Last Mile Delivery Software: Free Options for Small Delivery & Install Teams (2026)

The entry price for last mile delivery software is steep for what most small teams actually do with it: Onfleet's cheapest plan is $599/month, Circuit for Teams starts at $100/month for 500 stops, and OptimoRoute runs $39 per driver per month. That pricing makes sense for parcel fleets doing hundreds of drops a day with dedicated drivers, live tracking, and customer SMS. It makes a lot less sense for a manufacturer, installer, or local delivery team whose entire order book fits in one spreadsheet tab.

Most content about delivery software is written for the parcel fleet. This one is written for the other group: teams who already manage orders, addresses, and delivery windows in Google Sheets, and whose real problem is that they can't see any of it geographically. For that job, the comparison below includes a free option that maps the sheet you already have, plus an honest look at when Onfleet, Routific, Circuit, and OptimoRoute are worth paying for.

Most Last Mile Delivery Software Is Built for Parcel Fleets — Not for You

Open any last mile platform's feature page and you'll see the same stack: automated route optimization, a driver mobile app, live GPS tracking, customer notifications, proof-of-delivery photos, and dispatcher dashboards. That stack exists because parcel and courier fleets run 50–500 stops per driver per day, and at that volume every one of those features pays for itself.

Small delivery and install teams operate differently. A window-coverings manufacturer delivering and installing made-to-order product doesn't do 200 drops a day, it does 8 to 15 jobs, each taking 30 to 90 minutes on site, scheduled days or weeks out based on production lead time. A furniture retailer with two vans plans deliveries for the week, not the hour. The bottleneck isn't route optimization across hundreds of stops; it's the dispatcher trying to answer one question from a flat spreadsheet: which of these orders are near each other, and what can we batch into Tuesday's run?

Here's a real pattern from InstaMaps usage data: a Dutch window-coverings manufacturer maps its 236-order book directly from a Google Sheet, order number, customer, address, delivery window, lead-time days, and sequences install runs by region. No driver app, no SMS, no per-driver fee. Just the order book, on a map, grouped by geography and delivery window. That's the workflow this post is about.

The Spreadsheet Order Book: What You Already Have Is Enough

If your team runs on a spreadsheet, you've already done the hard part, the data exists and it's current, because it's the same sheet production and customer service work from every day. A typical order book that maps well looks like this:

1. Order #, your internal order or job number, so the pin on the map ties back to the row

2. Customer, name shown on the pin, useful when a customer calls and you want to find them fast

3. Address, street, city, postal code; one column or several, both work

4. Delivery window, the promised week or date range (e.g. 'Week 25' or '15–19 June'); this becomes your pin color

5. Status, confirmed, in production, ready to ship, scheduled; lets you filter out anything not ready

6. Notes, access instructions, two-person lift, call before arrival

InstaMaps vs Onfleet vs Routific vs Circuit for Teams vs OptimoRoute

All four paid platforms below are good products, for the fleet use case they're built for. The question is whether your team is that use case. Pricing is from each vendor's public pricing page as of June 2026.

1. InstaMaps (Free). Maps your Google Sheets order book directly. Install the add-on, open the map, and every order appears as a pin with filters auto-detected from your columns. Color pins by delivery window or status, filter by region, and plan runs visually. No route optimization or driver app, this is the dispatcher's planning view, not a fleet execution system.

2. Onfleet (from $599/month). The heavyweight. Launch plan covers 2,500 delivery tasks/month with route optimization, driver app, proof of delivery, and ETA notifications. Built for courier operations and high-volume local delivery. At $7,188/year minimum, it's the wrong size for a two-van install team.

3. Routific (Free up to 100 orders/month, then $150/month up to 1,000). The most SMB-friendly route planner for deliveries on this list. Genuinely strong automated stop sequencing and a usable free tier. If you've outgrown manual run planning and want optimized routes plus customer notifications, start here.

4. Circuit for Teams (from $100/month for 500 stops). Simple multi-driver routing with a clean driver app and proof of delivery. Stop-based pricing ($0.04 per extra stop) is predictable. A solid middle option for teams with daily dedicated drivers who don't need Onfleet's depth.

5. OptimoRoute (from $39/driver/month). Per-driver pricing with strong scheduling features: delivery windows, driver shifts, recurring orders. The best fit on this list for service-and-install businesses that need true delivery scheduling software with constraint handling, once they have enough volume to justify the per-seat cost.

How to Put Your Order Book on a Map (Free, ~10 Minutes)

Here's the full workflow, using the sheet structure from above.

Step 1. Tidy the sheet. One row per order, with Order #, Customer, Address, Delivery window, and Status as columns. If your addresses are messy or split inconsistently, run them through the free geocoder at /tools/geocoder first, it converts raw addresses to clean coordinates and flags anything it can't locate, so you fix bad addresses before planning day, not during it.

Step 2. Install the InstaMaps add-on from Google Workspace Marketplace. It takes about a minute and there's no account setup or credit card.

Step 3. Open the map from the add-on menu. InstaMaps reads the sheet, auto-detects the address columns, and drops every order as a pin. A 236-row order book renders in seconds.

Step 4. Color pins by delivery window or status. This is where the planning happens: every order due 'Week 25' turns one color, 'Week 26' another. Clusters jump out immediately, six orders in the same region due the same week is a run.

Step 5. Plan the week's runs. Zoom into a region, filter to the current window and 'ready to ship' status, and write the run assignments back into the sheet (a simple 'Run' column. Tue-North, Thu-South, works fine). The map updates as the sheet updates, so the whole team sees the same picture.

That's the loop. The sheet stays the source of truth, production updates lead times, customer service updates windows, and the dispatcher plans from the map. Nobody re-enters data into a second system, which is the quiet killer of most delivery software rollouts at small companies.

When You Should Actually Pay for Last Mile Delivery Software

A free map is not a fleet platform, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. Pay for one of the platforms above when these things become true:

1. You run 3+ dedicated drivers making deliveries every day, automated route optimization starts saving real drive time at that scale

2. Customers expect live tracking links and SMS updates, that requires a driver app reporting location, which a planning map can't do

3. You need proof of delivery (photos, signatures) for disputes or COD. Circuit and Onfleet handle this well

4. Stop volume passes ~100/month with tight time windows. Routific's free tier ends here, and its paid optimization is worth the $150/month

5. Drivers are paid hourly and route efficiency directly moves payroll cost

At a Glance

Common Questions