Buyer's guide
How to choose freight forwarding software.
Five kinds of tool, ten things to test in a demo, six questions for any AI claim.
Written by the Freightools team. We sell tools discussed here, so no vendor is ranked or scored.
Name your problem first.
"Freight forwarding software" covers at least five kinds of tool, and few products are equally strong in all five.
| Kind of tool | The problem it solves | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Operations suiteA TMS or forwarding ERP. | Running the shipment file: bookings, bills of lading, consolidation, invoicing, accounts. | How far its rates and quoting go. Would you still price in a spreadsheet? |
| Rate and quote tool | Turning carrier rates into quotes, with the margin in view. | After yes, does the quote become the shipment or stop at a PDF? |
| Visibility and tracking | Knowing where the cargo is, and telling the customer before they ask. | Which carriers and modes are covered, and where the positions come from. |
| Customs filing | Sending declarations or manifests to a customs authority. | Which filings, and in which countries. |
| Single-job tool | One job, such as opening a shipment, paid per use. | Where the record ends up, and what a person approves before anything is sent. |
Freightools GPT, one of our own two products, is a tool of the fifth kind.
Ask each vendor which half they built first.
A TMS holds the shipment file. A rate and quote tool produces the price. Some systems do both, so test the other half harder. If quoting is your bottleneck, read the quoting software guide.
Ten things to test in a demo.
Use the same ten on every vendor, on your own files. A vendor's sample data is chosen to work.
0 of 10 tested
Ticks stay in this browser.
How to judge an AI claim.
"AI" covers three things: reading a document, suggesting a number, and acting with nobody looking.
0 of 6 asked
If a vendor quotes an accuracy figure, ask which files it was measured on. Our own answers are on AI in Freightools.
Cost questions for every vendor.
Vendors count different things, so two price lists rarely compare line for line.
- What is the unit of price: user, shipment, office or module?
- Which users count: everyone with a login, or some roles?
- What does onboarding cost, and who does the setup?
- What must you buy on day one: minimum users, a minimum term?
- Are AI features metered, and what happens when the allowance runs out?
- What costs extra: the portal, API access, carrier connections, the accounting link?
- Is support included, and during which hours?
- If you leave, how do you get your data out?
Freightools publishes its prices on Pricing.
Where Freightools fits, and where it does not.
Freightools is built around the quote, and it follows the won quote into the shipment. It can sit on top of the ERP or TMS you already have, or be your TMS.
AI Rate Loading reads a carrier rate sheet into one proposed buying agreement per lane. When you load a file, you review every lane before any agreement is created.
| Subject | It fits when | It does not fit, or not yet, when |
|---|---|---|
| Rates | Your rates arrive as Excel and PDF, and someone retypes them. | You need rail rates loaded. Rate loading covers ocean, air and road. |
| Quoting | Sales needs buying, selling and margin on each option before sending. | You expect pooled spot rates. They come from your own ocean carrier accounts. |
| Shipments | A won quote should become the shipment file and the invoice, without retyping. | You want supplier invoices read for you. They are typed and matched by hand. |
| Customs | You submit manifests and delivery orders for Israeli ocean imports, after a one-time setup. | You need declarations, clearance or filings in another country. |
| Buying | You want the price and the help articles before you talk to anyone. | Procurement requires a third-party security certification. Freightools claims none today. |
Customs submission needs a one-time setup: you contact us and provide your signing key, and we install it.
Questions about freight forwarding software.
What is freight forwarding software?
Software a freight forwarder uses to run the business: manage carrier rates, quote customers, open and follow shipments, produce documents and invoice. Some products cover all of it. Others do one part, such as quoting or tracking.
How much does freight forwarding software cost?
Vendors count users, shipments, offices or modules, with onboarding on top. We publish ours: Unlimited is $1,490 a month with up to 10 users, and Pro is $4.66 per shipment. See Pricing.
Which is the best AI freight forwarding software?
The one whose AI you can check: a marker on anything it could not read, a way to trace a value to its source, and a person's approval before anything is created.
Read what Freightools does, then test it.
Send one rate sheet after you book, and bring the ten tests. We load it on the call and quote a lane from it.