Spree Commerce: The Best Open-Source Shopify Alternative for an Enterprise Business
Enterprise operations have requirements that SaaS platforms were never designed to meet. Here’s why source-available, self-hosted eCommerce delivers the control, security, and flexibility that enterprise organizations require.
Something we hear constantly from enterprise tech leaders is: “We’ve outgrown our eCommerce platform, but every alternative — especially SaaS solutions like Shopify or BigCommerce — feels like a compromise we can’t afford to risk.”
After years of working with large enterprises, we’ve seen this pattern repeat itself far too many times. The truth is, enterprise operations have requirements that SaaS platforms were never designed to meet — compliance mandates, deep custom integrations, full customizability, and self-hosting among them.
In this video, we walk through why source-available, self-hosted eCommerce makes sense for enterprise organizations and how it delivers the control, security, and flexibility that these operations require.
Read on for a deeper dive into why enterprises are moving away from SaaS, what the Spree Commerce Enterprise Edition brings to the table, and how our 12-step go-live process ensures a smooth transition.
Why SaaS Platforms Aren’t Enough for Enterprise
The fundamental issue with SaaS eCommerce platforms is simple: you don’t own anything.
On Shopify, BigCommerce, or any comparable SaaS, every customer receives identical core functionality. Your customization is limited to their APIs — which, by the way, change constantly. They call it progress. When the vendor decides to change something, you have no choice but to adapt, and fast. Your entire operation relies on what your vendor decides to do next — this month, next month, indefinitely.
Enterprise needs are fundamentally different. You need deep, stable integrations with controlled change management. Compliance isn’t optional — SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, sector-specific regulations all apply. Single sign-on is a must. The full list of non-functional requirements sometimes runs into the hundreds.
And then there’s the economics. Transaction fees compound dramatically with volume. Charges multiply for each store, vendor, or tenant you add — if you can add them at all. Essential features are locked behind higher pricing tiers. And you can’t even audit the security of the underlying technology stack.
Enterprise organizations need something fundamentally different.
Introducing the Spree Commerce Enterprise Edition
We built the Spree Commerce Enterprise Edition to solve these exact challenges. It adds enterprise-grade features, support, and security on top of Spree’s battle-tested open-source foundations — providing everything enterprise teams need to launch, scale, and secure mission-critical commerce backed by dedicated support for go-live, daily operations, security compliance, and continuous optimization.
Built for Scale and Flexibility
Spree Enterprise is designed for organizations that need their commerce platform to handle the complexity of real-world enterprise operations:
Handles operations at scale. Manage millions of SKUs, orders, and customers without performance bottlenecks. Multi-warehouse, multi-currency, and multi-regional support is built in from the ground up.
Runs on any infrastructure. Deploy on AWS, GCP, Azure, or your own data centers. Spree is Docker-ready with full control over your hosting environment and data residency. Apply caching, load balancing, CDNs, and autoscaling — whatever your infrastructure demands.
Customizable and extensible. Spree’s event-driven architecture with Webhooks 2.0, fast APIs, and a customizable Admin dashboard means you can extend any workflow through clean extension points — no core modifications required.
Integrates with your systems. Connect with your ERP, CRM, PIM, and fulfillment providers through APIs, Webhooks, or pre-built integrations. Spree is API-first, making it perfect for composable architectures and mobile apps.
Role-based access control. Granular access controls with custom roles and a full audit trail ensure separation of duties and accountability across your organization.
Enterprise Security by Default
Enterprise security isn’t an afterthought with Spree — it’s foundational. The Enterprise Edition is engineered to pass your security review, with robust practices aligned with SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001 standards so you can focus on growth, not compliance gaps.
Encryption at-rest and in-transit. All sensitive data is encrypted using AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit, protecting customer and transaction data at every layer.
Single Sign-On (SSO). Integrate with your identity provider of choice — Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, or any SAML/OIDC-compliant system.
PCI DSS compliance. The architecture is designed to support PCI DSS requirements, with tokenized payments and no raw card data stored in your environment.
Role-based access control. Define custom roles with precise permissions to ensure team members only access what they need — nothing more.
Comprehensive audit logging. Every user action and system event is logged with timestamps and user attribution, ready for compliance reviews and forensic analysis.
Continuous security patches. Proactive vulnerability monitoring with timely patches delivered through our LTS program keeps your platform secure without disruption.
Full stack ownership. Complete control over your codebase, data, and infrastructure. No vendor lock-in, no black boxes — audit anything, anytime.
Enterprise Support Services
Your success is backed by the team that builds Spree. Enterprise support gives you access to our expertise with guaranteed response times, proactive monitoring, and direct access to the engineers who know your platform inside out.
Dedicated Success Manager. Your single point of contact who understands your business, coordinates resources, and ensures you get maximum value from the platform.
SLA-backed response times. Guaranteed response windows for issue resolution depending on severity, so you’re never left waiting when it matters most.
Group chat and email support. Direct access to our support team through Slack, Microsoft Teams, or email for fast, convenient communication.
Long-Term Support (LTS). Extended maintenance and security patches for stable versions, giving you predictable upgrade cycles without forced migrations.
Priority fixes and change requests. Priority access to new features and version upgrades, with guidance on adoption and migration planning.
24/7 monitoring and response. Round-the-clock infrastructure monitoring with proactive alerting and incident response for managed hosting customers.
Professional services on-demand. Access development consulting, custom integrations, and implementation services when you need specialized expertise.
Three Enterprise Modules for Three Business Models
The Enterprise Edition comes with three add-on modules, each delivered separately as a private library for your core application. Each module is licensed separately, so you pay only for what you need.
Multi-Vendor Marketplace
Automate vendor onboarding, payment splitting, and payouts. The marketplace module allows you to onboard dozens or hundreds of third-party vendors, sync their products into your marketplace platform, and offer those products to your customers — who can buy from multiple vendors in a single order with a single payment.
That multi-vendor order is then broken down into sub-orders so vendors can fulfill each one independently, shipping goods directly to the customer. The module handles product syncing (including stock levels), order syncing back to vendors, tracking information, and automated vendor payouts via Stripe Connect.
Vendors can connect their existing Shopify or WooCommerce stores through white-label integrations, or onboard manually through CSV import. It’s a fully automated marketplace platform that ensures smooth operations, satisfied vendors, and confident shoppers.
B2B eCommerce
The B2B module allows you to go wholesale or sell high-value items with buyer organizations requesting accounts to see prices. It supports customer segmentation with pricing per customer or per customer segment, buyer organizations with user roles and approval workflows, and complex, sophisticated post-purchase support — everything a B2B use case requires.
With gated storefronts, custom price lists, bulk ordering, and seamless connections to ERPs and procurement systems your customers already use, Spree delivers a B2B experience that matches the sophistication of your sales process.
Multi-Tenant eCommerce
The multi-tenant module allows you to host hundreds of independent stores — either as a standalone SaaS or as a composable, headless microservice integrated with your existing solutions such as your ERP, PIM, CRM, authentication provider, and your entire ecosystem.
Launch a white-label commerce SaaS where each tenant gets their own dashboard and storefront while you maintain central control over product catalog, billing and payments, fulfillment, and customer care. It’s ideal for franchise networks, multi-brand enterprises, regional storefronts, and SaaS commerce platforms.
Why Enterprises Choose Spree
The reasons enterprise organizations choose Spree come down to what matters most at scale:
Unlimited customizability. Build any workflow or integration you need. Spree’s source-available model means you can inspect, modify, and extend every part of the platform.
API-first architecture. Perfect for composable architectures, headless storefronts, mobile apps, and emerging channels like ChatGPT Instant Checkout via the Agentic Commerce Protocol.
Deployment flexibility. Run on any cloud, any region, or your own infrastructure. Full control over data residency and hosting.
High scalability. Apply caching, load balancing, CDNs, autoscaling — whatever your traffic demands.
Full ownership. No vendor lock-in, no transaction fees compounding against you, full control of your proprietary IP.
Enterprise security and support. Hardened authentication, authorization, and data protection. Priority support for incident resolution. Optional managed private cloud with 24/7 monitoring, autoscaling, and SLAs.
The 12-Step Go-Live Process
If this sounds like what your organization needs, we’ve developed a structured 12-step process to get you from evaluation to launch:
- Meet and greet. We get to know each other and talk about goals.
- NDA and project review. We dive deeper into your current systems and technical environment.
- Requirements checklist. We compare what you need against what Spree offers out of the box. Anything that requires custom development gets flagged, so you have full visibility into what’s available and what’s not.
- Architecture. We map out how Spree integrates with your existing ecosystem — covering integrations, hosting, and infrastructure decisions.
- Budget estimation and timeline. We see if our delivery pace matches your requirements and expected timeline.
- Delivery team structure. We figure out the best way to work together — whether that’s our team delivering the solution or embedding with your team.
- Procurement.
- Licensing.
- Support options.
- Hosting setup.
- Project delivery.
- Handover. Once we deliver everything you need over the next 6–9 months, we can keep working together maintaining the solution or hand it over to your team.
More complex, multi-faceted projects are more likely to take 12–18 months, but the relationship can continue post-launch. We provide ongoing maintenance and support as your platform grows and evolves.
Is Spree Enterprise Right for You?
Spree Enterprise Edition is built for two types of organizations:
Enterprises that require absolute control. Non-negotiable compliance and security standards. Must-have integrations with existing systems like ERP, CRM, PIM, and fulfillment. The ability to inspect and verify the entire codebase. A comprehensive audit log for accountability and visibility.
Business models that break SaaS assumptions. B2B operations with complex sales processes like RFP and RFQ. Wholesale channels with specialized payment requirements. Marketplace models connecting multiple sellers. Global operations spanning regions, currencies, and languages.
If any of that sounds like your situation, book an exploratory call with our team. We’ll dig into your specific challenges, walk through how our 12-step go-live process works for your organization, and figure out if Spree is the right fit.
Ready to take control of your commerce platform? Get started with Spree Enterprise Edition or book a meeting to explore your options.
