GetSwift Review - We Used GetSwift for 30 Days, Here’s What We Found

GetSwift is a delivery management software that’s supposed to help you manage your delivery services from A to Z.

Moreover, it’s advertised as the go-to solution for businesses of all kinds, shapes and sizes that deal with deliveries in one way or another.

But is it really so?

Is GetSwift the right choice for your business in particular?

This is probably the question that got you here to begin with, and if that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place because we’re here to provide you with all the answers.

In this blog, we’ll:

1. Cover GetSwift’s features from top to bottom;
2. Explain which businesses will benefit the most from using it;
3. Finally, as a bonus, we’ll offer an alternative solution for those businesses who’d be better off without GetSwift.

TLDR

• GetSwift is a delivery management software that has many various features
• Despite its numerous features, GetSwift is seriously lacking a wider range of POD collection methods, as well as options for multi-day and multi-stop routing, and other advanced routing options
• Users have also frequently reported technical issues, especially with GetSwift’s mobile app
• Due to its per-delivery pricing policy, GetSwift is best suited for the smallest businesses with a low number of deliveries per month
• Medium and large businesses, as well as those that generally need more advanced options, will find eLogii to be a much better fit

Our method of research

We’ve used GetSwift during its trial period to see what it has to offer to its users, but we didn’t stop there.

We’ve also:

• Interviewed a dozen former and present users to see how they feel about GetSwift’s features and functionality;
• Read through customer reviews and ratings on all the relevant SaaS rating sites, such as G2, Capterra and GetApp.

The factors we’ve considered when evaluating GetSwift

Since we know a thing or two about last-mile delivery management solutions - as we’ve developed one ourselves - we know what it has to include in order to provide optimal results.

So, we’ve made sure to pay special attention to GetSwift’s:

• Ease of use;
• Key delivery management features;
• Shortcomings;
• Pricing;
• Primary use case.

And now, without further ado, let’s dive into a detailed GetSwift review.

GetSwift Review - Ease of Use

At first glance, GetSwift’s interface seems pretty intuitive, although there are many features, so it will inevitably take some time before you fully wrap your head around them.

There is a support section on their site, which has articles divided into several different categories, depending on whether you’re a merchant who manages deliveries, a driver, or need help integrating GetSwift with other apps and tools.

Personally, we didn’t have much trouble with GetSwift, but we’ve used it for only 30 days.

On the other hand, clients who’ve used GetSwift for extensive periods seem to have mixed feelings about both GetSwift’s UI and their customer support service.

In fact, their Ease of Use and Customer Service scores are pretty low, especially compared to some of their alternatives.

Users have reported multiple issues with GetSwift, including:

• Notifications being late and/or inaccurate;
• Compatibility problems, as the mobile app has trouble functioning on certain OS (e.g. some versions of Android);
• Custom-added features are prone to lagging;
• Customer support is often unavailable or doesn’t provide the necessary help and answers.

The verdict

To put it in the words of one of GetSwift’s users, this app has great potential but can be pretty buggy.

In addition, GetSwift’s customer support is far from great, meaning you’ll often be left to your own devices when something goes wrong.

These are all things to remember when deciding whether GetSwift is a good choice for you.

GetSwift Review - Key Delivery Management Features

To help you get a clearer picture of GetSwift’s features, we’ve divided them into three categories that cover the essential areas every good delivery management software should cover.

Routing

When it comes to route management capabilities, GetSwift offers several, such as:

• Automated route optimization - the algorithm considers factors such as drivers’ skills, vehicle capacity, and the overall distance when calculating the optimal route. However, it’s not as fit for quickly adjusting to unforeseen events that happen on the road as we’d like;

• Automatic dispatching - integrations with online ordering systems and point of sales allow the platform to automatically get dispatched to the nearest available driver;
• Real-time driver and vehicle tracking - so you’ll know where each driver and vehicle are at any given moment. Moreover, you’ll get alerted if a driver’s running late so you can adjust accordingly and minimise the potential damage.

Operational efficiency

This section includes various features that are supposed to help you use your fleet in the best way possible and easily integrate with other parts of the supply chain, and GetSwift has the following:

• Vehicle capacity configuration options - you can easily set up the type, load limits and maximum capacity of each vehicle in your fleet.

That way, when you add a new task or job - provided you’ve added parameters for job capacity - GetSwift will compare them to the available vehicle types and their capacities. If the total size of the load for this job exceeds available vehicles’ capacity, you will be informed;

• Setting up drivers’ schedules - so you’ll know at any time which driver is available, and as it works both ways, your drivers will always be in the know about their shifts;
• Driver app - a dedicated mobile app makes driver management much easier, as it allows seamless communication between dispatcher and drivers, collecting POD, enables drivers to have an overview of their jobs for the day, declare their availability, etc.;

• Analytics - having a clear overview of all the vital data significantly leverages your overall efficiency, as it provides insight into what you’re doing right and what needs to be improved. GetSwift’s analytics dashboard will include stats on drivers’ performance, average delivery time, average distance, etc.;
• Integrations - these are vital for enabling you to manage your entire operational chain as effectively as you can. On top of having a well-documented API and webhooks, GetSwift also has many native integrations with various POS systems, ecommerce, and online ordering platforms.

Customer satisfaction

Since 84% of customers will not return to a retailer after one poor delivery experience, making your customers happy is key to retaining them and winning over new ones.

GetSwift has a number of features to help you with this, including:

• Notifications - automated notifications from every vital stage of the route to keep customers informed about their order’s current status and the ETA. There’s also an option for live tracking of their order on the map via a web link;

• POD - collecting proof of delivery is a sure way to always know where an order ended up and if it was delivered in the right place, which can be especially handy in a dispute. GetSwift enables you to set up mandatory POD collection for a certain order, but the only methods of POD GetSwift supports are taking a photo or an e-signature.

However, GetSwift lacks one of the most broadly used POD methods - barcode scanning.

Barcode scanning is crucial for several reasons:

• Barcodes help drivers to confirm package identity at high speed
• They can make handling returns much less time consuming
• Barcodes allow goods to be tracked throughout the entire shipping process, helping with inventory management, quality assurance, and more.

This means that GetSwift’s inability to scan barcodes (or QR codes) can be a significant shortcoming for many prospective users.

The verdict

Although GetSwift has lots of functionality, that doesn’t necessarily make it a great choice for everyone, especially considering that it comes with quite a few faults.

Namely, users constantly report lots of technical issues and difficulties in accommodating non-standard requirements, so it’s no wonder its Features score isn’t exactly on the high end of the spectrum.

Moreover, GetSwift has only two POD collection methods which don’t include barcode scanning, which has become particularly important.

So, although it is a feature-rich solution on the one hand, on the other, you should be prepared for facing potential glitches, as well as be able to work with a minimal number of POD methods.

GetSwift Review - Pricing

What makes GetSwift a particularly interesting delivery management platform is its pricing policy.

GetSwift functions on an entirely per-delivery pricing basis, and it has no upfront costs nor actual pricing packages to speak of.

It is billed at 0.29$ per task, i.e. per delivery.

As you can see, that price includes pretty much all of the features we’ve discussed, making GetSwift a very attractive option at first sight.

But there’s a catch.

GetSwift is a very affordable solution for small businesses that don’t have that many deliveries to take care of.

For example, if you own a business with about 200 deliveries per month, the monthly costs for using GetSwift would be no bigger than $58, which is a bargain.

However, things look significantly different once you amp up the workload.

If you’re dealing with about 5000 tasks per month, which is a very reasonable number for medium to large businesses, expect to pay as much as $1450.

And the costs will just keep going up as you scale.

The verdict

The per-delivery pricing makes GetSwift a very affordable option for the smallest of businesses that manage no more than a couple of hundred deliveries per month.

At the same time, however, such a pricing policy makes GetSwift a choice far from optimal for medium and large businesses.

So, medium, large, or scaling businesses will be much better off with delivery management solutions with fixed monthly fees, so they’ll know in advance what kind of expenses to expect.

Moreover, this pricing policy makes GetSwift inadequate for certain types of businesses that deal with transportation, but not always with last-mile delivery per se.

For example, suppliers that have to make several stops at vendors for pick-ups before getting the product back to the warehouse would be charged for each stop all the same, just like a regular delivery service, which doesn’t make much financial sense for these businesses.

GetSwift Review - Shortcomings

Although we’ve mentioned most of these earlier in the text, we’ll list them all here for a clearer overview of the possible issues you could have with GetSwift.

• It’s prone to bugs and glitches - especially when it comes to more advanced and custom-added features;
• The driver mobile app isn’t compatible with some OS;
• It doesn’t have barcode scanning as a POD collection method, as it offers only the most basic POD methods, i.e. photo and e-signature;
• It doesn’t have options for effectively managing multi-day or multi-stop routes;
• Its per-task pricing policy makes it a bad choice for medium and large businesses, as any increase in the number of deliveries you perform monthly will cause the costs to skyrocket before you know it.

GetSwift Review - Primary Use Case

Once you consider GetSwift’s essential features, shortcomings and especially its pricing policy, there can be only one conclusion.

GetSwift is best suited for the smallest businesses that deal with last-mile delivery alone, i.e., getting the order to the end customer’s doorstep.

On the other hand, large and medium businesses won’t get the same benefits from GetSwift, as it’s far from the most affordable option when you have to manage several thousand deliveries per month.

Moreover, GetSwift isn’t a viable option for businesses that manage a wider supply chain or any other complex logistics operations.

GetSwift’s per-task pricing and lack of multi-day and multi-stop routing functionality make it an inadequate solution for these types of businesses.

GetSwift Review - Best GetSwift alternative

So, if your business is aiming to scale or is already a medium or large business, GetSwift just won’t do the trick for you.

eLogii, on the other hand, is a cloud-based delivery management platform that will have you covered in all the areas in which GetSwift leaves much to be desired, as it has:

• Dynamic routing;
• Other advanced routing options, such as multi-day, multi-stop, return to depot functionality, etc.

• Numerous highly customisable operational parameters that enable things such as vehicle load optimization, among others;
• Various features that ensure optimal customer experience, including real-time automated notifications, calculations and recalculations of ETA, delivery live-tracking, customer feedback functionality, etc.

• Widest range of POD methods on the market (including barcode and QR scanning, among others);
• A designated mobile app and drivers’ profiles dashboard for seamless management and communication;

• A well-documented API to allow integration with all the other tools and technologies you use.

Moreover, eLogii doesn’t have one-size-fits-all pricing packages, which makes it an ideal solution for small, medium and large businesses alike.

eLogii comes with custom-tailored pricing plans that are based on your business’s particular configuration and needs, with the typical entry-level price for 2500 tasks.

Finally, with an average customer rating of 4.8, it’s clear that eLogii has quite an edge over GetSwift in all the essential areas.

(Source: GetApp)

GetSwift Review - Key Takeaways

1. GetSwift isn’t the easiest delivery management platform to use since it can be pretty glitchy, especially when it comes to the more advanced features

2. GetSwift is quite feature-rich, but it omits some critical functionality, such as multi-day and multi-stop routing and return to depo option, among others

3. GetSwift has only two very basic ways of POD collection - photo and signature - while it lacks barcode and QR scanning, which is a problem for many users

4. Its per-delivery pricing policy makes it a good fit only for the smallest businesses that find GetSwift affordable due to a lower number of deliveries per month

5. Medium and large businesses, as well as all businesses who need more advanced routing options and more methods of POD, will be much better off with eLogii