Search dispatch software and you will mostly find enterprise platforms explaining why you need a platform. That is not much use if you run six vans out of a unit and the current system is a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group and a phone that will not stop ringing.
This guide is written for that operation. It covers what dispatch software actually does, which parts matter on a real delivery day, what it costs when you add the second and third van, and the honest answer to whether you need it yet.
- →Dispatch software does five jobs: assign work, sequence the day, get it to the driver, prove it happened, and tell the customer. Everything else is a feature, not the job.
- →Most tools price per driver per month, which is why cost complaints dominate reviews: OptimoRoute publishes $35.10 per driver per month, and adding a van adds a bill line forever.
- →Small operators lose roughly 46 minutes every morning sequencing stops by hand, and that is the single biggest thing worth automating first.
- →Proof of delivery is a cash-flow feature, not an admin one: around 40% of payment delays in delivery work trace back to documentation disputes.
- →The 'where is my order?' call is a tax on the whole day. A tracking link the customer can watch removes more phone time than any routing improvement.
- →Under about ten vehicles, a spreadsheet plus a phone link genuinely does the job. Above that, or with time windows and volatile demand, buy the software.
What dispatch software actually does
Strip away the feature lists and dispatch software does five things. It assigns work to people and vehicles. It sequences each day into an efficient order. It delivers that plan to the driver on a phone. It captures proof that each stop happened. And it tells the customer where their order is.
Almost every other feature is a variation on those five. Live maps are a way of seeing the sequence. Barcode scanning is a way of capturing proof. Customer SMS is a way of telling the customer. When you compare tools, compare them on the five jobs and the noise falls away quickly.
Assign: who takes which stops, and can that change at 6am when a driver calls in sick?
Sequence: the visiting order, ideally respecting when each customer can actually receive.
Deliver: the plan on the driver's phone, without a training session.
Prove: time, place, photo, signature, note, kept somewhere you can find it in six weeks.
Tell: the customer knows roughly when, without phoning you to ask.
The parts that actually hurt on a delivery day
Research into small delivery and field-service operations puts the same handful of complaints at the top, and they are not the ones vendors lead with.
The morning scramble is first. Sequencing a day by hand takes roughly 46 minutes, it is redone every morning, and it dies on contact with reality when the first customer cannot receive until eleven. Second is receiving windows: for most wholesale and food routes the constraint is not distance, it is that the shop can only take the delivery between eight and eleven, or after the lunch rush. A tool that optimises purely for miles and ignores windows produces a route your drivers will quietly ignore.
Third is visibility. When nobody can see where the van is, the dispatcher becomes a switchboard, and the phone becomes the job. Fourth is proof: roughly 40% of payment delays in delivery work trace back to documentation, so a missing photo is not an admin problem, it is a cash-flow problem. Fifth is the mid-run change, which is where most manual systems break entirely.
What it costs, and the per-driver trap
Most dispatch and routing tools price per driver per month. OptimoRoute publishes $35.10 per driver per month on its standard plan, rising to $44.10 for Pro. Circuit for Teams starts around $100 per month for a small operation. Onfleet and the enterprise tier of the market sit considerably higher and typically ask for an annual commitment.
The per-driver model is worth understanding before you sign, because it changes the arithmetic of growth. Every van you add adds a permanent bill line, so the software gets more expensive exactly when margins are thinnest. Read enough reviews of this category and the same complaint recurs: the tool was fine, the price stacked up as the fleet grew. It is the most cited reason operators leave.
Two practical questions to ask any vendor: what happens to my bill when I add a seasonal driver for six weeks, and can I remove a seat mid-term? The answers vary far more than the headline price.
When a spreadsheet genuinely does the job
There is a real threshold here and vendors have no incentive to tell you where it is. Under roughly ten vehicles, with a customer list that changes slowly and a dispatcher who knows the patch, a spreadsheet plus a link to the driver's phone does the five jobs well enough that dedicated software is a solution looking for a problem.
What makes that work is not the spreadsheet itself, it is closing the loop back to it. The list has to become an ordered route, the route has to reach the driver without an app install, and the driver's check-offs have to come back into the same sheet automatically. If any of those steps is manual, the spreadsheet becomes the bottleneck people rightly complain about.
That loop is what our own add-on does with formulas: =GEOCODE and =VISIT_ORDER turn a list into a sequenced day, =ROUTE_LINK builds one Google Maps link for up to 100 stops, the crew tap each stop off on a phone with a photo, and =LOGBOOK pulls it all back into the sheet. No per-driver fee, because there are no seats.
When you should buy the software
Be honest about the tipping points. Buy dedicated dispatch software when any of these are true: you run more than about ten vehicles; your day genuinely needs constraint solving because of tight time windows, vehicle capacities or skills matching; demand is volatile enough that routes must reflow mid-run; you need integrations into an order system rather than a list; or you carry compliance obligations that require an audit trail you cannot maintain yourself.
Those are real problems that real software solves, and a spreadsheet will not fake its way through them. The mistake is buying at three vans because the marketing implied you should, then paying per driver for five years to solve a problem you did not have.
At a Glance
| Feature | InstaMaps | Typical dispatch tools |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per operation, no per-driver fee | Typically per driver per month |
| Driver app | A web link, nothing to install | App install and account per driver |
| Where the data lives | Your Google Sheet | The vendor's database |
| Setup time | Minutes, from a list you already have | Onboarding and configuration |
| Constraint solving (capacity, skills) | No, sequence and windows only | Yes, this is what you pay for |
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Common Questions
Software that turns a list of jobs or deliveries into an assigned, sequenced day, gets that plan to drivers, records proof that each stop happened, and keeps the customer informed. In small operations it replaces a whiteboard, a spreadsheet and a lot of phone calls.
Most tools charge per driver per month. OptimoRoute publishes $35.10 per driver per month, and Circuit for Teams starts around $100 per month for a small team. Enterprise platforms cost considerably more and usually require annual commitments. Budget for the model as much as the number: per-driver pricing grows with your fleet.
Under about ten vehicles, usually not. A spreadsheet that produces a sequenced route, a phone link for the crew, and automatic check-offs back into the sheet covers the same five jobs. Buy dedicated software when you need genuine constraint solving, mid-run reflow, or integrations into an order system.
Route optimization is one part of dispatch. Optimization decides the order and assignment; dispatch also covers getting the plan to drivers, capturing proof, and updating customers. Many tools do both, but if the only thing hurting is the morning sequencing, you may only need the optimization piece.
Yes, for a small operation. The sheet holds the list, formulas sequence the stops and build a route link, drivers check stops off from a phone link, and the results come back into the sheet. The limits are constraint solving and live reflow, which spreadsheets do not do well.
Paste your stops into the free planner and see the sequenced day plus one Google Maps link for up to 100 stops. If it covers your day, you have just saved a per-driver subscription.
Open the free 100-Stop Planner