Route4Me vs Circuit: Which Last-Mile Delivery Software is Better?

Creating optimal routes is key to balancing speed, accuracy, and cost efficiency for successful last-mile delivery operations. These routes help maximize timely deliveries while minimizing transit time, distance traveled, and fuel or maintenance costs. 

So, how do you optimize your routes efficiently? 

Implementing last-mile delivery software is the answer. But with numerous routing software options available, which one should you pick?

If you are stuck making this final decision, you are in the right place. This comparison blog examines the features, strengths, limitations, pricing structures, and user experiences of two leading players in the route planning industry: Route4Me and Circuit.

Product Comparison at a Glance

Route4Me: Suitable for Businesses Looking for Multi-Constrained Delivery Routing

Founded in 2009 by Dan Khasis, Route4Me has become one of the leading names in the last-mile delivery route planning software industry. It provides a suite of features, like GPS tracking and one-click driver dispatch solution, to streamline delivery operations.  

Moreover, this routing software optimizes routes for all types of delivery vehicles, including trucks, vans, pickups, or trucks, making it suitable for delivery businesses with mixed fleets. One good thing about this route optimization software is the wide range of components it provides to augment route optimization. 

Customers can select only the add-ons they need to meet their delivery requirements and leave the rest. However, this flexibility may be overshadowed by the prices a delivery business must pay for basic features, such as recurring routes that are not included in their plans. 

While they boast of their ‘patented route optimization engine,’ users reported incidents of overlapping routes and vehicles routed to wrong addresses, which raises questions about their routing capabilities. 

Route4Me pricing plans

Route4Me follows a modular pricing structure with three plans.

Free trial

• 14-day free trial

Additionally, Route4Me offers various add-ons at extra costs, such as curbside delivery ($499/month per company), avoidance zones ($299/month per company), and driver breaks ($5 per user/month).

Route4Me offers flexible pricing plans designed to meet different business needs. Users can pick the plan that suits their routing requirements, team size, budget constraints, and scalability needs.

Route4Me’s Key Strengths

Route4Me offers several features as its strengths, making it a popular choice among delivery businesses.

Here are the key strengths and features of Route4Me:

1. Multi-constrained route planning: This platform allows you to plan the most efficient delivery routes, considering distance, driver skills, and commercial vehicle constraints. However, there is a scope for improvement in optimization algorithms, as tests and users revealed.

2. Real-time GPS tracking: Route4Me offers real-time tracking capabilities, letting you monitor delivery vehicles’ movements to ensure continuous collaboration for prompt resolution of issues. This feature also helps send accurate ETAs to your customers, enhancing transparency and trust in delivery operations.

3. Pay-as-you-go pricing model:  Route4Me follows a flexible pay-as-you-go approach, enabling you to add the desired features to customize your delivery management solution. This is handy if you want basic routing capabilities with only a few advanced features.

4. Integration options: This delivery management software provides industry-standard and publicly documented APIs to facilitate seamless integration with your existing business-critical systems. This helps you achieve end-to-end last-mile delivery automation.

5. Mobile apps: Mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Zebra devices enable you to map multiple stops, optimize routes, and dispatch them to your delivery staff. This real-time collaboration feature makes this route planner suitable for mobile workforces.

6. Territory mapping: This feature lets you divide your delivery area into custom territories based on location types, such as customer addresses or warehouses. You can then plan efficient territory-specific routes and assign each territory to the most suitable driver to optimize workload distribution and overall delivery management.

Route4Me’s Positive reviews

Route4Me’s Weaknesses

While Route4Me provides route planning and delivery management functionalities, considering its weaknesses as well is equally important.

Here are a few of them:

1. Expensive add-ons: Despite a flexible modular structure, Route4Me may require you to pay extra for even some essential features like driver breaks as they are paid add-ons. This is in contrast to Circuit for Teams or Upper, which includes them within their plans.

2. Costlier monthly plans: Unlike delivery route optimization software like Upper, which offers both monthly and annual plans, Route4Me offers only monthly plans. Even its basic plan, ‘Route Management,’ starts at $200 but lacks route optimization, making it highly expensive.

3. Weak route optimization: Despite producing the shortest routes, Route4Me may not always create clean and practical routes for your deliveries. At times, the estimated arrival times it displays were also found to be inaccurate. This may lead to delivery delays and customer dissatisfaction.

4. Unintuitive user interface: Users reported Route4Me’s user interface as outdated and cluttered, making it comparatively less user-friendly compared to advanced route planning software like Upper.

5. Pricing ambiguities: Differences between the features offered in Route4Me’s mobile app and desktop version for the same price were reported to be uninformed, indicating a lack of transparency in pricing structures.

Circuit for Teams: Suitable for Delivery Businesses Looking for Driver-Friendly Route Optimization

Founded in 2017 by Jack Underwood, Circuit is 8 years younger than Route4Me, a well-established name in the route planning industry. Initially created as a general route planner, it later pivoted its focus and target delivery drivers to create the best route planner app for them. 

With a continued focus on ‘fixing’ or resolving last-mile delivery challenges, they tweak their software and apps to add more driver-friendly features. For instance, in their latest March update, they introduced a feature that lets drivers take photos of packages to identify them when reaching stops and expediting deliveries easily.

However, internal tests and users found performing route changes or adding stops through the mobile app cumbersome. Moreover, incorrect syncing of addresses from Circuit to Google Maps has also been an area of concern for some users.

Circuit’s Pricing Plans

Circuit provides four different subscription plans, with details as below.

Starter

• Price: $100/month
• Includes: First 500 stops, additional stops at $0.20 each
• Best for: Couriers and large retailers needing high-quality delivery at low volume

Essentials

• Price: $250/month
• Includes: First 1,000 stops, additional stops at $0.05 each
• Ideal for: Businesses optimizing delivery routes and tracking multiple drivers

Standard

• Price: $500/month
• Includes: First 2,000 stops, additional stops at $0.06 each
• Suitable for: Collecting proof of delivery and sending customer notifications

Pro

• Price: $750/month
• Includes: First 5,000 stops, additional stops at $0.07 each
• Designed for: Analyzing performance and improving delivery efficiency

Free Trial:

7-day free trial (may vary based on region)

Strengths of Circuit for Teams

Here are the key strengths of Circuit for Teams: 

1. Route planning: While Circuit provides route planning capabilities to create efficient routes, it doesn’t let you edit optimized routes. Internal tests and users further found the routes to be crossing and messier in contrast to those that advanced route planner solutions create.

2. Multiple drivers and depots: This feature lets you add or remove depots and increase or decrease your delivery staff as per your business demands to ensure a flexible workforce for seamless operations.

3. Route monitoring: Circuit helps track your multiple delivery drivers and edit in-progress routes as needed to maximize successful deliveries and minimize failed delivery attempts.

4. Proof of delivery: Using Circuit, you can collect your customers’ digital signatures or photos of items delivered to maintain verifiable evidence and enhance accountability throughout your last-mile delivery process, making it an effective proof of delivery solution for your logistics operations.

5. Dynamic customer notifications: This route planner offers dynamic customer notifications to keep your customers informed about their delivery status and estimated arrival times, boosting customer satisfaction.

6. Dispatcher view and driver app: Circuit offers a dispatcher view for efficient route management and a dedicated driver app that uses navigation apps like Google Maps for turn-by-turn directions. 

Positive Reviews of Circuit for Teams

Weaknesses of Circuit for Teams

1. Stop-based pricing limitations: Circuit’s pricing plans provide only a fixed number of stops, implying you have to pay an additional charge for exceeding stop limits. This may escalate your costs fast as your operations grow, leading you to go for high-priced plans.

2. Limited customization options: Circuit offers fewer customization options than competitors like Upper. For example, it doesn’t allow you to create custom data fields, set vehicle load constraints, or define priority stops.

3. Integration issues: While Circuit enables the creation of no-code workflows to integrate with Zapier and automate customer notifications, a former user reported that it didn’t work as desired. Eventually, that user switched to Upper Route Planner, which solved their problem with OpenAPI integration.

4. Limited reporting and analytics: While Circuit offers basic route summaries and reports, its reporting and route analysis capabilities may not be as detailed as those of its several competitors. It may limit your ability to make data-driven decisions based on actionable insights and improve delivery performance.

5. Steep learning curve: Editing routes through the app may be challenging and may require some time to learn, unlike several other route planning solutions like Upper that provide comparatively easier route adjustments.

Negative Reviews of Circuit for Teams

Route4Me vs Circuit Pricing Comparison

• While Route4me offers more flexibility, its base tier doesn’t include route optimization. Further, the costs associated with paid-ons for basic features like recurring routes scale up fast, making it expensive and unfit for businesses with standard routing needs.
• Circuit’s pricing structure is more transparent and inclusive, positioning it as a better alternative for smaller to medium-sized businesses with fundamental routing requirements.
• Businesses seeking the best of both features and prices should consider Upper, which offers competitively priced plans equipped with advanced route optimization functionality.
• Comes with essential features like route optimization, proof of delivery, and customer notifications in its base tiers; Upper eliminates the extra paid add-ons, giving it a competitive advantage over Route4Me.
• Upper’s user-based pricing model can be especially more advantageous for businesses with larger fleets or varying vehicle requirements.

Key Feature Comparison between Route4Me and Circuit

Route4Me and Circuit are both last-mile delivery route optimization software designed to enhance your delivery operations. However, they differ in various aspects, including features, pricing structures, integration capabilities, and user experience.

1. Route planning

Both Route4Me and Circuit offer route planning for multiple stops and drivers. However, Route4Me provides more advanced features, including territory planning, smartzone routing, and commercial vehicle routing.

2. Route optimization

Some users have found Route4Me’s route optimization to be erratic at times, leading to overlapping routes and unrealistic ETAs. Contrarily, Circuit’s route optimization capabilities are generally applauded for its clean and easily navigable routes, except when routing for clustered stops, which may be a little cumbersome.

3. User interface and ease of use

Route4Me’s user interface is widely described as cluttered and outdated. Route4Me, on the other hand, is often popular and widely accepted for its clean and user-friendly interface. 

4. Features and functionality

Route4Me offers a modular pricing structure, enabling you to add different add-ons, such as curbside delivery, avoidance zones, and left-turn/right-turn avoidance, as needed. While there are free add-ons like time windows or priorities, most features are chargeable. 

Circuit’s standard plans include some of these features, such as proof of delivery, live GPS tracking, and customer notifications.

5. Pricing

Route4Me’s base plan starts at $200 per month, in contrast to Circuit’s, which starts at $100 per month. However, Route4Me’s three pricing tiers differ only in the extent of functionality they offer while supporting 5 users. Circuit, on the other hand, provides four pricing tiers that differ not only in features but also in the number of stops included.

6. Integration and customization

Route4Me boasts a wide range of integrations with third-party software tools and a well-documented API for custom integrations. Circuit also supports integration with third-party software like Shopify or Zapier but may be unreliable and ineffective at times.

7. Customer support

Both Route4Me and Circuit provide customer support, but users have reported mixed experiences with the responsiveness and effectiveness of their respective support teams. Also, in Route4Me, you have to pay extra for dedicated customer support.

Here’s what Upper’s Users have to say:

Experts’ Opinion on Overall Functionality

The comparison between Route4Me and Circuit shows their distinct positives and areas of concern that businesses should thoroughly assess before making the final choice.

• Route4Me stands out for its robust multi-constrained route planning, while Circuit has a slight edge when it comes to the accuracy and efficiency of route optimization. 
• Route4Me is better suited for businesses requiring advanced route planning capabilities, extensive customization, and integration with third-party platforms. 
• Route4Me and Circuit differ in their pricing framework. While Route4Me has a flexible modular pricing approach that may sometimes turn expensive, Circuit provides stop-based pricing plans that may sometimes be costlier if you have over 5000 stops. 
• While Route4Me doesn’t provide route optimization in their basic subscription, Circuit includes all the essential features like optimization, proof of delivery, and customer notifications. These features eliminate the need for costly add-ons, making it a go-to option for businesses with basic routing needs and budget constraints.

So, both Route4Me and Circuit have their advantages and limitations across different aspects. If you need a solution that lets you find the sweet spot between prices and advanced delivery route optimization features, Upper is an ideal fit for you. 

It offers a wide range of features that overcome these platforms’ shortcomings at competitive prices.

• Comprehensive features: Upper offers a comprehensive set of features, including route planning, optimization, proof of delivery, customer notifications, real-time tracking, driver dispatch, analytics, and easy spreadsheet import of addresses.

The good part is that Upper’s plans include all these features instead of charging extra for them as add-ons, making it a cost-effective solution.

• Ease of use: Upper’s user-friendly and intuitive design facilitates the easy import of delivery stops, simplifies route planning and optimization, and lets you manage driver dispatch efficiently, saving time and effort.
• Multiple optimization options: Upper provides an extensive set of constraints, enabling you to optimize your routes based on priority, time windows, service times, and driver preferences, paving the way for efficient deliveries.
• Cost-effective pricing: Upper’s pricing model is based on the number of users instead of vehicles. This makes it more flexible and cost-effective, especially if you manage large delivery fleets comprising different vehicle types. 
• API integration capabilities: Upper provides an OpenAI to enable seamless integration with your existing platforms and tools. It enables you to ensure seamless logistics operations and better control over delivery processes. 
• Customer support: Upper offers dedicated customer support, live chat assistance, and technical consulting, unlike Route4Me, which charges an extra fee for these services. 

While Route4Me and Circuit are prominent solutions in route optimization, Upper has a competitive advantage due to its user-friendly interface, extensive range of features, competitive pricing, and strong customer support.  

Upper doesn’t create just the shortest or speediest routes; it leverages sophisticated routing algorithms to provide practical and efficient routes that are beneficial for both you and your delivery teams.

Here’s what Upper’s users have to say