Feature Request: Updates To Promotion Engine — Stacking, Exclusions, and Priorities

[mezzat11]

Problem:
Vendure’s current promotion engine applies all matching cart promotions without fine control. There is no native support for setting promotion priority, exclusions, or stacking rules, which are critical for managing real-world marketing logic.

Why It Matters:

In standard eCommerce setups, promotions often conflict or must be stacked in a specific order (e.g., "Black Friday 30% off, cannot be combined with coupon").

Without rule exclusions or priority levels, promotions can apply unexpectedly, creating customer confusion or lost revenue.

Platforms like Magento and Sylius have extensive rule engines to prioritize, exclude, or control stacking behavior.

Examples from Other Platforms:

Magento: Has rule priorities, exclusive checkboxes, and stackable configuration.

Sylius: Promotion rules and actions can be composed, and developers can prevent overlap programmatically.

Shopify Plus: Promotion stack rules are managed via Functions/Scripts.

Suggested Implementation in Vendure:

Extend the Promotion entity with:

priority: number – determines application order

exclusive: boolean – if true, blocks other promotions from applying

excludes: Promotion[] – optional relation to define exclusion relationships

Update the promotion engine to:

Sort promotions by priority before evaluation

Skip conflicting promotions based on exclusive and excludes logic

GraphQL API:

Expose applied promotions and any conflicts for transparency

Admin UI:

Add fields for priority, exclusive, and excludes during promotion setup

[dlhck]

There is no native support for setting promotion priority, exclusions, or stacking rules, which are critical for managing real-world marketing logic.

There is. You can add your custom promotion conditions. With that you can basically handle every possible combination.

The idea of adding execution priority is actually a good idea and could find its way into the core.

[mezzat11]

There is no native support for setting promotion priority, exclusions, or stacking rules, which are critical for managing real-world marketing logic.

There is. You can add your custom promotion conditions. With that you can basically handle every possible combination.

The idea of adding execution priority is actually a good idea and could find its way into the core.

If you asked GPT how vendure compared with other open source solutions community edition will reply with missing promotion capability with basic use cases .. i believe enhancing promotion system with catalog promotions feature will give more to vendure in the market.

[dlhck]

@mezzat11 well, this always depends on the audience you're catering your product too. We want to keep the core as lean as possible and add further functionality as standalone plugins. We might be adding some of this basic promotions in a dedicated plugin, but not in the core.

[mezzat11]

@dlhck
Thanks for your response — I absolutely respect the philosophy of keeping Vendure’s core lean and plugin-driven. That said, I’d like to explain why minimal support for catalog promotions and promotion stacking logic should ideally be part of the core contract, even if their full behavior lives in plugins.

⸻

1. Catalog Promotions: Not Just a Plugin Feature, but Core Price Behavior

Catalog-level discounts (i.e., sale prices visible before checkout) are considered a fundamental part of modern commerce. This isn’t “advanced marketing” — it’s basic customer expectation and platform parity.

Why it matters:
• All serious eCommerce platforms support this by default — Magento (Catalog Rules), Sylius (Catalog Promotions), Shopify, Saleor, etc.
• Customers and developers expect discounted prices to show directly on PLP/PDP without needing to simulate a cart.
• Without this, every storefront implementation has to duplicate the same workaround to “fake” discount visibility.

Proposed middle ground:
• Keep the rule logic in plugins, but provide a core-resolved price lifecycle hook (resolveCatalogPrice()) or a CatalogPromotion entity contract in the schema.
• This would standardize extension points and prevent duplication of logic across projects.
• It aligns with how Vendure already handles tax, shipping, and cart pricing via strategies.

⸻

2. Promotion Stacking, Priorities & Exclusions: Needed for Stability

Without stacking rules, multiple cart promotions can apply together unintentionally, resulting in:
• Conflicting discounts (e.g., “Black Friday 30%” + “Loyalty 10%”)
• Revenue-impacting double discounts
• Lack of control for marketing teams

Why core support matters:
• Even minimal support like priority, exclusive: boolean, or excludedPromotions: string[] would give teams enough control without adding complexity to the core engine.
• Right now, plugin authors or users have no way to prevent conflicting promotions without re-implementing core logic.

⸻

3. Strategic Value: Ecosystem and Adoption

These features are expected even in MVP setups, and their absence:
• Creates friction for agencies and startups evaluating Vendure
• Leads to duplicated or fragile implementations
• Makes it harder for plugin authors to interoperate cleanly

Vendure’s architecture is excellent — this is just about providing core scaffolding that plugins can build on cleanly.