Published 25 August 2026 · 6 min read · GermanyLegalE-commerce
Short answer: yes, almost certainly. If you operate a commercial website directed at users in Germany — you sell there, you market there, your site targets German customers — then § 5 of the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG) requires an Impressum. It does not matter whether your company is registered in Austin, London, Amsterdam or Sydney. The obligation follows the audience, not the headquarters.
💡 Need one now? Our free Impressum generator produces a complete, DDG-compliant Impressum in English or German — including register details, VAT ID and § 18 MStV editorial notice. No sign-up.
Why this hits foreign sellers hardest
Germans know about the Impressum requirement. Most German businesses comply. But thousands of international shops, SaaS products and dropshipping stores selling into Germany don't — and that gap has created a small industry:
German competitors and specialised law firms systematically scan foreign shops for missing or incomplete Impressa.
They send a formal warning letter — an Abmahnung — demanding you fix the page and reimburse their legal fees.
Typical cost per letter: €500–€2,000. Ignore it, and it escalates to an injunction with even higher costs.
A missing Impressum also creates a GDPR problem: without an identifiable "provider", data protection authorities treat your site as non-transparent about who processes visitor data — a separate fine risk.
The test: does § 5 DDG apply to me?
Your situation
Impressum required?
You ship products to German customers
Yes
Your site is available in German, or prices in EUR, or markets to Germany
Yes
Purely private blog, no commerce
No
SaaS with paying customers in Germany
Yes
B2B-only services sold into Germany
Generally yes — commercial orientation suffices
What the Impressum must contain (§ 5 DDG checklist)
Name and legal form — e.g. "Acme GmbH", "Jane Doe e.K.", or your full name as a sole trader.
Physical address — a reachable postal address. A P.O. box is not sufficient.
Contact channel leading to a person — an email address; phone numbers are expected where rapid contact is reasonable.
If incorporated: legal representatives (managing directors / board), commercial register number and register court ("HRB 12345, Amtsgericht München").
VAT ID (USt-IdNr.) if you have one.
Regulated professions/trades: chamber, professional title and applicable rules.
Editorial responsibility (§ 18 MStV) if you publish journalistic content — name and address of the person responsible.
Dispute resolution note — EU ODR platform reference for consumer-facing businesses.
The placement rule people miss
The Impressum must be reachable with two clicks or fewer from every page — conventionally linked as "Impressum" in the footer. Burying it three levels deep counts as non-compliant.
What foreign sellers get wrong most often
No Impressum at all — the classic Abmahnung target.
Only "Contact us" form — a form is not a named, identifiable provider.
P.O. box or virtual-office address — not considered a proper business address.
Missing register/VAT details for companies that clearly have them.
English-only page on a German-language shop — acceptable in principle, but the information must be complete; many sellers omit fields required only under German law.
Fix it in five minutes
You do not need a German lawyer for a standard Impressum — you need accurate company details arranged correctly. Our free Impressum generator walks through all of the above fields, supports every common legal form (including foreign entities selling into Germany), outputs both English and German versions, and gives you HTML ready to paste into your footer.
Then run your site through the EUComply compliance scanner to confirm the rest of your legal pages hold up too — privacy policy, cookie consent and terms included. For the full picture of warning-letter exposure, read our guide to Abmahnung risk for e-commerce.