Spree Commerce 5.3: Customer Groups — Segmentation for Personalized Commerce
Personalization and customer segmentation is no longer a nice-to-have in eCommerce — it’s a baseline expectation. B2B buyers expect contract pricing tied to their account. Wholesale customers expect volume discounts. VIP shoppers expect loyalty perks. And your business needs the ability to treat different customer segments differently without building separate storefronts or managing complex workarounds.
Spree 5.3 open-source eCommerce introduces Customer Groups — a native segmentation system that lets you organize customers into defined groups and deliver personalized pricing, promotions, and experiences from a single admin dashboard.
This post is part of a series exploring the major features in Spree Commerce 5.3 open-source eCommerce release. Read the full announcement to learn more.
What Are Customer Groups?
Customer Groups are exactly what they sound like: a way to categorize your customers into meaningful segments. You might create groups like “Wholesale,” “VIP,” “B2B Enterprise,” “Loyalty Members,” or “Regional Partners” — whatever makes sense for your business.
Once a customer is assigned to a group, that membership drives how they experience your store. They see different prices, qualify for different promotions, and can be targeted with specific marketing campaigns. All of this happens automatically, based on their group membership.
Customer Groups are managed directly from the Spree admin dashboard with a simple, intuitive interface. You can create groups, assign customers individually or in bulk, and immediately see the impact across your store.
How Customer Groups Work with Pricing
The real power of Customer Groups emerges when combined with the new Pricing Engine (Price Lists) in Spree 5.3.
Price Lists can be assigned to specific Customer Groups, creating automatic segment-specific pricing. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Wholesale pricing. Create a “Wholesale” Customer Group and assign it a Price List with reduced prices. When wholesale customers log in and browse your catalog, they automatically see wholesale prices — no coupon codes, no special checkout flows, no manual intervention. This is essential for wholesale eCommerce operations.
B2B contract pricing. For B2B eCommerce, create groups for each enterprise account tier — “Bronze,” “Silver,” “Gold” — each with progressively better pricing. As accounts grow, simply move them to a higher-tier group and their pricing updates instantly.
Regional pricing. Combine Customer Groups with zone-based Price Lists to serve different regions with localized pricing strategies, supporting your multi-region eCommerce operations.
VIP and loyalty pricing. Reward your best customers with exclusive pricing by adding them to a VIP group. This drives retention and increases lifetime value without the complexity of a separate loyalty program.
How Customer Groups Work with Promotions
Customer Groups also integrate with Spree’s promotions engine, enabling segment-specific promotional campaigns:
Targeted promotions. Create promotions that only apply to specific Customer Groups. Run a 20% off campaign exclusively for wholesale buyers, or offer free shipping only to VIP members.
Exclusive access. Use Customer Groups to control access to special promotions, pre-sale events, or limited-edition products. This creates a sense of exclusivity and incentivizes customers to maintain their group membership.
Combined strategies. Layer Customer Group pricing with group-specific promotions for sophisticated commercial strategies. For example, wholesale customers might see reduced base prices AND qualify for additional volume-based promotional discounts.
Business Value
Customer Groups unlock several high-impact business capabilities:
Higher conversion rates. When customers see prices and promotions that are relevant to them, they’re more likely to buy. Personalized pricing removes friction and builds trust.
Better customer retention. Group-based pricing and exclusive promotions reward loyalty and create switching costs. Customers who benefit from their group membership are less likely to shop elsewhere.
B2B enablement. Customer Groups are foundational for B2B commerce. They enable account-based pricing, organizational purchasing, and tiered commercial relationships — all managed from the same platform that serves your B2C customers.
Operational efficiency. Instead of managing pricing exceptions manually or building custom logic for each customer segment, Customer Groups let you define the rules once and apply them automatically across your entire catalog.
Scalability. As your customer base grows, Customer Groups scale with you. Whether you have 5 segments or 500, the system handles it the same way — through simple group assignment and rule-based automation.
Managing Customer Groups in the Admin
The Customer Groups interface in the Spree admin is designed for simplicity:
- Create groups with descriptive names and optional descriptions.
- Assign customers individually from the customer detail page or in bulk from the customer list.
- Connect to Price Lists by selecting which Customer Groups a Price List applies to.
- Set promotion rules by adding Customer Group conditions to any promotion.
- Track membership with clear visibility into which customers belong to which groups.
Everything is point-and-click — no developer involvement required for day-to-day group management.
Get Started
Explore the full Customer Groups documentation to learn how to create segments, assign customers, and connect groups to pricing and promotions in Spree 5.3.
What’s Next — Spree 5.4 Preview
Spree 5.4 is already in development and will expand the platform’s reach to JavaScript developers with a new REST API (~10x faster than API v2), a TypeScript SDK with full type safety, and a Next.js Starter Kit for building production-ready headless storefronts.
Spree Enterprise Edition — Support, Scale & Security
Spree Enterprise Edition extends the open-source platform with advanced modules for B2B eCommerce, multi-vendor marketplaces, multi-tenant SaaS, enhanced security, premium support, and managed hosting. If your project demands enterprise-grade reliability and scale, get in touch with the Spree team.
Why Spree 5.3
Spree 5.3 continues the momentum of Spree 5 — the biggest open-source release in the platform’s history. With the new Pricing Engine, Events & Subscribers, Customer Groups, Webhooks 2.0, and a modernized Tailwind CSS admin, Spree 5.3 empowers teams to build exactly the commerce experience they need — whether B2C, B2B, marketplace, or composable. Read the full Spree 5.3 announcement for the complete overview.
