Software for coffee roasteries, compared
Most lists of roastery software are written by whoever is selling one of them, this page included. So here is the version that says what each tool is actually for, what it charges, and when the answer is a spreadsheet.
Published 16 September 2026Updated 8 October 2026
Short answer. Roastery software splits into three jobs that rarely live in one product: the roast (Cropster, Artisan), the wholesale desk (Order Book, effizient, Orderspace, Crate, Shopify B2B, and the wholesale apps for Shopify and WooCommerce) and accounting (whatever your accountant uses). RoasterTools tries to cover the first two. Pick one tool per job, check what each one meters — kilos, orders, users or clients — and do not buy production planning when what hurts is the ordering.
Prices read from each vendor's own public pricing pages on 16 September 2026 (effizient and the Shopify and WooCommerce apps on 8 October 2026), and they change. Order Book is one of the tools listed, so read this with that in mind and check the others yourself before you decide.
The three jobs
Almost every argument about roastery software comes from treating it as one category. It is three.
- The roast. Curves, profiles, batch logs, cupping scores, green lots and traceability. This is Cropster's home ground, and Artisan does the logging side free with a probe kit.
- The wholesale desk. Who ordered what, at which price, for which day; what to roast; what to pack; who has gone quiet; what a café owes. This is where a growing roastery loses hours and accounts.
- The money. Invoices, VAT, banking, payroll. Your accountant has already chosen this one, and it is rarely worth fighting them over it.
A roastery that buys a production system to fix an ordering problem ends up with a more expensive version of the same problem. The reverse is just as true: no ordering tool will tell you why yesterday's roast tasted flat.
What each one is for
| Tool | The job it does | What it charges | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cropster | Roasting and quality | Free Starter tier, then from €95, €275 and €999 a month. Volume charges begin after 250 kg roasted. Add-ons priced separately, including green contracts (€500), resource planning (€500) and the API (€100). | Roast profiling, quality control, green contracts and traceability, at any size. |
| RoasterTools | Roastery operations | $99, $199, $499, $999 and $2,300 a month, each including a monthly pound allowance with per-pound overage. Plans above the first need a one or two year term. | A roastery that wants production planning, inventory and wholesale ordering in one American-shaped system. |
| Orderspace | General B2B ordering | $65, $95, $125 and $185 a month, by number of admin users and sales reps. Orders, customers and products are unlimited. | Any wholesale business that wants a storefront, stock control and accounting sync, not only coffee. |
| Shopify B2B | Wholesale on your Shopify store | Included in your Shopify plan. Three catalogs on Basic, Grow and Advanced; unlimited on Plus. | A roastery already on Shopify whose wholesale list is short and whose buyers will log in. |
| Crate | Wholesale for small makers | $50, $100 and $150 a month by number of active buyers, with invoicing and payments as a $30 add-on. | A maker selling by the case in the United States who wants ordering, invoicing, payment and labels together. |
| effizient | Wholesale ordering and invoicing, US | From $153 a month by wholesale locations served, quoted on a call ($149 if you pay them by ACH debit). Online payments through your own Stripe account: 1% + $1 per bank transfer, capped at $20, and 3.5% + 20¢ per card payment. | A US roastery that wants orders, a planning board by delivery day and invoices pushed to QuickBooks or Xero. |
| Shopify wholesale apps | Wholesale prices inside a Shopify store | Free to $129 a month for most apps; SparkLayer runs to $299 and caps orders per month (50 at $49, 150 at $299). A price for one customer usually needs a higher tier, from about $49. | A Shopify roastery whose trade buyers shop like retail customers and will log in. |
| WooCommerce wholesale plugins | Wholesale prices inside a WooCommerce store | Free versions, then yearly licences: $129 to $449 for one plugin, by number of sites; Wholesale Suite's five plugins are $299 the first year and $598 at renewal. A full setup is often several plugins. | A WooCommerce roastery with a few trade accounts that shop like retail customers, priced by role. |
| Order Book | The wholesale desk, coffee only | €49, €149 and €249 a month by number of clients. Every feature on every plan, the whole team included, no volume charge. | A roastery in Europe whose cafés order on a rhythm and who wants to see the account that is drifting. |
Two things are worth reading across that table rather than down it. First, the unit each one meters: Cropster and RoasterTools rise with kilos or pounds roasted, Orderspace with the people on your side of the desk, Crate with active buyers, effizient with the locations it serves, the store apps and plugins with a plan tier or a yearly licence, Order Book with clients. Second, what is bundled: a price that looks low before add-ons is not low after them.
When a spreadsheet is still the right answer
Under about ten accounts, with one roast day a week, a spreadsheet and a phone work. The order arrives however it arrives, you write it down, you roast on Tuesday, you deliver on Wednesday. Nothing here will beat that for cost, and the setup time would buy you two sample drops.
The spreadsheet starts losing when any of these is true: you cannot say from memory which accounts are ordering less than they were; an order has been missed in the last month; more than one person needs to see the orders; the roast plan gets rebuilt by hand every week; or you have stopped knowing what each café is meant to be paying. Those are ordering problems, and they arrive somewhere between fifteen and thirty accounts for most roasteries.
What to ask before you buy any of it
- What does it meter, and what happens when I grow? Model your bill at twice your current volume or account count before you sign.
- Is there a term? Monthly is a different commitment from a one or two year contract, especially in your first year of wholesale.
- What do my cafés have to do? Every login, password and app is a café that phones you instead.
- Does it tell me anything I did not know? Recording orders is table stakes. Noticing the account that has slowed down is not.
- What happens to my data if I leave? Ask for the export before you need it.
- Who answers when it breaks on a Tuesday morning? Ask the vendor's customers, not the vendor.
Where Order Book does not fit
It is worth being plain about this, because the fastest way to waste your week is to trial the wrong thing. Order Book is the wrong choice if you want one system that raises invoices, chases them and takes card payments — it does none of those, and the accounting page explains what happens instead. It is the wrong choice if you need green inventory, warehouse stock or roast profiling. And it is the wrong choice if your wholesale is three accounts that all text you on a Monday, because the spreadsheet is still winning.
Questions roasters ask
- What software does a small coffee roastery actually need?
- Usually three things, and they are rarely one product: something to record the roast, something to take wholesale orders, and accounting. A roastery under about ten accounts can run the middle one on a spreadsheet and a phone. Past that, the ordering side is where the hours and the mistakes are.
- Is Cropster a competitor to Order Book?
- Mostly not. Cropster is built around the roast: profiles, quality, green contracts and traceability, none of which Order Book does. The overlap is only in taking and organising wholesale orders. Plenty of roasteries run one for the roast and the other for the wholesale desk.
- Why do some tools charge by kilos or pounds roasted?
- Because it tracks the size of the business and grows with it. Roasters dislike it for the same reason: roasting more is how a roastery earns its way out of trouble, and a bill that rises with every kilo taxes exactly that. Order Book prices on the number of clients instead, which is what actually drives the work the software does.
- Can I just use Shopify for wholesale?
- Up to a point, and since April 2026 B2B features are on every Shopify plan rather than only Plus. Below Plus you get three catalogs assigned by market rather than by company, buyers need a login, and Shopify's subscriptions do not work with B2B companies. See the full comparison for where that breaks.
- What does none of this software do?
- Nothing here will tell you which twenty cafés to call next, keep a relationship warm, or fix a coffee a barista cannot dial in. Software is good at the parts that repeat. The rest is still the job.
Where Order Book fits
It does one job: the wholesale desk, for coffee, in Europe. Every café gets its own account with its own prices and its usual order at the top of the sheet, signed in with the address you already hold, with no password. Orders that arrive as a text or an email are pasted in and matched to the catalog. At the cutoff, confirmed orders become the roast plan, the picking list and the delivery notes; the café confirms each delivery with Received, and what you are paid is marked against the order or the account. And every account is measured against its own rhythm, so the one that has quietly slowed down is on a call list rather than in a memory.