Shopware 6 Dynamic Pricing: Rule Builder vs Custom Plugin

Decision: implement dynamic pricing based on customer group and cart total

The store needs a price that changes for wholesale customers when the cart exceeds a certain amount. The solution must be maintainable without frequent code changes, work with Shopware 6.5 or newer, and add minimal overhead to cart calculation.

Supported options

Option	How it works	Where to configure
Rule Builder	Define conditions and actions through the admin UI; Shopware evaluates the rule during cart price calculation.	Settings › Rule Builder › Create rule
Custom plugin	PHP class that listens to the CartPriceCalculationEvent and modifies line item prices programmatically.	Custom plugin in custom/plugins/; activate via admin or CLI.

Trade‑offs

• Rule Builder: zero‑code, fast iteration, visible to non‑developers. Limited to actions exposed by core (e.g., fixed price, percentage discount, free shipping). Adding many rules can increase cart calculation time.
• Custom plugin: full flexibility to implement any pricing formula, access to services and repositories. Requires development effort, version‑specific testing, and maintenance when core events change.

Concrete implementation – Rule Builder

Example: set a fixed price of €19.99 for product SKU ABC-123 when the customer belongs to the WHOLESALE group.

1. Log in to the Shopware admin.
2. Navigate to Settings › Rule Builder and click Create rule.
3. Name the rule Wholesale fixed price ABC-123.
4. Add condition: Customer group equals WHOLESALE.
5. Add action: Set price → value 19.99, currency EUR, apply to Specific products → select SKU ABC-123.
6. Save and activate the rule.

Validation steps

1. Create a test customer and assign them to the WHOLESALE group.
2. Log in as that customer (or impersonate via admin).
3. Add product ABC-123 to the cart.
4. Observe the cart line price: it should display €19.99 regardless of the product’s base price.
5. Log out or switch to a regular customer; the same product should show its default price.
6. Optional: run a Symfony test asserting the cart total for both scenarios.

Limitations and practical checks

• If the required action (e.g., a tiered discount based on cart total) is not available in Rule Builder, a custom plugin is necessary.
• Performance: keep the number of active rules under a few dozen; monitor cart calculation time with the Shopware profiler (php bin/console server:profile) to ensure latency stays acceptable.
• Future Shopware updates may rename or remove rule conditions/actions. After each minor version upgrade, revisit Settings › Rule Builder to confirm the rule still appears and functions.