Circuit for Teams Route Planner: Review and Alternatives

Circuit for Teams is a popular route planning app for delivery services and couriers — but is it a good fit for your business? In this review we’ll look at where the Circuit app is great, where it’s lacking, what kinds of business needs it’s best for, and some alternatives. 

Circuit as a company actually has three separate products:

1. Circuit Route Planner is a standalone route planner app for smartphones, aimed at individual delivery drivers.
2. Circuit for Teams is a desktop app for businesses that plan and dispatch routes for multiple drivers. 
3. Circuit Package Tracker is a portal where consumers anywhere in the world can track the delivery status of their packages. 

In this review we’re focusing on products for delivery businesses that have multiple drivers, which means Circuit for Teams. If you’re a solo driver, check out our review of the best route planning apps for iPhone and Android instead.

What should you look for in route planning and delivery management software?

Planning routes for a team of drivers, and then managing them through the delivery process, is very different from just planning your routes for the day as a solo driver. As a dispatcher, delivery manager, or operations manager, you probably need to:

• Plan the most efficient routes to minimize time on the road and fuel consumption.
• Track delivery progress through the day and solve problems like missed deliveries.
• Notify customers accurately about when to expect their deliveries.
• Track delivery success and collect proof of delivery.
• Track driver performance and hours.

All the route planning and route optimization software we cover in this article includes real-time driver tracking, customer notifications, and proof of delivery — although the pricing may vary. We’ll mention notable features in each review.

Circuit review

What Circuit for Teams does right: Great design and a rich feature set

• Circuit for Teams is beautifully designed and stands out for its ease of use.
• Shopify and Zapier integrations make it easy to import orders.
• Planners can choose what kinds of proof of delivery to accept (photo and/or signature), and whether POD is optional or not. 
• They offer a good set of analytics, including calculation of cost per delivery and a breakdown of reasons for failed deliveries. 
• Customer notifications can be fine-tuned for each customer to show a simple ETA, the customer’s location in the delivery queue, or a live tracking link so people can see exactly where their driver is. 
• If the live tracking link is enabled, customers can leave notes for their drivers. 
• Their customer support is well regarded. 

The Teams product is also well integrated with the driver app, which makes sense for a product which started life as a mobile route planner app for solo delivery drivers. 

In fact, some of Circuit’s best features are exclusive to its driver app. The most impressive are:

• A Package Finder feature which enables drivers to record where each package is placed in their vehicle. 
• Drivers can create and edit their own routes on mobile. 
• You can get driving directions inside Circuit itself, without needing to use another navigation app like Google Maps or Waze. 

Overall, Circuit for Teams is easy to use and feature-rich. Its biggest weakness, though, is in actual route planning and route management. We’ll look at that in the next section. 

Where Circuit is lacking: Inefficient route planning and lackluster dispatch tools

Circuit’s biggest downfall in our tests is that its actual route optimization and route management is mediocre. 

Take a look at the routes in this screenshot:

This is a classic example of what we call “spaghetti routes”. These are tangled and overlapping routes that aren’t actually workable for real-world businesses that care about efficiency. In particular:

• The purple route is extremely long and includes six bridge crossings. Bridges are often traffic bottlenecks, so truly efficient routes should avoid crossing major bodies of water as much as possible. 
• Two stops in the area covered by the purple route have been allocated to the red route, creating an unnecessary extra leg for the red driver. 
• Four drivers are available for these routes, but the blue driver has only been allocated one stop. That leaves all the drivers with wildly different route lengths and shift times. 

No easy way to edit routes

A dispatcher’s first instinct will be to move some of these stops around to create a more sensible set of routes. But there’s no easy way to do this in Circuit for Teams. You can move a stop to another day, or force a particular stop to be allocated to a particular driver. But making changes is awkward and difficult, and it doesn’t solve the main problem. Dispatchers and route planners need an easy way to edit routes, and Circuit doesn’t have one. 

This is a big efficiency problem. Route optimization algorithms do an amazing job of sorting stops into automatic routes, but they can’t be perfect. Then there’s the fact that every city has its own quirks and traffic patterns: Experienced dispatchers know them, but algorithms often don’t. For example, in Vancouver everyone knows to keep bridge crossings to a minimum if you want to avoid getting stuck in traffic. In other cities there will be tunnels, toll roads or traffic hotspots that pose the same problem. The ability to edit routes easily is an essential part of a smooth dispatch and delivery process. 

No timeline view

Finally, Circuit doesn’t offer a timeline view of its routes. Keeping track of delivery progress through the day is a big part of a dispatcher’s job, and it can be hard to do on a map, even with real-time updates that show driver positions. The problem gets more difficult the more routes you have. 

As we noted above, when you’re managing a team of multiple drivers you need to be able to plan efficient routes, then track delivery progress through the day and solve problems like missed deliveries. For all its great features, Circuit doesn’t do so well at this core task. 

Pricing

Circuit for Teams has four base pricing tiers, with additional per-stop charges:

• The Starter tier includes 500 stops per month for $100. Extra stops are charged at 4c per stop. This would add up to $120 a month for 1,000 stops. Proof of delivery and customer notifications are included. But your team is limited to 5 drivers, and you can only access 14 days of delivery history. If you don’t need more than 5 drivers, this is definitely the lowest-cost plan to be on.
•  The Essentials Tier starts at $200 per month for 1,000 stops, with extra stops charged at 5c. You get unlimited drivers, but no proof of delivery or customer notifications; and delivery history is restricted to 90 days.
• The Standard Tier adds proof of delivery and customer notifications for $250 per month and 6c per extra stop. Delivery history is 1 year.
• The Pro tier adds unlimited delivery history for $300, and an extra 7c per stop for more than 1,000 stops.

Circuit review summary

• Circuit’s route optimization algorithm creates inefficient spaghetti routes. 
• It’s awkward and difficult to edit routes. 
• There’s no timeline view to help track progress through the day. 

So if you’re a growing business that values efficiency, you may want to try an alternative to Circuit for Teams. In the rest of this review, we’ll look at the top four alternatives to Circuit: Routific, Onfleet, Route4Me and Optimoroute. 

💡Seen enough? Try Routific free for 7 days  — no credit card needed.

Alternatives to Circuit

Routific: For businesses that care about efficiency

Super efficient route optimization and route management features are what make Routific stand out. Our algorithm development team has made it a priority to create routes that are driver-friendly and make sense for business workflows.  

Take a look at this screenshot:

As you can see, these routes are a lot neater than the ones produced by Circuit, clustering stops so that drivers don’t have to overlap their routes too much. 

We’ll admit it’s not perfect, though! There is one blue stop near the middle of the map that might make more sense on the pink route. To change it, all the planner or dispatcher has to do is drag and drop the stop to the desired route — and that’s it. It’s just as easy to move groups of stops. 

Routific’s dispatcher view also includes a timeline, which makes it much easier to keep an eye on route progress through the day, and see where each driver is at. 

What about other features? It depends on what’s most important to your business:

• Integrations: Circuit has a slight edge here with its Shopify and Zapier integrations. Routific has a 2-way API to make it easier to import and export info from your order management system or CRM, but we don’t yet have app-specific integrations. 
• Proof of delivery: Routific and Circuit both enable photos and signatures as proof of delivery. 
• Customer notifications: Routific and Circuit both offer SMS and email notifications, as well as a live delivery tracker. Circuit allows customers to send messages via the live tracker link as well.
• Analytics: Routific and Circuit both offer route and driver analytics. As of late 2024 Circuit’s analytics features are more advanced than Routific’s, but this is changing rapidly. 
• Driver app: Routific and Circuit both have free mobile apps that drivers can use to receive and manage their routes. Circuit also has the separate standalone app fo solo drivers, which is paid.

💡Want to see the difference for yourself? Sign up for a free trial of Routific — no credit card needed.

Pricing

Like Circuit for Teams, Routific has a sliding scale of prices depending on stops per month. The differences to note are:

• The first 100 stops per month are free; after that there’s a standard base price of $150 per month. 
• Per-stop pricing kicks in after 1,000 stops per month. The cost per stop starts at 15c and decreases with every 1,000 stops after that. 
• All plans offer the full feature set including unlimited team members, customer notifications via email, and proof of delivery. 

Comparing exact pricing can get tricky depending on the size of your business and the features that are most important to you. We recommend spending some time comparing the pricing options between Routific and Circuit for your own business, to see which one offers the best value for money in your business. 

What about other alternatives? Onfleet, Optimoroute and Route4Me are the most relevant. We’ll look at each of them in turn. 

Onfleet: Good for on-demand deliveries that need ID verification or barcode scanning

Onfleet is a solid route planner with some standout features. The big one is that it has great features for on-demand deliveries. This makes it a good choice for couriers who do a lot of single-package trips, and for restaurants. 

A more detailed list of what makes some businesses choose Onfleet includes:

• Automated driver assignment and dispatch to give customers a self-service option.
• Barcode scanning.
• Age verification: In-app age verification at the point of delivery is a dealbreaker for companies that deliver alcohol or cannabis.
• Customer feedback: Onfleet has a feature that lets customers rate their delivery experience.

On the downside, Onfleet’s route quality is mediocre. Most of the complaints we hear from Onfleet users are about poorly optimized routes, with lots of criss-crossing and inaccurate addresses. 

Onfleet is also not at all user-friendly. There’s a steep learning curve for people just starting out, and the app feels really old-fashioned and clunky. Even worse, some really important route management features are absent:

• It’s not possible to view all the routes for a single day at once. You can see all the stop pins, or one route at a time; but not all the day’s routes. There isn’t even any color coding to show which stops are allocated to which routes.
• The interface doesn’t show real routes – just straight lines between stops.
• It’s difficult to make changes to routes. 
• There’s no timeline view. 
• There are no route stats for the day, like the total number of stops, shift times, or distance. 

This can get really confusing and frustrating for a dispatcher. We know people have questions like: What is my total mileage? How many driving hours in total and across my drivers? 

Without this info, and without a way to see all your routes, you’re in the dark. You simply have to trust that the algorithm is doing its job and hope for the best. We don’t think that makes for a great user experience. 

Pricing

The bottom line: Onfleet is expensive, and their pricing is inflexible. 

• The $550 per month starting price includes up to 2,000 stops per month. For comparison, 2,000 stops would cost $300 with Routific, or between $250-$370 with Circuit depending on which features you choose.
• There’s a big jump to the next tier at $1,265 per month for up to 5,000 stops. 

This lack of flexibility can leave some of Onfleet’s customers having to choose between paying for overages, or paying for capacity they don’t use.

Optimoroute: Good for specific use cases like multi-day routing

Optimoroute  is a lot easier to use than Onfleet, and has a couple of unique features that make it a good choice for some businesses. The standouts are:

• Weekly planning: This is what we call multi-day routing at Routific. It allows customers to plan routes up to five weeks ahead NOFOLLOW, and allocate stops automatically to the most appropriate days and times.
• Return to depot: Optimoroute gives route planners and dispatchers the ability to schedule routes that include trips back to the depot for reloading during the day. Circuit and Routific both include a return to depot at the end of a shift, but not during a shift. 
• Breadcrumb trails: This feature tracks vehicle movements so that dispatchers can compare actual vs planned routes. 
• Individual driver profiles: Optimoroute’s detailed driver profiles include information like breaks and overtime, skills, vehicle types, service areas they should stay in, and even cost and speed settings. This makes OptimoRoute a good option for field sales and service organizations. 
• Barcode scanning: Enables drivers to scan barcodes or QR codes for proof of delivery.

When it comes to drawbacks, Optimoroute shares many of the same problems as Circuit and Onfleet:

• Route quality is lackluster, with lots of spaghetti routes.
• Route editing is not great. 
• Start locations are inflexible. It’s not easy in Optimoroute to adjust the start locations for routes. This can make life difficult for dispatchers who work with contract drivers, where route starting points can change from day to day.

Pricing

Optimoroute’s Pro plan is billed per driver, rather than per stop. The Pro plan starts at $44.10 per driver per month for an annual subscription (or $49 if you pay monthly).

Per-driver pricing makes sense if you have a fixed number of drivers — although the costs can add up quickly. At five drivers and 1,000 orders per month, for example, this is what you’d pay for different route planners:

• Circuit for Teams Starter plan: $120 per month
• Routific:  $150 per month
• Onfleet Launch plan: $550 per month
• OptimoRoute Pro plan: $220.50 per month. 

It’s also a problem if you have a variable number of drivers, which is quite common. You may end up paying for extra drivers who only work a handful of days a month. 

Route4Me: Great for customization

Route4Me is one of the original route planning software tools. Its main strength is an extensive marketplace of add-on features that allows customers to mix and match modules for maximum flexibility — although this does come at an extra cost.

We’ve also noticed that some of the things Route4Me charges extra for, like time windows and photo proof of delivery, are standard features in other apps like Circuit for Teams and Routific. 

Here are the places where Route4Me shines compared to the other route planners in this review:

• Truck routing: If your fleet includes trucks that can’t go on all roads or fit under all bridges, you need a route planner that takes those constraints into account. Some Circuit and Routific customers use the Hammer truck routing app as a workaround, but it’s only available in the US. Route4Me’s mixed vehicles routing and commercial vehicle routing add-on components handle these scenarios.
• Territory assignment: Customers can carve their delivery or service area up into different zones and assign each to a regular driver. This helps drivers become familiar with their territories and delivery routes.
• Recurring routing: Route4Me has an add-on component that makes it easy to handle regularly recurring routes. 
• Integrations: Route4Me offers integrations with e-commerce platforms including Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. That’s an even bigger selection than Circuit’s.

Where does Route4Me fall down? In the usual places:

• Route4Me’s route optimization is not driver friendly.
• ETA estimates are suspect. Accurate delivery time estimates are absolutely critical to an efficient process — when ETAs are wrong, so are driver shift lengths and customer notifications. But in our tests, Route4Me kept coming up with time estimates we just didn’t believe. For example, on one route section that Routific and Google Maps both estimated would take 18-19 minutes, Route4Me estimated just 10 minutes. 

Pricing

Route4Me’s pricing page is a little misleading at first glance — the price per user month is highlighted, but you have to sign up a minimum of 5 users! We also don’t think their “Route Management” package is worth it. The main reason to use a route planner is automatic route optimization — that’s where the value comes from! 

So the actual prices for Route4Me, if you’re comparing it with Circuit for Teams or Routific, are:

• $400 per month for basic route optimization. Be careful, though: The plan includes five drivers, but you can only optimize across one driver at a time. That still leaves a lot of work for a dispatcher to do, and a lot of value on the table.
• $600 per month for full route optimization. 

Then some of the add-ons are extra, so overall it’s hard to assess what value for money Route4Me actually provides. But if your business needs some of their advanced modules like curbside routing, it might be worth it. 

How we tested and ranked the alternatives to Circuit for Teams

We tested all five delivery management platforms in this review using real-life data, with stops in our home city of Vancouver. For each app, we signed up for a new account to assess how easy it is to get started, and then went through the entire route planning process. We uploaded orders, optimized routes, inspected the routes and made changes, then dispatched them to drivers. 

We realized that when it comes to some basic functionality you’d expect in a delivery management solution, there’s very little difference between Circuit, Routific, Onfleet, Optimoroute, and Route4Me. They all have:

• Live GPS tracking
• Proof of delivery
• Customer notifications with a live tracking link
• Standalone driver apps for both Android and iOS

The biggest difference is in the quality of route optimization, where performance varies widely — so that’s what we focused on. 

Why are route optimization and route efficiency important?

Last mile delivery is expensive —  up to 40-50% of total shipping costs, according to most estimates. So cost optimization is an important part of efficient delivery management — and the single most important number you need to track is cost per delivery. 

The two biggest components of cost per delivery are: 

• Driver wages (usually 70 to 80% of the total).
• Fuel costs. 

You can’t realistically lower wages, and you can’t change the fuel price. That leaves route density, or the number of deliveries you can make per hour, as the only important factor you can control. 

An efficient route that covers more stops per hour results in less total distance traveled, less fuel used and less drive time. So as a route manager, route efficiency is the most effective lever you can pull to make your delivery operations more efficient, and your business more profitable. 

Driver acceptability and the “spaghetti routes” problem

As much as we love algorithms, we have to admit: They’re not great at common sense. In route planning, this often manifests in what we call “spaghetti routes”. Take a look at these screenshots:

See that tangled mass of colorful spaghetti on the left? Routes are  criss-crossing and overlapping, and multiple drivers are going to the same area.  From years of talking to route planners, dispatchers and drivers, we’ve learned that drivers absolutely hate routes like this. The routes might meet some kind of mathematical definition of “best route” but they make no sense to humans. No driver wants to pass one of their colleagues on the road going to the same place they just left! That’s why our algorithm development team has put so much effort into avoiding spaghetti routes. 

Additionally, our ETAs are highly accurate, powered by 179 machine learning models all across the globe that incorporate tunnels, bridges, and busy highways. Not only are our routes highly optimized, they are also realistic.

Summary 

Circuit for Teams is a simple, well-designed piece of software that can be very valuable for any small business in the early stages. As soon as you scale beyond just a few dozen deliveries per day, you’ll likely hit some of their shortcomings.

As your delivery business grows, efficiency becomes increasingly important. A difference of 15% in mileage for a few dozen deliveries might not mean much — but for larger operations, this difference could make or break your business.