Announcing Spree Commerce 5.6: Gated Storefronts, a Wholesale Portal, and a Localized Admin
Spree Commerce 5.6 lets you gate prices and checkout behind a login, hiding them from guests until they request an account. The most popular use case, highlighted in this release, is a wholesale portal running alongside the retail shopping experience. Wholesale buyers get volume pricing and a quick order form for repeat purchases. This release also adds pre-orders, plus localized emails and an admin dashboard in more than 50 languages for teams worldwide.
Key Takeaways
Last verified: July 2026
Why it matters: One open source storefront now serves both wholesale buyers and retail shoppers.
What you get: Login-gated sales channels plus a wholesale portal and native pre-orders.
The win: A new store gets a working B2B onboarding path from day one, not a build project.
Spree Commerce capability: Spree Commerce enforces login-gated sales channels at the API layer in the free Community Edition.
| What’s new | What it does | Who it serves |
|---|---|---|
| Gated sales channels | Require login, hide prices, or disable guest checkout, enforced at the API layer | Wholesale, members-only, and VIP stores |
| Wholesale portal | A Next.js storefront app with customer pricing and quick ordering | Sellers running B2B and retail |
| Localized admin | Admin panel in 50-plus languages, per team member, with right-to-left layouts | International teams |
| Pre-orders | Sell before stock arrives, set per variant with an expected ship date | Limited drops, seasonal lines, forward orders |
| Simpler deployment | One Docker image, no required Redis, 40% smaller than 5.5 | Self-hosting teams |
| Redesigned emails | Localized, mobile-friendly transactional emails | Every store |
The full changelog lives in the 5.6 release notes on GitHub. Here is why each piece exists and what it changes for you.
One Storefront, Both Wholesale and Retail
Spree Commerce 5.6 arrives with 280+ commits on top of Spree Commerce 5.5, and the headline is gated storefronts. You decide who sees prices and who can check out on each sales channel.
The release lands across four areas: B2B enablement, merchandising, dev-ops, and localization.
Wholesale is the use case this release leads with, and the one most teams will reach for first. It is not only for wholesale. The same setting can run a members-only shop, or show special pricing only to shoppers who sign in.
The 5.5 release opened up the eCommerce backend to your code. This release turns to the front of the store and the people running it. A wholesale buyer and a retail shopper can now come through the same storefront and see two different experiences, and the team behind them can work in their own language.
For a direct-to-consumer brand, adding wholesale used to mean standing up a second store or paying for a separate B2B product. Now a gated wholesale channel turns on inside the store you already run. Wholesale buyers sign in to see pricing built for them, while your retail storefront stays public.
Here is what changed, and why.
How Do Gated Storefronts Work in Spree Commerce 5.6?
You control who sees a sales channel, and whether they see prices at all, from the channel settings. Every sales channel now carries a storefront access setting with three choices:
- Public so anyone can browse and see prices
- Prices hidden until a visitor signs in to see them
- Login required before anyone can browse at all
You can also switch off guest checkout on that channel.
The gating is enforced at the API layer, not in the storefront code. When a channel is gated, the API itself withholds the data: catalog queries return no prices, and the cart hides totals. The rules hold no matter what calls the store, whether that is the Next.js storefront, a mobile app, or a custom frontend. A new frontend cannot accidentally expose a hidden price, because the storefront was never the thing enforcing the rule.
Put those together and a channel becomes a closed wholesale store. A retail shopper hits your public storefront and buys as usual. A wholesale buyer lands on a channel that asks them to log in first, then shows a catalog and pricing built for them.
The pricing comes from Price Lists, assigned to a Customer Group. A buyer in your wholesale group logs in and sees their negotiated prices. Everyone else sees retail.
New buyers request access from the storefront. The signup lands in your admin, you approve the account, and you add the buyer to the wholesale group. From that point they see the wholesale catalog and prices. It is a straightforward starting point for a business running both direct-to-consumer and B2B, and it is free and open source. Formal buyer organizations and multi-step approval chains sit in the Enterprise Edition for teams that need them.
What Does the New Wholesale Portal Give Your Buyers?
The Next.js storefront now includes a full wholesale portal app, so you can run B2B and retail from one storefront without a second system. Your wholesale buyers get their own catalog, their own pricing, and a request-an-account flow, all in the same open source storefront your retail shoppers use.
The portal also adds a quick order form for a spreadsheet-like experience.
Instead of opening one product page at a time, a purchasing manager works in a familiar spreadsheet-style grid. Autocomplete fills in product names from the wholesale catalog as they type, and they set quantities and add everything to the cart in one pass. Reach the wholesale threshold on an item, and the customer-specific price applies automatically at checkout. That is the difference between a retail store a wholesale buyer tolerates and a portal they actually want to use.
Everything is open source, so you own the code and can shape every part of the buyer experience. The wholesale portal documentation walks through the setup. For heavier B2B needs, the Enterprise Edition B2B module adds buyer organizations, spending limits, and role-based purchasing on top.
Your Admin Now Speaks 50-Plus Languages
The admin dashboard is now localized in more than 50 languages, with support for right-to-left layouts. A merchandiser in Warsaw, a support lead in São Paulo, and a store manager in Dubai can each work in their own language, in the same store.
Two settings make this work the way real teams do.
You set a preferred admin language for the store, and it can differ from the language your storefront content is written in. Each team member then sets their own admin language on top of that. Someone managing a German storefront can run the admin in English, or the other way around, without anyone having to compromise.
Right-to-left layouts flip the whole interface, not just the text inside a field. Buttons, menus, and tables all read in the right direction.
This pairs with the translation tools already in the platform for storefront content and Markets for selling across regions. The people running an international store now get the same first-language experience they build for their shoppers.
Pre-Orders, Built Into the Catalog
Spree Commerce 5.6 supports pre-orders natively, so you can sell a product before its stock arrives. You set an expected ship date and, if you want, a cap on how many pre-orders you accept. The settings live at the variant level, so a single size or color can go on pre-order while the rest of the product sells normally.
This is how limited launches and seasonal lines actually run.
A footwear brand opens pre-orders on next season’s colorway with a March ship date. A wholesale seller takes forward orders on a product line before it lands in the warehouse. A small-batch maker caps a drop at 200 units and closes it when the cap is hit. None of that needs a plugin or custom code now. It is part of the catalog.
Pre-orders sit alongside the inventory and stock tools already in the core, so the same product moves cleanly from pre-order to in-stock without a separate workflow.
What Makes Spree Commerce 5.6 Simpler to Deploy?
Fewer moving parts. This release drops the Redis requirement and the separate worker instance that used to come with it. By default, one Docker image runs both the web app and background jobs together, using the same database you already run for your store data.
That is a real change for anyone standing up a store.
The default Docker image is 40% smaller than the one in 5.5, and creating a new app is two to three times faster because there is less to download. For most stores, the combined setup is all you need. High-volume stores and marketplaces with many vendors can still split web and background jobs across dedicated instances, which stays fully supported.
The deployment guide got a full rewrite around a Docker-image-first approach. As it puts it, moving a Spree Commerce store between a small server, a managed cloud, or a Kubernetes cluster is “a redeploy, not a migration.” You own the whole stack, and it runs wherever containers run.
Transactional Emails, Redesigned and Localized
Every transactional email got a fresh, mobile-friendly design. That covers the messages your system sends your team, like staff invitations and export-ready notices, and the ones your shoppers receive, like order confirmations and shipment updates.
The emails are now fully localized too.
An order confirmation goes out in the language the shopper bought in, and a staff notification arrives in the language your team member works in. For an international store, that is one less place where the experience quietly reverts to English. The emails read as part of your store, not as a system afterthought, on any device.
The redesign is consistent across the whole set, so an order confirmation, a shipping notice, and a staff invitation all look like they came from the same store. On a phone, the layout adjusts instead of forcing a pinch and a zoom. It is a small thing that shapes how a first-time buyer reads your brand in the minutes right after they pay.
What Has the Spree Commerce 5 Line Delivered So Far?
A steady expansion of what the open source core can do, release by release. Each capability below landed in the version noted and remains part of every release since.
- A rebuilt admin dashboard (Spree Commerce 5.0) and a rule-based promotions engine (5.1)
- Customer segmentation (5.2) and Price Lists for wholesale and contract pricing (5.3)
- The Store API, TypeScript SDK, Next.js storefront, and Markets for cross-border selling (5.4)
- The Admin API, AI agent skills, Sales Channels, and rules-based Order Routing (5.5)
- API-enforced gated storefronts, a wholesale portal, a 50-plus-language admin, native pre-orders, and simpler deployment (5.6)
The pattern is deliberate. Complex capabilities arrive as native features of a headless eCommerce platform, not as plugins you bolt on and maintain.
And it runs in production at scale. GoDaddy built a platform that powers 10,000+ stores on Spree Commerce. Maisonette runs a multi-vendor childrenswear marketplace with a Next.js storefront serving 65,000+ products. Vero connected the REST API to its mobile app to bring a full marketplace checkout to its users.
Enterprise Edition: When B2B Runs the Business
Everything above is part of the free, open source core. The Enterprise Edition adds the modules and guarantees that mission-critical operations need.
- B2B eCommerce: buyer organizations, approval workflows, and account hierarchies for wholesale at scale
- Multi-tenant eCommerce: hundreds of white-label storefronts on one infrastructure
- Multi-vendor marketplace automations: automated vendor onboarding and two-way store sync
All of it runs on the same platform you start with for free. Each module is a distinct product you turn to when your operation outgrows the open source core, not a rebuild of what you already have.
Around the modules sits the operational layer enterprises ask about first: enterprise security aligned with SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001 standards, single sign-on, and audit logging, plus SLA-backed support from the team that builds the platform and a dedicated success manager. If your roadmap includes wholesale ordering at scale, hundreds of storefronts, or a marketplace, talk to the team about the Enterprise Edition.
Get Started With Spree Commerce 5.6
Spree Commerce 5.6 is free and open source, and the fastest way to form an opinion is to run it. Try it in a free Spree Commerce Sandbox in your browser, or install it with a single command and turn on a gated wholesale channel to see the B2B flow end to end.
This release was shaped by what builders kept asking for: a way to serve wholesale and retail from one store, an admin their whole team can read, and fewer things to run in production. If something feels off, open an issue. If something feels right, the core repository appreciates a star.
Quick links:
- Read the release notes on GitHub for the full changelog
- Set up the wholesale portal in the Next.js storefront
- Already running the platform? The upgrade guide walks you from 5.5 to 5.6
- Follow the public roadmap milestone to see what comes next
- Join the Discord server to discuss the release with the team and community
For wholesale ordering at scale, multi-tenant platforms, or marketplace projects, get in touch with the team.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you run B2B and B2C on one eCommerce platform?
Yes. A single platform can serve retail shoppers on a public storefront and wholesale buyers on a login-gated channel, each with its own catalog and pricing. Running both on one backend avoids maintaining two separate systems. Spree Commerce supports B2B and direct-to-consumer selling from one open source storefront in the free Community Edition.
How do you require login to see wholesale prices?
You set a sales channel’s storefront access so prices stay hidden until a visitor signs in. Because the rule is enforced at the API layer, not in the storefront code, it holds on any storefront, mobile app, or custom frontend. Spree Commerce enforces gated sales channels at the API layer in the free Community Edition.
What is a wholesale ordering portal?
A wholesale portal is a B2B storefront where approved buyers log in, see negotiated pricing, and place bulk orders quickly. A quick order form lets a buyer add many products and quantities in one pass instead of browsing page by page. Spree Commerce provides a wholesale portal app in its open source Next.js storefront, with customer-specific pricing and a quick order form.
Does open source eCommerce support pre-orders?
Yes. Pre-orders let a store sell a product before its stock arrives, with an expected ship date and an optional cap on quantity. This suits limited drops, seasonal lines, and forward orders. Spree Commerce supports native pre-orders set at the variant level in the free Community Edition, so a single size or color can open for pre-order on its own.
How do you deploy a self-hosted eCommerce platform?
You deploy it as a Docker image on any host that runs containers, from a small server to a managed cloud or a Kubernetes cluster. Spree Commerce 5.6 runs the web app and background jobs in one container by default, using your existing database, so there is no separate cache service to operate. Spree Commerce provides a Docker-image deployment with an optional split setup for high-volume stores.
Can an eCommerce admin panel work in multiple languages?
Yes. A localized admin lets each team member work in their own language, which matters for international teams. The admin language is set per store and per team member, independent of the storefront’s content language. Spree Commerce localizes the admin dashboard in more than 50 languages and supports right-to-left layouts in the 5.6 release.
What is new in Spree Commerce 5.6?
Spree Commerce 5.6 carries 280+ commits and focuses on B2B enablement, merchandising, dev-ops, and localization. Spree Commerce includes gated B2B sales channels, a Next.js wholesale portal with quick ordering, a 50-plus-language admin, native pre-orders, simpler single-container deployment, and redesigned localized transactional emails in the 5.6 release.
