An honest comparison of Glasswise and Bottlebooks for wine e-labels. We break down pricing, design, the consumer-capture layer, data ownership, and how to switch.
David Wippel
Founder of Glasswise
Every e-label provider worth considering gets compliance right. EU Regulation 2021/2117 is non-negotiable, and both Glasswise and Bottlebooks deliver fully compliant e-labels with all required nutritional values, ingredients, and allergens in the correct EU languages. That is the baseline. The real question is what else a platform does for your winery once compliance is handled, and that is where these two go in genuinely different directions.
Disclosure: This article is written by the Glasswise team. We have tried to be fair and factual, but we are obviously not neutral. We encourage you to try both platforms and judge for yourself.
Bottlebooks prices e-labels per label, with the first few free each year. You pay for each new e-label you publish, and previous years' labels are not re-billed. That means your cost tracks how many new wines and vintages you release each season, and for a growing range it keeps climbing.
Glasswise uses one flat annual rate that covers unlimited e-labels, unlimited users, and unlimited updates. Whether you publish five wines or five hundred, the rate holds, so your cost does not grow just because your portfolio does.
This is where the two platforms differ most.
Bottlebooks builds e-labels from a standard template. The compliance data is correct and complete, and theming is limited to a header color, so most producers' labels end up looking alike.
Glasswise starts from the same compliance foundation and treats design as a core feature on top. Your e-label carries your brand: your colors, your fonts, your imagery. You can also add storytelling sections, food pairings, and vineyard maps beyond the legally required data, so the page a customer sees feels like your winery rather than a form.
Bottlebooks is a full product information management (PIM) platform for the wine trade, built for larger operations and data-heavy workflows. Beyond e-labels it offers portfolio management, structured tasting notes, and a trade network where importers request product data from producers. If you run a large catalogue across many buyers, that depth is real and worth weighing.
Glasswise positions itself as a central wine data hub with a different center of gravity. Your data stays yours: entered by you, editable by you, and exportable whenever you want. The weight sits on making that data presentable, through branded e-labels, designed data sheets, and marketing QR destinations. Both platforms let you manage wine data centrally, and Glasswise adds a strong design and storytelling layer on top.
The mandatory QR code is the one moment every customer touches your brand directly. What happens after they read the compliance data is where these platforms part ways.
Bottlebooks generates a QR code that resolves to the e-label through its own short-link domain. Once the customer has read the ingredients and nutrition, the journey ends there. Bottlebooks is built for the trade, so it carries no consumer marketing, redirect, or loyalty layer.
Glasswise offers Scan with Glasswise, which turns the same mandatory QR code into a marketing channel. After the e-label, the customer can be sent on to your website, your online shop, a tasting booking, or a custom landing page. You capture the interest that the compliance scan already created, on a bottle that is sitting in a drinker's hand. For a winery that sells direct, this consumer-capture layer is what separates a legal checkbox from a sales tool. We explain the mechanism in Scan with Glasswise, explained.
Bottlebooks guarantees that a published e-label stays online for at least ten years and lets you re-route the QR to your own site or another provider while your account is active.
Glasswise offers a wine-long guarantee, so your e-labels stay online for as long as your wines are in circulation, with no fixed ten-year cut-off. If you ever leave Glasswise, forwarding from your existing QR codes to your new destination continues, so a cancellation never turns a printed bottle into a dead link.
Bottlebooks offers email support and guides. Its higher Portfolio tiers and any custom integration run through its sales team, and the platform is built around enterprise-scale catalogues.
Glasswise offers email, chat, and phone support, and is built to be self-serve from the first login. You can publish a compliant, branded e-label without a sales call. If you would rather hand it off, the Done For You tier has the Glasswise team handle data entry, label creation, and bottle photography for you. Support and the product speak your language, with DACH-native people behind both.
| Feature | Bottlebooks | Glasswise |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per new label, per year | Flat annual rate, unlimited |
| Custom brand design | No (templates) | Yes (full customization) |
| Central data hub | Yes (PIM) | Yes |
| Marketing QR redirect | No | Yes (Scan with Glasswise) |
| Consumer capture / loyalty layer | No | Yes |
| QR code guarantee | 10 years | Wine-long (no fixed cut-off) |
| Self-serve setup | Sales-led for higher tiers | Yes |
| Multilingual e-labels | Yes | Yes |
| Concierge service | No | Yes (Done For You) |
Choose Bottlebooks if you run a large catalogue, need enterprise-grade PIM depth across many buyers, or want the trade-network and data-request workflow.
Choose Glasswise if you want your e-label to carry your brand, prefer one flat annual rate, want to turn the mandatory QR code into a direct sales channel, or value self-serve simplicity and DACH-native support. There is more on the thinking behind it in why wineries choose Glasswise.
Switching does not mean reprinting a single bottle. Your GS1 or QR identity stays exactly as it is on the glass, and only the destination behind it changes. Here is the path:
Most wineries are fully moved within a week. We also will not charge you for the period you have already paid at Bottlebooks.
Read our complete switching guide or visit the switching page for details.
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