Address Validation and House Number Check | Fewer Failed Deliveries

About the Extension

The parcel is back on your doorstep. "Addressee unknown." The customer typed "High Street" and forgot the number, or swapped two characters in the postcode. Getting it wrong took them no time at all. Putting it right costs you a second shipment, a support email and a customer who is still waiting.

The problem

Shopware accepts any address as long as the required fields are filled in. Nobody checks whether the street line actually contains a house number, or whether street, postcode and city belong together. You find out when the carrier sends the parcel back. Then comes the email to the customer, the second label and the postage you pay twice.

The solution

The plugin checks the address where it is created: at registration, under "Addresses" in the customer account and when the address is changed during checkout. If the house number is missing, your customer sees a hint right below the address fields. Add your own Google key and the plugin also checks street, postcode and city against Google, then offers a corrected address your customer can apply in one click.

What's in it for you

• Fewer parcels on a return trip. A missing house number shows up while the customer is still on the form, not at the depot. In "Required" mode an address without a house number cannot be saved at all, not even through the Store API.
• Your customer has the final say. A suggestion stays a suggestion. With "Keep my entry" the customer saves the address exactly as typed, which matters for new-build streets Google does not know yet.
• Small typos fix themselves. Two digits swapped in the postcode or one letter too many in the street name: the plugin applies the correction Google has confirmed, shows what changed and offers "Undo". It never changes a house number on its own.
• Your Google bill stays predictable. Every result is cached for 24 hours, so the same address costs one request. Each IP address can trigger at most 40 Google requests in 10 minutes, a daily cap per sales channel limits the total, and you decide which countries are checked against Google at all.
• Parcel lockers stay parcel lockers. If an address contains a keyword such as Packstation, PO Box or Parcel locker, the plugin neither checks nor corrects it. You maintain the keyword list yourself.
• You see which order needs a second look. The verification status is stored on the customer address and on the order. The Rule Builder condition "Address validation: status" lets you react to it in checkout rules and in the Flow Builder.

How the plugin works

The house number check runs entirely inside your shop and needs no external service. You choose between "Off", "Hint" and "Required". "Hint" points out the missing number but still saves the address. "Required" rejects the address on the server as well. For saved addresses without a house number, checkout shows a notice with a direct link to the address; in "Required" mode the order is blocked until the number is added.

For the Google check you enter a Google Maps Platform API key. The default is the Google Address Validation API. For countries it does not cover, the plugin falls back to the Google Geocoding API automatically. "Test connection" checks the key right in the plugin configuration, even before you save. The key stays on your server and is never sent to the browser.

The check starts as soon as your customer changes street, postcode or city. If a hint is still open when the form is submitted, the plugin holds the form back once so the customer actually sees it. If Google does not answer in time, the shop saves the address unchecked. An outage at Google never traps a customer in the form.

Hints use the alert colours of your theme: warning, information, primary or secondary colour. No theme compilation needed. Every setting works per sales channel, including the switch that turns the plugin off for a channel completely.

Typical use cases

• Shipping with Royal Mail or DPD in the UK: Many British addresses use house names instead of numbers. You limit the house number check to the countries where a number is standard and let Google verify the UK addresses instead.
• Shop shipping to Germany and the Netherlands: A house number is part of every address there. You set the check to "Required" for those countries and stop failed deliveries before the label is printed.
• B2B with a careful finance team: Invoices should go to verified addresses. A flow tags orders whose billing address is not confirmed, and your team checks them before the invoice run.
• Strict privacy requirements: No address data should reach Google without consent. With "Check only after cookie consent" enabled, visitors who have not agreed only get the local house number check.

Technical facts for your IT team

• Shopware 6.7.5 or later (version 6.7), PHP 8.2 or later.
• No custom tables. Shopware's core tables stay untouched; the verification status lives in custom fields on the customer address and the order.
• External calls only when you select a verification service and enter a key: server to server to the Google Maps Platform. The plugin sends street, postcode, city and country. Name, email address and phone number never leave the shop.
• With "No verification service (local checks only)" the plugin sends no data to external servers.
• Optional cookie entry "Address validation" in the comfort features group, lifetime 30 days. Add Google to your privacy policy; Google's privacy notice is at policies.google.com/privacy.
• Result cache of 24 hours in the Shopware cache, rate limit of 40 Google requests per 10 minutes per IP address (IPv6 per /64 network) and sales channel, adjustable daily cap per sales channel (default 1,000), at most 4 seconds per request. Saving an address does not trigger another Google request.
• Store API route for headless frontends, POST /store-api/swp-address-validator/check.
• Own log file in the Shopware log directory, without address data.
• Uninstall: if you delete the plugin data, the plugin removes its custom field sets.
• Interface texts in German, English and Dutch.

To be honest

This is not an autocomplete. It does not suggest addresses while your customer types; it checks the finished entry. The local check only knows whether the street line contains a number, not whether that number exists. Only the Google check can tell, and for that you need your own Google Maps Platform account, billed by Google directly to you. Start with one sales channel and watch how many addresses get flagged.

Legal notice

We accept no liability for legal requirements. Please check the use of this plugin with a qualified legal advisor.