April 02, 2025

Announcing Spree 5: The Biggest Open-Source Release Ever

We’re thrilled to unveil Spree 5—the most feature-packed open-source release in Spree Commerce’s history! This milestone is more than just an upgrade. It transforms the platform into a future-ready, mobile-first, no-code, enterprise-friendly eCommerce solution that still adheres to its open-source roots. And it’s completely free to use and customize as you require.

Whether you’re an ambitious startup, an established brand re-platforming, or an enterprise business looking to expand, Spree 5 free open-source eCommerce platform gives you the tools to build precisely the eCommerce experience you need — faster, easier, and more flexibly than ever before.

Let’s take a look at what’s new and why it matters.

New Admin Dashboard Experience

Spree 5 free Community Edition introduces a fully redesigned admin dashboard with improved UX for a day-to-day productivity boost:

New Admin Dashboard UX: Redesigned experience for managing Store settings, Products, Orders, with multiple key metrics charts for more day-to-day visibility.
Multi-store management: Ability to easily add a new Store and import Products or Payment methods from an existing store, while sharing Products, Locations & Inventory, Customers, Shipping methods, rates and markets, Payment Methods across all Stores.
Store Standards & Formats: Set store-wide units like size, weight, and time zone — and customize them per Product.
Digital products: A streamlined digital checkout flow. Now you can also set a download expiry date and a maximum number of downloads for product-related digital files.
Custom Domains: Manage and connect custom domains directly from the admin.
Shipping Method Management: Improved setup experience with ability to set estimated delivery times.
Bulk Operations: Perform bulk actions on Products and Customers to save time at scale when merchandising or performing customer service activities.
Tags: Tag Products for easy merchandising and Orders or Customers for filtering and bulk admin operations.
Automatic Taxons: Auto-assign Products to appear in Categories or Collections based on conditions such as Tags, availability date, sales status, or Vendor.
Promotions Management: A completely revamped and more intuitive promotions UI
Currency-Based Promotion Rules: Apply discounts only in selected currencies.
Coupon Code Batches: Generate and export unique coupon codes into a CSV format.
Admin-placed Orders + Customer Payment Links: Create orders as an Admin on behalf of a customer and email them a secure payment link to finalize checkout.
Export to CSV: Export large data sets (orders, products, customers) for offline manipulation and reporting.
Import from a CSV: Ability to import Products or Customers from a CSV file.
Returns & Refunds: An improved returns & refunds flow to make daily operations smoother and more intuitive.
New Reporting Engine: capable new reports with a CSV export feature and a flexible architecture for building custom reports.

Take a sneak peek at Spree 5’s new admin dashboard: Spree 5 Admin Sneak Preview

Enterprise Edition Features

Besides the free open-source Community Edition, we’re also releasing an improved Enterprise Edition which is a preferred solution for medium to large projects as it comes with advanced B2B eCommerce, multi-vendor marketplace or multi-tenant eCommerce features.

The Enterprise Edition comes at an annual license cost but for complex projects it dramatically shortens time-to-market, reduces project delivery risks and cuts the internal costs of ownership – maintenance, upgrades, feature and integration development.

The improved enterprise features include:

Audit Log: Monitor, track, and search every admin action across your entire team for visibility, record keeping, accountability, and security.
Multi-vendor Marketplace Vendor Management: Onboard, manage, and approve vendors, while curating the marketplace product catalog, capturing multi-vendor orders and payments.
Stripe Connect integration: automatically split and payout payments to marketplace vendor accounts while leaving the sales commission with the marketplace or facilitate returns and refunds the other way
Shopify & WooCommerce Integration: Sync product catalogs from the vendor to the marketplace, send orders to the vendor’s system, pull shipment tracking, and send it by email to the customer
Multi-tenant / white-label SaaS platform: host thousands of stores for your customers, resellers, and franchisees – all using a single platform, giving each tenant the ability to customize and manage their eCommerce business

A Mobile-First, No-code Customizable Storefront

Spree-5-A-Mobile-First-Customizable-Storefront

Spree 5 free Community Edition introduces a modern storefront that looks and performs beautifully on all devices and could be customized without any developers involved:

Storefront Themes: Create, clone and edit multiple custom website themes with ease. Swap themes with a click of a button for various seasons and sales objectives.
Mobile-First Storefront: A fast, responsive storefront with fast no-code customization of any section on any page, including all eCommerce pages, any number of shoppable landing pages, a built-in blog, T&C pages.
Drag & Drop Page Builder: Easy page configuration, including styling and content management with an ability to create new shoppable landing pages with a library of pre-built page sections. Image uploads with caching and fast delivery.
Quick Checkout with Wallets: Support for Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Link with the new official Stripe integration for Spree.
New Checkout Flow: Completely redesigned and customizable checkout, with offsite payment support (BNPL, bank redirects, checks) and ability to toggle guest checkout on and off
Inject Custom Code: Add custom scripts to header, body or checkout without developer help.
Full-Text Search: Fast and accurate product and category search with PostgreSQL.
Built-In Blog: Create shoppable content to improve product discoverability and conversions as well as SEO under the shop domain – all from a single dashboard.
Contact Form: Enable customers to reach you via email directly from the storefront.
SEO Management: Full control of meta tags, slugs, photos for Products, Taxons, Pages with search engine indexing settings and a live preview of Google search results.
Password-Protected Storefront: Gate your site behind a password when needed.
Sitemap Generator: Easily generate and manage your storefront sitemap.
Policies: Manage legal policies like T&C, returns, shipping, or privacy with ease.

Integrations That Empower Your Business

Spree 5 delivers new no-code integrations with leading payment and marketing tools available from the admin dashboard:

New Stripe Integration: a native Stripe Elements SDK integration supports credit cards, wallets, regional methods, BNPL, and more.
Stripe Connect (Enterprise Edition): split marketplace payments, vendor onboarding, and manage payouts for marketplaces.
PayPal Integration (coming soon): a native PayPal integration supports credit cards, wallets, regional methods, BNPL, and more.
Klaviyo Integration: track all kinds of eCommerce events in order to create marketing automation flows and manage marketing campaigns directly from Klaviyo.
Google Analytics 4: allows you to track user behavior, sales performance, and marketing effectiveness across your store.

Why Spree 5 Is a Game-Changer

With Spree 5 free Community Edition, you’re not just getting an eCommerce platform.

You’re gaining:

A blazing-fast, mobile-first storefront boosting conversions and loyalty
A fully redesigned admin dashboard boosting your team’s productivity
No-code tools to empower your merchandising, operations, and customer care.
Deep integrations with Stripe and Klaviyo.
Open-source freedom with enterprise-grade scalability.

Whether you’re building a D2C brand, a B2B store, a multi-vendor marketplace, or a multi-tenant eCommerce platform, Spree 5 gives you full control and customizability, flexibility, and performance — all within a modern, developer-friendly open-source foundation.

Spree 5 Demo: Evaluate the Biggest Release Ever

Experience firsthand the transformative capabilities of Spree 5, the biggest and most feature-rich Spree Commerce open-source release ever.

👉Check out the Spree 5 storefront demo

This live Spree 5 demo lets you explore the new customer-facing storefront, showcasing the sleek, modern checkout experience, complete payment options powered by Stripe, and the intuitive, mobile-first user interface.

If you’re interested in exploring the brand-new Admin Dashboard—packed with powerful new management tools and improved workflows—we encourage you to:

follow these instructions and either set up your own Spree instance locally
or a set up a cloud-hosted environment with Render.com or any other provider.

Follow our straightforward installation instructions to get up and running quickly thanks to the Spree Starter bundle.

See for yourself why Spree 5 is the ideal solution for businesses looking for flexibility, scalability, and cutting-edge commerce experiences.

Announcing Spree 5.2 — Faster Development, Deeper Customization & Enterprise-Ready Workflows

Spree 5.2 open-source eCommerce release is here – a follow up to Spree 5 – the biggest and most transformative open-source release in the platform’s history.

Spree 5.2 release pushes forward our mission to deliver:

shorter go-to-market times for complex eCommerce projects,
greater customization flexibility for any use case,
and higher performance at scale.

Many of the improvements in Spree 5.2 directly enhance developer experience, reduce implementation effort, and expand the configurability of the platform — especially through configurable metafields, which unlock custom data structures without touching the database.

Spree 5.2 empowers teams to build exactly the commerce experience they need — whether B2C, B2B, marketplace, multi-tenant SaaS, or composable. And it keeps Spree true to its roots: open, flexible, powerful, and built for real-world growth.

Check out a detailed breakdown of the major improvements in Spree 5.2, including the business impact of each.

Ready to Get Started?

Spree 5 free Community Edition is here to power your next big idea. Join the thousands of businesses worldwide choosing Spree for their most mission-critical eCommerce projects.

Developer documentation
- Spree on Github
- Get going with Spree Starter bundle
- Join Spree Slack with a community of 6k+ developers and users
Ecommerce API documentation
User documentation
Spree 5 storefront demo
Community Edition vs Enterprise Edition comparison
Enterprise Edition – contact us to learn more

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an open-source ecommerce platform?

An open-source ecommerce platform provides the full source code for building and running an online store, allowing teams to customize every aspect of the shopping experience. Unlike SaaS platforms where the vendor controls the code, open source gives you complete ownership. Spree Commerce is licensed under BSD 3-Clause, meaning you can modify and deploy it without restrictions.

Is open-source ecommerce free to use?

The software itself is free to download and use, but running an ecommerce operation involves hosting, development, and maintenance costs. Open-source platforms like Spree eliminate licensing fees and per-transaction charges that SaaS platforms typically impose. The trade-off is greater control and no vendor lock-in in exchange for managing your own infrastructure.

What are the advantages of open-source over hosted ecommerce?

Open-source ecommerce gives you full code ownership, zero platform fees, and the ability to host anywhere. You can audit every line of code for security compliance, customize checkout and pricing logic without platform limitations, and switch hosting providers freely. These advantages matter most for businesses processing high transaction volumes where per-sale fees compound quickly.

Can open-source ecommerce platforms handle enterprise-scale traffic?

Yes. Open-source platforms like Spree Commerce run on standard cloud infrastructure that scales horizontally. With over 13,000 GitHub stars and active development since 2008, Spree powers stores processing millions of orders annually. The API-first architecture supports high-concurrency workloads by separating the storefront from the commerce engine.

What’s new in the latest version of Spree Commerce?

Spree 5 introduced a redesigned admin dashboard, drag-and-drop page builder, native Stripe integration, and a complete REST API v3. The release focused on reducing time-to-launch for new stores while adding enterprise features like multi-currency support, advanced promotions, and a product import system for migrating from other platforms.

Does Spree Commerce include built-in marketplace functionality?

Yes. Spree’s Enterprise Edition includes a native multi-vendor marketplace module with vendor onboarding, per-seller product management, commission calculation, and split payment processing. Unlike marketplace plugins that bolt onto a basic ecommerce platform, Spree’s marketplace features share the same codebase as its core commerce engine, reducing integration complexity.

Can I migrate to an open-source ecommerce platform from a SaaS provider?

Yes. Most SaaS platforms allow product, customer, and order data exports. Spree includes a CSV and API import system designed for platform migrations, supporting bulk product imports with variants, images, and pricing. Typical migrations take 8-16 weeks depending on catalog size and customization requirements, with REST API endpoints reconnecting existing integrations.