Managing WordPress Plugins Shouldn’t be Your Full-Time Job

WordPress was built to publish content. Your ecommerce sales are reliant on WooCommerce and other plugins.

So the daily work of running a store (catalog, inventory, orders, fulfillment, reporting) gets stitched together across separate plugins and spreadsheet exports that were never designed as one system.

For a brewery or cidery, compliance plugins and shipping plugins pile on top of that stack, and every one of them updates on its own schedule.

Every hour spent in the WordPress admin is an hour away from brewing, selling, and managing your team.

Our ecommerce agency has helped breweries and cideries solve this, along with the compliance, shipping, and subscription challenges that come with selling DTC alcohol, with two services:

  • A platform migration from WordPress + WooCommerce to Shopify
  • The integration of our Shopify Vinoshipper Checkout App

We integrate Vinoshipper with Shopify to make online beer and cider sales easier than ever. Open cider sales in 40+ states, and beer sales in every state that allows them, with our Shopify Vinoshipper Checkout App.

Why We Recommend Shopify for Breweries and Cideries

Shopify bakes into one platform what WooCommerce assembles from an entire team of plugins and duct tape.

As an ecommerce agency obsessed with conversion rate optimization, these native features within the Shopify platform are some of the reasons why we recommend a move to Shopify for breweries, cideries, and other DTC alcohol sellers.

  • Compliance inside the checkout

    The Vinoshipper Shopify Checkout App we developed handles tax, age verification, and state permits behind the scenes. Cideries can sell DTC into 40+ states, and breweries into every state that allows beer shipping, with your legal ship-to list enforced automatically at checkout.

  • A checkout built to convert

    One page, done. Shop Pay prefills address and payment for anyone who has bought from any Shopify store, so a first-time visitor can check out in one tap. Shipping costs show upfront, carts become orders, and a case of cans stops dying on the shipping page of a 5-step checkout.

  • A Shipping Strategy for Beer

    Beer ships heavy. Glass, full cases, and adult signature requirements add cost to every order. Our Shopify/Vinoshipper integration lets you build rate logic around case weight, hold-at-location options, and carrier alcohol rules, so shipping can protect your margin, order by order.

  • Subscriptions that keep members

    Retention pays back acquisition. Shopify's subscription and remarketing ecosystem helps you keep the beer club member you already paid to acquire, with flexible shipments, member pricing, skip and swap options, and win-back flows that can bring lapsed members back to the club.

  • One inventory: online and taproom

    DTC sales, subscriptions, taproom POS, and merch unified: one catalog, one inventory count, one set of reports. Taproom regulars become online customers, and online customers plan a visit, because both live in one customer record. Your tees and glassware sell from the same cart.

  • Marketing built into the store

    Automated email flows (abandoned cart, win-back, post-purchase, club renewal) come built-in and connect cleanly to Klaviyo, HubSpot, and other ESPs. Your story separates your cans from the distributor's shelf; tell it to your own list from within Shopify, on your own schedule.

Just Ask Our Brewery + Cider Clients

More Clients and Case Studies

The Questions Every Brewery Asks Before Migrating

We don't need to sell you on Shopify as a platform capable of handling your ecommerce business. We understand what's holding most brewery and cidery owners back from migrating to a new platform: we've worked with hundreds of ecommerce clients for 20+ years who've all had the same hesitation before making the move.

  • Our compliance works today. A migration could break it.

    Compliance is why we built the Vinoshipper Shopify Checkout App in the first place. We map your legal ship-to states before we touch a line of code; then tax rates, age verification, and shipping permissions are configured and tested against that list. You go live compliant on day one, in every state you can legally serve.

  • We'll lose years of order, club history, and our SEO rankings.

    Order history, customer accounts, club member records, product data, and reviews migrate with you. URL redirects are mapped page by page so your WordPress search equity lands on the new store. We're obsessed with CRO: our migrations have increased conversions by 15% to 150%, on top of the 99.6% average conversion retention.

  • A migration sounds expensive. What will this cost us?

    A data-only migration for stores under $5M starts at $7,500 and takes about 5 weeks. Compare that against what you spend each year on hosting, premium plugin licenses, and developer hours to keep WordPress/WooCommerce working, and the math gets friendly fast. Bigger builds are scoped in writing on the consult call.

  • I don’t have time to manage a project like this.

    A DIY migration can eat months of your working life. Our 300-point migration plan, run by a Shopify Plus Preferred Partner team, moves your data without sacrificing sales while you keep running the business. You make the decisions, we flag exactly when your input is needed, and we handle every other step of the move.

Our Shopify Clients

More Clients and Case Studies

Your Partner in Ecommerce Success

Whirlwind Ecommerce is a Shopify Plus Preferred Partner. Every strategist, designer, and developer on your project is in-house and US-based. The team that onboards you on day one is the team that works on your project all the way through to launch.

Our Process

Whirlwind has been building and rebuilding ecommerce stores since 1999, for more than 200 brands across DTC alcohol, including breweries, cideries, wineries, and distilleries, plus food and beverage, health and nutrition, fashion and beauty, and more.

Conversion rate optimization is the foundation for every ecommerce project our team touches, because we know that increasing revenue is the most important aspect of your business. Our CRO results aren’t just luck; they come from our proven, strategist-led approach on every project:

  • Conversion Rate Optimization

    We include conversion rate optimization in every project, from app integrations to full-service migrations. Our methodologies make it easier to buy: easing checkout, lowering friction, increasing trust, and removing purchase risk.

  • Content Strategy

    Full-service migration projects include persona-based content strategies and copywriting that attract your ideal customers, so you can share your story and sell more at the same time, from your first taproom release to your flagship product.

  • Branding Strategy

    Full-service migrations include visual brand identities that support your content strategy, resonate with your customers, and communicate your values online, on your labels and cans, and in taprooms and retail accounts.

  • Technical Expertise

    From custom development to app integrations, our team's technical expertise makes it easier to sell, with solutions for inventory management, marketplaces, unified commerce, taproom POS integration, and more.

Whether you’re migrating to a new ecommerce platform or optimizing your current one, our Whirlwind Approach can make it easier to buy and easier to sell, so you can see conversion improvements for your ecommerce store.

How It Works: The Taproom Keeps Pouring.

  • Consult.

    You check the cellar before you plan the next brew. Same here: multiple calls where our strategists map your current situation, anxiety points, requirements & expectations, then give you a scoped budget and timeline.

  • Parallel build.

    The taproom keeps pouring while the next batch brews. We build your Shopify store while WordPress + WooCommerce keeps selling, and you review the build as we go. No downtime, no disruptions, no lost sales.

  • Launch.

    When your new batch is ready, you swap the taps, taste, and sell. When your new store goes live, we verify redirects and analytics, then monitor conversions daily against your old WooCommerce baseline. Watch your conversions climb!

You keep selling the whole time.

Whirlwind Makes it Easier to Buy, Easier to Sell

Your customers get a faster store and a one-tap checkout. You get your weekends back from WordPress maintenance.

Book your migration consultation. 30 minutes, with a strategist, free. You leave with a real number and a real timeline, whether or not you hire us.

Email Us @ Info@wwinde.comCall Us @ 888.344.3836