Solidus is a free, open-source ecommerce platform built on Ruby on Rails. Learn about features, governance, pricing, and who uses Solidus.
Solidus is a free, open-source ecommerce framework built on Ruby on Rails. It was created in 2015 as a fork of Spree by the consultancy Stembolt, which wanted a more stable, backward-compatible foundation for the online store it was building for the fashion brand Bonobos.
After Stembolt was acquired in 2018, the Solidus community reorganized under a decentralized governance model. The Italian software agency Nebulab is the largest code contributor today, and the project is overseen by a rotating group of Project Directors and a technical Core Team rather than a single company.
Solidus is structured as a Rails engine, giving developers a fully functional ecommerce backend covering products, orders, payments, promotions, and shipping, while allowing every part of the platform to be customized or overridden using Rails' native mechanisms.
It has been used in production by numerous direct-to-consumer brands, including Bonobos, Casper, Away, MeUndies, FLOYD, Maisonette, and Ace and Tate, demonstrating its ability to handle real-world, high-traffic ecommerce workloads.
Solidus itself is completely free and open source; there is no license fee to download, install, or modify the codebase. As a self-hosted Rails application, the actual cost of running a Solidus store comes from developer time, hosting infrastructure, and any third-party extensions or services you choose to integrate.
Organizations that want dedicated implementation help or ongoing support typically hire an agency such as Nebulab or another Solidus partner, and those engagements are priced individually rather than through a fixed subscription.
Yes, Solidus is a free, open-source ecommerce framework. There is no license fee, though you pay for hosting, developer time, and any optional paid support.
Solidus was created in 2015 by the consultancy Stembolt as a fork of Spree, aimed at greater stability and backward compatibility.
Solidus is maintained by an open-source community under a decentralized governance model, with the Italian agency Nebulab as the largest code contributor.
Solidus is a fork of Spree created in 2015 to prioritize stability, easier upgrades, and backward compatibility after Spree's development direction became unstable.
Well-known brands that have used Solidus include Bonobos, Casper, Away, MeUndies, FLOYD, Maisonette, and Ace and Tate.
Yes, Solidus exposes an API that supports headless commerce architectures, allowing teams to build a custom frontend on any framework.
Yes, Solidus is built as a Ruby on Rails engine, so implementing and customizing it requires Rails development expertise.