Spree 5.3 with new Pricing engine, Customer Groups and Events & Subscribers workflows

[damianlegawiec]

Spree 5.3 with new Pricing engine, Customer Groups and Events & Subscribers workflows

Spree 5.3 continues the momentum of the biggest Spree release ever — Spree 5 — delivering major architectural improvements, like a new powerful pricing engine and support for event-driven workflows, making framework customization easier and more future-proof.

This release builds on the foundations laid in 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2 by introducing flexible pricing engine, customer groups, a pub/sub event system, modernized admin UI, and enhanced developer tools — all while keeping Spree fully open source and community-driven.

Highlights

New Pricing Engine (Price Lists)

A flexible pricing system for managing pricing strategies — essential for B2B, multi-region, wholesale, and marketplace use cases.

• Customer Group pricing — Offer different prices to VIP, wholesale, or B2B customers.
• Volume pricing — Automatic discounts when item quantity falls within min–max ranges.
• Zone-based pricing — Regional pricing based on customer location.
• User-specific pricing — Individual pricing for key accounts.
• Time-based activation — Schedule price lists with start and end dates.
• Bulk Editor — use spreadsheet-like UI to manage prices for multiple products in multiple currencies with ease, also with keyboard shortcuts :)

Learn how to set up Price Lists in Spree Commerce.

Events & Subscribers Engine

A powerful new event system that allows you to react to various actions happening in your application. When something happens (an order is placed, a product is updated, or inventory changes), Spree publishes an event that your code can subscribe to and handle.

• Loose coupling — Connect and extend Spree without modifying core code.
• Multiple event types — Order, payment, shipment, product, customer, and more.
• Wildcard subscriptions — Subscribe to order.* to catch all order events.
• Sync or async — Run handlers immediately or via ActiveJob. Async default!
• Custom events — Publish your own events from anywhere in your application.

Perfect for sending notifications, syncing with external services, logging audit trails, triggering webhooks, and updating caches.

Learn how to work with Events in Spree Commerce.

Customer Groups

Segment your customers into defined groups for personalized experiences and targeted business rules.

• Flexible grouping — Create unlimited customer groups (VIP, Wholesale, B2B, Early Access, etc.).
• Price List integration — Apply custom pricing to specific customer groups.
• Promotion rules — Restrict promotion eligibility to certain customer segments.
• Easy management — Add and remove customers from groups directly in the admin.

Learn how to set up Customer Groups in Spree Commerce.

Webhooks 2.0 with Admin UI

A completely revamped webhook system with full admin panel management, built on top of the new Events engine.

• Admin panel management — Create and manage webhook endpoints directly from Settings > Developers > Webhooks.
• Event filtering — Subscribe to specific events or use wildcards (e.g., order.*).
• HMAC-SHA256 signatures — Secure payload verification for all deliveries.
• Automatic retries — Failed deliveries retry up to 5 times with exponential backoff.
• Full audit trail — Track every delivery attempt with response codes, timing, and error details.
• Multi-store support — Each store can have its own webhook endpoints.

Learn how to configure Webhooks in Spree Commerce.

Tailwind CSS Admin Dashboard

The admin dashboard has been completely rebuilt with Tailwind CSS, replacing Bootstrap entirely.

• Modern, clean, and consistent design language throughout the entire admin interface.
• Faster page loads and smaller CSS bundle size.
• Easier customization using Tailwind's utility-first approach.
• Improved responsive design for mobile and tablet admin access.

Admin Tables Component

A new flexible table system for displaying resource listings in the admin dashboard with a powerful DSL for customization.

• Declarative API — Define table configurations with customizable columns, sorting, filtering, and bulk actions.
• Multiple column types — String, number, money, status, boolean, datetime, link, image, association, and custom partials.
• Query builder filters — Advanced filtering with autocomplete, select, date ranges, and more.
• Bulk actions — Select multiple rows and perform batch operations.
• Extensible — Add columns to existing tables, insert at specific positions, or create entirely new tables.

Learn how to work with Admin Tables in Spree Commerce.

Order Adjustments & Order Promotions

A new admin experience for managing order promotions and order adjustments.

• Order promotions — Manually add promotions to the order in the admin panel
• Order adjustments — Manually add charges or credits to existing orders with streamlined payment/refund handling.

Learn how to create Promotions and manage Order Adjustments in Spree Commerce.

Admin Order & Customer Notes

Add internal notes to orders and customers for better team communication and order tracking.

• Staff notes — Add internal comments visible only to admin users.
• Order history — Keep a record of important order-related communications.
• Team collaboration — Share context about special handling, customer requests, or issues.

What's Next

Spree 5.4 will include another batch of impressive changes, such as:

• New REST API built around simplicity, ease of use, and performance (around 10x faster than API v2!)
• TypeScript SDK allowing developers leverage the new API with a great developer experience and type safety!
• Next.js storefront starter kit powered by the new API and TypeScript SDK
• Multi-channel support allowing developers to build and manage a truly omnichannel experience

Contributors

A huge thank-you to everyone who contributed ideas, code, testing, issue reports, documentation, and feedback.

New Contributors

• @malakada made their first contribution in Fix: Implement allowed_file_types option for spree_file_field #13421
• @carl-lee-lu made their first contribution in Allow JsonPreview to use dependency seralizers  #13441
• @MuhammadIbtisam made their first contribution in -- Remove NOT NULL constraint from spree_policies.name to support Mobility translations #13463
• @FrederikKragh made their first contribution in Fix string mutation bug in Google Merchant feed title generation #13484

Full Changelog: v5.2.3...v5.3.0

Upgrading from earlier versions?

Please follow our Spree 5.3 upgrade guide.

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This discussion was created from the release v5.3.0.