---
title: Choco alternative for wholesalers
Metadescription: Choco is free to restaurants and billed to suppliers by usage, in Choco's own buyer app. Wholesale Handler is your own ordering portal on a flat fee.
author: Dan Edwards
author_role: Founder
author_url: https://danedwardsdeveloper.com
author_linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-edwards-developer
published: 2026-08-26
updated: 2026-09-27
---

Token estimate: ~2,200

# Choco alternative for wholesalers

Choco is free to the restaurant and billed to the supplier, and the ordering happens inside Choco's app next to every other supplier that restaurant buys from. Wholesale Handler is the other trade, a [wholesale customer portal](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/wholesale-customer-portal) carrying your own customers at a flat monthly fee, with no app in between and no per-customer charge. Choco has reach that a private portal does not.

By **[Dan Edwards](https://wholesalehandler.com/about)**, Founder.

## Choco is free to the restaurant because the supplier funds it

Choco publishes no rate card. The pricing page says only that "we charge a monthly fee depending on your usage of Choco" and routes suppliers to a sales conversation. Its wording for the buyer's side is "Choco is for free for restaurants", with the restaurant page adding no catches and no hidden fees, so the cost of running both sides sits on the distributor.

The one per-customer figure in public is not Choco's. A rival vendor's comparison page states a monthly rate charged per customer that steps down once a supplier passes a hundred customers, and works it through as a four-figure monthly bill for a supplier with eighty accounts. That page is a competitor selling against Choco and carries no date, so the number is directional at best. The structure is the part worth reading, and Choco's own wording agrees with it: the fee tracks usage, so signing a new account is a line on next month's software bill as well as a sale.

| Difference | Choco | Wholesale Handler |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fee shape | Quoted per supplier, tracks usage | A flat monthly fee |
| Buyer's app | Choco's, shared with their other suppliers | Your portal, your customers only |
| Order capture | AI reads whatever the buyer sent | Buyer types into a priced catalogue |
| Invoices | Raised in the distributor's ERP | Raised in the app from processed orders |

## The buyer's app belongs to Choco, not to you

A restaurant on Choco keeps one order guide across every supplier it buys from, preloaded with product codes, units and par levels, and builds it from a supplier's catalogue, an uploaded invoice, a spreadsheet or by hand. Browsing distributor catalogues for new products is a feature of that app. The relationship the buyer has is with Choco, and your catalogue is one tab in it.

Choco is not an open sourcing marketplace, and it says so. A buyer adds a supplier by confirming "I am an existing customer", because Choco only connects businesses that already trade with each other. You are not going to be displaced by a stranger through the app.

You can, though, end up inside it without deciding to. If a restaurant cannot find you on Choco, it fills in a short form, Choco creates a supplier record for you within about a business day, and your orders start arriving through Choco's relay by email, WhatsApp or SMS. That costs you nothing and gives you no account, no catalogue and no control over how your products are listed on the buyer's side.

## Choco reads the order the buyer already sent

Choco's paid product for distributors is capture. OrderAgent takes orders in from email, WhatsApp, SMS, voicemail, photographs and scanned sheets, matches the text to your catalogue and writes the result into your ERP; VoiceAgent takes the phone call live. The buyer's habit does not change, and the ERP stays the system of record, which is also why invoicing does not move onto Choco.

That is a different bet from a portal, where the order arrives structured because the buyer placed it against your live prices and your cutoffs. [Do you need AI to take wholesale orders](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/do-you-need-ai-to-take-wholesale-orders) weighs the two approaches. [Orderlion alternative for wholesalers](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/orderlion-alternative-for-wholesalers) runs the same split against the European platform that search results tend to pair with Choco.

## Wholesale Handler is a private order desk at a fixed price

A flat monthly fee covers the whole product, with no charge per user, no charge per order and no percentage of what you sell, so a busy month costs the same as a quiet one. [Flat-fee wholesale ordering software](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/flat-fee-wholesale-ordering-software) covers what that pricing does and does not include. Up to 3 customers it is free, with no card, and the demo account opens with products, customers, orders and invoices already in it.

What the portal holds:

-   Every customer buys from exactly one price list, and a list can be a percentage of your default list with rounding applied after
-   Order profiles carry delivery days, a cutoff per delivery day, minimum spend, delivery charge and how far ahead an order can be placed, assigned per customer
-   Standing orders place themselves at the cutoff, pause, skip a single delivery, and stop rather than place when the basket falls below the minimum
-   Every order for a date collapses into one make-list, with a printable production sheet and packing slips for one order or a whole selection
-   Catch-weight lines are ordered by the piece, weighed at pick, and re-settle the money before the invoice
-   Processed orders collate into one draft invoice per customer, and finalising emails the PDF
-   Customers and products import from a spreadsheet, and invoice lines export as CSV for your accountant

## Where Choco wins

Reach. Choco carries tens of thousands of distributors and processes over a million orders a month, on a buyer app that is already on the phone of chefs who have not heard of you. Nothing a private portal does replaces that, and a wholesaler whose growth problem is being found rather than being ordered from should weigh it seriously.

It also has 200-plus ERP integrations, a sales rep app with churn and upsell alerts, and the strongest AI capture in the category, including live voice. If your customers will not change how they order and you already run an ERP, that is the product built for the problem.

## What Wholesale Handler does not do

-   No ERP integration and no AI capture. Orders arrive structured or they arrive by phone, and a phone order is typed in by you against the customer's own prices
-   One sign-in per business. Team seats are not built, so a second person cannot have their own sign-in yet
-   No buyer-side app spanning several suppliers. Your customers sign in to your portal
-   The public storefront lists your business and products but has no enquiry form, so a visitor who finds you there cannot yet ask to open an account
-   Invoices do not raise themselves on a schedule. You collate processed orders into drafts when you choose to

## Q&A

**Q: How do you find out what Choco costs?**
A: You ask. Choco quotes each supplier individually and promises a reply within 24 hours of an enquiry. Software directories list the price as available on request and record no free trial, so there is no self-serve way to price it or try it first.

**Q: Does Choco need an ERP to be worth having?**
A: Largely, yes. Onboarding a distributor runs as a request, an initial conversation, an assessment, a customised proposal and then the ERP integration. A wholesaler running on paper and a spreadsheet has nothing for the capture to write into.

**Q: How accurate is Choco's AI order capture?**
A: Choco claims up to 97 per cent accuracy and its published case studies report figures in the mid-nineties, all vendor-supplied. Reviewers on G2 report that the AI occasionally misreads an order and needs oversight, and Choco's own help documentation concedes that new customers and new products match poorly until someone corrects them.

**Q: Can a Wholesale Handler customer order without a sign-in?**
A: Yes. A customer can exist as a managed record with no sign-in at all, with you placing their orders for them, and can be invited to self-serve later without losing any of their history.

**Q: What happens to a Wholesale Handler account that stops paying?**
A: It becomes read-only. Everything you built stays visible, nothing can be changed until you subscribe again, and your customers can cancel or amend existing orders but cannot place new ones.