Free Postcode Route Planning Software Question

[Rose Knowles]

Hi Forum - I help run a small service company, with clients all over the UK. We have just taken on some more locations but it's getting to the stage now where we do need a route planner. The route planners I've seen are all subscription based. I want to avoid having to subscribe to.. *anything*.. if I possibly can (probably because I'm very old school, I don't have any TV/music subscriptions *at all* etc, preferring instead to watch terrestrial TV programmes and to select my own music from my own collection instead of being served it by Spotify or whoever)..

So IS there such a thing as an online route planner that I'd be able to use for free? It's not really something I would need to be using regularly because our locations *do* remain relatively static over time, with additions only now and then (not really lots of additions on a very regular basis).

thanks in advance for any suggestions/thoughts/advice!!

 

[MBE2017]

Have a look at www.routexl.co.uk , the free version gives you up to 20 stops per route.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

You don't get something for nothing but I have written down @MBE2017 suggestion and I'm going to look at it later

The existing route planners are reasonably good and there is a reason that they monetise them with subscriptions
We use Trackpod and there is an App called Circuit that has some good press in the industry but again I have never seen it and nobody here has used it
If you need it sadly it does cost

 

[tertius]

The answer is probably NO :-(

There is no such thing as a free lunch, they say - so somewhere along the line you have to be prepared to pay - that's how business works. And chances are, anything that appears to be free, can only afford to be so because it is able to use your data in some way shape or form. "If you're not paying for the product, then you're the product"

 

[MBE2017]

Personally I think a paid for solution would pay for itself unless it is a very rare occurrence. Not only will the software plan a route, it will sort it into a decent order, so particularly for new drivers it would be useful.

I used to have around three hundred drops on various routes I used to do on a regular basis, normally 50/60 deliveries in a day. It can take a week or so the memorise a route really well, but it is much faster than any software, nothing matches your own mind yet. I don’t actually have a great memory either, but nothing will ever beat a good driver sorting a route out themselves.