Marzipan vs Shopify: Which is Better for Wine and Drinks Subscriptions?

If you're a winery, brewery, or drinks producer thinking about selling subscriptions online, you've probably already looked at Shopify. It's the most recognisable name in e-commerce, it powers millions of online stores, and for a lot of things it works brilliantly.

Wine clubs and drinks subscriptions are not those things.

This article explains why Shopify struggles with subscription commerce for drinks producers, what you'd need to make it work, and when Marzipan is likely to be a better fit.

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What Shopify does well

Let's be fair: Shopify is an excellent platform for selling products online. It has a polished storefront, a huge app ecosystem, great payment processing, and strong logistics integrations. If you want to sell cases of wine as one-off purchases, Shopify does that well.

The problem comes the moment you want to offer subscriptions: wine clubs, recurring shipments, quarterly allocations, or any arrangement where a customer pays on an ongoing basis to receive wine they haven't individually selected each time.

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Why Shopify struggles with drinks subscriptions

Shopify wasn't built for subscriptions. It was built for retail. Someone picks a product, adds it to a basket, pays, receives it. That transaction is complete.

Subscriptions are fundamentally different. They involve:

• A customer agreeing to receive (and pay for) future shipments they haven't chosen yet
• Variable order contents: different wines each quarter, curated by the producer
• Renewal management: charging the customer again each cycle without them actively repurchasing
• Failed payment recovery: what happens when a card declines on renewal day
• Member management: pausing, skipping, updating delivery addresses, changing tiers
• Allocation logic: some wine club releases are limited, members get priority access

Shopify ei toeta seda mingil juhul seista omalt poolt. Tellimuse käivitamiseks Shopifyis vajalete kolmanda osapoole rakendust. Jookide, veini ja toiduvalmistajate jaoks on parim valik Awtomic. See on loodud muutuvate tellimusesisude silmas pidades ja mõistab kureeritavate kastide ja veiniringide mudelite spetsiifilisi vajadusi paremini kui üldised alternatiivid.

Awtomic is genuinely good at what it does. But even the best Shopify subscription app is still bolted onto a platform that wasn't designed for this, and that has real consequences for how a wine club actually runs.

The hidden costs of Shopify + subscription apps

When you add up the costs of running subscriptions on Shopify, the numbers can surprise you:

• Shopify Basic plan: from £19/month
• A subscription app like Awtomic: from $299/month (about £223), plus 1% of every order
• Potentially a separate CRM or email marketing tool to manage member communications
• Developer time to integrate everything and customise it for your specific wine club logic

That second line is the one to look at twice. For a smaller producer, the Awtomic app on its own, about £223/month, costs more than the whole of Marzipan at £199/month with no transaction fees, and that's before Shopify's own plan, the 1% on every order, or a separate email and CRM tool.

Put a year to it, billed annually on both sides. A smaller winery doing £100k of DtC would pay roughly £3,450 a year on Shopify plus Awtomic (Shopify Basic ~£228, Awtomic ~£2,226 on annual billing, plus 1% of sales ~£1,000), before any email or CRM tool, versus £1,990 a year on Marzipan, all in. As you grow, the picture shifts: Marzipan's fee steps up by revenue band while the Shopify stack climbs with the 1%, so the cheaper option depends on your revenue and order volume. What doesn't change is that Marzipan is one flat fee with no cut of your sales, where Shopify is two or three separate bills with a percentage on top.

That example uses Shopify's cheapest Basic plan to be conservative, but Shopify also gates features by tier. Basic is built for a solo operator; as soon as you need more staff logins you move up to Grow (£49/month for up to five staff accounts), and higher plans again for lower card rates and more. Marzipan puts no limit on staff accounts or features at any tier, so the figure you see is the figure you pay.

You're also managing multiple separate tools that don't always talk to each other cleanly. Customer data lives in different places. Order history is fragmented. Running a member event or tasting requires yet another tool.

Dollar figures converted at $1 = £0.74, the rate on 17 June 2026. Competitor pricing changes, so check Awtomic and Shopify's current plans before relying on these.

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What Marzipan does differently

Marzipan is built specifically for subscription commerce in the drinks industry. Rather than starting from a retail model and bolting subscriptions on, subscriptions are the foundation everything is built around.

In practice, this means:

Variable subscription contents work natively. You can create a shipment where different tiers receive different wines, adjust contents for a specific cycle, or give members the ability to swap or skip without it requiring developer work.

Member management is built in. Pause, skip, cancel, upgrade, downgrade, update addresses. Members can manage their own subscriptions through their account area, and you can manage them from the same dashboard you use for everything else.

Events and tastings are integrated. Wine clubs aren't just about the wine; they're about access. Marzipan handles event ticketing and reservations in the same platform, so your harvest tasting or cellar door event is connected to your member data rather than living in a separate system.

CRM is built in. Your customer purchase history, club membership, event attendance, and communication preferences all live in one place. You're not exporting data between systems to understand who your best customers are.

EU hosted and GDPR compliant. Marzipan is built in the UK and hosted on EU-based servers. For wineries and drinks producers selling to customers in the UK and EU, this matters for compliance and for trust.

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When Shopify makes sense

Shopify is still the right choice in some situations:

• You primarily sell wine as one-off cases or bottles with no recurring subscription element
• You have an existing Shopify store with a large catalogue and just want to add a simple recurring product (same wine, same price, every month)
• You need access to a specific Shopify integration that Marzipan doesn't currently support
• Teil on arendajate tiim, kes on harjunud ehitama kohandatud tellimuse loogikaid Shopifys API-le

Kui tellimused on teie äris pigem väike erand peamisest tegevusest, võib Shopify koos tellimuste rakendusega olla piisav.

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Millal Marzipan järkil tuleb

Marzipan on tõenäoliselt parem valik, kui:

• Wine club or subscription memberships are central to your DtC business model
• Teie saadetised erinevad, iga tsüklil on erinevad veinid ja erinevate tasandite liikmed saavad erinevaid eraldisi
• Te korraldavad sündmusi ja maitsesessioonid liikmetele ja soovite, et need hallataks samas süsteemis
• Te müüte UK-sse või ELi ning soovite platvormi, mis on ehitatud GDPR-i nõuetele ja ELi andmehoiu arvesse võttes
• Te juhite praegu oma veiniklubi käsitsi või tabelitega ning soovite seda professionaliseerida

Põhiline järeldus

Shopify on suurepärane e-kaubanduse platvorm. Jooke käsitleva tellimuslahenduse jaoks, eriti veiniklubide puhul, millel on muutuv sisu, liikmete tasandid ja integreeritud sündmused, on vaja märkimisväärseid väljapääse, mis lisavad kulusid, keerukust ja jatkuvat hooldust.

Marzipan on loodud täpselt selliseks olukorraks: jookide tootjaid, kes juhivad kureeritavaid tellimusi, kus saatmised varieeruvad ja liikmed on sama olulised kui vein. Tellimused, liikmete haldus, sündmused ja CRM on ühes kohas juba algusest peale, majutatud ELis, hindadega alates £199/kuu ja ilma kandetasudeta tellimuse väärtusele.

Kui tellimused on teie otsemüügi südameks, tasub Marzipani vaadata praktikas.

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Seotud

Platvormi valimise laiemaks uurimiseks lugege meie juhist veiniklubi tarkvarast vinääridele. Või võrrelge Marzipani ja WooCommerce'i.