Routific Not the Right Fit? Check Out These 4 Alternatives

So you’ve looked at Routific and you’re not sure it’s right for you — but what are the alternatives? 

We’d love to say we’re perfect for any delivery business, but the truth is that we’re not the right fit for everyone. And since we’re all about efficiency, we’d like you to find the best route planning software for your needs as fast as possible — even if that means using one of Routific’s competitors!  

In this article we’ll look at the strengths and weaknesses of our own route optimization and delivery planning app, and then look at the best alternatives for different delivery operations and business needs. At the end, we’ve included a section on how to choose delivery management and route optimization software, including what features are standard and how to test each app for yourself. 

💡Too much reading? Want to talk it over with a human? Set up a call and we can walk you through the options. 

Let’s get right to it:

What are Routific’s strengths?

1. Routific has the best route optimization algorithm in the market

When people switch to us from a competitor, it’s usually because they need better route optimization. We put a lot of effort into constantly improving our core algorithm, using AI and machine learning to refine the results. After more than a decade of experience and listening to our customers, we focus on:

• Driver-friendly routes that don’t need manual editing. That means we avoid criss-crossing spaghetti routes, doubling back, and other things that really annoy drivers.
• When a dispatcher or delivery manager does need to edit a route (because hey, stuff happens), we make it easy with a choice of map or timeline view, combined with simple drag-and-drop stop editing. We also have a batch editing feature for moving a group of stops all at once.
• We have super-accurate traffic prediction and ETAs.

2. Routific’s customer support is great

Most of our customers are small-to-medium sized businesses, making anything from a few dozen to a few thousand deliveries a day. As a small business ourselves, when we need help we want to talk to a human who knows their product, and is empowered to solve problems — so that’s what our customer support team aims to deliver. And it’s working! We maintain a 98% customer satisfaction rate.

Here are some direct quotes from our customers:

“The value for money and customer support have been second to none.” — Hamu, Dispatch Manager in a construction business.

“Whenever we have had a question or issue, customer service has been right on top of it and fixed it extremely quickly.” — Ginger, owner of a meal delivery company.

“The team behind this service is just awesome. They are knowledgeable, responsive, and genuinely invested in helping their users succeed.” — Alyssa S, retail CEO

3. Routific is easy to use

For SMBs, this is a big deal. Nobody in a small- to medium-sized business can take days or weeks off for a training course to learn complicated new route optimization software! So our priority is to make our software easy to use with no training. If there are questions, our customer support team and library of articles is available to fill in the gaps. 

4. Routing engine API

Routific offers two APIs. The first is fairly common among our competitors, the second is rare:

1. Our Platform API makes it easy to pull data from your backend systems like a CRM or order management system into our web app, without the need to create and upload spreadsheets. 
2. Our easy-to-use stand-alone Routing Engine API allows customers to add our route optimization algorithms to their own in-house systems. 

Read more about our APIs.

5. We offer a no-strings free trial — no credit card needed

We get it — having to hand over credit card information just to try out an app that might not work for us is a big turnoff. That’s why our 7-day trial is free, unlimited, and doesn’t need a credit card. 

If you need more time to test, our support team can usually help out.  

Routific’s main weaknesses

Nobody can be the best at everything! Here are some cases where a Routific alternative might be a better fit for you:

1. On-demand delivery

If you’re a restaurant or other business that sends out deliveries as soon as the orders come in, Routific is not a great fit. Uber Eats, DoorDash, Skip The Dishes, or the equivalent service in your city or country would be a better bet. 

While Routific is a great option for delivering perishable goods, it is better suited for businesses that have pre-scheduled deliveries at least a few hours in advance. Think meal prep kits, grocery boxes, frozen meals, or beverages. 

Greenhouse Juice is a great example: They deliver fresh-pressed, organic juices to households and retailers across Canada. They need to deliver fast, but not 15-minutes fast. Fresh juices will keep a couple of days if properly refrigerated, so Greenhouse allows customers to order up to midnight for next-day delivery.

2. Return to depot functionality

If your drivers need to make multiple trips to and from a depot or warehouse to complete their  delivery routes, a Routific alternative might be a better bet for you. 

This is a common need for businesses that make deliveries with small vehicles like cars, bikes, scooters, and ebikes. A smaller vehicle might need to return to the depot several times a day to reload for the next round of deliveries.  

Routific can handle this scenario to a limited extent, by planning routes according to morning and afternoon shifts, for example. But right now it’s not core functionality (although it is on our future development roadmap).

3. Barcode scanning

If your business needs to scan barcodes as part of its delivery management process, you may run into issues with Routific.

A common use case for this would be delivering multiple parcels that have to be scanned to update a delivery status. 

4. Limited support for multi-day routing

Routific doesn’t support multi-day routing, where a business needs to plan routes over the course of multiple days.

Let’s say you have to complete 1,000 stops during the week. You need your route planning software to help out by suggesting which deliveries should go on which days — for example, by automatically grouping all the deliveries to the east side of the city on Tuesdays. 

Multi-day routing is also a common need for companies that do sales and field service calls. A lot of people schedule routine maintenance calls in specific areas each day — say the west side on Mondays and downtown on Tuesdays. When a downtown service request comes in, you want to be sure it gets scheduled for a Tuesday if possible. 

This is not something Routific can do easily right now. 

New Routific vs old Routific

During 2024 we’re starting to transition to an updated version of Routific. It features a fresh user interface and more sophisticated planning options for dispatchers. The roadmap for future development includes improved reporting and analytics, customer profile management, an enhanced pickup and delivery algorithm, and more. The new Routific also offers better support for multi-day routing for some use cases.

Here’s a preview of the difference:

For now, the new Routific is still in public beta form, so we’re offering it to a limited number of users. If you’d like to know more, contact our sales and support team. 

That sums up the major strengths and weaknesses of Routific, as we’ve heard them from our customers. In the next sections, we’ll look at:

1. Standard features you should look for in any routing software solution. 
2. Which Routific alternatives are best for different business needs.

Standard route planning and delivery management features 

Route planning and delivery management software is evolving fast. Some features that were differentiators a couple of years ago are now table stakes — basic features that any app should have to stay in the game. 

These standard features are common to all the apps in this article, so we won’t discuss them in any more detail:

• Spreadsheet upload: Add stops by uploading an Excel or CSV spreadsheet.
• Time windows: Specify delivery time windows for each customer.
• Mobile apps: Android and iOS apps for drivers.
• Customer notifications: Automate your SMS or email messages to let your customers know when to expect their deliveries.
• Live tracking: Track drivers either in real time or as each stop is checked off. 
• Proof of delivery (POD): Capture photographs and/or signatures. 

The exact implementation of each of these features varies, and so does the cost. You will need to find the balance which suits your needs — but all the route planning providers we cover in this article offer the same basic feature set.

Best Routific alternative for return-to-depot routes: Optimoroute

What advantages does Optimoroute have over Routific?

When we talk to prospects who end up choosing Optimoroute instead of Routific, it’s usually for one of these reasons:

• Return to depot: Optimoroute gives route planners and dispatchers the ability to schedule routes that include trips back to the depot for reloading during the day. 
• Customer feedback: Optimoroute has a feature that allows customers to rate their delivery experience. 
• Breadcrumb trails: This feature tracks vehicle movements so that dispatchers can compare actual vs planned routes. 
• Individual driver profiles: Optimoroute’s detailed driver profiles include information like shift schedules (including breaks and overtime), start/end locations, skills, vehicle types, service areas they should stay in, and even cost and speed settings. This makes OptimoRoute a good option for field sales and service organizations. 
• Barcode scanning: Enables drivers to scan barcodes or QR codes for proof of delivery.
• Weekly planning: This is what we call multi-day routing at Routific. It allows customers to plan routes up to five weeks ahead, and allocate stops automatically to the most appropriate days and times.

What Routific does better than Optimoroute

Based on our own tests and feedback from customers who’ve chosen us after testing Optimoroute, these are the areas where Routific stands out:

• Route quality: Routific’s routes are clean and driver-friendly, with a lot less criss-crossing and overlap. Route efficiency is the best way to lower cost per delivery and increase profitability in a delivery business, so this one is a big deal.
• Route editing: It’s easier to make changes after optimization with Routific.
• Flexible start locations: Customers have told us that OptimoRoute makes it difficult to adjust start locations. This can make life difficult for dispatchers who work with contract drivers, where route starting points can change from day to day.
• Pricing: Optimoroute’s Pro plan starts at $49 per month, compared to $69 per month for Routific’s Pro plan. But there is a limit of 1,000 orders per day, which is low for a medium-sized business. With Routific you can route an unlimited number of stops each day.
• Scalability: Optimoroute is great for startups and small businesses with simple routing needs, but Routific has better ability to scale along with a growing company.

Best Routific alternative for on-demand deliveries: Onfleet

Onfleet's biggest strength is its ability to support on-demand deliveries. This makes it a good choice for couriers who do a lot of single-package trips, and for restaurants. 

What advantages does Onfleet have over Routific?

From conversations we’ve had with customers, these are the main reasons they choose Onfleet over Routific:

• Automated driver assignment and dispatch for on-demand deliveries. This enables a customer self-service option.
• In-app chat: Onfleet’s team chat function enables drivers to communicate securely with both dispatchers and customers, directly from the driver app. There’s no need to share phone numbers or open other apps. 
• Barcode scanning.
• Age verification: In-app age verification at the point of delivery is a dealbreaker for companies that deliver alcohol or cannabis.
• Customer feedback: Like Optimoroute, Onfleet has a feature that lets customers rate their delivery experience.

What Routific does better than Onfleet

The main disadvantages of Onfleet in comparison to Routific relate to route optimization, ease of use, and cost:

• Route quality: Most of the complaints we hear from Onfleet users are about poorly optimized routes, with lots of criss-crossing and inaccurate addresses. 
• Route editing: It’s difficult to make changes to Onfleet’s routes.
• Ease of use: Onfleet’s platform is not very user-friendly, and it needs some training to help people get started. For example, as you can see in the screenshot above Onfleet doesn’t display actual routes — only individual location pins. You can view individual routes, but not the whole day’s routes at once. There’s not even any colour coding.There’s also no timeline view, which can make a dispatcher’s job more difficult. 
• Pricing: Onfleet is expensive, and their pricing is inflexible. The $550 per month starting price excludes many smaller businesses, and there’s a big jump to the next tier at $1,265 per month. This can leave some of their customers having to choose between paying for overages, or paying for capacity they don’t use.

Best Routific alternative for a driver-first approach: Circuit

Circuit Route Planner started out as a very popular mobile app to help individual delivery drivers plan their routes. Off the back of that success they launched Circuit for Teams  to serve companies that needed to plan routes for multiple drivers. 

Circuit for Teams is still very easy to use, which makes it a good match for very small businesses where one person might have to handle multiple roles, including route planning, dispatch and delivery management.  

What advantages does Circuit for Teams have over Routific?

• Zapier and Shopify integrations: In addition to their platform API, Circuit’s Zapier and Shopify integrations make it easy to pull data from other systems into their route planner.  
• Package finder: The mobile app has a feature to help drivers find packages easily in their vehicles. During loading, each package can be marked front/middle/back, left/right, and floor/shelf. This can save a lot of time at each delivery stop.
• Delivery analytics: Circuit for Teams users have access to a range of reports to help them review failed deliveries, as well as track their on-time delivery rate and cost per delivery.

What Routific does better than Circuit

• Route optimization: In our tests of Circuit for Teams we saw a lot of messy, tangled, spaghetti routes. Oddly for an app which prioritizes drivers, this creates a really terrible driver experience. 
• Timeline view: Circuit for Teams will display multiple routes on their map, but they don’t have a timeline view. We’ve found that dispatchers and route managers who are juggling multiple routes every day love our timeline, because it lets them see their progress across all routes at a glance.
• Pricing: Both Circuit and Routific have recently switched to flexible per-stop pricing models. Circuit’s pricing is slightly lower for users doing 100-500 stops per month, but at greater volumes (1,000 stops and up) Routific offers better value. 

Best Routific alternative for specialized use cases and customisation: Route4Me

Route4Me is one of the original route planning tools. Its main strength is an extensive marketplace of add-on features that allows customers to mix and match modules for maximum flexibility — although this does come at an extra cost.

What advantages does Route4Me have over Routific?

• Truck routing: If your fleet includes trucks that can’t go on all roads or fit under all bridges, you need a route planner that takes those constraints into account. Some Routific customers use the Hammer truck routing app as a workaround, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Route4Me’s mixed vehicles routing and commercial vehicle routing add-on components handle these scenarios.
• Territory assignment: Customers can carve their delivery or service area up into different zones and assign each to a regular driver. This helps drivers become familiar with their territories and delivery routes.
• Recurring routing: Route4Me has an add-on component that makes it easy to handle regularly recurring routes. 
• Integrations: Route4Me offers integrations with e-commerce platforms including Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento.

What Routific does better than Route4Me 

• Driver-friendly route optimization: The mathematically most efficient route, or shortest route, isn’t always the best one. In the real world, routes are completed by humans — and they don’t like spaghetti routes that criss-cross and loop back on themselves. Route4Me seems to optimize for pure efficiency, producing a lot of messy routes. Routific’s algorithm aims to balance mathematical efficiency with driver-friendliness. 
• Accurate ETA estimates: This came up repeatedly in our tests. For example, on one route section that Routific and Google Maps both estimated would take 18-19 minutes, Route4Me estimated just 10 minutes. Underestimating journey times can lead to lots of overtime, late deliveries, and a very poor customer experience.
• Pricing: Route4Me route optimization starts at $300 per month minimum — and that’s for just one driver! Multiple vehicle routing starts at $450 per month. 

Summary: Routific vs the rest

Routific’s sweet spot is small- to medium-sized last-mile delivery businesses that need to plan multiple routes every day. Our driver-friendly route optimization with accurate ETAs, ease of use, and customer service are our greatest strengths. 

On the other hand, some of our competitors have more features. If you’re looking for barcode scanning, in-depth analytics, multi-day planning, specific support for field sales and service calls, or return to depot functionality, one of the other apps in this article is probably a better choice for you. 

How to choose delivery management and route optimization software

Still not sure what’s the best choice for you? The best way to find out is to test each one for yourself. Here’s how we do our tests:

1. Use sample data from your own organization

Prepare a typical stop list, with all the information you use for your route planning — then use the same set for all your tests. 

Why is this important? We’ve noticed that route planners can have quirks depending on exact geographical location. For example, if your routes include a lot of bridges, tunnels, bodies of water, toll roads, etc, different algorithms deal with that in different ways. Testing with your own data will confirm that the routing works for you. 

It’s also a good idea to prepare a list of drivers. Proper end-to-end testing means working through a whole delivery run, including dispatching routes to at least one driver and tracking progress. You’ll need an email address and phone number, so arrange ahead of time with someone who’s willing to be a test driver.  

2. Decide on your dealbreakers

What features are nice to have, and what can’t you live without? Age verification is a good example — this is an absolute requirement for some businesses, and there’s no workaround for it. You can instantly cut down your shortlist this way. 

3. Sign up for a free trial

Most trials are 7-14 days, so make sure you’ll have enough time to test each one. It’s a good idea to test one at a time, rather than signing up for everything at once.

Some apps, notably Circuit, need your credit card details before you can sign up for a free trial. If the trial doesn’t work out, remember to go back and cancel it so that you don’t get charged.

If the app you want to test doesn’t offer a free trial but only a demo, prepare a list of questions for the demo ahead of time. It’s a good idea to schedule demos after you’ve done some tests on other systems, so you have an idea of what to look for.

4. Set time aside for a full test run

A full test should include:

• Uploading or adding stops
• Adding drivers
• Optimizing routes
• Editing routes
• Assigning routes to drivers
• Dispatching a live route to at least one driver
• The driver starting the route and completing at least one stop (this doesn’t have to be far away — you can make up a stop one block away from your office if necessary
• Tracking driver progress 

If your trial includes SMS or email customer notifications, try those out as well. 

5. Keep notes

You know best what matters to you, but a suggested starting list of things to track includes:

• Ease of use: The whole point of route optimization software is to streamline your operations and make your life easier. A few hiccups during setup and getting started is one thing, but will this work in day-to-day use?
• Route quality: Take a look at the suggested routes. Do they make sense? Check for tangled spaghetti routes. 
• Ease of editing routes: What happens if a driver misses a stop and needs to come back later, or the route needs to be changed for another reason?
• ETAs: Are the ETAs accurate?
• Does it work for all stakeholders? It can be hard to keep track of three different personas during a test, so consider teaming up a colleague to make sure the experience is good for dispatchers, drivers, and customers alike. 

6. Try it twice

The first time using any software is often frustrating because it includes account creation and setup — but this isn’t necessarily a reflection of how things will work in daily use. If the setup was annoying, come back and test again once all the basics are in place. This will give you a sense of how it might work day to day. 

7. Try out the customer support

Definitely reach out if you hit a snag and need help, but also if you need more time for testing. The response will tell you a lot. 

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