6 ms·

Site looks great and it was easy to understand the service. However, I went looking for pricing and couldn't find it. My guess is that maybe you are testing now

by diasks2 13y ago

Site looks great and it was easy to understand the service. However, I went looking for pricing and couldn't find it. My guess is that maybe you are testing now to see what type of demand there might be? I think some type of note on pricing would be helpful (even if it is somethings like "currently free for beta testers but we plan to start charging from x date").

mck- 13y ago
Currently free beta, plan to charge $29/vehicle/month
- michaelt 13y ago
  What countries are supported? What will happen if I ask to route between two places I can't drive between? What's the cap on number of vehicles/orders? How long does optimization take? Have you ever driven one of your optimized routes? How does your product compare to Eurobios, Descartes and oracle real time scheduler?
  - mck- 13y ago
    1. Global support 2. The orders that cannot be reached will be returned in an array: unserved 3. No cap. $29/vehicle/month. 4. Hard question; since we're talking about an NP-hard problem: - For ~20 orders, it takes ~1s. - For ~120 orders, an API call (from POST to response) is about ~20s. Just to give you a few pointers of benchmarks. Having said that, given the nature of our algorithms, you may run the algorithm for as long as you have time, to keep searching for better solutions. 5. No I haven't. But I always drive with a GPS :) 6. I used to work as an OR consultant. I haven't used the products you mention, but I have used AIMSS, GAMS, Quintiq, and the like before. My take-away is that those software packages are expensive, bloated, and clunky. They require consultants and IT integrators. And workshops and manuals. Routific is Simple. Straightforward.™
    - junto 13y ago
      You should include some of these comparisons on the site. You seem to know your market really well and you should expand on the website copy with some of this reaaly valuable information. Well executed BTW. Looks really nice on mobile too.
      - mck- 13y ago
        I think that's a great idea :) thanks!
- oxtopus 13y ago
  In one of my previous roles as a software engineer at a local, independent office supply company, this would have been a compelling idea. They ran a small fleet of leased delivery trucks, and employed drivers hourly, so as a company there is an incentive to reduce delivery costs, and the benefits. At $29 per vehicle per month, it seems like optimized routes would pay for itself relatively quickly. You'd need only to shave a few hours and miles off the routes per month to cover the cost, and then anything else is pure cost saving. However, I think there are some caveats. Drivers were given all items at the beginning of the day with a set of destinations and a deadline. As long as everything was delivered by the end of the day, everyone was happy. Sometimes there were exceptions, and multiple trips needed to be made, or certain customers needed to be given priority at the discretion of the sales rep. Obviously, the drivers aren't interested in optimized routes, as that would cut their pay, and other factors would override the initial route decisions. Best case scenario, the company is at a point where they are having to turn away customers, and they are able to increase their revenue by adding capacity through optimized routes.

by diasks2 13y ago

mck- 13y ago

Currently free beta, plan to charge $29/vehicle/month

michaelt 13y ago
What countries are supported? What will happen if I ask to route between two places I can't drive between? What's the cap on number of vehicles/orders? How long does optimization take? Have you ever driven one of your optimized routes? How does your product compare to Eurobios, Descartes and oracle real time scheduler?
- mck- 13y ago
  1. Global support 2. The orders that cannot be reached will be returned in an array: unserved 3. No cap. $29/vehicle/month. 4. Hard question; since we're talking about an NP-hard problem: - For ~20 orders, it takes ~1s. - For ~120 orders, an API call (from POST to response) is about ~20s. Just to give you a few pointers of benchmarks. Having said that, given the nature of our algorithms, you may run the algorithm for as long as you have time, to keep searching for better solutions. 5. No I haven't. But I always drive with a GPS :) 6. I used to work as an OR consultant. I haven't used the products you mention, but I have used AIMSS, GAMS, Quintiq, and the like before. My take-away is that those software packages are expensive, bloated, and clunky. They require consultants and IT integrators. And workshops and manuals. Routific is Simple. Straightforward.™
  - junto 13y ago
    You should include some of these comparisons on the site. You seem to know your market really well and you should expand on the website copy with some of this reaaly valuable information. Well executed BTW. Looks really nice on mobile too.
    - mck- 13y ago
      I think that's a great idea :) thanks!
oxtopus 13y ago
In one of my previous roles as a software engineer at a local, independent office supply company, this would have been a compelling idea. They ran a small fleet of leased delivery trucks, and employed drivers hourly, so as a company there is an incentive to reduce delivery costs, and the benefits. At $29 per vehicle per month, it seems like optimized routes would pay for itself relatively quickly. You'd need only to shave a few hours and miles off the routes per month to cover the cost, and then anything else is pure cost saving. However, I think there are some caveats. Drivers were given all items at the beginning of the day with a set of destinations and a deadline. As long as everything was delivered by the end of the day, everyone was happy. Sometimes there were exceptions, and multiple trips needed to be made, or certain customers needed to be given priority at the discretion of the sales rep. Obviously, the drivers aren't interested in optimized routes, as that would cut their pay, and other factors would override the initial route decisions. Best case scenario, the company is at a point where they are having to turn away customers, and they are able to increase their revenue by adding capacity through optimized routes.