How to Choose and Implement Software for the Taxi Business
This article provides insights into the different types of ride-hailing software, how to choose the right approach, and the crucial factors to consider when making your decision.
Why do you need ride-hailing software?
Ride-hailing software is used to automate, simplify, and improve the complicated and competitive taxi business.
Taxi booking apps allow you to:
- Automate taxi operations
- Control your business remotely
- Grow your customer base and scale your taxi company
- Control drivers and their cash flow
- Add new services, e.g., delivery
With features like real-time tracking, automated dispatching, and integrated payment systems, they give you far more control and flexibility, improve user experience, optimize route time to reduce driver idle time, and prevent driver fraud.
Ride-hailing solutions also provide you with a better understanding of your business performance through built-in analytics. They include multiple tools to attract and motivate drivers, and safety features that customers and drivers came to expect.
How do you choose your ride-hailing development approach?
When it comes to ride-hailing software, businesses have several options, each with its advantages and disadvantages.
Let’s start with the most costly and time-consuming options:
1) In-house development: fully custom solutions tailored to your business.
2) Outsourcing development: custom solutions developed by third parties but still requiring in-house maintenance.
Both in-house and outsourced development will take from 9 to 12 months. The price for a ride-hailing solution that includes Driver and Customer apps, a dispatch system (Operator app), and an admin system starts from $150,000.
Keep in mind that outsourced services don’t offer upgrades and maintenance, so you will still need an in-house developer or even several to keep your apps working properly.
Both in-house and outsourcing ride-hailing app development allow you to create your own ride-hailing service from scratch: you can include the features that no other app has, and you can play around with design and usability however you want.
Next, we have much simpler options, which are also significantly cheaper (although be careful, as these tools it is initially cheaper but often have incalculable hidden fees and charge extra for almost everything).
3) No-code tools: easy to set up but often limited in functionality.
No-code taxi booking tools allow you to build ride-hailing apps if you don’t have an in-house team of developers and you don’t wish to outsource app development. Instead of manual coding, no-code platforms let you design the app’s UI/UX by simply dragging and dropping built-in components and using pre-built visual templates.
Some examples include Jotform, Builder.ai, and AppMySite.
No-code tools could be good for building an MVP of a taxi booking app with an essential feature set. However, no-code taxi booking apps are unscalable, unreliable in terms of system uptime, and require constant maintenance, updating, and bug fixing from your side.
As a long-term solution, no-code booking apps usually fail their owners.
4) Code purchasing: offers ownership but comes with hidden costs and potential compatibility issues.
Code purchasing for ride-hailing apps involves buying pre-built, ready-to-deploy source code for a ride-hailing platform from a third-party provider or marketplace. This code typically includes all the essential features of a ride-hailing app.
Code purchasing is a risky and unreliable purchase: the framework you get may become incompatible, and the hidden costs and the costs of maintenance and upgrades are unpredictable.
Next, we have ready-made ride-hailing solutions, which come in different sizes and forms.
5) White-label ride-hailing solutions: pre-built platforms you can customize to some extent.
- SaaS solutions (e.g., Onde): Subscription-based models that offer ready-made solutions.
- Dispatch and fleet management solutions (e.g., TaxiCaller).
Ready-made ride-hailing platforms offer fully developed solutions for launching your own taxi service, including Customer and Driver apps, an admin panel, and a dispatch system. Often, they allow you to turn your taxi company into a Super App by adding delivery and other services. These platforms are pre-built with Uber-like features, customizable with your branding, and can also support additional business needs like delivery.
White-label taxi platforms differ in the type of features they offer and their platform stability, as well as their pricing system. Some are more suitable for rental businesses, some - for large fleets, and others - for growing ride-hailing services.
How to choose the right ready-made ride-hailing solution?
Faulty prioritization during the software selection process is common, which often leads to unexpected costs and operational inefficiencies. Besides, it’s quite complicated to exit a ride-hailing system once you’re already using it.
This section is dedicated to helping you focus on the right things when choosing a white-label ride-hailing solution and not get distracted by marketing (as much as we appreciate the effort put into it).
Here’s where the problem usually lies.
What businesses think matters: | What actually matters: |
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Why “what actually matters” actually matters?
Your company’s success depends on managing profit versus loss. To control the losses, you need to know where they are coming from.
Common sources of loss come from:
- System downtimes and freezes, which depend on your booking apps’ technology;
- Investment, commission, and hidden costs, which depend on your software’s pricing model;
- Poor customer-driver balance, cost per attraction, and driver satisfaction rate.
For example, a system lag during a peak period could result in not just operational losses but also wasted marketing spend: if your software is processing 100 orders and your regular profit is 20%, then the loss from a lag would be 20% + marketing spending.
How to choose a reliable ready-made taxi solution?
Every system has downtimes. What matters is the frequency, the length of the downtimes, and whether the system of reaction to downtimes is in place. With every downtime, a ride-hailing system must be updated according to what happened and you should be notified. A team of backenders should always be on call and 24/7 support is highly advised. Remember, it’s your revenue that is at stake!
How to choose the best pricing model?
Calculate how much in total you will be spending on your software. Compare pricing models - not just numbers you see straight away, but also all additional costs. These might include paid maps, paid languages, paid payment gateways, paid SMS, paid maintenance, updates and new features.
Dig deeper and ask what exactly you pay commission for. You might be paying for unapproved drivers or incomplete orders, and that would be a waste.
How to compare features?
Must-have features | Nice-to-have features |
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Consider specific requirements for your location, like local payment gateways, languages, and map compatibility.
Also, plan for future scalability, whether that means handling millions of orders, expanding to new locations, or adding new verticals.
You will need:
- Stability (uptime above 98%)
- Scalability (working in different locations and in big numbers of orders)
- Possibility to add additional verticals (e.g., delivery)
Summary: how to choose a ride-hailing software
- Compare pricing models. Look for hidden costs. Calculate.
- Compare stability & reliability. Compare the system of reactions to order spikes and downtimes.
- Compare features. Focus on must-haves.
- Compare options for growing and diversifying.
How to implement ride-hailing software?
Whether you’re starting from scratch or migrating from an existing system, the process typically involves:
1. Personalized demo
Share your business needs and software requirements, and go through the Onde demo to see if it fits.
2. System setup
The Onde team will import drivers and prepare apps and panels. If you’re migrating from a different platform, the Onde team will import all drivers with their current earnings and send them automatic invites to the new app.
3. Training
Receive personalized training from the support team.
4. Launch
Release the Customer and Driver apps in app stores. If you’re migrating from a different platform, the Onde team will replace the Customer app or provide a redirect to the new Customer app.
5. Make your first order!
Begin operations with ongoing support from an account manager.
