The information contained in this article is an expression of the views and experiences of its author, obtained by using all the applications listed and gathering the opinions of users of these applications. If you believe any of this information is inaccurate or out of date, we will be happy if you let us know.
In the first part, we discussed the functions that individual load planning applications offer, in the second part, we talked about the experience that awaits the user when using these programs. In the third part, we had a look at the prices of individual software, determined if they have a trial version for free, and if those trial versions have any limitations.
For the highest possible level of objectivity, I will detail here the way I compared and then ranked the applications. If you are only interested in the final ranking table, you can skip straight to the final section.
Then, I assigned each attribute an importance rating on a scale from one to three, with one being the least and three being the most important attribute. Again, I drew on the experience and comments of our customers.
In the next step, I scored each of the properties for each application according to how well it met that property. For simplicity and clarity, I always awarded a minimum of one (worst) and a maximum of three (best) points.
In the penultimate step, I multiplied the importance of each feature by the rating of that feature to get the score that the app received for that feature.
In the last step, for each application, I simply added up all the scores given for all sixteen criteria to get an overall score, which I used to rank the programs from best (highest score) to worst (lowest score).
The winner of this section is CargoWiz, which has the most required features. It is followed by EasyCargo, which, unlike Cargowiz, does not offer the rather desirable palletization option. In third place with identical overall scores are Cube-IQ, CubeMaster, and packVol.
Cube-IQ lost points for not supporting priority groups, which are essential especially for customers shipping goods from one loading point to multiple customers. On the other hand, it received the highest score for supporting the variety of item shapes it allows to load. CubeMaster lost out on a better position due to the lack of manual load plan adjustments, which combined with the low quality of the calculation can be a major problem. However, it still has many features.
The winner here is EasyCargo, which scored full points in all categories except for the ability to use the app on mobile devices, which is not yet supported by EasyCargo. Cube-IQ came in second place with a difference of just half a point. Its controls are slightly less intuitive compared to those in EasyCargo and the number of supported languages is half. On the other hand, it is optimized for mobile devices. Searates came in third place. While the user-friendliness is excellent and the app can run on mobile phones as well as tablets, the quality of the calculation is rather average and the only supported language is English.
The winner in this section is 3D Load Calculator, which cannot be rivalled by any other application in this respect, as it is free. Therefore, the length of the trial version is infinite and there are no restrictions.
The following table combines the three sections we discussed above and the order of the software in this table. This table represents the final ranking of the applications as they stood in this grand comparison.
EasyCargo came in first place thanks to its excellent user-friendliness and a reasonable range of required functions. All at a very reasonable price. These positives managed to outweigh the lack of palletization or mobile devices optimization. I may recommend EasyCargo to all those where the quality of calculation, intuitive operation, and low price are important but, also to those who do not need the program to calculate how to load a pallet and only load items in the s
