Background: how Hyvä Theme started
The Hyvä Theme originated from frustration with the standard frontend for Magento Open Source (formerly Magento) and the rapid shift in the e-commerce world towards headless/back-end-only solutions. According to the founders:
Insufficient performance of the “Luma” frontend and complexity in the frontend architecture.
The desire to build a frontend that is simple, fast, and maintainable.
Born out of necessity: Hyvä was built in a few months and quickly further developed.
Hyvä grew into a full-fledged alternative with its own ecosystem for webshops that want to differentiate themselves through speed, performance, and conversion.
Why is Hyvä now open-source and free?
As of November 10, 2025, the Hyvä Theme has transitioned to open-source licenses (OSL3 + AFL3) and the core theme is available for free use.
Important reasons:
Opening up the ecosystem further: smaller entrepreneurs, students, and new agencies now have access without license barriers.
Accelerating innovation: since the code is freely available, developers and extension providers can more easily contribute and expand.
Strengthening the platform: Hyvä positions itself as a ‘performance-first’ solution for Magento and aims to help advance the entire Magento community.
For commission partners and agencies this means: lower costs for entry-level, greater adoption, and more extensions becoming Hyvä-compatible, improving maintainability and long-term certainty.
What does this mean for your Magento webshop?
For clients of Epartment and webshop owners with Magento/Adobe Commerce, the following implications apply:
✅ Direct advantages
No more license costs for the core Hyvä Theme for Magento Open Source.
Lower entry barrier, so even smaller webshops can now benefit from a modern frontend.
Improved performance, with faster loading times, better Core Web Vitals, and thus potentially higher SEO rankings.
Increased flexibility: extensions can be made on top of Hyvä or customized without a license threshold.
⚠️ What remains commercial or changed
The Hyvä Checkout solution remains commercial, so costs may still apply for advanced checkout functionality.
For webshops on Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento Enterprise) with B2B functionality or complex modules, extra license or Hyvä Enterprise may be required.
While the theme is free, migration, development, or customization work still costs and requires attention to compatibility with existing extensions.
How you can get started with this at Epartment
At Epartment, we help Magento webshops to optimally benefit from the new open-source version of Hyvä. We usually start with an audit of your current Magento frontend, where we analyze performance and compatibility. Based on this, we recommend the best approach for your situation.
We then guide the migration or implementation of the Hyvä Theme within your webshop. On our page about Hyvä themes you can find more information about the possibilities and benefits.
For B2B webshops, we investigate together what opportunities exist with the Hyvä B2B Suite. When your webshop is focused on growth and scalability, we look at the use of Hyvä Commerce.
Conclusion
The step from Hyvä to open-source is a significant development for Magento webshops. For clients of Epartment, this offers an opportunity to start with a modern, fast frontend at lower entry costs. This is the moment to evaluate if your webshop benefits from the Hyvä stack and plan the migration or upgrade together with Epartment.
