Best Last-Mile Delivery Software Solutions in 2024

The last mile of delivery is often the most challenging and expensive leg of the supply chain process. Businesses must optimize their last-mile delivery operations to meet customer expectations for fast and efficient delivery. 

One effective way to enhance these operations is by leveraging specialized last-mile delivery software. This software plays a critical role in streamlining delivery processes and improving efficiency.

In this article, we’ll provide a comprehensive overview of last-mile delivery software, its role in optimizing delivery operations, essential features to look for, and reviews of the top 8 solutions in this category.

What is Last-Mile Delivery Software?

Last-mile delivery software, also referred to as final-mile delivery software, is a specialized tool designed to tackle the complexities of the final segment of the delivery process. The solutions have features such as route planning, package tracking, customer communication, and data analytics. Given the significance and challenges of last-mile logistics, this software helps businesses streamline operations, enhance route efficiency, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

The Role of Last-Mile Software Solutions

Last-mile delivery software is revolutionizing the delivery landscape by significantly enhancing delivery efficiency and reducing associated costs, proving indispensable for businesses aiming to stay competitive in a fast-paced market.

Transforming Last-Mile Deliveries

Last-mile optimization software is crucial for businesses seeking cost-effective logistics solutions. It transforms how businesses manage the complex dynamics of urban deliveries, addressing the challenge of meeting rising consumer expectations for speed and convenience. 

This software solution enables smarter route planning and resource allocation, minimizing unnecessary mileage and time on the road, which in turn cuts fuel expenses and vehicle wear and tear. 

With it, businesses can not only enhance operational efficiency but also significantly reduce last-mile delivery costs.

Improve Customer Satisfaction

This software elevates customer satisfaction by ensuring efficient, prompt deliveries—a key driver in many sectors. 

By improving delivery speed and reliability, businesses can meet customer expectations more consistently, which is crucial for retaining customers and encouraging repeat business. 

Through efficient last-mile operations, supported by sophisticated software, transform a logistical challenge into a value-adding aspect of the customer experience, fostering loyalty and enhancing the overall brand perception.

Essential Features of Last-Mile Delivery Software

The last-mile delivery SaaS market is rich with options, each boasting unique features designed for a variety of purposes. However, when selecting last-mile delivery software for your business, it’s crucial to ensure it includes the following essential features.

Route Optimization

An essential element of last-mile delivery software is route optimization, which is designed to enhance the efficiency and speed of deliveries.

This feature leverages real-time data and advanced algorithms to determine the most efficient routes for delivery carriers. By considering factors such as geographic locations, vehicle capacities, delivery timeframes, and traffic and weather conditions, businesses can reduce fuel consumption and travel time through optimized routes.

Such operational efficiency makes it possible for businesses to fulfill same-day deliveries, meet tight delivery windows, and improve overall customer satisfaction. 

Real-time Delivery Tracking

Real-time delivery tracking provides continuous, live updates on the location of the delivery vehicle.

This feature allows both logistics managers and customers to view the progress of the delivery in real time through a map interface.

It’s particularly useful for logistics teams to monitor and manage fleet operations, ensuring optimal efficiency and timely interventions if needed. Custom tracking portals or pages can help reduce customer inquiries by providing a self-service option to check delivery status. 

Delivery Notifications

Delivery notifications focus on sending automated alerts and updates to customers at key stages of the last-mile delivery process. 

These notifications include information such as when the package is out for delivery, any changes in the delivery schedule, and a notification when the package is delivered or if a delivery attempt was missed.

This feature is crucial for enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction, as it keeps customers informed without the need to actively track their package. Moreover, it decreases the risk of lost packages and porch piracy.

Proof of Delivery

The Proof of Delivery (POD)  feature allows drivers to capture and record the recipient’s signature, photo, or other verification methods upon delivery. 

By providing a tangible record that the package has been delivered to the correct address and received by the intended recipient, POD minimizes disputes and enhances trust between the business and its customers. 

This verification process not only confirms successful deliveries but also helps in tracking and resolving any delivery issues promptly. 

10 Best Last-Mile Delivery Software

After appreciating the importance of last-mile delivery and acknowledging software’s vital role in improving delivery efficiency and enhancing customer experience, it is time to select the right solution for your business. We have compiled the following review of the eight top last-mile software to help you make the right decision.

1. Onfleet

Onfleet is a last-mile delivery technology that helps businesses optimize their delivery operations’ dispatch and route management. Onfleet has helped over 1,000 companies in 90+ countries to do more than 200M deliveries.

Some of Onfleet’s key features and benefits include:

1. Dispatch: Onfleet helps businesses optimize their delivery routes through a unified dashboard. Powerful search and filter functions allow you to retrieve information quickly and automatically assign tasks to drivers.
2. Driver Management: Empower your drivers with a smooth onboarding process made possible through guided walkthroughs. Onfleet also has an iOS and Android app for drivers, allowing you to chat with them, get proof of delivery, and analyze and improve driver performance with real-time data.
3. Customer Delight: Enhance the delivery experience for your customers with automatic delivery status updates, real-time driver tracking, integrated customer communication, and feedback collection.
4. Data and Analytics: Monitor the key metrics that matter most for your business and generate comprehensive reports to share with your team.
5. Integrations: Onfleet integrates with popular business systems, including Zapier, Google Workspace, and Shopify. The software also features a developer-friendly API.

Who is Onfleet best for?

Onfleet is best suited for couriers and delivery businesses looking to enhance their driver management and route optimization efforts.

2. FarEye

FarEye is a last-mile delivery platform that aims to help businesses make deliveries cost-effectively and guarantee customer loyalty.

The platform has the following features to help businesses achieve their last-mile delivery objectives.

1. Ship: FarEye’s Ship product allows your business to offer customers flexible delivery options at checkout.
2. Track: Efficiently track customer orders and ensure accurate and on-time delivery.
3. Route: Manage logistics with dynamic route planning and scheduling.
4. Execute: Improve your business’s delivery operations with driver and rate management tools.
5. Experience: This suite features tools that help you streamline the post-purchase experience for your customers and build brand loyalty.
6. Analyze: Get a bird’s eye view of your operational data, monitor business trends, and get insights to help you make critical decisions.

Who is FarEye best for?

FarEye is ideal for e-commerce, grocery, courier, and logistics brands that want to enhance the delivery experience for their customers.

3. Onro

Onro is a customizable last-mile delivery SaaS that helps businesses develop custom delivery management platforms. Businesses that use Onro get to fulfill customer expectations, enhance their experience, and boost delivery transparency.

Some of the features that Onro has include the following:

1. Dispatcher Panel: The dispatcher panel helps you optimize your business’ last-mile logistics operations by managing your drivers and vehicles. The panel has auto dispatch, order management, real-time monitoring, address book, and flexible workflows.
2. Driver App: Onro’s driver app streamlines your fleet management operations. It comes with GPS tracking, route optimization, proof of delivery, and real-time chat.
3. Customer App: Delight your customers with the app, which features real-time delivery tracking, ETA, notifications, chat with driver, wallet, and online payment.
4. Customer Portal: The customer portal is designed to help you equip your business customers, such as restaurants and catering businesses, with an intuitive way to place and track their orders.
5. Admin Dashboard: The admin dashboard puts you in control, allowing you to manage drivers, customers, and promotions in one place. You can also generate and export reports from here.

Who is Onro best for?

Onro is suited for on-demand delivery businesses like restaurants, grocery stores, and pharmaceutical brands. It is also ideal for pick-up and delivery businesses looking to create a custom delivery management platform.

4. Track-POD

Track-POD is a comprehensive last-mile delivery platform with software solutions that helps businesses increase delivery success rates.

Some of the solutions businesses can explore include:

1. Route Planning Software: Track-POD’s route planning software enables users to optimize deliveries and collections simultaneously for multiple vehicles. The software features one-click optimization, a multi-drop route planner, and real-time routing updates.
2. Last-Mile Logistics Software: This out-of-box solution solves most last-mile challenges businesses encounter when handling delivery. It comes with final-mile tracking, multi-stop route optimization, and powerful routing capabilities built-in.
3. Delivery Driver App: The Track-POD delivery driver app is available to download for iOS and Android devices and features an industrial-grade barcode scanner and sign-on glass. The app enables businesses to assign deliveries, give navigation to drivers, track their movements, and enable them to complete deliveries. It can also be used to notify customers of deliveries.
4. Transport Management System: This ready-to-use solution helps businesses to digitalize their logistics operations. Users can plan and forecast transportation needs to allocate available assets proportionately, automate manual tasks, and track freight in real time.
5. Vehicle Check and Safety Management: This fleet management app allows businesses to create customer safety checklists, generate reports on all vehicles, and access the history of safety checks.
6. Courier Dispatch Software: The courier dispatch software features a unified drag-and-drop dashboard that allows businesses to manage their orders, drivers, and deliveries in one place. Its capabilities include automated scheduling, instant dispatching, courier tracking, and performance insights.

Who is Track-POD best for?

Track-POD is best suited for courier companies and logistics service providers.

5. Circuit

Circuit is a technology company that builds software to enable more efficient deliveries for businesses, drivers, and recipients.

Circuit’s software catalog includes the following solutions:

1. Circuit for Teams: Circuit for Teams is delivery management software for multi-driver teams. It allows users to automatically import delivery data, create fully optimized delivery routes, and track and manage deliveries in real-time.
2. Circuit Route Planner: This iOS and Android app helps businesses save time by optimizing delivery routes.
3. Circuit Package Tracker: With Circuit’s package tracker, businesses can instantly track packages across over 1,000 carriers.

Who is Circuit best for?

Circuit’s software is ideal for small and big businesses that handle deliveries in any capacity.

6. OptimoRoute

OptimoRoute is a route and schedule optimization software designed to help delivery and field service businesses increase performance.

Some features that make OptimoRoute one of the leading last-mile solutions include:

1. Automated Planning: This feature enables multi-driver workload balancing by allowing businesses to import orders and get the most efficient routes and schedules.
2. Driver Mobile App: The driver mobile app allows businesses to send detailed routes to their drivers, display customer orders and details, and give them schedules and navigation instructions.
3. Live Tracking and ETA: This OptimoRoute feature enables businesses to see where drivers are and assign them rush orders easily.
4. Customer Notifications: Share the estimated time of arrival information with customers, customize text and email notifications, and automatically send delivery status updates.
5. Proof of Delivery: Drivers can capture signatures, photos, and notes via the mobile app to improve delivery accuracy and resolve customer inquiries seamlessly.
6. Customer Feedback: Instantly send customers post-service surveys via email and SMS to gain insights on areas that can be improved and boost loyalty.
7. Analytics: Auto-generated detailed statistics from route data to identify high performers, reasons for service delays, and more.

Who is OptimoRoute best for?

OptimoRoute is an ideal last-mile delivery platform for delivery and field service businesses in the food and beverage, healthcare, retail, installation and maintenance, e-commerce, pest control, logistics, and inspection services industries.

7. Route4Me

Route4Me is a route planning and optimization platform that helps businesses master the complexities of final mile delivery at scale, reduce costs, and lower carbon emissions.

The Route4Me last-mile delivery platform hosts software that will help you optimize different aspects of your final-mile logistics. These include:

1. Route Planning: This set of tools helps you create reliable routes for your drivers in seconds and adjust them instantly when needed. Manage all routing needs from commercial truck routing, mixed vehicles routing, curbside delivery, pickup & dropoff, SmartZone, and recurring routing in one place.
2. Dispatch & Tracking: Route4Me’s dispatch and tracking tools help you manage drivers efficiently and monitor real-time progress. This software’s capabilities include GPS tracking, advanced team management, high-resolution mapping, and dynamic order dispatch.
3. Driver Efficiency: Route4Me’s iOS, Android, and Zebra mobile apps allow you to empower your drivers with detailed routes, voice-guided navigation, real-time communication, and checklists.
4. Business Operations: With Route4Me, you can automate your last-mile workflows from order to receipt to boost profits and customer satisfaction. Leverage tools like a delivery management system, max weight per route, time windows, and custom data fields to streamline your final mile workflows.
5. Customer Experience: Enhance customers’ delivery experience and earn loyalty with flexible delivery windows, scheduled notifications, driver ratings, and online order tracking.
6. Business Analytics: Route4Me empowers your business to measure, manage, and master the data that matters most with real-time performance monitoring and detailed audit logs of route history and activities.
7. Integrations: The Route4Me platform integrates with Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Zapier, and other popular systems.

Who is Route4Me best for?

The Route4Me platform is ideal for logistics, courier service providers, and e-commerce brands.

8. Bringg

Bringg is a delivery management platform that helps businesses optimize and grow their last-mile delivery operations. The software focuses on assisting companies in reducing costs, simplifying operations, and driving brand loyalty.

Some of the features that Bringg has include the following:

1. Delivery Hub: The Delivery Hub is Bringg’s multi-carrier delivery management suite, which integrates with over 200 carriers. Some tools available include carrier rate and delivery estimates, fulfillment and manifestation, tracking and communications, ratings and returns, and reporting and analytics.
2. ROAD: ROAD is Bringg’s proprietary fleet and driver management feature, which helps businesses launch, optimize, and accelerate their last-mile logistics operations. Some tools include the driver app, reporting and analytics, route optimization, AutoDispatch, and live traffic.

Who is Bringg best for?

Bringg is a last-mile delivery solution for grocery, appliances, furniture, and white glove delivery businesses.

9. Shipsy

Shipsy is a software platform that helps logistics companies and shippers manage logistics operations. It features a last-mile delivery solution that enables businesses to ensure on-time deliveries for an enhanced customer experience.

Some of Shipsy’s standout features that help transform last-mile logistics include:

1. System Interoperability: Shipsy’s last-mile operations software seamlessly connects to your ERP and Shipy route planning and optimization systems.
2. Zoning/Geo-fencing: Geo-fencing-based driver allocation allows your business to leverage local knowledge about routes for faster deliveries.
3. Multi-screen Experience: The Shipsy Field Ops iOS and Android app helps your drivers capture delivery indications.
4. Seamless Customer Intimations: Unified, real-time customer communications across SMS, WhatsApp, and email help to enhance their delivery experience.
5. Real-time Dashboard: All managers can use a single dashboard to track last-mile performance in real time.

Who is Shipsy best for?

Shipsy’s last-mile delivery solution is designed for logistics service providers, retail brands, and manufacturing companies.

10. Project44

Project44 is a digital platform that helps businesses reduce supply chain friction. Its proprietary last-mile solution is Movement, which is designed to improve supply chain velocity through real-time visibility, automation, and AI-powered insights.

Some of the features available in Project44’s Movement include:

1. Initiate: With Initiate, you can control your pre-shipment workflows with tools like port intel, sailing schedules, rating & booking, and centralized document management.
2. Visibility: Visibility helps businesses manage inventory in transit globally across all modes (air, over-the-road, rail, ocean, and ports & terminals).
3. Facilities: These automation and IoT-enabled workflows help you manage processes across your facilities, from appointment management to yard management and automation.
4. E-commerce Logistics: These tools enable you to enhance your customer’s delivery experience with visibility, exception management, and insights. They include last-mile resolution, insights, post-purchase consumer visibility, and predictive pre-purchase delivery dates.

Who is Project44 best for?

Project44 is a good option for large automotive, chemical, food and beverage, manufacturing, life sciences, and retail enterprises.

How to Choose the Best Last-Mile Delivery Software for Your Business

Narrowing down to the ideal last-mile delivery solution for your business requires you to consider the following.

1. Assess Your Business Needs

Start by identifying your unique delivery challenges and requirements. Consider factors such as delivery volume, route complexity, and customer expectations to understand what your business truly needs from the software.

2. Evaluate Key Features

Prioritize features that align with your business needs, such as real-time tracking, route optimization, and proof of delivery.

Focus on features that align with your business needs, such as:

• Route Optimization: Enhances efficiency and reduces costs.
• Real-time Tracking: Provides visibility into delivery status.
• Proof of Delivery: Ensures accountability and minimizes disputes.

3. Cost Analysis

Consider the upfront costs, subscription fees, and additional charges. Evaluate the software’s long-term value and return on investment potential.

4. Integration Capabilities

Ensure the software integrates seamlessly with your existing systems, such as your CRM, ERP, and inventory management system. Smooth integration streamlines operations and eliminates manual data entry.

5. Scalability and Flexibility

Choose software that can scale with your business growth and offer flexibility to handle peak seasons or changing delivery demands. 

6. Compliance and Security

Ensure the software complies with industry regulations and data protection standards. Additionally, verify the vendor’s security measures to protect sensitive customer information.

7. Customer Support and Training

Reliable customer support is crucial for resolving issues and ensuring smooth software implementation in your business. Adequate training also ensures your team can utilize the software effectively, maximizing its potential benefits.

8. Vendor Reputation and Reviews

Research the vendor’s reputation in the industry. Read customer reviews on G2, Capterra, and other review sites to gain insights into their experiences with the software.

Key Benefits of Last-Mile Delivery Software

The following are key benefits your business gets from connecting to a last-mile delivery platform.

Enhanced Delivery Efficiency

Last-mile delivery software improves delivery accuracy and reliability by automatically generating optimal routes and schedules and providing real-time package tracking, which reduces missed deliveries and ensures timely arrivals.

Visible Cost Reduction

Optimizing delivery routes and reducing fuel consumption directly translates into cost savings. Last-mile delivery software minimizes unnecessary mileage and improves delivery times, leading to lower operational costs and increased productivity.

Increased Customer Experience

By providing real-time tracking, flexible rescheduling options, and multiple delivery choices, last-mile delivery software enhances the customer experience. Satisfied customers are more likely to return, reducing the cost of acquiring new customers and boosting loyalty.

Data-Driven Insights

Delivery management software also provides your company with valuable data insights that can be used to improve operations. Using this data, your team can identify trends, analyze customer behavior, and make better delivery route and schedule decisions.

Competitive Advantage

Leveraging last-mile delivery software gives your business a competitive edge by enhancing delivery efficiency and customer service. This not only attracts more customers but also helps in retaining them, thereby reducing marketing and operational costs while growing your market share.

 Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the last-mile delivery tracking system?

The last-mile delivery tracking system is a technology that provides real-time updates and visibility for the final segment of the delivery journey, from the distribution center to the customer’s doorstep.

• What is the last-mile delivery app?

A last-mile delivery app is a software application usually available for use on mobile devices that is designed to streamline and manage the final stage of the delivery process. It offers features such as route optimization, delivery scheduling, real-time tracking, and communication tools to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of last-mile logistics for businesses and drivers.

• What is the new trend for last-mile delivery services?

The latest trend in last-mile delivery services includes the adoption of autonomous delivery vehicles, drones, and electric bikes. Additionally, there is a growing emphasis on sustainability, with companies focusing on eco-friendly practices and optimizing delivery routes to reduce carbon footprints.

• How do I manage my last-mile delivery?

To manage your last-mile delivery effectively, you should optimize routes using advanced route optimization software, provide real-time tracking for customers, and maintain clear communication through SMS or email updates about delivery status.