Vinolin

What Vinolin does

Vinolin UG (haftungsbeschränkt) is a Heilbronn-based vertical SaaS company founded in 2024 that builds a wine estate-specific e-commerce and AI platform. The company targets German Weingüter (wine estates) selling directly to consumers online, addressing pain points that generic commerce platforms like Shopify, Shopware, and WooCommerce do not natively solve — wine-specific data fields (vintage, vineyard site/Lage, grape variety, sulfite content, alcohol percentage, allergens, per-liter pricing), built-in compliance with German/EU food labeling law (LMIV), youth protection (Jugendschutz), and pricing regulation (PAngV), and automated synchronization with Winestro.Cloud, the leading German wine estate ERP. The platform is sold in two tiers: Vinolin Suite, a complete turnkey online shop with built-in AI Sommelier and success-based pricing (5.9% + €0.50 per processed order, no fixed costs), and Vinolin Connect, an AI Sommelier add-on module priced at €79-219 per month that layers onto a winery's existing shop via a lightweight snippet.

The core technology is the KI-Sommelier, a domain-specific AI assistant that operates exclusively on each winery's own product catalog — not on generic internet knowledge — and answers natural-language wine and food-pairing questions in 9 languages, 24/7. Supporting AI features include generative AI for recipe content, automatic product photography, and a planned Newsletter Autopilot (Summer 2026) that synthesizes purchase history and AI Sommelier conversation data into personalized customer newsletters. The platform integrates natively with Winestro.Cloud for ERP synchronization, exposes an open REST API, and supports free migration from major generic e-commerce platforms. The business is structured around product-led growth with self-serve signup, a free live demo (Ketterberg storefront), and no credit card required, supplemented by direct phone and email sales support; 40+ wine estates are live on the platform across Becksteiner Winzer, Alde Gott, WG Schriesheim, WG Heilbronn, Sasbacher, Kloster Bronnbach, and others. The company is founder/team-owned, closed a $231,931 seed round in July 2025 from Campus Founders and L-Bank, and operates with 1-10 employees.

Name

Vinolin

Legal name

Vinolin UG (haftungsbeschränkt)

Website

https://vinolin.de

Company type

Private

Founded year

2024

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Vinolin builds an AI-powered wine estate e-commerce platform (KI-Sommelier and shop) for German Weingüter, offering a full Suite at success-based pricing and a Connect add-on module for existing shops. The platform handles wine-specific compliance, Winestro ERP sync, and 9-language customer consulting.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Wine Industry E-commerce Software

NAICS

Wineries (312130), Wineries (31213)

SIC

Wholesale-Beer, Wine & Distilled Alcoholic Beverages (5180)

akta.pro primary industry

Wineries & Vineyards (Tasting Rooms) (THAFALAE)

akta.pro secondary industry

Wine & Sparkling Wine Wineries & Brands (CRADAIAB)

Keywords

• Wine e-commerce software
• AI sommelier assistant
• Winery online shop
• DTC wine platform
• Wine recommendation engine

Headquarters

HQ city

Bad Mergentheim

HQ country

Germany

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Vinolin Suite - Transaction Fee: Success-based pricing: 5.9% plus €0.50 per processed order, inclusive of card and PayPal fees. No fixed costs, no setup fee, no hidden limits. Revenue scales with customer sales volume.
2. Vinolin Connect - Subscription: Fixed monthly subscription (€79-219/month depending on tier), payable monthly or annually with discount. Three tiers: Starter (€79/mo, 150 conversations, 150 wines), Professional (€149/mo, 250 conversations, 750 wines), Business (€219/mo, 400 conversations, 1,500 wines). Annual payment saves €240-360/year.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Vinolin sells a wine-specialized e-commerce platform plus a domain-trained AI Sommelier to German Weingüter (wine estates). It offers two packages: Vinolin Suite, a complete online shop with built-in AI Sommelier and upcoming Newsletter Autopilot priced as 5.9% + €0.50 per processed order with no fixed costs; and Vinolin Connect, an AI Sommelier snippet that integrates with existing shops (Shopify, Shopware, WooCommerce, Magento, JTL) at fixed monthly subscriptions starting at €79. Both deliver multilingual, regulation-compliant online wine selling with native Winestro.Cloud ERP synchronization.

Product overview

Vinolin is a modular platform-plus-modules architecture designed specifically for wine estates selling online. It consists of two main go-to-market packages: Vinolin Suite (a complete turnkey online shop system with built-in AI Sommelier and upcoming Newsletter Autopilot, priced on a success-only model of 5.9% + €0.50 per order) and Vinolin Connect (an add-on layer bringing AI Sommelier and Newsletter Autopilot to existing shops without migration, at fixed monthly prices starting at €79). The underlying product portfolio includes the core Shop module (wine-specific e-commerce with automatic compliance features and Winestro sync), the KI-Sommelier AI assistant, and the Newsletter Autopilot (scheduled for Summer 2026). All products share the same data layer, enabling personalized customer experiences across sales, advice, and communication.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Vinolin Suite Complete online shop system for German wine estates, combining a wine-specialized e-commerce platform with built-in AI Sommelier and a forthcoming Newsletter Autopilot. Charges a 5.9% + €0.50 fee per processed order (inclusive of card and PayPal processing), with no fixed monthly costs. Includes free migration from Shopify, Shopware, or WooCommerce, automatic product photography, AI-generated wine-pairing recipes, automatic LMIV labeling, age verification, built-in legal texts, Winestro.Cloud sync, and 9-language support.
• Vinolin Connect Add-on product that integrates the Vinolin AI Sommelier (and Newsletter Autopilot from Summer 2026) into a wine estate's existing online shop (Shopify, Shopware, WooCommerce, Magento, JTL) via a lightweight snippet, without requiring migration. Available in three subscription tiers (Starter €79/mo, Professional €149/mo, Business €219/mo) priced per conversation and wine volume; no commission on sales.

Quantifiable outcome

• Wine estates can set up complete online shop in one afternoon (Self-signup in 5 minutes, data entry 3 hours, go-live 30 minutes)
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers7 records

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration6 records

AI capability7 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• Winestro.CloudcoreTechnology or IntegrationNative bidirectional synchronization with Winestro.Cloud ERP for wine estates. Products, prices, inventory, orders, and customer data sync automatically between Winestro and Vinolin without manual intervention. Available in all packages (Suite and Connect). This is a core integration for the wine estate target market in Germany.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• WineDirect: WineDirect (formerly Vin65) is one of the largest wine-DTC platform providers, offering e-commerce, wine club, POS, and compliance tools to wineries globally. It is a direct competitor in the same wine-specific DTC software category as Vinolin, with overlapping compliance and club management features.
• Commerce7: Commerce7 is a wine-industry-specific DTC e-commerce and CRM platform used by hundreds of wineries in North America, Europe, and Australia. Like Vinolin, it is purpose-built for wineries with wine-specific POS, club, and online-shop functionality, making it the most direct international comparable.

Emerging players

• Tastry: Tastry is an AI-driven sensory science company that builds recommendation engines for wine retailers and producers, using chemistry and consumer preference data. It is the closest emerging AI-native wine-recommendation competitor to Vinolin's KI-Sommelier, though it currently focuses more on US retailers.
• Vivino: Vivino operates a global wine marketplace and recommendation app, combining consumer wine discovery with marketplace transactions. While not a direct DTC platform, it competes for the AI-driven wine recommendation mindshare that Vinolin's KI-Sommelier is built around.
• Bright Cellars: Bright Cellars is a data-driven wine subscription service that uses a taste-profile quiz and recommendation engine to match consumers to wines. It is an emerging adjacent business model that signals the broader viability of AI-driven wine personalization, which is core to Vinolin's value prop.

Broad incumbents

• WooCommerce: WooCommerce is the most widely deployed open-source e-commerce extension for WordPress, used by many small Weingüter that already run a WordPress marketing site. Vinolin's free migration from WooCommerce positions it as a direct alternative for these merchants.
• Shopify: Shopify is the dominant general-purpose SMB e-commerce platform and is explicitly listed as a shop system Vinolin Connect can integrate with and migrate from. Many German Weingüter already use Shopify, so it is the most likely 'do nothing' incumbent against which Vinolin must differentiate.
• Shopware: Shopware is a leading German-headquartered e-commerce platform widely used by German SMBs, including wine estates. It is also a Vinolin Connect integration target, and as a broad German incumbent it competes for the same mid-market merchant wallet.
• Adobe Commerce (Magento): Adobe Commerce / Magento is a high-end e-commerce platform used by larger wine brands and retailers globally. As a broad incumbent, it competes for enterprise wine estates that might otherwise choose a wine-specialized platform like Vinolin.

Regional players

• JTL-Software: JTL is a German SMB-focused e-commerce and ERP suite (JTL Shop, JTL Wawi) used by many small German merchants including Weingüter. It is also a Vinolin Connect integration target and competes for the same low-end German SMB wine-estate customer.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors2 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Vinolin