How to compare the cost of an e-label without trusting the headline price
The price of an electronic wine label is advertised in forms that cannot be subtracted from each other. Some charge an annual fee with a ceiling on references. Others charge per label and per language. Others start with a set-up and then bill for hosting the QR. Comparing the first number on the website, without knowing what is included, leads to dearer second-vintage contracts. We have not audited competitors’ current tariffs, and they change, so the same questions apply to any offer, including ours.
We publish a subscription of €50 a year, with unlimited dynamic QR codes, an energy calculator, an e-label preview, and translation into the 24 official languages of the EU. There is no set-up fee. Migration from another provider, if you bring the references, is not charged and is delivered within 24 hours when the QR is dynamic and can be redirected. A static QR, by contrast, needs reprinting. That is everything that is free. The rest is the subscription.
The models you will come across
The first is the fee per reference. You pay for each wine, sometimes for each vintage, sometimes for each language as if it were another label. With ten still wines in three markets the multiplier shows, and a sparkling wine that you split by disgorgement can count as several records. Ask whether the lot, the vintage, and the language are the same line on the invoice.
The second is the annual fee with a maximum. The entry price looks closed until you pass 15 or 50 references and jump a band, or until the eleventh wine is billed separately. Ask for the band in writing, and what happens in the month you go over it. Is it prorated, is the new record blocked, or does another contract open?
The third is the single subscription, with no ceiling on labels. That is our model. It makes sense when the catalogue moves, when you label by parcel, or when you do not want to decide whether it is worth registering a garage wine. It stops being attractive if you will only have two static references for ten years and nobody will touch the record. There, any low fee will do, as long as the QR keeps resolving.
The fourth is the cost that is not on the tariff. Project set-up, page design, human translation charged on top of the automatic one, extra users for the winemaker and the importer, or the QR download in the format your printer asks for. A platform can be cheap to keep and expensive to start. Ask for the first year closed, not the renewal price.
There is also the cost of leaving. If the QR is dynamic and the URL belongs to the provider, when you leave you have to reprint, unless they leave you a redirect. That cost does not appear in the comparison table and it is often the highest: a new back label on a run that was already planned. Before you sign, ask who owns the URL, how long the records live if you do not renew, and whether you can export ingredients, energy, and languages in a sheet, not only in a PDF.
What has to be included for the number to mean anything
An e-label that is useful for a winery selling in the EU is not just a QR that opens a website. Check these points in the proposal, not in the sales pitch.
The code has to be dynamic. If you correct a sugar or add German, the print still works. A static code, or a PDF hung on the winery website, forces you to reprint or to keep a discipline that does not hold at harvest.
The destination page has to be able to stay on the ingredients and the nutrition, with no shop and no capture of consumer data. That is a condition of the Commission’s own framework on the electronic means, not an aesthetic preference. If the provider only offers the record inside their “brand experience”, you are going to argue with the first fussy importer.
The energy has to be calculable from the analysis, in kJ and kcal per 100 ml, and also writable by hand when the laboratory already gives it to you. Wineries that only have a “calories” field end up rounding on the back label and on the QR with two different criteria.
The languages have to cover the real market. You do not have to serve all 24 on the first day if you only sell in Spain and France, but it has to be possible to add them without rebuilding the code when an order comes in from another Member State. Automatic translation does not spare you from reading it. An additive badly named in German is your responsibility, not the engine’s.
The record has to stay online while the subscription is alive and the wine is still on the market. Be wary of plans that “include a year of hosting” per label and then charge renewal code by code. Also of those that switch the QR off the day you miss a payment, with no window for the bottles already in a shop.
How to run the sum in your winery
Take the references you will have live this year, not the ones on the website. Add the lots that really have their own record. Multiply by the languages already open, if the provider charges for them. Add the set-up, any translation that is not included, and a new back label if in two years you want to leave. Compare that total with €50. On a short, frozen catalogue, a fee per label can come out similar. As soon as vintages turn over, or you export single-vineyard wines, the unlimited ceiling is the invoice that does not grow.
What you should not pay for
Do not pay for the migration twice. If you bring the records from another provider, with us that work falls inside the 24 hours and is not invoiced, provided the QR is dynamic and can be redirected. A static code is reprinted. Do not pay a “language pack” to read the same composition in the market you already export to, if the plan you choose says the 24 languages are included. Do not pay a start-up period that in practice is filling in a form. And do not accept a discount in the first year that hides a different renewal. Ask for both figures.
You also do not need a custom build to comply. The obligation is a list of ingredients, a nutrition declaration per 100 ml, and a stable link. What you do need is someone who updates the record when the lot changes and who does not switch the code off while the bottle is on sale. With us, that is the subscription of €50 a year.
If you want to open the account directly, it is at app.vinoveo.com/login. If the catalogue already lives in another tool, write to [email protected] or come in through the migration page. The detail of which wines fall under the obligation from December 2023 is in the electronic-label guide, on this blog.
