Whether your main concern is route optimization, delivery planning, or operational efficiency, growing numbers of businesses like yours are looking for alternatives to Onfleet.
Maybe it’s too expensive for what you get.
Maybe you need to be able to define more delivery, driver, and vehicle parameters than Onfleet can handle.
Or maybe it’s something else.
To help you find the right software for your business, we recently analyzed in detail 40K route optimization software reviews:
And now we’re taking an in-depth look at Onfleet and three of the best alternatives on the market.
Expectations around deliveries have skyrocketed since the start of the pandemic.
The old model, where companies take (for example) two to five working days for delivery just doesn’t cut it anymore. Next-day or even same-day is what shoppers and businesses now demand. That, along with clear, up-to-the-minute information about when their packages are going to arrive.
Source: freepik.com
For businesses, this puts huge demands on their logistics arrangements. And with last-mile delivery accounting for 41% of total supply chain costs in 2020, the need to optimize the system has never been greater.
Onfleet does a great job in this space and it handles millions of deliveries in more than 90 countries. But is it right for your business? We’re going to take you through the pros and cons of some of the best alternatives, and why they might suit your needs better.
Onfleet was one of the pioneers of the SaaS model in delivery management software that charges a flat rate subscription fee up to a fixed number of monthly “tasks” (i.e. pickups and deliveries). Go over that limit and you’ll be charged anywhere between 13 and 18 cents per task, depending on which product tier you’re on.
It’s a great last-mile solution for small to medium companies that need to handle moderate delivery volumes – although if you’re too small, the flat rate works against you.
Onfleet has a clean, attractive user interface for both admins and drivers, and it’s simple enough for non-specialists to get up to speed quickly while offering lots of powerful functionality.
In terms of what users think, Onfleet gets a score of 4.6 out of 5 on G2, and 4.7 on both Capterra and GetApp.
All of Onfleet’s packages provide:
But the Starter package – with its attractive $149 per month flat rate charge (when billed annually – it’s $199 when you pay monthly) – is missing a lot of what all but the smallest companies are going to expect as standard. For example:
The Basic package (starting at $349 per month) includes these, but it only provides 2,500 tasks per month and it lacks barcode scanning and age verification. You’ll need to upgrade again to get those.
However, it is very easy to get started with and provides some great analytics views that can help you identify areas for savings and service improvements.
At $799 per month for the Premium package – the minimum level that provides most of what a logistics manager will be looking for in a planning, routing, and dispatch software solution – Onfleet is not cheap.
And with a minimum commitment of one year at that level, you don’t have flexibility if Onfleet doesn’t do what you need.
While the Basic package provides a free trial and 90-day contract terms, with only 2,500 actions per month it may not be feasible to use as a test run for medium-sized and larger businesses exploring their options.
OK, so you may have noticed that this is the eLogii blog…
Naturally, we think we have the best alternative to Onfleet but we don’t expect you to just take our word for it! We’ll aim to show – as objectively as possible – how for many use cases, eLogii meets businesses’ needs better than any of these competitors.
eLogii is a cloud-based, end-to-end enterprise delivery management software solution that enables you to digitize your last-mile operations and better plan, route, and optimize your delivery and/or field operations.
It’s built for businesses of any size, in any vertical, that want to get the most out of their fleets at the lowest cost. Unlike Onfleet and, say, Tookan, which are designed for small businesses and struggle to meet the needs of large enterprises.
Where eLogii stands out is:
Tools that are aimed at a wide market usually achieve this by having a one-size-fits-all approach, but not eLogii. With lots of configurable functions, it’s ideal for verticals as diverse as medical and pharmaceutical, food and drink, 3PL, and couriers.
It also makes it possible to provide a standard of customer experience that the competition will find hard to match. We’re talking delivery notifications, accurate ETAs, and electronic Proof of Deliveries (ePODs).
We’ll get onto pricing shortly, but hold that thought while we look at functionality…
Above all, eLogii includes automatic route planning for all users – enabling you to identify the most efficient routes with just two clicks and in an average of 15 seconds. With Onfleet, you simply don’t get that in the Starter package.
Plus, eLogii lets you manage the widest range of parameters, constraints, and special requirements in optimizing routes, timings, and costs of any tool available. For example:
This lets your team get really specific about customer experience, making ETAs more accurate and allowing for a far greater range of unexpected factors. It also gives you total visibility over your drivers and their timings.
Thirdly, eLogii enables you to update and re-optimize routes live while drivers are in transit. If a customer has to dash out at their designated slot, it’s a simple drag-and-drop operation to reorder the driver’s task list – and the technology will recalculate the optimal routes and new delivery times.
You might think a tool with so many options would be complicated to use. That’s not the case with eLogii. The user interface is extremely straightforward, and the learning curve has been designed by UX experts to be very easy to grasp.
Indeed, eLogii was built with day-to-day users in mind rather than people with explicit training in logistics or delivery management – and yet its exceptional design means that it can be configured to optimize performance for virtually any business.
But like we said, don’t just take our word for it. Listen to the users: eLogii has a 4.9 out of 5 rating on Capterra and GetApp.
As you might expect for something so flexible, eLogii has a lot of different pricing options that reflect individual users’ needs.
But with our entry price of just $359 per month for unlimited users and drivers – including all of the features discussed above (many of which Onfleet holds back from lower-tier customers, if it even has them) – eLogii is highly competitive.
Bringg is an Israel-headquartered tech business that provides a cloud platform that connects, automates, and orchestrates supply chains and people – primarily in a last-mile context.
Bringg is primarily aimed at large enterprises in retail, food and grocery, and healthcare. Their customers include Walmart, the Co-Op, Coca-Cola, and KFC.
While Bringg does have smaller customers, its services are tailored most to big delivery businesses, where deliveries and supply chains are integrated and which can make use of both their delivery and backend management capabilities.
Bringg offers similar features to Onfleet – including driver management, route optimization, real-time visibility, a mobile app, analytics, POD collection, etc. – but integrates all this into a wider logistics and inventory management system.
For example, it allows all packages to be allocated a barcode (a POD-only paid-for extra with Onfleet) that enables inventory management and tracking back in the warehouse, as well as on-route.
With an open API, Bringg can easily be integrated into eCommerce and other platforms to automate your entire business.
Of course, getting these benefits requires a relatively long lead time. And this is not an enterprise delivery management system that’s easy to just pick up and implement. It’s complex, reflecting its end-to-end design.
And as you can see, Bringg has a tired-looking user interface that could use a refresh!
A fair number of reviewers have noted the Bringg app’s tendency to crash when overwhelmed. It scores 3.5 on G2, and 4.8 on Capterra and GetApp.
And there are a few strange omissions. There’s no Geofencing (offered as standard by eLogii and Tookan, for example), for example. And options for customizing the UI are very limited.
However, if you’re a bigger business running integrated supply chain and delivery operations, Bringg can do a lot more to optimize your activities than Onfleet can by itself.
Good question.
Bringg’s pricing is not made publicly available. It would seem to be tiered based on delivery numbers, as that’s a question you have to answer when booking a sales meeting.
Nor is there a free trial available.
So, when it comes to Bringg’s price competitiveness, you’ll have to figure that out for yourselves!
Jungleworks’ Tookan offers delivery management software that’s a bit different than most delivery tools. It’s part of a wider suite of products and add-ons that allows users to tailor truly unique solutions.
Tookan is best suited for smaller businesses handling local deliveries with an in-house driver team (e.g., taxi companies, restaurants, etc.). It has a very low entry price, a 14-day free trial, and it’s renowned for being easy to use.
Plus, native integrations with Jungleworks’ other software tools mean that Tookan can be fitted into a wide variety of “off the peg” custom IT ecosystems.
Tookan has a lot of great features:
Where it stands out is through the ecosystem of add-ons that Jungleworks has created. If the marketplace doesn’t have what you need, you can build an extension yourself or connect to third-party tools via Zapier.
It even provides custom order forms that plug straight into the dispatch system, rather than requiring you to integrate your own, which is brilliant for micro-businesses.
Tookan also provides some of the most comprehensive training materials for users out there, right down to the level of how to build integrations.
However, compared to the other apps we looked at, Tookan’s review profile is somewhat less positive: it scores 4.2 out of 5 on G2 and 4.3 on Capterra and GetApp. Quite a few reviews mention software glitches and customer service issues – but just as many say the opposite!
When you look at those entry-level prices, you can see why Tookan is extremely attractive to micro-businesses. Pricing is also task-based, and you might be forgiven for thinking that – with a 5,000 task limit – Tookan’s Standard package beats the competition.
But wait! Tookan’s modular structure means that you have to pay extra for a lot of features that come as standard in the alternatives. Route optimization costs 12 cents extra per task, for example. Optimizing the routes for 5,000 tasks would add $600 a month to the $359 price. ETAs on your dashboard cost $49 a month, and so on.
Tookan can quickly end up being a very expensive option.
So there you have it: the pros and cons of Onfleet and its three leading competitors – eLogii, Bringg, and Tookan.