DISTRYB vs. Provi
Provi is an ordering marketplace: search your distributors' catalogs, build a cart, send it to a rep. DISTRYB is that too — and it keeps watching after the order. Because the same system carries the product from the production line to the person who drinks it, it can answer the question an order form never could: what should I be moving right now. Demand as it happens, on one record that runs the whole chain — for every beverage you sell, not only the ones that need a liquor licence. And because that catalog is published for machines as well as people, an AI assistant can find your products and hand a shopper a checkout link.
If you want a faster way to send orders to reps, both products do that, and Provi has more distributors signed up than we do — that is the one place we are genuinely behind. Everything else on this page comes down to a single difference: Provi records the order, DISTRYB runs the chain the order sits in. Which is why only one of them can tell you what is selling in your state this week, and what you should be carrying that you are not.
What each one is
Provi describes itself as the largest e-commerce marketplace for beverage alcohol. Buyers search across their distributors’ catalogs, build one cart and send each order to the right rep. Distributors connect it to their ERP and take digital orders. Brands buy placement and read market-share data.
- One cart across your distributors’ catalogs
- Message your sales rep in the same place
- ERP-integrated order routing for distributors
- Biddable ads and US market-share data for brands
DISTRYB is an ordering marketplace and the system the beverage business runs on — production, distribution, the shelf and the consumer on one record. The buyer catalog shows every distributor that can legally serve your premise and state, not only the ones you already have an account with. Alcohol carries the extra rules it has to; a zero-ABV product runs the same rails without them. And because the chain does not stop at the order, the platform can tell you what is actually moving, where, and what you should carry next.
- What is selling in your state, and what you are not carrying
- Live velocity, momentum and repeat rate per brand
- One cart across every distributor that can serve you
- Three-tier legality enforced at order creation
- Alcohol and zero-ABV on the same rails, gated differently
- Your own DTC storefront on Bottl.Service
The short version: Provi records the order. DISTRYB runs the chain the order sits in — which is why only one of them can show you every distributor's price for the same bottle side by side, tell you what is selling in your state this week, and name what you should be carrying that you are not.
One chain, from production to the glass
Provi's record is the wholesale order, so its view begins when a buyer places one and ends when the distributor fills it. DISTRYB carries the same product across every link — because it also runs the production side and, in Bottl.Service, the consumer one — across the whole beverage catalogue, alcoholic and not. That is not a longer feature list. It is the reason a question like “what should I put on the truck this week” has an answer here at all.
The two middle links are where both platforms operate. The two ends are what turn a record of orders into a read on demand.
Decisions, not dashboards
Data across the whole chain is only worth the report you would otherwise have built by hand. PLUG, the assistant inside your dashboard, reads your own records and answers in the terms the decision is actually made in. These are questions it answers today, not a roadmap.
Anything drawn from other businesses leaves as an aggregate only — never a seller's name, and never a cell thin enough to point at one competitor. Your own numbers are yours; the market's are the market's.
Example output with sample data, not real distributors or prices. The shape is real: one product, every distributor licensed to serve your premise and state, sorted by price with your margin worked out. On a catalog-per-distributor model this is four tabs and a calculator.
What each one covers
| Capability | Provi | DISTRYB |
|---|---|---|
| Ordering & selling wholesale | ||
| Order from several distributors in one place | The core product | Every distributor that can serve your licence |
| Discover products and distributors you do not already buy from | Search across the marketplace | Availability-driven: premise, state and territory aware |
| Talk to the rep about the order | Built-in rep messaging | Thread stays attached to the order |
| Distributor-side order management | Routes into the ERP you run | DISTRYB is the system of record |
| Every distributor’s price for the same product, side by side | Search spans your distributors’ catalogs | Price-sorted, cheapest flagged, margin computed |
| Per-account and per-location wholesale pricing | Custom pricing and deals | |
| Purchase orders and receiving into stock | ||
| Compliance & licensing | ||
| Three-tier legality checked before the order exists | Blocked with a reason, not flagged after | |
| Per-SKU state registration gating the purchase | ||
| TTB and state licences verified and on file | Verified at onboarding | |
| State delinquent-retailer lists enforced on wholesale orders | Blocked until the delinquency clears | |
| Public licensing directory | distryb.com/directory | |
| Zero-ABV products freed from the alcohol gates | No 21+, no per-SKU registration, no liquor licence | |
| Operations & money | ||
| Multi-warehouse inventory with cost basis | ||
| Beverage-excise returns and their schedules | Generated from your ledger, on your state’s forms | |
| QuickBooks sync for COGS, fees and payouts | ||
| Invoicing, statements and ACH pay links | Payment at checkout | Full A/R, both directions |
| Broker commissions and Stripe Connect payouts | ||
| Bonded warehouse / 3PL bailment ledger | Goods you hold but do not own | |
| Real-time demand & decisions | ||
| What is selling in your state right now, across sellers | Category momentum and top movers, anonymised | |
| The products you are NOT carrying that are moving | “You carry 6 of the top 10” | |
| Live velocity, momentum and repeat rate for a brand | 30-day sales by product line | Units/week, week-over-week, account repeat |
| Consumer-side demand, not just wholesale orders | DTC, social engagement and buyer questions | |
| How your prices compare locally | Anonymised, by state and area | |
| An AI you can ask, that reads your own data | PLUG — demand, readiness, sourcing, pitch | |
| Agent-native commerce | ||
| AI assistants can find your products directly | Public MCP server — no key, no scraping | |
| An assistant can hand the shopper a checkout link | Hosted checkout; the agent never touches payment or age | |
| State legality checked before an agent promises a shipment | Per SKU, per state, 21+ where it applies | |
| A published machine-readable map of the site | /llms.txt, kept in sync with what we cover | |
| AI crawlers explicitly welcomed rather than blocked | Named in robots.txt, training opt-ins included | |
| Demand & data | ||
| Which accounts actually carry your brand | Counts of new, maintained and lost PODs | The named businesses — premise, licence class, units, last order |
| Which of your accounts have gone quiet | Lapsed accounts ranked by how long since they ordered | |
| Market share across the whole US category | Category and subcategory, US-wide | Deeper per state, from real sell-through — 11 live and growing |
| Paid placement in front of buyers | Biddable ads, 200K+ buyers | Discovery is not for sale — by design |
| Your own direct-to-consumer storefront and local delivery | Bottl.Service | |
| Documented public API for your own data | REST, with reference docs | |
| Shopping-feed export for channels that ban alcohol | Zero-ABV SKUs to Google Merchant | |
Compliance rules, registrations and excise forms are per state — they are configuration, not code, so a new market is a new set of rules rather than a new product. Which states are live today is in what Provi has that we don't, below.
Where they actually overlap
The top of that table is real overlap, not a hedge: finding a product, finding a distributor, and placing the order. Both products do all three. The difference is what the order is attached to. On Provi the order is the artifact — routed to a rep, landing in whatever system that distributor already runs. On DISTRYB the order is an event in a ledger that already holds both licences, the product's state registrations, the stock it draws down, the cost basis it consumes, the invoice it raises, and the gallonage line it will appear on at the end of the month.
That is also why a compliance failure looks different on each. An order that state law does not permit is something you normally find out about later, from someone else. On DISTRYB it is never created.
Nobody buys their way to the top
Provi sells biddable ad placement — a brand can pay to sit in front of a buyer's search. That is a real business, and it is the opposite of how DISTRYB is built.
There is no paid placement anywhere in DISTRYB. Not a sponsored rank, not a promoted tier, not a plan that buys a better position in a catalog. What a buyer sees is decided by licence, state registration, territory, and what is actually in stock — so a one-person brand in its first state appears on the same terms as a national portfolio, because the order of that list is a fact about legality and availability rather than about spend. The only thing money buys here is the software.
Brands can advertise on Bottl.Service, the consumer app — a separate product, with a separate audience, where a paid post carries an automatic FTC #ad disclosure naming the advertiser. Even there the fences hold: a sponsored post cannot display a retailer's prices, and a brand cannot choose which shops appear in “available near you”. None of it reaches the wholesale side.
The one thing metered on the trade side is cold outreach — a first message to a business you have never dealt with spends a reach credit, refunded the moment they reply. That is a limit on unsolicited contact, not a lane to buy: replying is always free, talking to people you already trade with is always free, and no amount of it moves you up anyone's results.
A buyer's list is the same list whoever is looking at it. That is the line, and we built the market around it rather than bolting it on afterwards.
What Provi has that we don’t
Which one you need
Why move, and what it takes
Every order placed somewhere else is a hole in the record this runs on. An order that lands in Provi does not draw down your stock, consume your cost basis, raise your invoice, or reach the demand signal that tells you what to carry next. Running both keeps the ordering convenience and gives up the reason you came. That is not a lock-in argument — it is arithmetic about a single ledger.
Put one month through it
Everything on this page — what is selling in your state, which of your accounts have gone quiet, what you should carry next — is computed from orders that actually ran through the platform. So the honest test is not a demo. Move one location's ordering for a month, import the history behind it, and read what comes back. Retailers start free.
Provi is a trademark of Provi, Inc. DISTRYB is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Provi. The Provi column reflects capabilities described on Provi's public product pages as of August 2026; it cannot account for anything sold privately or released since. If we have a row wrong, write to accounts@distryb.com and we will correct this page.