I Love Pimcore, So I Stopped Recommending It
It is with significant reluctance that I must finally discontinue my relationship with the platform. I simply cannot reconcile my belief in truly open source with the commercial tactics now being implemented by the core development team, which has led me to cease all recommendations of Pimcore. For years, it was my favored solution for projects large and small, a conviction rooted in its robust architecture. While adaptation is necessary in this industry, this shift represents a departure that I cannot follow. My decision to abandon the platform is ultimately grounded in the concerns detailed below, perhaps until such a time, if ever, that the developers return to the principles of a GPLv3 license.
Pimcore’s popularity among PHP developers, particularly those specializing in Symfony, was historically rooted in its powerful, familiar, and open foundation. As a developer, the platform was an easy sell: it was built directly on the robust Symfony Framework, immediately granting access to a modern architecture, a massive ecosystem of bundles and components, and a community of best practices. This foundation was seamlessly integrated with a comprehensive suite of enterprise-grade tools—PIM (Product Information Management), MDM (Master Data Management), DAM (Digital Asset Management), and DXP/CMS—all in one place. This “best of both worlds” combination made Pimcore a highly flexible and enthusiastically recommended platform for building complex digital solutions, offering a clear path to high-quality, maintainable, and scalable enterprise applications.
With the release of Pimcore Platform Version 2025.1, the licensing landscape for the Community Edition has undergone a fundamental transformation, switching from the GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3) to the new Pimcore Open Core License (POCL). This change introduces a critical commercial constraint: free and official use of the Community Edition is now limited to organizations with an annual revenue of less than €5 million (or USD equivalent). Businesses exceeding this threshold, or those wishing to use certain advanced features now moved to paid editions, will be required to purchase a commercial license.
For the Symfony developer, this licensing shift introduces new considerations that complicate the previous clear-cut advantages. Technically, the core platform remains built on Symfony, with the latest versions (like groundwork for Symfony 7) and modern practices (switching from annotations to attributes) being adopted. However, the legal and operational clarity that POCL provides to large enterprises—by eliminating the “viral” GPLv3 copyleft and reducing legal audit risks—comes at the expense of developers working with smaller, rapidly scaling companies or those creating SaaS offerings, which are explicitly restricted.
Developers must now be acutely aware of license compatibility, as the POCL is incompatible with the strong copyleft of the older GPLv3. This mandates a clear separation of codebases for any existing GPLv3 bundles and the newer POCL-licensed core. Furthermore, upgrading to the latest versions often involves significant architectural changes, such as the migration from the legacy ExtJS-based Admin UI to the new Vue-based Pimcore Studio. This not only requires code refactoring but also strict adherence to the new POCL terms, as the Symfony container now requires a product registration key to be built, tying the development process directly to the new mandatory license compliance.
The enthusiasm once generated by Pimcore’s open-source, Symfony-powered stack has been tempered by the new Open Core model. While the platform continues to offer a strong, modern technical foundation for data and experience management, the change to POCL shifts the calculus for developers and agencies. The decision to use Pimcore now requires a mandatory financial and strategic assessment based on a client’s revenue and future growth trajectory, fundamentally changing the nature of how the free Community Edition can be positioned and implemented for commercial projects.
Despite the strategic and commercial facets of the platform that have motivated this shift, Pimcore remains a technically impressive piece of technology. The introduction of the Vue-based admin panel, in particular, represents an exciting development in user experience. Furthermore, I would be remiss not to acknowledge the instrumental role the platform has played in my professional career, thanks to the clients and projects that trusted my enthusiastic recommendations thus far. It is disheartening to think that this established trust can be undermined by the platform’s leadership. This marks the end of an era, resulting in the bittersweet, but necessary, cessation of my endorsement for Pimcore.
