Hey everybody it's Phil from Routific and today we're looking
at the Best Route Planner Apps with Unlimited Stops. Let's get started.
We all love free apps. That's the beauty of the internet. I use a lot of freebies myself
but what I found is that the further you get into your business endeavor,
and the more complex your needs get, the more difficult it is to rely on
free tools. But if you are still interested in seeing what free options are available,
keep watching. We're going to be featuring some of the free route planning software out in the market
as well as some workarounds that might be good enough for you.
RouteXL is actually one of the options that we looked at in our last video,
where we did a bit of a deep dive. But what you need to know for here is that it's free
to use for up to 20 addresses and that is great. There's actually an option to pay to increase that
limit to 100 addresses. And while they do offer mass upload of addresses using copy and paste,
it doesn't support uploading spreadsheets which is very very beneficial in a lot of instances.
Another limitation is that the route settings apply to all routes.
That means you can't set up individual drivers with different shift times or starting locations.
Mapquest is another piece of software that we looked at in a previous video.
This app supports mass upload of your addresses with copy and paste and spreadsheets,
and offers a free route optimization option. The limitation here is that you can only use it for
a single driver in up to 26 locations. And as you can see by looking around at the screen,
if pop-up ads bother you, you should probably consider looking elsewhere.
Speedyroute is another piece of software that you can look at that offers a generous amount
of free stops for you to optimize. Their free tier has a limitation of up to 20 stops and
they also offer drag and drop reordering and time-boxed locations which are constraints
based on delivery times during the day.
While these pieces of software are great because they're free, there are some limitations that
stop it from being truly unlimited. Here are some of the most common ones that we found.
Let's take a look at limited stops per optimization. A lot of the pieces of software that
we're taking a look at today actually have limits on the amount of stops that you can optimize for
in a given route. RouteXL and Speedyroute have a max of 20 stops while Mapquest has a max of 26.
A lot of the pieces of software out there that allow you to optimize routes
limit you to only using one vehicle at a time. That means when your operation
grows and you need to incorporate a lot more vehicles, you'll have to find another solution.
Some of these solutions can be difficult to use. Good design and great experience are things that
are not necessarily thought about when you have a small amount of deliveries because you just
need to get the job done. But as your business expands and as your needs become more complex,
when you're dealing with a clunky software that is harder to use,
all of that time compounds and it takes even longer to plan your routes.
Setting delivery time windows is probably something that free software just won't do
and this is pretty significant. If you're like me, you probably hate waiting around for a
package to arrive, especially if the time they quoted you for was anywhere between 9am to 9pm,
which is something that still happens. You can alleviate that pain for your
customers by giving them a delivery time window,
but it will likely cost a subscription for a routing service with more robust features.
Planning optimized delivery routes is only half of the battle. The other side is getting those routes
into the hands of your drivers, and the best way to do that is through a mobile driver app.
These mobile driver apps have everything that drivers need to make that delivery smooth, from
access to the routes to delivery instructions and notes that would be important for them to know.
All of these things are probably really hard to find on a free tool
but most likely something that is available with a subscription.
Free software often means that the person who built that software isn't paying much
attention to it. Not updating it the way they used to, not communicating with customers
the way that they need to be communicated. But when you pay for software, all of that changes.
Service level agreements act as guarantees to make sure that the software actually
behaves the way that it's supposed to, giving you a bit more peace of mind.
So which one of these pieces of software is the best? That's something that you'll
have to decide for yourself. But what we can say for sure
is that if you're just starting out with only one driver and a few stops,
then any one of these free tools would probably do the trick. But as your business starts to scale
and you need more unlimited stops, start looking for more sophisticated routing software with more
robust features like Routific. Hopefully this video helps and we'll see you in the next one!