A winery point-of-sale (POS) system should help wine merchants manage inventory, sell wine on-site and online, and notify customers of allocated bottles, sales, and promotional events. If your winery hosts a tasting room, you’ll also need to sell wines by bottle, glass, or tasting flights.
Subscription-based payments and robust customer relationship management (CRM) tools help wineries grow their wine clubs. Wineries in scenic settings may also host private events and need to process party deposits. So, the best POS system for a winery must combine retail, wholesale, bar, and ecommerce functions.
The best winery POS systems for small businesses are:
- WineDirect: Best overall winery POS system
- Square for Restaurants: Best for low-volume wineries
- Commerce7: Best for ecommerce
- Toast: Best for in-person tastings
- KORONA POS: Best for building clientele through referrals
- Vintegrate: Best for virtual tasting and wholesale operation
- VinNow: Best for custom crush operations
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Best Winery POS Systems Compared
 | Our Score (out of 5) | Monthly Software Fee | Native Ecommerce Site | Shipping Integrations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 4.73 | $79-$199+ | Yes | Built-in |
 | 4.23 | $0-$165 | Yes | Yes |
 | 4.15 | $149-$1,249 | Integrates with existing CMS | Yes |
 | 4.15 | $0-$69+ | Yes | Yes |
 | 4.00 | $59+ | Needs integration | No |
 | 3.90 | Custom-quoted | Integrates with existing CMS | Yes |
 | 3.90 | $99-$589 | Integrates with existing CMS | Yes |
Why You Can Trust Fit Small Business
I’ve been writing about retail topics—and point-of-sale software in particular—for over two years. I’ve researched, evaluated, and tested dozens of POS systems for a variety of specialized purposes (inventory management, ecommerce, in-person sales, etc.) and industries (retail, restaurant, services, etc).
For this guide to winery POS systems, I assessed the pricing, sales and tasting room features, and back office tools for each of the systems I recommended. Whenever possible, I also tested the systems myself to get a feel for their ease of use and functionality.
WineDirect: Best Overall Winery POS System
Pros
- Integrated ecommerce site
- Built-in fulfillment services
- Marketplace selling introduces your winery to a new audience
Cons
- Cannot pre-authorize credit cards for bar tabs
- Limited by item inventory tracking
- POS onboarding fees
Overview
Who should use it:
Wineries that sell to customers through wine club, online, and third-party channels and wineries wanting a strong online presence and fulfillment options
Why we like it:
WineDirect handles online ordering, gift cards, event reservations, tipping, and more. Plus, it has an offline mode and CRM features and supports wholesale customer accounts. Unlike others on this list, WineDirect also includes a unique Marketplace feature that enables wineries to showcase their wines to new customers.
WineDirect has a couple of subscription tiers available, including an advanced custom-quoted plan. This gives you options no matter the budget your winery is working with. However, note that any plan you choose will come with a one-time onboarding fee that starts at $399.
- Software subscription fee:
- DTC Starter: $79 per month + 2% of sales
- Up to $200,000 yearly sales
- DTC Pro: $199 per month + 1% of sales
- From $200,000 to $4 million yearly sales
- DTC Advanced: Custom-quoted
- More than $4 million yearly sales
- DTC Starter: $79 per month + 2% of sales
- One-time installation fees:
- DTC Starter: $399
- DTC Pro: $999
- DTC Advanced: $2,500+
- Hardware costs: Varies; WineDirect is browser-based, so you can operate the system from any internet-connected device
- Wine club management: WineDirect hosts a customer portal allowing wine club members to manage their accounts from your website. An easy-to-use one-page signup sheet speeds the enrollment process and makes joining easy.
- Personalized web experience: WineDirect includes automated upsells at critical moments of the online purchase process. These prompts encourage customers to add more bottles to unlock a full case price break or free shipping promotions. They can appear on-site as customers add items to their virtual cart, or even appear in the cart itself before shoppers finalize payments.
- Wholesale account management: With WineDirect, wholesale customers are treated similarly to retail customers. Your wholesale clients will have detailed customer profiles and can manage their accounts through the customer portal. On the back end, you can set wholesale clients to receive orders tax-free. There is no separate interface to manage.
- Marketplace option: WineDirect maintains a virtual storefront on popular wine platforms like Vivino, allowing WineDirect wineries to promote their wines to Vivino’s nearly 70 million wine-loving users. This can have a massive impact on your wine sales. WineDirect is the only system on this list with a marketplace feature.
- Built-in fulfillment services: WineDirect customers can hold wine in a temperature-controlled WineDirect warehouse. WineDirect’s staff will package and ship your orders from its warehouse. All shipping services are compliant with US standards. Tracking numbers and order statuses are updated in your WineDirect system, and WineDirect automatically emails customers the same shipping information.
Square for Restaurants: Best for Low-volume Wineries
Pros
- Square subscription includes free online ordering website
- Wine club management and shipping tools are available via integrations
- Square invoices support wholesale orders
Cons
- Many winery tools require additional integrations
- Inventory tools are not very detailed/granular
- Must use Square’s system processing
Overview
Who should use it:
Low-volume wineries that do not need in-depth wine-focused features
Why we like it:
Square for Restaurants is a cloud-based POS that runs on iPads. It is an easy system to use with minimal setup. You can download the app from the Apple app store after you sign up for a Square account. The baseline POS software and integrated Square Online Store are free; all you pay are credit card processing fees. If you choose to upgrade to paid plans for greater functionality, you’ll be paying very affordable monthly fees.
However, you are limited to Square’s payment processing; this prevents you from choosing a payment processor with which you could get lower rates. Square for Restaurants is also not purpose-built for wineries, so making it work for your wine club or wholesale operation requires add-ons and third-party integrations.
- Free: $0
- Plus: $69+ per month, per location
- Premium: $165+ per month, per location
- One-time installation fees: None
- Hardware costs: Varies; the system operates on iPads. You can bring your own or purchase through Square. Full restaurant hardware kits are available starting at $1,089.
- Free integrated online store: Your Square account comes with a free online store. All you pay are Square’s processing fees for online payments, which are currently 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. You can add this store to an existing winery website or host it for free on the Square domain. Additionally, you can sync products between your online store and your POS.
- Vincipia integration: Vincipia is a Square partner app that allows you to synchronize sales, product, and customer information between Square and the Vincipia platform. With this integration, you can manage wine clubs and batch-process credit card transactions for wine club shipments. Vincipia users pay up to 2% per Vincipia transaction. These fees are on top of Square’s payment processing fees.
- Shipping integrations: Square integrates with UPS, FedEx, and DHL for shipping. You can print shipping labels for these services directly from your Square dashboard. For additional couriers and automated shipping tools, you can add the Easyship integration—free for up to 50 shipments per month and up to $199 per month for 10,000 shipments. Custom pricing is available for even greater shipping volumes. Easyship allows you to offer delivery services at checkout, generate shipping labels in-app, schedule pickups with freight companies, and send automated tracking emails to customers.
Commerce7: Best for Ecommerce
Pros
- Ecommerce tools include personalized customer recommendations and in-cart upselling
- Operates via a browser on any internet-enabled device
- Customer-facing reservations with table management
Cons
- No tools for wholesale account management
- Cannot pre-authorize credit cards for bar tabs
- Relatively expensive
Overview
Who should use it:
Wineries wanting a flexible POS system that can run from any device; wineries wanting to beef up their online selling capabilities
Why we like it:
Commerce7 is browser-based winery software that includes POS tools along with ecommerce and wine club management functions. Personalized wine selections based on user history, unlimited product templates, and intuitive cart upsells are just a few of the features offered for ecommerce users. You can run the software from any internet-connected device, making Commerce7 an incredibly flexible system for wineries of all types. While Commerce7 does not host your ecommerce site, it integrates with most website content management systems (CMS).
All of Commerce7’s subscription plans give you POS features plus tools for clubs and subscriptions, ecommerce, and reservations. The difference between the plans is the transaction fees, which get lower at higher subscription tiers.
- Basic: $149 per month
- For brands with up to $500,000 annual DTC revenue
- 1.5% transaction fee
- Pro: $399 per month
- For brands with $500,000–$2 million annual DTC revenue
- 1% transaction fee
- Experience: $1,249 per month
- For brands with $2 million–$5 million annual DTC revenue
- 0.5% transaction fee
- Enterprise: Custom quote
- For brands with over $5 million annual DTC revenue
- One-time installation fees: None
- Hardware costs: Operates via a browser on any internet-enabled device; can use compatible existing hardware
- Automated emails: You can send automated emails to club members when their cards on file are close to expiring. This saves time and potential headaches before you batch bill wine club runs. You can also create custom email campaigns when you release new vintages or offer promotions.
- Smart cart tools: You can create in-cart incentives in your online store to entice customers to buy more before they finalize their orders. For example, you can remind customers with four bottles in their cart that they’ll get a price break or free shipping if they make it a six-bottle case. Commerce7 also supports a single, consistent cart across multiple user devices.
- Detailed product listings: Commerce7’s product entry page includes specific fields for teasers, product descriptions, tasting notes, shipping information, and various prices (for discounts, case prices, and club members). You can customize the slug for the product link and add a meta description to make your wine easily findable in internet searches. Users can also add custom templates to the product page, handy if your winery is known for detailed tasting notes or providing tech sheets to wholesale clients.
Toast: Best for In-person Tastings
Pros
- Affordable subscriptions and pay-as-you-go hardware
- Top-shelf tasting room features
- Great back-office tools
Cons
- Extra fees for wholesale order management and memberships
- No volume processing discounts
- Two-year contract
Overview
Who should use it:
Wineries that host in-person tastings or events and those that want strong back-office features
Why we like it:
Toast is our top choice of restaurant POS system, and the same features that make it stand out for restaurants also make it a great pick for wineries. Toast offers table service features, reservations, tipping management, credit card pre-authorization, online ordering, and CRM features. These make it a great choice for setting up, supplying, and running in-person tasting events at your winery. Toast rounds this off by offering affordable monthly plans and pay-as-you-go hardware.
The software does have a few downsides: you’ll need to pay add-on fees for many of its features, and you’ll need to commit to a two-year contract if you choose Toast as your POS system.
- Starter Kit: $0+ per month
- Table and order management
- Digital menus
- Basic staff management
- Point of Sale: $69+ per month
- Toast Mobile Order & Pay add-on
- Toast Retail add-on
- Advanced staff management and reporting add-ons
- Build Your Own: Custom pricing
- Hardware:
- Upfront costs: $799.20–$1,339.20 plus $69–$99 per month; processing at 2.49% + 15 cents
- Pay-as-you-go option: $0 upfront and $0 per month; processing at 3.09% + 15 cents
- Tasting room features: Toast stands out for its restaurant/tasting room features. The Toast Tables tool lets you manage tables and seat guests efficiently; set up reservations and waitlists, share reservation or waitlist links via Google Search and Maps; and track orders and items. Toast also offers floor plan templates for full-service restaurants, which can help you design your perfect tasting room.
- Online ordering and delivery: If your winery offers delivery and shipping services, you’ll need the appropriate tools for these. Toast Online Ordering and Toast Delivery Services let you easily find a delivery driver from within a local network, track moving orders in real time, view delivery-specific reports and analytics, and pass delivery fees onto customers if you so choose.
- Pay-as-you-go hardware: Toast includes multiple hardware options (handheld POS devices, countertop kits, and self-service setups). What’s more, you can opt to pay for these immediately or forego upfront costs in exchange for paying higher processing fees. This option allows you to obtain hardware as quickly as possible to get right to selling.
KORONA POS: Best for Building Clientele Through Referrals
Pros
- Referral system to grow customer base
- 24/7 customer support
- Comprehensive back-office tools
Cons
- No built-in ecommerce site
- No scheduling capability
- Many features require plan upgrade
Overview
Who should use it:
Wineries that want to prioritize loss and theft prevention, plus age verification; wineries looking to grow their customer base through a referral program
Why we like it:
KORONA is a versatile and easy-to-use POS system with a great price. It tracks inventory wherever you sell your wine and has wine club integrations, a loyalty program, and age-verification tools which are integral when serving alcohol. However, it stands out for its anti-theft features and ability to leverage referrals to attract more customers. KORONA POS is on our lists of the best liquor store POS systems and best overall POS systems for small businesses.
It lost out on a few points due to its sales and ecommerce tools requiring an extra add-on fee, plus the lack of a built-in payment processor and reservation management.
- Core: $59 per month
- Customer support
- Product database
- Ecommerce tools
- Retail: $69 per month
- Inventory management
- Customer management
- Real-time tracking
- Plus: +$20 per month, per terminal
- Advanced inventory management
- Advanced reporting
- Multilocation features
- Enterprise: Custom quote
- One-time installation fees: None
- Hardware costs: Can use compatible existing hardware or purchase from KORONA for custom-quoted prices
- Referral program: KORONA’s loyalty features let you create a referral program that rewards your customers for referring others who may like your wines. You can then send a special offer to the referred person to convert them into a customer.
- Programmable promotions and discounts: Create case discounts, bundled deals, happy hours, or other special promotions. Do this easily with the Price Rule tool, which lets you set conditions. You can also give your employees control over discounting certain items by making a product price changeable in the inventory.
- Anti-theft features: KORONA’s anti-theft tools can help you prevent retail loss. The software lets you monitor and set permissions to prevent such tricks as receipt voiding or cancellation, or leaving the drawer open between transactions. It also has blind balance for end-of-day cash-outs and extensive inventory reporting.
Vintegrate: Best for Virtual Tasting & Wholesale Operation
Pros
- Includes tools to track wine making process
- Supports multiple styles of virtual wine tastings
- Wholesale account management tools
Cons
- Pricing is all custom-quoted
- Lacks personalized upselling tools, tipping, and offline functionality
Overview
Who should use it:
Small and midsize wineries making up to $2 million a year, or that want winery-specific features and tools.
Why we like it:
Vintegrate offers fantastic features for retail, inventory, wine clubs, events, and wholesale clients. It also includes insightful tools for virtual wine tastings, which can expand your winery’s reach beyond your tasting room. Like Commerce7, Vintegrate is a browser-based system. You can run the POS and management dashboard from any web-enabled device.
It lost some points for pricing and because the personalized upselling features are not as robust as those of WineDirect and Commerce7. Also, pricing is not transparent on the website; you’ll need to call for a quote.
- Software subscription fee: Custom quote
- One-time installation fee: Custom quote
- Hardware costs: Browser-based system runs on any internet-connected device
- Virtual wine tasting events: You can host virtual tastings directly on Vintegrate. Tastings can be livestreamed or prerecorded, and either open to the public or private. You can ship wines to tasting attendees in advance so customers can follow along. Best of all, when your tasting is virtual, attendees can access your ecommerce site the whole time. You can easily convert virtual tasting attendees into new customers or wine club members.
- Bulk inventory management: Manage your bulk inventory by wine program to maximize profits. Track intended use from grape-picking to blending and bottling. You can explore the impact of various bottling formats (750 mL, half bottles, or large format). Also, you’ll be able to forecast how many bottles you will have of a particular vintage and identify your potential sellout date.
- Wholesale account management tools: Beyond basic invoice management functions, Vintegrate includes a complete web portal for your wholesale clients. Clients can log in to their accounts to place orders, see open invoices, and make payments.
- Wine production management: Vintegrate offers tools to track your wine production from field to bottle. You can forecast planned harvest tonnage and compare those projections to your actual harvest. Compare yields from individual plots year over year to identify trends. Vintegrate helps you estimate the cost and composition of proposed wine blends and tracks vessels of various sizes throughout your cellar.
VinNow: Best for Custom Crush Operations
Pros
- Unlimited number of terminals
- Flexible retail and restaurant modes
- VinTracker tool tracks bulk wine costs
Cons
- No table mapping or reservations
- User interface is dated
- No on-site upselling tools
Overview
Who should use it:
Wineries that make their own wine on-site or custom crush wine for smaller winemakers
Why we like it:
VinNow’s pricing is based on wine club membership, as opposed to features or sales size. It allows you to designate some iPads for retail functions and others for restaurant tools.
The VinNow system also includes the most robust bulk wine tracking features of any system on this list. The tools are specifically designed to track the most granular details of specific wine vats including tracking blending, chemical additions, and alcohol volume, making this an excellent system for wineries that make wine for other wineries under custom labels. VinNow lost points due to a lack of an offline mode and the ability to make reservations for tastings.
- Software subscription fee:
- Up to 150 wine club members: $99.00 per month
- 151 to 500 wine club members: $249.00 per month
- 501 to 1000 wine club members: $389.00 per month
- 1001+ wine club members: $489.00 per month
- Bulk Wine Module: $69/mo
- Web Shopping Cart: $50.00 per month
- One-time installation fee: No installation fee, but if you need to convert existing data from another system there is a $600 fee
- Hardware costs: Browser-based system runs on any internet-connected device
- VinTracker: This system allows you to track wine vessels of any size throughout your winery—tank, vat, barrel, keg, drum, etc.—and assign work orders to specific staff to manage the winemaking process. You can track specific wine blends, when wine is topped off, when chemicals are added, and the amount of alcohol by volume (ABV). The system also includes detailed invoice tools to charge custom crush clients for your work on their wine.
- Wine club customization: Customers can give memberships as gifts and join more than one club. Signing up is as easy as clicking a button, and the software will remind you and your members about expiring credit cards, declined cards, and more.
- Order holds and email messaging: Customers can place holds on single shipments or put their club accounts on hold for a specific amount of time without canceling their membership. For members with second homes or who travel seasonally, VinNow can skip specific months each year. You can send emails to all customers with orders on hold for on-winery pickup or email all wine club members whose credit cards will expire before the next billing cycle.
- Shipping integrations: VinNow integrates with UPS and FedEx so that you can print shipping labels for your wine club deliveries directly from your VinNow POS dashboard.
How We Evaluated the Best Winery POS Systems
We looked for systems that help wineries support wholesale sales alongside in-person retail sales. Since online sales have become an essential lifeline for wineries, we also looked for robust ecommerce integrations and social media marketing tools. Inventory tracking, the ability to process recurring subscription payments, and customer relationship management were also considered. Finally, we awarded points based on our software experts’ experience with the POS tools.
Based on the above criteria, WineDirect is the best winery POS. The software received the highest overall score according to our grading system for winery software. Based on our personal experience testing different POS software and working in and with small businesses that use POS systems daily, WineDirect is also one of the top software we recommend.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of our scorching criteria:
20% of Overall Score
We looked at the overall affordability of the subscription, whether there were setup and transaction fees and if the system included integrated payment processing. Revel, WineDirect, and Square had perfect scores.
20% of Overall Score
We favored POS software with online ordering, the ability to handle shipments, batch billing, and wine club features. Also, we awarded points to systems that have tools to process B2B and wholesale orders for wineries that sell to liquor stores and restaurants. Our evaluation considered systems that integrate with robust ecommerce websites. We awarded bonus points to systems that personalize upsell suggestions and “carrot” type reminders that encourage online customers to turn a few bottles into a case order. WineDirect had a perfect score.
20% of Overall Score
We looked at reservations, table management, tipping, general mobility, and credit card pre-authorization so tasting room guests can open tabs. Revel had top scores here, followed by Commerce7.
20% of Overall Score
20% of Overall Score
In addition to our expert evaluation of features, we looked at experts in the field—winery publications and users themselves. This score also takes into account standout features and ease of use. We gave VinNow, WineDirect, and Vintegrate perfect scores.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Click through the sections below to learn more about winery POS systems and what they can and should do for your business.
In addition to general features like reporting and staff management, a winery-specific POS should include granular inventory management (detailed enough to measure bottles and pours), personalized upselling tools, reservations, retail sales, and tip management.
It depends on your business priorities, size, and budget. If you want a low-budget or low-volume option, Square for Restaurants is a reliable standby. If you want to focus on online sales, go with Commerce7. For winery-specific functions like tastings and custom crush wine, try Vintegrate or VinNow.
Shipping and delivery solutions aren’t strictly necessary to run a winery business. However, customers will definitely appreciate it if you can deliver wine bottles to their doorstep, especially if they don’t live near your tasting room. Investing in ecommerce and delivery solutions will go a long way toward building life-long customer relationships.
Bottom Line
With over 8,000 wineries currently operating in the US alone, it’s important that you choose a POS system with an online component to keep you competitive.
WineDirect received the highest score across our grading system for its comprehensive online and in-store winery management features alongside its affordable pricing. WineDirect is affordable for small, fledgling wineries. Personalized upselling features drive web sales, and built-in fulfillment services make shipping a breeze. With three pricing levels, wineries of all sizes can find a subscription that works for their business.