Comparison
Where GoLoop fits, and where it doesn't.
Most comparison pages are an argument dressed as a table. This one tries to be useful instead: what the realistic options are for planning a delivery or visit day, what each is genuinely good at, and the fairly narrow set of circumstances in which GoLoop is the right answer. If your operation is simple, one of the other options is almost certainly the better buy.
The realistic options
Four ways people plan a day.
Scroll sideways to see all columns
| Approach | Best when | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheets and local knowledge | A stable round, a planner who knows the patch, and a day that rarely changes. | It does not scale past the planner. Quality drops when they are on leave, and nobody can check the plan was near-optimal. |
| General-purpose route planners | Straightforward drops — ambient goods, loose or no time windows, one type of vehicle. | Constraints tend to be preferences rather than rules, so an efficient-looking plan can quietly violate one. |
| Telematics platforms with routing added | You mainly want live tracking, proof of delivery and driver comms, with planning as a bonus. | The optimisation is usually the lighter part of the product. Complex constraint sets are not what it was built around. |
| Constraint-first optimisation engines | The constraints are the actual problem — cold chain, equipment, site rules, mid-day change. | Overkill for a simple round, and it is an engine rather than a finished product with an interface. |
These are categories, not products. Any specific tool may sit across more than one of them, and the sensible way to judge one is against your own day rather than a table.
What actually separates them
Is a constraint a rule, or a preference?
Almost every routing tool can express "this job needs a refrigerated vehicle". The difference is what happens when honouring that costs a lot of kilometres. If the requirement is a penalty inside a cost function, a large enough saving will override it, and you get a plan that is cheap and wrong.
If it is a hard constraint, the solver will not produce that plan at all — and if no valid plan exists, it says so rather than inventing one. That single design decision is most of what separates the approaches above, and it is the whole reason GoLoop exists.
The right question is not "can it handle cold chain?" but "what does it do when cold chain and efficiency disagree?"
Be honest
When GoLoop is the wrong choice.
There are several situations where we would tell you to buy something else.
- Your day is genuinely simple. Ambient goods, generous windows, interchangeable vehicles. A simpler planner will cost less and take an afternoon to adopt.
- You need a finished product, not an engine. GoLoop returns an optimised manifest over an API. It does not ship a driver app, proof of delivery, customer notifications, live tracking or invoicing.
- You want to sign up and use it today. There is no self-serve product yet. Early access means working with us directly while the platform around the engine is built.
- Tracking matters more to you than planning. If the pain is knowing where vehicles are rather than deciding where they should go, a telematics platform solves your actual problem.
- You cannot describe your constraints. GoLoop is only as good as the rules you give it. If nobody can articulate what makes a job hard, the honest first step is a conversation, not software.
What you actually get
An optimisation engine, and the constraint model behind it.
GoLoop is deliberately one thing done properly rather than a suite done thinly.
A solver, over an API
POST the day as JSON, receive a driver-ready manifest. It sits behind whatever systems you already run rather than replacing them.
A constraint model built for hard days
Cold chain, equipment, driver qualifications, site rules, capacities, hard and soft windows, breaks and shift limits.
Re-planning that respects reality
Days can be re-solved after drivers have left, with completed work locked and the remainder rebuilt from where people actually are.
Infeasibility reported, not hidden
If the day cannot be served with the fleet you have, the jobs that could not be placed come back with the plan.
Questions
Choosing between approaches, answered plainly.
How do I know if I need route optimisation software at all?
A reasonable test is whether your planner is the bottleneck. If the day takes hours to plan, if quality drops when a particular person is away, or if nobody can say whether the plan was close to the best available, software is likely to help. If the round is stable and the planner is comfortable, it may not be.
What makes a routing problem "hard"?
Constraints that interact. Refrigeration, equipment requirements, driver qualifications, site access rules, tight delivery windows and mid-day changes are each manageable alone. The difficulty comes from having to satisfy several at once while still producing an efficient plan.
Is a hard constraint always better than a preference?
No. Soft constraints are the right tool when a rule genuinely can be traded off — arriving slightly outside a preferred window, for instance. The mistake is expressing something that must never happen as something the solver is allowed to price.
Can GoLoop replace my telematics or transport management system?
No, and it is not meant to. GoLoop decides who takes which job and in what order. Tracking, proof of delivery, customer communication and invoicing stay with the systems you already use.
What does GoLoop not do yet?
There is no self-serve signup, no driver-facing app and no user interface for planners — it is an engine with an API, offered through early access while the product around it is built. That is a deliberate order of work, but it does mean it suits teams comfortable integrating an API.
How can I tell whether it would actually help my operation?
Send us one real day and find out on your own data rather than ours. We return the optimised manifest and the difference against how the day actually ran.
Send us one real day.
Comparison tables are arguments. A result on your own operation is evidence. Send us one typical busy day — your fleet and your jobs, as two spreadsheets — and we'll run it through GoLoop and send back the optimised manifest, plus the difference against how the day actually ran: kilometres, driver hours, and time windows met.
- Free, no install and no integration
- Back with you within five working days
- Anonymise the customer names — we only need real addresses
- Your file is used for this test only, and deleted within 30 days
Or email hello@building8.io directly, with your two spreadsheets attached.
Or request early access if you'd rather talk first.
If the result is unimpressive on your day, that is a useful answer too, and we would rather you had it before you bought anything.