Order Book vs Crate
Crate is a wholesale platform for independent makers — roasters, bakeries, brands that sell by the case. Order Book is built only for coffee roasters and their café accounts. They overlap on taking orders and diverge almost everywhere else.
Published 16 September 2026Updated 9 October 2026
Pick Crate if you want ordering, invoicing, payment collection and shipping labels in one subscription, you already run on Square or Shopify with QuickBooks Online behind it, and your buyers are mostly in the United States.
Pick Order Book if you are a European roaster whose cafés pay by transfer on terms, you issue invoices in your own software, and the problem you actually have is knowing which accounts are drifting before they go.
Side by side
| Area | Crate | Order Book |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Independent wholesale makers: roasters, bakeries, sauce, tea, chocolate | Specialty coffee roasters only |
| Home market | United States; their terms are governed by California law | The EU |
| How buyers order | A branded portal per supplier, with per-customer pricing | An account per café, signed in with the address the roastery holds, no password — one café account across every roastery it buys from here |
| Orders that arrive as text or email | AI ordering on both wholesale plans; email-to-order is an add-on, enabled on request | A paste box: a message, an email or spreadsheet rows, matched to the café’s catalog, on every plan |
| Standing orders | Yes, on the Growth plan | No; every order is placed by the café, or by you for it |
| Delivery confirmation | See their site | The café marks each order Received; a problem it reports is credited against the order |
| Drift detection | Not published | Core feature: a rhythm per account and a weekly call list |
| Payments | Collection on the Growth plan; a 0.5% ACH fee on their invoices, capped at $5, with processing charged separately | No payment processing: cafés pay by transfer on your terms, recorded against the account with a running balance, or an order marked as paid |
| Invoices | Generated and sent, on the Growth plan | Issued in your own invoicing software and attached to the order for the café |
| Accounting | QuickBooks Online sync | None; CSV export of orders for the accountant |
| POS and storefront | Square, Shopify and Clover sync, products and prices | CSV import of clients and order history, or a one-way Shopify import of catalog and history for stores with an existing custom app, run by you |
| Shipping labels | USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL through your own Shippo or ShipStation account | None; picking lists and delivery notes |
| Roast day | Not published | Roast plan, run sheet, picking list and delivery notes from confirmed orders |
| Stock control | See their site | Roasted stock on the shelf and what is free to order; no green stock |
| Languages for the café | See their site | Six |
| Pricing model | $50 a month for 150 orders, $80 for 400, any number of buyers; standing orders, invoicing and payments on the $80 plan | €49, €149, €249 per month on clients — 20, 100, then unlimited — every feature on every plan, whole team included |
| Trial | 14 days, no card | 30 days, no card |
Where Crate is stronger
- Money. Invoices with a payment link, ACH and card collection, and AR aging in the reporting. Order Book issues no invoices and takes no payments at all: you invoice in your own software, attach the PDF, and record what arrives against the account.
- Accounting and POS. Square, Shopify, Clover and QuickBooks Online sync, so the products and prices you keep in your till are the ones your buyers see. Order Book syncs with no accounting package, and its Shopify import is one-way and manual.
- Shipping. If you post boxes rather than drive them, labels off the order through Shippo or ShipStation is real work saved. Order Book prints delivery notes, not labels.
- Retail alongside wholesale. A $30 a month Retail plan adds an online store and retail subscriptions. Order Book is wholesale only and has no retail side.
- One subscription for the whole chain. Order taken, invoice out, money in, box shipped. Order Book covers the first of those four and hands you the rest.
Where Order Book is stronger
- It notices things. Order Book learns each café's own rhythm and basket, then tells you who broke it, in days, while the account can still be saved. A café that ordered every Tuesday for a year and stopped is at the top of Monday's call list. How that works.
- No password to remember. The café signs in with the address you already hold and finds its own prices, with its usual order at the top of the sheet. Nothing to set up, nothing for the barista who covers Tuesdays to be locked out of. And a café buying from three roasteries here signs in once and sees all three.
- Coffee shape. Unlimited catalogs, overrides and volume breaks per café, a blend only one café sees, scheduled price changes announced café by café, loan espresso machines with a QR fault page, and the roast plan the morning after the cutoff. Bread and pastry lines sit in the catalog like any other item.
- Europe. Six languages per café, invoicing left where your country's rules already put it, EU hosting, and holiday closures that do not read as churn.
- What the price counts. Crate counts orders, 150 or 400 a month with any number of buyers, and puts standing orders, invoicing and payments on the higher plan; Order Book counts clients, never orders, includes your whole team, and puts every feature on every plan. Their prices are published in dollars and ours in euros — we have not converted them, because the exchange rate is not the thing that differs.
Can you use both?
Probably not, and there would be little point: both sit in the same place, between the café and your roastery, and neither is much use with half the accounts on it. The honest test is which half of the job is hurting. If it is unpaid invoices and boxes waiting on labels, that is Crate's half. If it is accounts quietly tailing off while you are busy roasting, that is this one.
Crate details are taken from public pages at cratehq.ai on 9 October 2026 and may have changed — it is an actively developed product and its plans move. Check their pricing page before you decide. If something here is out of date or unfair, write to [email protected] and it will be corrected.