Straightaway Powered by Mapbox

Review by eFreeware

Straightaway is a route planner for Android from Straightaway, LLC, filed under Maps & Navigation and free to download. Its pitch is narrow and clear: build a list of addresses, have the app put them in a sensible order, then drive the whole thing with turn-by-turn guidance inside the same app. You are not meant to jump out to a separate navigation app between stops.

The reason to consider it is the combination. Plenty of tools can sort a list of addresses, and plenty can guide you to one destination, but the work of a delivery driver sits in the join between them: finishing a stop and immediately needing the next one. Straightaway keeps that handoff inside one screen, and it accepts stops in ways that match how drivers actually receive them, including photographs of labels and manifests.

It is not a general-purpose map app, and it does not pretend to be. The developer frames it around trips with more than three addresses, and the whole design follows from that. If your driving is a single destination most days, the feature set here will feel like more machinery than you need.

Delivery drivers first, errand runners second

The developer pitches Straightaway at people whose working day is a route. Couriers and delivery drivers at FedEx, USPS, OnTrac, Canada Post and DHL are named as everyday users, and the app is said to have more than 100,000 drivers on it. Whether or not that number holds up, the intended audience is unmistakable.

That audience widens further than parcel delivery. The app supports food delivery, local delivery, pest control, field sales, utilities, cable and telecom, retail and home healthcare. What those have in common is a shift spent moving between many addresses, where the order of the stops decides how long the day runs.

There is a smaller group the app also fits: anyone running errands with a long list, or a household sorting out a day of pickups and drop-offs. The developer's own test is a trip with more than three addresses. Below that, the value of optimization is thin, and a normal map app will do.

Getting stops into the app without typing them

The feature I find most interesting is photo entry. You point the camera at an itinerary, a shipping label, a shipping manifest or a set of NMLS listings, and the app uses computer vision to pull the addresses out and drop them onto the map. The developer describes this as taking a picture of anything and being on your way, which is the kind of line I read as marketing rather than a specification.

The appeal is practical. A driver holding a stack of labels does not want to type each address, and a manifest photographed once is a whole route entered in a few seconds. How well the scanning copes with a crumpled label or a handwritten note is the sort of thing only use would show, but the idea targets a real friction point rather than a hypothetical one.

Manual entry exists alongside the camera. The address search draws on a global database assembled from hundreds of sources and updated daily, and the search is fast. That is a claim I would treat as a claim, though the underlying point stands: a route planner is only as good as its address lookup, and a broad index matters more here than in a consumer map app.

Reordering a day of stops

Optimization is the core of the product. You hand the app a list and it returns the stops in a different sequence, chosen to cut backtracking. A route of up to 250 stops can be reordered in seconds, and the algorithm behind it has been refined for over a decade. The "best-in-class" framing is the developer's, and the speed claim is the sort of thing that depends on the phone and the route.

For anyone who has spent a morning crisscrossing a suburb because the stops arrived in the wrong order, the value is obvious. Reordering does not just save fuel; it changes how a day feels, because the driver stops making those small judgment calls at every corner and simply follows the sequence.

The ceiling of 250 stops per route is generous for most work, and the free tier's limit of 25 addresses covers a good many local routes.

Navigation that stays in the same app

Turn-by-turn directions are built in rather than handed off. Routing takes account of live traffic, road closures, speed limits and weather, and keeping navigation inside the app means finishing one stop flows straight into the next without a switch to another program.

There is also a birds-eye view for stops packed into a small area. When several addresses sit within a few blocks, seeing them together is more useful than following a line one at a time, and it is the sort of small addition that suggests the developer has watched how drivers actually work a dense neighborhood.

This is where the free and paid tiers separate. The free version covers routes and optimizations without a stated cap. Anyone whose day is mostly driving between stops will feel that line quickly.

What it costs, and what the free tier covers

Straightaway is free to download, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases. The free version supports up to 25 addresses per route, with unlimited routes and unlimited optimizations. That is a workable setup for a local round or a heavy errand day.

Pro is priced at $9.99 per month or $95.99 per year, and comes with a 7-day free trial. It raises the per-route limit to 250 addresses and adds unlimited turn-by-turn directions and unlimited image scanning, alongside the unlimited routes and optimizations already in the free tier.

For a working courier, the monthly figure is easy to weigh against an hour saved on a shift, which is the trade the developer is inviting you to make. For occasional use, the free tier is the sensible place to start. The app shows a 3.3 average from 165 ratings, with more than 50,000 installs since its release in December 2019.

How it compares with other route tools

The split between this app and its competitors is fairly clear. Waze is a consumer navigation app; it will get you somewhere, but stop ordering is not its job. The others are route planning services, several of which lean toward fleet management, dispatch and back-office reporting.

Straightaway sits closer to the driver's seat. The camera scanning, the 250-stop ceiling and the integrated navigation all point at one person in one vehicle working through a list, rather than a dispatcher watching a board. If your need is oversight of a fleet, that is a different category of tool.

Against a plain map app, the difference is the ordering and the multi-stop workflow. Against a heavier routing platform, the difference is scope and the fact that you can start on a free tier.

A planner for people who drive for a living

Straightaway is a focused tool, and focus is its strength. Photo entry, stop optimization and in-app navigation answer the three questions a delivery driver asks in sequence: how do I get this list in, what order should it be in, and how do I get to the next one. The free tier is generous enough to test the first two.

The caveats are the ones the app sets for itself. It is built for multi-stop work, so a single-destination commute gains nothing from it. The features that matter most to a professional sit behind the subscription, and the rating average suggests a fair number of users have found something to complain about, though the developer's recent work has been limited to tweaks and bug fixes.

If you drive a route for a living, or you regularly face a day with a long list of addresses and want the order handled for you, this is worth trying on the free tier and judging against your own routes. If your driving is mostly one destination at a time, the app's strengths simply do not apply to you.

What's new in version 5.3.1

In this release, we are tweaking some features and shipping bug fixes. Happy driving. See you on the road!