Is cellartracker.com REALLY free?

Question

I just signed up with cellartracker.com. Before I migrate all my infor (manually!) from cork'd.com to cellartracker.com, I want to know if this "free trial" i signed up for will turn into a payment-required account. (they say cellartracker.com is funded by voluntary contribution?)

Answer 1

It is free "for the foreseeable future". There is a suggested donation of $20 (USD) for those using it to store fewer than 500 bottles, and enough people have volunatrily paid so that CellarTracker creator/owner Eric LeVine can make a living from it.

I do not think that you will regret for one moment your move to CellarTracker. It really is amazing -- there is a lot more to it than appears at first and that you find as you use it.

I moved from Cork'd to CT and started using CT at end of July. I had around 300 wines to enter manually, but since CT already has the details of millions of wine, there was very little need to do other than click an 'add' button and sometimes change a vintage. I think I needed to create an entry for a completely new wine no more than 3 times.

If you have your data in a spreadsheet there is an upload function, and you can download your entire CT database anytime as a spreadsheet for security/backup etc.

I too held off a longtime before committing to an online service for the very reason you name (potential future cost) and also effort of entering all that data and then maybe not having access to it. But I have been so pleased with CT that I myself voluntarily sent my $20 donation, and since I can download my database onto my own PC I am better off than before.

The 3 major strengths of CT are

1) - virtualy all wines are already entered, so there is minimal data entry requirements to add your own wines.
2) - first rate fast support from Eric and via the forum
3) - super reporting on every aspect of your wines.

I thoroughly recommend it -- give it a try -- see how quickly you can add your wines even manually. Any questions or problems just ask on the forum. I don't think you'll return to Cork'd.

Answer 2

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