8 Best Wine POS Systems & How To Choose Winery Software For Your Business

We love that Revel Systems offers both retail and restaurant POS features, plus that the POS is so customizable. With Revel, you can offer a quick-serve or full table service menu, run a catering operation, schedule appointments for private tastings or rent out your winery, start a wine subscription club, and more.

Revel’s inventory management system is flexible enough to accommodate any winemaking and distribution process, even if you’re running a B2B business. Multilocation businesses will also thrive with Revel’s master inventory management and smart product performance reporting across locations.

Let’s not forget the customizable customer loyalty program, customer relationship management system, or the customizable discount and coupon marketing capabilities, either!

Revel’s baseline contract is requires a two-terminal minimum under a three-year standard commitment. Otherwise, you’ll get a custom-quoted monthly pricing plan.

Some features, such as online ordering and delivery, are a paid monthly add-on, but these features will pay for themselves (and then some).

Revel offers the following wine-specific features:

• Alcohol shipping compliance for online orders
• Liquid inventory wastage to better monitor where your inventory is going
• Wine sales by the glass, bottle, case, or mix-and-match sales with inventory breakdowns
• Custom alcohol tax rates and sales reports

If you serve customers in a retail/restaurant environment, Revel has a great food ordering POS screen with customizable modifiers, such as ordering by the glass or bottle. You can create scheduled and recurring sales for the whole store or just special items (such as a new wine you’re introducing to your menu).

You can sell wine, food, and merch online for pickup, local delivery, or shipping, with delivery monitoring. Plus, you can set minimum purchase amounts for shipping. There’s also an online appointment scheduling portal for customers to book a class, event, private tasting, or tour of your winery.

Larger businesses will appreciate Revel’s multilocation features, such as stock transfers across locations. Businesses with a catering component will appreciate Revel’s catering event scheduling features and catering reports.

Revel Systems catering function.

Revel is iPad-based, and you can turn an iPad into a POS register, kitchen display system (KDS), customer-facing display, and self-serve kiosk.

Other hardware, such as credit card readers and barcode scanners, will have to be purchased from Revel (a representative will give you a quote), or you have to get written permission from Revel to purchase specific Revel-compatible items on your own.

Revel offers its own in-house payment processing solution, Revel Advantage. Each business will get a custom quoted flat rate processing fee, which will largely depend on your business’s sales volumes, average ticket size, and time in business.

You may also integrate Revel with another payment processor, such as Chase Payments, Worldpay, TSYS, or Adyen. You may have to pay an extra monthly fee to do so.

Revel’s standard contract term is three years, and there is a steep early termination fee if you cancel.

However, you can negotiate a shorter-term contract until you’re sure that Revel is what you need for your winery.

Lightspeed Retail is one of the best retail POS systems on the market due to its extensive inventory, purchase order, and invoicing management capabilities.

You can manage B2B, B2C, online, and in-person sales from one or several locations all in one easy-to-use dashboard. B2B customers can backorder items, B2C customers can preorder new bottles, and you can choose whether to sell in bulk or by the case, bottle, glass, or any custom-defined inventory quantity you want.

We also love that this POS has several winery-specific third-party integrations, plus integrations to manage event location rentals, waitlists, and wine club member subscriptions.

Plus, you get multilocation support on all pricing plans, which is not common among POS providers. You can easily set up permanent locations and generate temporary ones for popup shops and hosted events.

Note: Lightspeed Retail offers a 14-day free trial; no credit card is required.

All plans come with one register and Lightspeed’s integrated payment processor, Lightspeed Payments. If you’d like to use a third-party payment processor for taking customer payments, you’ll pay an extra $50/month. Additional POS registers cost $59/device/month.

Third-party integrations such as Drizly and subscription management software will cost extra.

Lightspeed’s strongest assets are its inventory capabilities and numerous third-party integrations. Winery owners will appreciate these inventorying features the most:

• Inventory breakdowns and composite items, so you can list and sell items however you want
• Exclusive online catalogs for B2B clients, with B2B customer accounts and account limits
• Auto-populating purchase order generation based on POS recommendations, minimum stock levels, and backorders
• Vendor catalogs with easy pricing updates
• Automated inventory tracking, including partial inventory deductions from bottles when you sell single glasses of wine

Lightspeed’s event rental integration, Booxi, is customizable enough that tasting room owners can book private tastings, rent out their location for parties or meetings, and get customers to sign up for winemaking classes. It seamlessly integrates with your Lightspeed website and POS register so that patrons can sign up online or in person.

Booxi, Lightspeed Retail’s scheduling and rental integration.

Drizly, a popular alcohol delivery platform that allows you to sell alcohol online for shipping and delivery according to local laws, integrates with Lightspeed. The only competitor with this integration is Shopify.

Lightspeed also integrates with QuoteMachine, a software that allows you to sell wine club subscriptions and take custom orders with an online ordering form.

Lightspeed runs on browsers and iPads, which you may purchase yourself or from Lightspeed. You can also buy items such as barcode scanners, cash drawers, and receipt printers from Lightspeed or source Lightspeed-compatible ones on your own.

You can purchase a full hardware kit from Lightspeed. You have to contact Lightspeed for a custom quote, as the retailer doesn’t list pricing online.

Lightspeed Payments, Lightspeed’s in-house payment processor, charges a payment processing fee of 2.6% + $0.10 per in-person transaction. Card-not-present rates are 2.6% + $0.30 and include manually keyed-in cards as well as online orders. Individuals on the Advanced plan will get a custom Lightspeed Payments processing rate.

If you want to use a payment processor other than Lightspeed Payments, such as TSYS or 2Accept, you’ll pay an extra $50/month. Depending on the processing rates you get with third-party payment providers, that extra $50 may be worth it if you save a lot on fees.

While you will get the best pricing on an annual Lightspeed plan, there is an early termination fee if you cancel your plan early. Unless and until you’re sure Lightspeed is the POS for you, consider signing up for a monthly plan.

If you purchase hardware from Lightspeed, you must verify that you have received it within five business days, or it won’t qualify for the hardware warranty (14 days for Apple products, 30 days for other products).

We love that KORONA offers flexible contract terms, payment processing options, and low monthly pricing compared to many other wine POS systems. You can also find winery-specific third-party integrations, a built-in ID scanner, and eCommerce integrations that help you follow alcohol compliance laws while selling online.

KORONA makes it easy to view sales reports and get key insights on just about anything, from which stock to prioritize on shelves to when your business’s peak hours of operation are.

The system has great customer profile analysis features, so you can learn how to engage your one-time customers better. Plus, there’s a great loyalty program setup, including the ability to reward your wine club subscribers for referring new members.

Note: KORONA offers an unlimited free trial; no credit card is required. You only have to start paying when your customers do.

KORONA offers the following four pricing plans:

• Core: $59/month; for basic in-person sales and open API access
• Advanced: $69/month; for inventory management features and eCommerce
• Plus: $89/month; for multistore and franchising features
• Enterprise: Custom quote; includes prebuilt integrations and event ticketing

If you want to sell event tickets through KORONA POS, you can get a quote for a very affordable Enterprise plan or pay for the event ticketing module separately.

KORONA’s open API access feature allows you to build an integration between your POS and any other third-party software, which can be very useful if you have certain software you already use or are very interested in.

KORONA’s best features are in four specific areas: inventory management, customer engagement, winery-specific integrations, and sales reporting.

This POS system’s inventory management is designed so that you can spend minimal time thinking about ordering stock. You can set minimum stock levels and get the system to reorder items for you automatically. The system will also recommend what stock to order and when depending on sales data. Plus, customers can pre-order items online, and the system will send out a request to the right vendor for any out-of-stock items.

KORONA offers some winery-specific integrations, including:

• bLoyal, a wine-specific membership, subscription, and loyalty program; also includes email and text marketing
• Bottlecapps is a company that will build an eCommerce store/mobile app for your business
• City Hive is a commerce platform that offers services such as eCommerce site creation and marketing to help retailers and distributors sell online

KORONA takes a unique approach to sales reporting. Instead of having to generate hard-to-read reports, KORONA has created a user-friendly visual-focused reporting dashboard so that you can get a holistic view of your business and dial into important sales metrics. Many winery owners use it to determine which bottles perform best, how to nurture their best customers, and even decide store hours!

KORONA can run on browsers, iPads, and several types of POS hardware.

This includes hardware from Epson, PartnerTech, PAX, Genius, Dejavoo, Econduit, Aures, and Honeywell. You can purchase these yourself and follow KORONA’s directions to integrate them for no added fee.

KORONA does not have in-house payment processing but has opted to remain processor-agnostic, meaning that you can integrate your POS with any of several payment service providers.

This includes some of the best high-risk payment processors for businesses that sell alcohol.

KORONA has excellent contract terms, with month-to-month contracts and no cancellation fees.

You will have to sign a contract with your merchant services provider (which also processes transactions) and may run into long-term contracts with early termination fees unless you carefully read and negotiate your merchant agreement.

We love how Shopify’s eCommerce tools and shipping suite makes it easy to sell on a local level, nationally, or all over the world while remaining compliant with alcohol sales laws. The eCommerce site builder allows you to build a beautiful, fully functional retailer and B2B sales website within a day.

There are also a lot of add-on apps that will help winery owners meet their every need. There’s an ID verification app, several wine subscription club integrations, an integration to monitor liquid stock, and many more.

Shopify is powerful for retail stores and can handle small foodservice establishments, such as tasting rooms, although it’s not suitable for full-service restaurants.

While Shopify is a good retail POS system, the software’s true strengths lie in its omnichannel inventory management and sales tools, which include:

• Sales via your own age-restricted website
• Integrations with wine marketplaces
• Sales via customer accounts, with a saved card on file
• Shipping suite that helps you manage pickups, local deliveries, national and international purchases, plus tracking numbers for all orders
• Inventory syncing across all sales channels, including ones that don’t directly integrate with Shopify (any “custom” sales channels such as non-integrated wine marketplaces)
• Online ticket sales, appointment booking, and custom order form integrations

Shopify wine online store builder.

You can start a wine subscription club easily and create more customization with Shopify than with any other wine club management software. You can also set up your customer loyalty program however you want, given the number of general and wine-specific loyalty integrations available.

Large-scale sellers, wholesalers, and dropshippers will find that Shopify’s built-in shipping and fulfillment tools are sufficient for growing their business. There are also wholesale and dropshipping inventory and shipping integrations available.

Shopify offers a lot of POS hardware, ranging from the $49 Shopify card reader that you can use with a mobile phone to iPad POS hardware bundles listed at $639 (not including the iPad).

Read our post on Shopify hardware to determine what kind of hardware you’ll need at your winery and how much it will cost.

Shopify has its own in-house payment processor, Shopify Payments, which you are required to use if you don’t want to pay any transaction fees. You’ll be charged between 2.4% and 2.7% per in-person transaction and between 2.4% + $0.30 and 2.9% + $0.30 per online transaction.

The higher your plan is, the less you’ll have to pay in fees. If you process a lot of payments every month, consider getting on a higher-level plan.

If you decide against using Shopify Payments, you’ll be charged a transaction fee between 0.5% and 2% per transaction. Payment processing providers such as 2Checkout, Adyen, Chase Payment Solutions, and National Processing all integrate with Shopify. This may be a good idea for businesses that don’t want to use the flat-rate pricing model and instead want the more cost-effective (but more involved) interchange-plus payment processing model.

Shopify offers very transparent monthly, annual, and biannual plans. You may cancel at any time with no penalties.

You are permitted to use Shopify Payments to sell alcohol, but you must apply to use it and show Shopify that you have an age restriction system in place, have a winery license, and intend to follow all local and national alcohol sales laws that apply to your store.

We love that Lightspeed Restaurant offers so many hotel management and scheduling integrations for small to mid-size inns to manage their properties. It also offers integrations for managing liquid inventory, which is very useful for tasting rooms. Plus, just like Lightspeed Retail, Lightspeed Restaurant offers great built-in inventory management.

Lightspeed users can connect their restaurant POS to an eCommerce site for online ordering. Customers can also scan a QR code somewhere on the property (at a restaurant or even in their room) and order for pickup or delivery.

All plans come with one register and Lightspeed’s in-house payment processing system, Lightspeed Payments. Extra registers cost $59/device/month.

Lightspeed offers some great hotel guest management and wine-focused restaurant software integrations, including:

• StayNTouch and WebRezPro, two highly rated hotel reservation, check-in, housekeeping, and integrated restaurant management apps
• BevSpot, a liquid inventory management app that helps minimize profit loss and optimize ordering practices
• OpenTable, an integration that helps restaurants and tasting rooms manage waitlists, table statuses, and more
• Como, a loyalty app that allows customers to pick up and redeem loyalty points at meals, and has a subscription membership function for wine clubs

Lightspeed Restaurant Bevspot wine POS integration.

You can also book events at your restaurant/inn by creating products as timed events and selling them on your online ordering site.

Like Lightspeed Retail, Lightspeed Restaurant offers great inventory management, including perishable inventory management. You can create timed discounts, combo deals, case breakdowns and composite drinks, generate purchase orders and invoices by vendor, and more.

Lightspeed also has a great server interface, with a quick-serve mode to take orders with modifiers faster. It connects to the intuitive kitchen display system, which syncs with online orders. Plus, managers can rearrange floor plans, and inn owners can monitor several restaurants (and several locations) starting with the Plus plan.

Lightspeed sells compatible hardware and gives users a list of compatible devices if they want to source hardware themselves.

Lightspeed Payments, Lightspeed’s in-house payment processor, charges a fee of 2.6% + $0.10 per in-person payment and 2.6% + $0.30 per card-not-present payment.

If you’re on the Pro plan or a custom enterprise-level plan, you’ll get a custom payment processing fee depending on your business’s sales volumes and average ticket size, among other factors.

You get much better pricing on the annual plan than you do on the monthly plan. However, if you cancel your plan early, there is an early termination fee. Consider a monthly plan until you’re sure Lightspeed is the POS for you.

Also, to qualify for Lightspeed’s hardware warranty (14 days for Apple products, 30 days for other products), you must verify that you have received it within five business days.

We love WineDirect’s customer member portal, which works the same for B2C and B2B customers. Portals are customizable, with special product recommendations based on past purchases, the ability to customize a wine club order, and the ability to offer a welcome package as soon as someone signs up as a wine club member.

WineDirect also has an excellent online ordering and order fulfillment system, taking the hassle out of storing, picking, packing, and shipping orders across the US. Customers and winery owners get real-time tracking information about shipping and updates at various checkpoints, plus notifications if an order is delayed.

Its wine marketplace sales integration is a great way for wineries to gain exposure without spending time or money on advertising or establishing themselves in a marketplace. WineDirect finds customers for you, takes their orders, and fulfills them, so you don’t have to.

WineDirect offers the following three pricing plans:

• Starter: $79/month; 2% transaction fee; onboarding fee of $399; for wineries making less than $200,000/year
• Pro: $199/month; 1% transaction fee; onboarding fee of $999; for wineries making over $200,000/year
• Advanced: Custom quote; onboarding fee starts at $2,500; for wineries making over $2M/year

All plans include access to WineDirect’s online store, tasting room, and wine club management tools. You’ll need to get a custom quote for fulfillment services.

To manage your wine club, WineDirect offers tools such as customized member portals where they can easily add to their monthly order and upgrade their services.

Monthly billing is done automatically with cards saved on file, and there’s a card updater for when a customer’s card expires.

Members will also get personalized recommendations as they’re filling up their cart.

WineDirect winery software wine club builder.

To use the wine marketplace, all you have to do is click “make available to the marketplace,” and you’ve uploaded your items to your own eCommerce site as well as WineDirect’s integrated marketplace. WineDirect shows your wine to a built-in customer base that matches retailers like yours.

WineDirect will handle your marketplace advertising, payment processing, and distribution logistics.

WineDirect’s fulfillment services are also top-notch and include the following:

• Warehousing in temperature-controlled, monitored warehouses
• Order picking, packing, and shipping through your preferred carrier
• Package tracking information is automatically emailed to your customer and updated in your order dashboard
• Real-time order monitoring and shipping updates for you and your customers
• Sending thank-you cards, tasting sheets, and other branded materials sent with packages

WineDirect’s last outstanding feature is its wholesaler account management. Wholesale customers are treated exactly the same as B2C customers, with special member accounts, so you don’t need to look at two different customer management systems for your different customer types.

WineDirect software runs on browsers and iPads. You may purchase card readers, cash drawers, barcode scanners, and receipt printers from WineDirect.

It also has its own built-in payment processing, WineDirect Payments. You will need to sign up for a merchant account to use this payment processor.

WineDirect software accounts are advertised as month-to-month with no early cancellation fees. However, since you have to sign up for a merchant account, you should double-check that contracts are short-term with no early cancellation fees.

We love that VinNOW thinks big, especially with its custom crush process monitoring.

You can monitor everything from container inventory to chemical additions and alcohol content, and create the perfect custom label for other wineries, B2B businesses, or direct consumers. You can generate work orders for cellar tasks and monitor them, including materials to be used, work to be performed, and which containers are having work done on them. All this reporting can be used for custom crush billing.

VinNOW also has a retail mode and restaurant mode in addition to inventorying mode, with an unlimited number of devices allowed on each plan. One employee can ring up customers, while another works with completely different software designed specifically for order-taking and card pre-authorizations, and another is up in the wine cellar working on custom creations.

VinNOW offers it all, although the software could use an interface lift.

VinNOW pricing is based on the number of wine club members you have and includes the following plans:

• $99/month if you have less than 150 wine club members
• $249/month if you have 151 to 500 wine club members
• $389/month if you have 501 to 1,000 wine club members
• $489/month if you have 1,001 or more wine club members

The Vinetracker module costs $69/month.

VinNOW’s standout feature has to be its Vinetracker module, which has the following capabilities:

• Thorough monitoring of which bottles bulk containers are being poured into and for whom
• Excellent record-keeping on what goes into each custom crush creation
• Work order generation and monitoring throughout the entire crush to bottling process for single and multiple containers
• Custom crush billing based on inventory and labor reports

VinNOW winery software custom crush work order.

VinNOW’s shipping and fulfillment services are also notable. The provider has direct integrations with GLS, UPS, and FedEx, so you get shipping updates and service information from these providers. You (and your customers) can get live shipping updates and email alerts when orders are shipped or delayed.

If you decide against using one of these providers, VinNOW has made it easy to dispatch shipping information to a third-party shipping partner.

The wine club functions are also solid. You can create as many wine clubs as you like, and customers can sign up for any they want to. It’s easy to get a customer signed up for a wine club at the register or online with VinNOW’s eCommerce link.

You can create one batch wine club order for the month and apply it to all members of a certain group or tier. Customers can skip shipments for the next month or designate times of the year when they don’t want their monthly wine order for pickup or delivery. Also, customers can gift someone a membership by putting a certain amount into their account.

VinNOW runs entirely on iPads and uses the Dejavoo Z1 card reader, which retails at around $235. There are no limits to the number of devices you have on your VinNOW plan and no added monthly cost when you put VinNOW software on a new device.

VinNOW offers payment processing through Clearent Merchant Services, which does not disclose payment processing fees. The company does advertise interchange-plus pricing, which is the least expensive pricing model in most cases.

VinNOW includes a guide on how to integrate the POS with a Clearent merchant account, although it is lengthy and tedious to read.

VinNOW is a monthly subscription. Check with your merchant account provider to make sure there are no lengthy contracts or early termination fees. If there are, try to negotiate a better merchant account. If the provider doesn’t budge, consider a different winery software provider.

While many POS providers advertise a “free” option, we love that Square is one hundred percent free for single-location winery owners. This POS has everything you need to take orders online and in person, plus ways to sell tickets and start a wine club using the recurring billing function.

Square also offers paid plans to get more inventory management, kitchen displays, and add locations to your setup. There are also integrations for things such as perishable inventory management and taking reservations.

For wineries that don’t have the money to spend on add-ons, Square has everything you need to start a small business.

Square’s loyalty program costs $45/month/location. On the free plan, kitchen display screens cost $20/device/month. Mobile restaurant POS systems cost $50/location/month.

Square is best known for its free feature set, which includes:

• Free online ordering website
• Free subscription payments function with a saved card on file
• Free QR code ordering
• Free invoice generator and online customer inquiry form
• Free menu and order manager

Square wine online ordering website.

Wineries can host events by selling tickets online and allowing customers to inquire about parties or special orders with an online form builder. Also, you can sell online for local pickup, local delivery, or shipping without paying a dime.

The server screen is easy to use, the system will auto-86 menu items when ingredients run out, and it has a few employee management functions. Plus, the simple-to-use inventory management features allow anyone to break down cases and create mix-and-match deals.

Square’s basic hardware offering (and the only one you need before opening your doors) is the $49 Square contactless card reader. Like Shopify, Square has a lot of hardware choices, so you should read our Square hardware guide to figure out exactly what you’ll need.

You must use Square’s in-house payment processor, which charges the following payment processing fees:

• In-Person Payments: 2.6% + $0.10
• Online Payments: 2.9% + $0.30
• Manually Keyed-In Card Payments: $3.5% + $0.15

Square subscriptions are month-to-month with no early termination fee. The company also has a generous hardware warranty on all Square products, whether you purchase your device directly from Square or not.