Ruby Pro vs Cave
Cave is a serious product, designed and built by Ross Merken across four decades of order-processing and accounting software for fine-wine importers. If you want a single vendor running purchasing, inventory, accounting, and compliance, it belongs on your list. Three things actually separate us: how much you have to replace on day one, whether you can see the price before you call, and whether the vendor covers the supplier and broker side of this industry at all.
Cave is adopted as the system: purchasing, inventory, sales, accounting, and compliance arrive together. Ruby sells four products separately and you can start with any one. If your pain is pricing, take Ruby Price Management for $25 per state per month and leave your accounting exactly where it is.
Cave publishes no dollar figure anywhere on its site. Ours are all public: Ruby Pro ERP $750 per month plus $90 per user, Ruby CRM $75 per user, Price Management $25 per state, Broker Platform $50 per broker. No setup, implementation, consulting, or transaction fees on any of them.
This one can go against us and you should know it before the call. Cave includes unlimited users in a flat subscription. We charge $90 per user on the ERP. If you have a large rep force all needing system access, run the numbers. Where we usually come out lower is a small back office on ERP seats with the field on CRM seats instead.
Cave serves importers and distributors. Ruby Price Management serves the supplier setting the FOB price into each distributor in each state, showing real margin after excise tax, freight, laid-in cost, depletion allowances, and every deal level. Cave's unlimited state price plans are distributor-side price lists, which is a different job from modeling an FOB.
Cave automates vendor billbacks: the distributor processing what it claims and owes. Ruby does that, and the other direction too. Because pricing lives in a database, a supplier can audit every depletion allowance billback a distributor sends against the deal that was actually approved.
Cave does not serve them. Distributor sales forces are down 15 to 20 percent, suppliers are hiring broker groups to cover the gap, and the reporting burden lands on the broker's back office. The Ruby Broker Platform is $50 per broker per month: brokers log the visit once, suppliers get scorecard, trends, and pipeline automatically.
| What you need | Cave | Ruby Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Integrated accounting (GL, AR, AP) | Yes, native | Yes, native, multi-currency |
| Vintage and lot tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Landed cost with freight and duty | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-warehouse and 3PL inventory | Yes | Yes |
| Distributor billbacks and allowances | Yes, with allowance automation | Yes, earned, claimed, and paid per deal |
| Supplier auditing a distributor's billback | Not offered | Yes, against the approved deal |
| Published distributor data feeds | SevenFifty, Provi, Beverage Data Network, Trade Pulse/VIP, Fintech, public warehouses | Fintech in the states that mandate it. Ask us about the rest before you sign anything |
| Supplier-side FOB price management | Not offered | Ruby Price Management, $25 per state per month |
| Broker group supplier reporting | Not offered | Ruby Broker Platform, $50 per broker per month |
| Field CRM with a license map | Rep order entry (Satellite) | Ruby CRM, 350,000+ active licenses on a map, $75 per user per month |
| User pricing | Unlimited users, flat subscription | $90 per user on ERP, $75 per user on CRM |
| Price published on the website | No | Yes |
| Buy one piece without replacing the rest | Platform adoption | Each product sold separately, start with any one |
| Contract terms | Not published | Month to month, 30-day cancellation, two-page contract |
Cave details above are taken from their own public website as of October 2026. They do not publish a price, so we have not guessed at one. If anything here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
If you are a fine-wine importer-distributor who wants one vendor and one database for the entire operation, and you need the published distributor data feeds — SevenFifty, Provi, Beverage Data Network, Trade Pulse/VIP, public warehouses — Cave documents those and we do not. If you have enough seats that unlimited-user pricing beats per-seat, that is a real arithmetic advantage, not a marketing line.
We will say all of that on the first call. What we would weigh against it: you cannot see Cave's price without a conversation, you replace your whole stack to start, and if you also sell into distributors as a supplier or run a broker group, Cave has nothing for that side of your business.
A vintage substitution on receiving. A freight invoice that showed up six weeks late. A billback from a distributor that does not match the deal you approved. We will show you how Ruby handles it, in about 30 minutes.
Request a DemoOr call us at 484.366.5302.