Changelog
What shipped, and when.
Every change that reached production, newest first, written for the businesses that use Porch Route rather than for the people who build it. Dates are the day a change went live.
Last updated By Porch Route
- Platform
Named depots, a Starter plan and a texting page
Vehicles can start and end at any named depot — a second farm, a kitchen, a driver's yard — not just the business depot. A $39 Starter plan covers a few delivery days a month, every paid plan's text allowance has a published overage, and the new texting page says exactly how texts work.
- Depots panel on the Vehicles page; the vehicle editor's Starts at / Ends at are a pick list
- Starter: 500 orders and 750 texts a month for $39; Porch 1,500 texts, Route 7,500; then $0.015 a text or $10 per 500
- /sms, /status, /changelog and /roadmap; support hours on Contact and Security
- Continue with Google / Apple on sign-in, once the owner switches the providers on
- Planning
Driver breaks, second delivery windows and learned service times
A driver's break has a window it must start inside and the optimizer places it where it costs least. An order can carry a second delivery window. Each driver has a speed factor, and the planner can learn service times from what routes actually took.
- Dispatch
Reverse, copy, draw and lasso; staff alerts
Reverse a route, copy a route to another day, and draw or lasso stops on the Build routes map to assign them. The office can be alerted by email or text when a stop runs late, fails, or a driver's GPS goes quiet.
- Drive
Spanish drive mode and package scanning
Each driver has a language for the drive screen (English or Spanish). Orders can carry package codes, and a driver scans them to confirm what was loaded and what was handed over.
- Connect
Shopify write-back, farm CSV presets, Zapier and API parity
A connected Shopify store gets each delivery's outcome written back to the order. CSV import has presets for the common farm store exports. A Zapier app and new API routes for routes and an optimization-only call bring the API level with the app.
- Planning
Plan the week
A week view of open orders by delivery day: drag orders between days to balance the week, then build each day as usual. Every move is recorded and sent to your order system as an update.
- Planning
Addresses found the way people write them
The address finder tries an address as typed, spelled out, without its direction and by street and ZIP before giving up, and the free US Census Geocoder backs up OpenStreetMap. One place picker everywhere: search, tap the map, drag the pin or use your location, with the nearest address filled in for a dropped pin.
- The depot is one tap away from Build routes and the getting-started checklist
- Address review shows how precisely each address was found
- Site
The public site
Product, pricing, six industry pages, guides for every screen, learn articles, a glossary, API docs as OpenAPI 3.1 with a Markdown twin, llms.txt for answer engines, and light, dark and system themes across the whole product.
- Platform
Plans, billing and usage
Porch Light free up to 150 orders a month; Porch and Route through Stripe with monthly or annual billing; a 14-day trial with no card; usage meters for orders, texts and vehicles with warnings at 80% and 100%. Limits are advisory — nothing stops mid-route.
- Platform
Two-step sign-in, activity log and data export
Owners and admins can require an authenticator code at sign-in. Settings → Activity records who changed what. Every plane is rate-limited. A business can export its data as CSV and an owner can delete the business outright.
- Customers
Customer notices, tracking pages, ratings and the message log
Scheduled, on the way, almost there, delivered and couldn't deliver — by text and email under the business's name, each with a tracking page showing the truck, the timeline and the proof photo. Delivered notices wait out an undo window. Customers rate the delivery; replies, STOP and HELP land in a messages inbox.
- Drive
Drive mode from a link, with proof and an offline queue
Dispatching texts or emails each driver a no-login link to one route. Drive mode shows a stop at a time, hands off to the phone's maps, takes photo or signature proof, and keeps working without signal — updates wait in a retry queue and sync when the phone reconnects. Printable manifests per route.
- Connect
Orders from the API, a CSV or by hand; customers and recurring deliveries
Create or update a delivery by your own order reference (safe to retry), import a day of orders from a spreadsheet with saved column mappings, or add them by hand. An address book links orders to customers, and standing weekly or biweekly deliveries generate their own orders.
- Planning
Free maps by default
Maps, address lookup and road distances run on OpenStreetMap — MapLibre with OpenFreeMap tiles, Nominatim and OSRM — so a new business needs no map key and gets no map bill. Google Maps stays an option.
- Platform
Porch Route becomes its own product
The routing engine, dispatch board, drive mode and tracking pages built for From The Farm's local delivery program now run as a standalone product with its own database, sign-in, jobs and deploy. Any store or order system plugs in through the integration API with API keys and signed webhooks; every business is kept apart on the server.
Plan your next delivery day in a few minutes.
Add your vehicles and a day of orders — by hand, from a CSV or over the API — and build your first routes.
Free up to 150 orders a month · No credit card