10 Best Apps for Delivery Route Planning

It can be hard to decide on the best apps for delivery route planning when there are so many vying for your attention.

Perhaps you’re looking for one comprehensive app that solves all your needs in one place? Or maybe you’re looking for something that lets you pick and choose only the features you need and want to pay for? Or maybe you’re looking for free products to support your delivery activities?

Well, whatever you’re looking for, we’ve got it covered in this blog!

Best Apps for Delivery Route Planning: All-In-One Tools

The most straightforward and popular delivery route planning solutions combine:

• Automated route planning and optimisation, plus rerouting and reoptimisation on the fly
• Dynamic ETA calculations, and the power to automate customer notifications
• A wide range of parameters for customising delivery plans (eg vehicle types, return-to-depot, multi-day routing, consideration of traffic conditions
• Proof of Delivery confirmation
• Live vehicle tracking
• Driver-dispatcher communications
• Performance analytics
• Extensive capabilities for integration with other software platforms

In this section, we’re going to look at five of the best apps in this category.

eLogii: for all-round delivery route planning excellence

eLogii combines all of the essential features mentioned above in one sleek, powerful package.

It is particularly strong in respect of:

• Ease of API and webhook integration with third-party applications. While most apps have some sort of support in these areas, eLogii’s offering is far better designed and documented than the norm
  
  
• POD collection, with options including signature, photo, barcode, QR code, alphanumeric code, and even cash-on-delivery - combined with geo- and time-stamping for total transparency
  
  
• Configurability of optimisation parameters. Choose to optimise vehicle loads by weight, volume, pallet number, etc and to optimise routes by territory, driver, and vehicle capabilities, incorporating return-to-depot, multi-day routing, pick-up only tasks, and more

• Massive scalability - eLogii’s technology architecture means that it doesn’t slow down as you increase task numbers

eLogii is the only all-in-one delivery route management app on this list that doesn’t charge on a per driver/vehicle basis, but rather purely on the number of tasks per month - starting from a minimum of 2,500.

While pricing is bespoke, the entry-level is around $359 (£270) per month for an unlimited number of users.

With price scaling by tasks instead of vehicles, eLogii is not only competitive for small businesses - but it is also highly cost-effective for big businesses as well.

Badger Maps: for outside sales agents

Although Badger Maps is a viable app for managing an entire business’s delivery requirements, it’s as a route optimisation tool for outside salespeople where it really excels.

For $49 per month, it allows a driver to create and optimise their own routes using a simple, even fun “lasso” tool. Once you have a list of destinations on a map, simply draw around it and Badger Maps calculates the best route!

If you’re self-employed, this really makes the task of optimising your own routes very straightforward when combined with the ability to upload locations via CSV. For your monthly charge, you also get an account manager and a lot of onboarding help.

As a company-wide solution, Badger Maps is less effective.

At $95 per user per month (and the despatcher counts as a user on top of drivers) the Enterprise package becomes very expensive fast.

Add on top of that:

• A lot of features only become available when you pay for 20 or more users (eg custom map layers, road strategy management, user management)
• ERP and CRM integrations are charged extra

WorkWave: for route optimisation with vehicle management

WorkWave Route Manager has similar capabilities to the other all-in-one tools we look at here, but with an added vehicle and fleet management dimension.

The Route Manager 360+ package offers:

• Hardwired or OBD GPS tracking of vehicles themselves, rather than just driver smartphones - enabling to monitor both, even when drivers are out of the vehicles
• Driver behaviour tracking for improved safety
• Electronic Logging Devices (at an extra charge)

A standard rate card is not available, but it would be reasonable to assume that the $49 per month per driver figure cited below refers to the basic Route Manager tier.

That’s a bit of a problem because, for the same price as some of the other apps listed here, WorkWave Route Manager doesn’t provide:

• Real-time planning
• Barcode scanning
• Customer notifications
• GPS via driver smartphone

The best reason to choose WorkWave Route Manager would be you need the advanced vehicle management options offered by 360+ and plenty to spend.

LogiNext: for route planning within a total logistics ecosystem

LogiNext Mile is the last-mile platform within LogiNext’s wider suite of logistics solutions (eg LogiNext Field, LogiNext Haul, etc). The company markets its solutions as enterprise-level products in the context of a comprehensive “Transportation Automation Platform”.

So, if your needs go beyond delivery management and into wider supply chain optimisation, LogiNext is definitely worth considering.

In terms of features, LogiNext stacks up well against our list of requirements. The only area where it is lacking is in terms of alternatives for calculating vehicle loads. It does not provide the ability to tailor the choice of packages to specific vehicles and drivers automatically, which - for example - eLogii does.

However, LogiNext Miles comes at a high price. Although the Advanced package is showcased at $49 per resource (ie driver or vehicle) per month, the entry-level is 25 resources: a minimum cost of $1,225 (£940) per month, plus a web license cost. And even then, one resource is limited to 100 orders per day.

That’s going to put LogiNext Mile out of reach for firms with smaller fleets.

OptimoRoute: for planning routes over deliveries

As the name suggests, OptimoRoute is primarily a route planning app. So while it has some excellent features in that area, it is not 100% dedicated to the needs of delivery businesses.

For example, it lacks support for barcode scanning as a means of POD collection or wider inventory management.

However, the inclusion of features like multi-day long-haul route planning, weekly delivery planning windows, and the ability to coordinate multiple drivers on complex jobs will make it attractive to many.

OptimoRoute also offers nearly as many options for customising routes, driver, and vehicle specifications as eLogii.

But by opting for a per vehicle pricing mode ($44.10 per month, or around £33), OptimoRoute has limited its appeal primarily to small firms. To run a fleet of 20 vehicles on OptimoRoute, for example, would cost $882 per month.

Not only that, the Pro plan limits the total number of tasks (a pickup or delivery) that can be stored at once to 1,000. Across 20 vehicles, that’s just 50 tasks per vehicle - which could quite easily be less than a day’s work.

Best Apps for Delivery Route Planning: Mix-And-Match Tools

Sometimes a comprehensive solution like those we looked at above is not what your business needs.

Some businesses will only need certain features of the all-in-one delivery route planning apps. Others will have very specific uses cases that require specific solutions.

So, we have included two mix-and-match tools on this list - which let customers build out unique solutions for their own particular circumstances.

Tookan: for industry-specific modules

We’ve written about Tookan before. While it is primarily suitable only for small businesses, we’ve included it here because of the huge ecosystem of add-ons Jungleworks and Tookan users have developed.

As well as enabling users to develop their own bespoke extensions, Tookan has made available loads of vertical-specific modules to tailor its offering to precise needs of various business types, including:

• Mobile laundries
• Cannabis businesses
• Flowers and gift delivery
• Furniture delivery
• Schoolchildren pickup and drop-off

These off-the-shelf modules can be a great way for micro-businesses to start using the tool without a lot of bespoke customisation.

The main downside with Tookan is that pretty much everything useful has to be added onto the entry prices (below) to make it a viable competitor to any of the other tools considered here.

For example, route optimisation has to be paid for at 12 cents per task, while ETA generation is priced from $49 per month.

However, at the Early Stage and Startup levels for businesses with low delivery numbers, Tookan is an attractively-priced and almost infinitely customisable option.

Route4Me: for selecting only the features you need

Route4Me is another app that we’ve reviewed in a previous blog.

We’ve included it on this list of the best delivery route planning apps for one reason: you can pick and choose exactly the features you need, and leave out those you don’t.

Not only does Route4Me offer a massive range of add-on components:

It also offers a huge range of native integrations with other software tools:

This makes Route4Me highly attractive for businesses that have very specific delivery requirements - particularly when the base-level pricing (which includes management of up to ten vehicles per month) is taken into account. An extra ten vehicles adds just £40 (around $55) to the monthly charge.

It should be noted that the entry-level Route Management package excludes automatic route optimisation, making it of minimal use for our purposes.

Nevertheless, even at £159 (around $210) per month for ten vehicles, this is a solid basic offering that enables you to buy in only what you need.

Best Apps for Delivery Route Planning: Free Tools

“Free” is an incredibly powerful word, no matter where you see it.

While these tools won’t give you everything you need for a comprehensive route planning solution, they certainly have their uses - which is why they’re on our best apps for delivery route planning list.

RoadWarrior: for short routes

If you’re looking for basic route optimisation at zero cost, then RoadWarrior is a great option.

The free RoadWarrior Basic subscription lets solo users plan and optimise routes of up to eight stops at a time (with a limit of 50 stops per day).

If you’re a part-time driver or if you’re making small numbers of deliveries for your own business, that might be all you need.

RoadWarrior also has paid packages, which are pretty cheap ($10 per driver per month, plus $10 for the despatcher web app). While it lacks some of the more advanced features that the all-in-one options have, it’s a solid option for a low price - or no price at all.

RouteXL: for small, local teams

Don’t be put off by the black-and-white maps!

In spite of its old-fashioned looks, RouteXL is a well-established route planning tool that still stands up after more than a decade in service - despite having fewer features than its more up-to-date counterparts.

We’ve included it on our best apps list because of the free package, RouteXL20. Users can upload unlimited numbers of routes per day of up to 20 stops.

RouteXL will then use OpenStreetMap data to generate optimised routes. Accuracy is not perfect as this package relies on free geocoding data sources, but you’re working in an area you already know well then that doesn’t need to be a problem.

Waze: for crowdsourced traffic information

OK, this final entry is a little bit different from the others.

Waze is a free satnav app for smartphones, which collects live reports from users about traffic conditions, road closures, accidents, speed traps, police activity, etc, and flags them on a map - suggesting alternate ways around the obstacles.

Some of the apps mentioned above are integrated with Waze’s navigation system (for example, eLogii), but for those that are not this crowdsourced information about real-time road conditions is a really useful complement.

And as you can see above, it brings a bit of fun to the business of route planning!

Best Apps for Delivery Route Planning: Final Verdict

There’s a bewildering range of choices on the market when it comes to route planning software. We want to help you narrow them down to the ones that can make the biggest difference to your business for the least outlay.

So to recap, our recommendations for the ten best delivery route planning apps are:

• eLogii - best all-round, except for very small businesses
• BadgerMaps - best for solo drivers and outside sales
• WorkWave - best where vehicle management functionality is needed
• LogiNext - best for integrated supply chain management
• OptimoRoute - a strong all-rounder, but lacking barcode scanning
• Tookan - best for micro-businesses needing vertical-specific modules
• Route4Me - best for picking only the features you need
• RoadWarrior - best free option for short routes
• RouteXL - best for route optimisation if your drivers are already familiar with the local area
• Waze - a great addition to any of the above!