Winery owners and wine enthusiasts, rejoice! You’ve picked the perfect time to embrace digital solutions and sell wine online as stats predict that the wine ecommerce market is expected to grow annually by 7.7%. And building your shop on an ecommerce platform can help you capitalize on this trend, boost your sales, and reach a wider customer base. 

To help you jump on board, we’ve narrowed the best ecommerce platforms to sell wine online and evaluated their features. But before we dive into the reviews, let’s briefly go over the most important features that every ecommerce platform suitable for selling wine online should have.

Table of contents

1. What to look for in an ecommerce platform for selling wine online
2. A quick summary of the best ecommerce platforms to sell wine online in 2020
3. Top 6 ecommerce platforms for selling wine online
4. Comparison table
5. FAQ

What to Look For in an Ecommerce Platform for Selling Wine Online

The wine ecommerce industry is constantly growing with reports predicting that the industry will reach $5.2 billion by 2022. Wineries and individual sellers that want to scale their business and grow their sales should follow this trend and establish a powerful online presence. So, what steps should you undertake to make the transit from working in a traditional marketplace to selling wine online? 

The first and most important step is, of course, finding a reliable and secure ecommerce platform that will provide you with an effective storefront, great SEO tools, and specific wine commerce management features and tools.

To successfully sell wine online, these are the most important features that the ecommerce platform of your choice should have:

• Intuitive and beginner-friendly website builder. Building and managing your store on a complex ecommerce platform can be time-consuming, especially if this is your first time doing it, which is why we recommend using a beginner-friendly platform with an intuitive interface.
• Secure and reliable payment system. The best ecommerce platforms provide security above all, and a number of payment gateways.
• Features geared towards selling wine. Look for an ecommerce platform that is packed with features that can handle wine allocations, wine membership management, and provide you with inventory control.
• Robust marketing tools. Aside from having built-in marketing tools, effective ecommerce solutions integrate with additional marketing tools such as MailChimp and Drip.
• Actionable reporting. Insightful reporting helps businesses identify their sources of traffic and help them make a rigorous competitor analysis.

A Quick Summary of the Best Ecommerce Platforms to Sell Wine Online in 2020

1. VineSpring

VineSpring is an ideal wine ecommerce solution for wineries that need wine club membership, reliable support, and inventory control, as well as high-volume sales management.

2. VinoShipper

VinoShipper is a compliance and ecommerce company that eases the process of shipping wine in the United States.

3. WineDirect

WineDirect offers clients a robust DTC platform for handling high-volume sales and wine club management.

4. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce platform that provides clients with unlimited customization and a number of tools, suitable for selling wine online.  

5. Shopify

Shopify offers wineries a reliable and flexible platform for handling wine membership, order processing, and inventory management.

6. Squarespace

Squarespace is an all-in-one storefront solution that provides wineries with a reliable platform for selling wine online.

Top 6 Ecommerce Platforms for Selling Wine Online

Below we’ve listed the best ecommerce platforms for selling wine online that can help you drive sales and grow your customer base.

Best for wine club management: VineSpring

VineSpring provides wineries and breweries with a robust ecommerce solution for selling wine online. What particularly distinguishes this ecommerce platform from others is that it’s specially designed for wine ecommerce. It’s created by people with in-depth knowledge of how the wine industry works, so you get an online store specially crafted to the needs of large-scale wineries and breweries. 

VineSpring can help wineries showcase their products and reach a wider audience. Their platform is mobile responsive and flexible. What’s more, the platform collaborates with a number of design studios that are devoted to crafting unique and beautiful website templates for wineries.

Inventory management can be time-consuming and tedious, particularly for large-scale wineries that experience high-volume sales. This is where VineSpirng steps in and provides wineries with the chance to track wine bottle production and gives access to production history where business owners can gain an insight into every detail including bottling, selling, and shipping.

Besides that, VineSpring features an amazing POS system that takes “tap, chip, and swipe transactions.” By using this system, the staff can process orders on a fulfill screen. Plus, business owners can use it to learn about their clients’ drinking preferences and purchasing habits.

Every business that collaborates with VineSpring relies on a robust support system that functions through email support, phone, and chat. Plus, this platform has an excellent blog where they provide clients with essential information regarding the secrets behind every wine ecommerce success. 

The reason why this platform is such a mighty wine ecommerce solution is that it offers clients options for wine management, wine allocations, and wine club membership. VineSpring is perfect for large-scale wineries that experience high volume sales and need reliable customer support.

Features:

• Hosted storefronts
• Inventory management
• Square POS
• Data migration
• Wine club
• Allocations management
• MailChimp Auto-sync
• MailChimp marketing tools
• ShipComplaint integration

Pros:

• Ease of use
• Flexibility
• Great speed
• Excellent customer support
• Mobile-responsive

Cons:

• Pricey

Pricing:

VineSpring offers clients 4 subscription plans:

• VineSpring Starter starts at $99 per month. This plan offers clients a hosted storefront, VineSpring payments, and free live support.
• VineSpring Standard starts at $199 per month. With this plan, clients get inventory control, allocation management, storefront customization plugins, and ShipCompliant integration.
• VineSpring Professional starts at $399 per month. Users are provided with all essential features from the VineSpring Standard plus a Square POS integration, MailChimp marketing tools, and user permissions.
• VineSpring Enterprise is ideal for large-scale wineries that experience high-volume sales. The pricing for this plan isn’t public. 

Best for wine shipment within the United States: VinoShipper

Wineries and breweries face a number of administrative problems when they try to ship wine across a number of states, which limits their sales and the overall success of the company. This is where VinoShipper steps in and eases the process of selling wine online across the United States.

Companies that collaborate with VinoShipper are provided with shipping permits for over 40 states. The company manages all reports, shipments, and orders on behalf of the client. Plus, it does a great job of taking care of the payment of taxes for wineries.

VinoShipper allows clients to streamline the process of selling wine online by providing them with a platform where they can manage all their members and clients in one place. What’s more, the platform’s shipping options offer clients exceptional service. Every order is managed by the VinoShipper UPS account, so the client doesn’t even need to have an account to process the orders. 

Apart from that, wineries get to set their own shipping rates and discounts and change them at any given moment by using a real-time rate feature. VinoShipper is the perfect fit for wineries within the United States that want to start selling wine online and expand their customer base.

Features:

• Report management
• Shipment management
• Winery compliant shopping cart
• Tax reporting
• Online and phone orders
• Discounted shipping rates
• Sales promotions
• PCI compliant

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Scalable 
• Flexible
• Great customer support

Cons:

• Limited shipping outside the United States

Pricing:

VinoShipper doesn’t have a monthly fee. The platform uses a Pay As You Go System where clients pay a processing fee for every bottle of wine sold. The processing fee for a product sold in a state where the client holds a permit is 4.75% of the product’s selling price. This transaction fee is 8.75% of the product’s selling price if the client doesn’t hold a state’s permit.

Best DTC wine ecommerce platform: Wine Direct

Wine Direct is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform specially designed to help wineries manage every facet of their online sales. This platform is ideal for wineries that don’t have experience with ecommerce platforms as Wine Direct does an excellent job at easing the process of selling wine online.

The platform helps customers manage their wine club membership by processing email alerts and by giving them access to real-time sales reporting. Besides that, the platform makes marketing their priority, which provides wineries with the opportunity to both retain their members and reach a wider audience. Wine Direct’s built-in marketing tools encourage customers to learn about a particular wine’s history and its production process, which is something that drives customers to try and buy more wine. Clients get to operate with built-in marketing tools and conduct batch processing and create personalized orders.

This platform provides wine sellers with effective records that can help them ease the tedious job of tracking vineyard production. You and your staff also have access to the customers’ profiles where you can learn about their order history and drinking preferences. This will allow you to create customized offers and discounts and drive more sales.

WineDirect is flexible and mobile-responsive. Clients get to manage products, inventory, and customers on the go by using Wine Direct’s excellent mobile app.

Another reason why Wine Direct is such a great solution for selling wine online is that it gives wineries the chance to send targeted emails and invite users to tasting rooms. It also offers great features such as website analytics, built-in upselling tools, and an event registration option to drive attendance at your events. 

Features:

• Wine club management
• Batch processing
• Email marketing
• Real-time reports
• Personalized orders
• Integrated POS system
• Advanced CRM software
• Shopping cart
• Shipment management

Pros:

• Intuitive
• Ease of use
• Mobile responsive
• Modern website templates
• Scalable
• Flexible

Cons:

• Pricey

Pricing:

Wine Direct offers clients 2 subscription plans:

• Wine Direct Lite starts at $79 +2% of sales per month. Clients get built-in marketing tools, free hosting, integrated payment processing, and ShipCompliant integration. Outside of the US it starts at $299.
• Wine Direct  Plus starts at $549 per month. Users are provided with all the essential features from the Wine Direct Lite plan, as well as loyalty programs, robust reporting, and automatic credit card updates. 

Best for storefront customization: WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a powerful ecommerce platform built on WordPress. This platform takes pride in putting content at its core so it’s ideal for wineries and breweries that, aside from selling wine online, want to create an active blog platform too.

What distinguishes this platform from the rest is that it’s completely open-source, which allows business owners to modify and customize any part of their storefront. It’s ideal for big wineries because they will have the opportunity to add an unlimited number of products and users. Additionally, wineries can take an unlimited number of orders.

WooCommerce offers wineries a number of specialized wine and vineyard templates that can help them build a beautiful online shop. These templates include gallery images where you can showcase your wines in the best light. They are all responsive and built with modern browsers in mind.

WooCommerce provides wineries with the opportunity to create bulk discounts and volume discounts based on the number of wines ordered in the customer’s shopping cart.

If you decide to sell wine online with WooCommerce, make sure you make the most out of the Product Table plugin. This tool allows wineries to display product attributes, add an unlimited number of images, and include a filter functionality. Additionally, WooCommerce gives clients access to a number of payment gateways including Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Square.

Features:

• Built-in blogging
• Built-in SEO tools
• Product ratings and reviews
• Product sorting and filtering
• Unlimited products
• Built-in payment processing
• Inventory management
• Order management

Pros:

• Open-source platform
• Scalable
• Flexible
• Unrestricted customization

Cons:

• Abandoned cart recovery is not available

Pricing:

WooCommerce is an open-source platform which means that it is absolutely free to set up an account with it. However, there are some additional costs that include domain registration ($15) and hosting costs ($120 per year). Shipping costs $108 per year on average and clients pay additional fees for payment gateways.

Best for small and medium-sized wineries: Shopify

Shopify offers wineries the chance to sell wine online and boost their sales by giving them access to multiple sales channels such as Facebook, POS, and Instagram.

Wine sellers can efficiently manage sales, fulfillment, orders, and inventory. Besides that, Shopify has an excellent mobile-app that allows wineries to manage every aspect of their online store on the go. Sellers also have access to the HTML and CSS code of their website which provides them with endless ways to customize their storefront.

Wineries that have a large customer base can benefit greatly by using Shopify, as the platform makes wine club management a breeze. Wineries get comprehensive access to their customers’ profiles and purchasing history. 

Wineries can choose from some of the specialized wine templates that Shopify offers and create a unique wine online storefront. 

With Shopify’s MailChimp integration, clients can completely automate their email marketing and send personalized emails. When it comes to storefront management, Shopify excels as there are numerous ways in which wineries can boost their online sales. For example, sellers can create customer groups, offer targeted discounts, and sell members-only products.

Additionally, Shopify integrates with over 100 payment gateways.

Features:

• Well-designed themes
• Built-in blog
• Built-in SEO tools
• Free SSL Certificate
• Unlimited products
• Inventory management
• Abandoned checkout recovery
• Refunds
• Dropshipping
• Fulfillment centers
• Discounts and gift cards
• Social media integration

Pros:

• Intuitive
• Scalable
• Unrestricted customization
• Great App Store
• 24-7 customer support

Cons:

• Lack of sales report suitable for wine businesses

Pricing:

Shopify offers clients 3 subscription plans:

• Shopify Basic starts at $29 a month. Clients can sell an unlimited number of products, manage staff accounts, and print shipping labels.
• The Shopify plan starts at $79 a month. This plan provides clients with professional reports and lower order processing fees.
• The Shopify Advanced plan starts at $299 a month. This plan features an advanced report builder and third-party apps for calculating shipping rates.

Best for growing businesses: Squarespace

If you want to sell wine online and offer your customers excellent user experience, then Squarespace is the ideal fit for your winery. This is a popular website builder known for its devotion to design.

Wineries can benefit greatly from Squarespace’s amazing wine templates as they allow them to create unique wine storefronts that’ll stand out from the competition. With the extensive image features, wineries can display a number of wine product images and showcase their winery in the best light. The templates are also fully responsive on mobile phones. 

Wineries can create personalized email campaigns and manage discounts. This type of personalized marketing encourages customers to try and buy more wine. The platform also provides sellers with the opportunity to add rich product descriptions, create gift cards, and manage customer accounts.

Wine sellers can use Shopify’s effective inventory management that tracks wine production and wine sales history. Plus, they can sell an unlimited number of wine bottles which is rarely the case with wine ecommerce platforms. 

All websites created with Squarespace are hosted on the company servers and the costs for hosting are included in their monthly plans. This type of ecommerce solution can help wineries save valuable time as self-hosting can be time-consuming, particularly for businesses that experience high volume sales. 

Squarespace integrates with a number of third-party extensions that allow wineries to add functionality to their online shop. Additionally, this online store solution is packed with excellent analytics tools that track traffic sources, visitor engagement, and measure revenue.

Features:

• Modern templates
• Custom CSS
• Finance extensions
• Inventory and product extensions
• Integrated analytics
• Email campaigns
• Unlimited products
• Multiple payment methods
• Discounts and gift cards
• Inventory management
• Order management

Pros:

• Intuitive
• Scalable
• Great customer support
• Reliable hosting

Cons:

• Squarespace’s backend user functionality is complex for beginners

Pricing:

Squarespace provides clients with 4 subscription plans:

• Squarespace Personal starts at $12 a month. Clients get unlimited bandwidth and storage, free SSL security, and access to Squarespace extensions.
• Squarespace Business starts at $18 a month. This plan is packed with advanced website analytics, premium integrations, and promotional pop-ups.
• Squarespace Commerce starts at $26 a month. Customers are provided with powerful marketing tools, e-commerce analytics, and POS integration.
• Squarespace Advanced Commerce starts at $40 a month. This plan features advanced shipping, advanced discounts, and abandoned cart recovery.

Ecommerce platform	Best for	Pricing for the basic plan
VineSpring	Best for wine club management	$99/mo
VinoShipper	Best for wine shipment within the United States	4.75% processing fee of the product selling price
Wine Direct	Best DTC wine ecommerce platform	$299/mo
WooCommerce	Best for storefront customization	Open-source
Shopify	Best for small and medium-sized wineries	$29/mo
Squarespace	Best for growing businesses	$12/mo

FAQ