Pimcore Installation – A Step-by-Step Guide

Have you chosen Pimcore for planning your website, online shop, or Product Information Management? First things first: excellent choice! There’s a reason Pimcore is often called the Ferrari of content management systems. So let’s get started. In this blog post, we’ll share more about Pimcore and guide you through the installation step by step.

Pimcore is an open-source software platform that combines several functions in one system. It is primarily aimed at companies looking for a central solution to manage digital content, products, and data. First and foremost, product information management (PIM), which manages structured product data from various different sources.With master data management (MDM), all master data can be centralized, enriched, and maintained in one place.Additionally, digital asset management (DAM) in Pimcore allows for the management of images, videos, PDFs, and much mor Another powerful feature is the content management system (CMS), which allows you to create and manage websites, landing pages, and portals. In terms of CRM, the software also provides the customer data platform (CDP), where you can store and manage customer master data and create unified customer profiles.

Last but not least, Pimcore’s Digital Commerce Platform (DCP) is an extremely powerful feature for building B2B and B2C e-commerce frameworks and creating unique customer experiences.

Companies with complex product catalogs particularly benefit from Pimcore’s core features — especially if their goal is to publish their products and content across multiple channels such as websites, mobile, and print from a single source. In general, Pimcore is also suitable for all companies aiming to digitalize their business processes: the software allows data synchronization via APIs and the configuration of interfaces to ERP and CRM systems.

Both content management systems share one thing in common: they were developed to help users design their website projects in a “do-it-yourself” format — but with different levels of difficulty.

MDM, PIM, CMS, CDP, DCP – no, this isn’t a remake of a 90s hit by Die Fantastischen Vier, but rather Pimcore’s superpower: the system serves as a central data management hub, integrating multiple data sources into a single platform. This not only ensures consistency but also accuracy. Thanks to this Single Source of Truth, errors that typically arise from duplicate data maintenance or inconsistencies between systems are significantly reduced.

The software was designed with an API-first architecture, allowing Pimcore to integrate seamlessly into existing systems such as ERP, CRM, or e-commerce. Thanks to its additional modularity and expandability, functions can also be individually customized or extended to meet the specific requirements of each company.

You can manage and publish your content, product data, or campaigns directly from Pimcore across various channels such as websites, mobile apps, POS systems, print catalogs, or social media. And that’s not all — you can also tailor customer-specific content and data for different target audiences and channels!

Different departments with different databases? Not with Pimcore! Whether it’s marketing, sales, or IT — all departments in your company can access the same data in real time within Pimcore, enabling efficient collaboration. At the same time, everything remains under control thanks to customizable user permissions, which allow you to precisely define who has access to which data.

As open-source software, Pimcore’s Community Edition is free of charge, so you won’t face expensive licensing fees. In addition, you don’t need any other specialized tools that could drive up your costs, since Pimcore already combines a wide range of functionalities in one platform.

So, you’re convinced by Pimcore — we’ve been for a long time! Now let’s get down to business: installing Pimcore. Follow our step-by-step guide, and nothing can go wrong. The result: a fully installed Pimcore instance!

To successfully install Pimcore, certain system requirements and preparations are necessary. We’ve summarized the server and software requirements for you in a simple table:

The following PHP extensions are required:

• pdo
• pdo_mysql
• intl
• ctype
• curl
• dom
• gd
• iconv
• json
• mbstring
• openssl
• simplexml
• tokenizer
• xml
• zip
• zlib
• fileinfo

Install the required PHP extensions with the following command:

You can check the requirements with the following code:

Check the requirements with these commands:

Set Up vHost and Database

In the next step, create the database:

Activate the Apache vHost:

Download the Desired Pimcore Version
Create your project directory:

mkdir /var/www/pimcore && cd /var/www/pimcore

Install Pimcore using Composer:
composer create-project pimcore/skeleton

Then start the installer:
./vendor/bin/pimcore-install
During installation, enter your database credentials.
Note: The installation automatically creates an admin user.

Make Adjustments
If necessary, edit the .env.local file — for example, to configure database access, mail settings, or Redis:

DATABASE_URL="mysql://pimcore_user:securePassword@127.0.0.1:3306/pimcore"
You can test all configurations in your browser by visiting:
👉 http://pimcore.local/admin
Log in using your installation credentials.

So, everything okay? Is your Pimcore instance up and running? Excellent! If you have any questions or need assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us! As a Pimcore Gold Partner, we are the professionals you need: we provide comprehensive advice and help you with the installation and configuration of your Pimcore instance!