take the API-only
aimeos/aimeos-headless distribution instead of the standalone application.
- Existing Laravel applications that add the
aimeos/aimeos-laravel composer package rather than deploying a second, separate application.
Getting started
Install with composer 2.2+ using php composer create-project aimeos/aimeos myshop, which prompts for database and mail server parameters and the administration account email and password, then start the integrated server with php artisan serve. For an existing Laravel application, install the aimeos/aimeos-laravel composer package instead.
How it compares
The provided facts name no competing or paid products, so no comparison on licence, hosting or cost model can be drawn from them. It stands alone in this registry as the only entry described here.
When to use it — and when not to
A self-hoster must operate a PHP 8.2+ runtime, one of the supported databases, and a web server, and must supply mail server details during installation, with the virtual host document root pointing at /.../myshop/public/ and APP_URL set in .env. It is not the right choice for teams that want a fully hosted service with no server operations, or for those working outside PHP and Laravel. One inconsistency is worth checking before adoption: the registry metadata lists the repository language as JavaScript, while the README requires PHP 8.2 and Laravel, so the README should be treated as authoritative.
