The State of UK DtC Wine Commerce
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Your shop runs on renewable energy
Every data centre we use runs on renewable energy, and your customers' data never leaves the EU. Here are the numbers, whose they are, and the parts we have not solved yet.
Where your data actually lives
Most platforms tell you they are "hosted in the EU" and leave it there. These are the companies, the cities and the certifications.
Production
UpCloud
EU data centre, on 100% renewable energy
The live version of Marzipan and all the customer data behind it. Certified to ISO 27001 for information security, ISO 14001 for environmental management and ISO 50001 for energy management.
Staging
Hetzner Online
EU data centres, on 100% hydropower
Where we test new code and features before they go anywhere near your shop. Certified to ISO/IEC 27001, and running on 100% hydropower.
Scaleway & Lettermint
EU
Transactional email: the order confirmations, shipping notices and club reminders your customers receive. Scaleway is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022.
CDN
Bunny
Slovenia, with edge locations worldwide
A European company delivering the images and assets on your shop from wherever your customer happens to be, so pages load quickly without shipping their data anywhere it should not go.
Being straight about it
No platform runs entirely on its own servers, and we would rather be open about that than pretend otherwise. Payments run through Stripe and PayPal. A handful of other services handle email delivery, analytics and the images on your shop.
Every one of them is named in the annexes to our Data Processing Addendum, along with what it does and where it does it. Not "industry-leading partners". The actual companies. If we add or change one, that is where you will see it.
Have a question about a specific part of our stack, or a data-residency requirement of your own? Ask us and you will get a straight answer.
Hosted in the EU
Customer data sits on EU servers within the EEA, not shipped off to another region to save a few pounds.
GDPR-native
Built in the UK to work the way UK and EU data rules expect, with a Data Processing Addendum you can actually sign.
Every sub-processor named
The actual companies, what they do, and which data centre they do it in. Listed in the DPA, kept current.
Yours, not ours
Your customer list is your asset. We process it to run your shop and wine club. We do not sell it or trade on it.
And the energy running it?
Running a shop online burns electricity in a data centre somewhere. Every one we use runs on renewable energy, and these are their published numbers rather than ours.
Beyond the electricity, UpCloud have their own footprint measured by a third party across all three emissions scopes, offset what they do produce through carbon sequestration, and wipe and recycle every server that reaches the end of its life. We would rather point you at people doing that than claim it as ours.
- 100%
- Renewable energy at the data centre your shop actually runs in. UpCloud
- 98%
- Of the year their data centres are cooled by outside air alone, using no water. Hetzner
- 100%
- Hydropower behind every one of their sites, since 2008. Hetzner
- 1.13
- Power usage effectiveness on average, against an industry norm nearer 1.5. Hetzner
Figures published by Hetzner and in UpCloud's 2025 ESG Report, which reports emissions across scopes 1, 2 and 3 to the GHG Protocol.
The rest of the footprint
None of this is going to save the world on its own. Together it means the tool running your winery costs the planet a little less.
One platform
Not ten plugins
Shop, wine club, events and CRM in one place means one set of infrastructure doing the job, rather than half a dozen services each running their own.
Digital
Less on paper
E-labels, digital receipts and online member management cut down what gets printed, for us and for the wineries we work with.
Company
Small and independent
We are bootstrapped, with no growth-at-all-costs mandate. Growing at a pace we can stand behind goes hand in hand with a lighter footprint.
Where we have got further to go
We would rather tell you what we are still working out than dress up a few good choices as a green badge. We are a young company, and being genuinely sustainable is a longer road than switching a couple of settings.
If sustainability is central to how you run your winery and there is something you would like to see from us, tell us. It genuinely helps us prioritise.
Measuring our own footprint
We rely on our hosts' published figures. We would like to be able to give you ours.
Offsetting the rest
Our hosts already offset their own direct emissions. Where a provider does not, we want to cover the gap ourselves rather than let it sit in someone else's report. Not every provider we use publishes a figure yet.
Helping you measure yours
Shipping is the biggest footprint in direct-to-consumer wine, and it is your customers' orders moving. We would like the platform to help with that.
Ask us anything about the stack
Got a data-residency requirement of your own, or a question about a specific part of our infrastructure? You will get a straight answer, not a sales pitch.
Frequently asked questions
Don't just take our word for it
“We made the switch from WooCommerce to a custom solution powered by Marzipan. Managing our orders is a breeze and the flexibility of the subscriptions API has allowed us to enhance our old vine adoptions offering.”
“Marzipan is incredibly easy to use, and extremely flexible and configurable. It makes recurring subscription wine clubs much easier than any other system I have used, and copes with pretty much everything we have thrown at it.”
