The digital era made time the most precious asset. For this reason, individuals and enterprises continuously work on finding ways to optimize their schedule and eliminate any wasted or idle slots that may arise. So it’s no surprise that on-demand delivery services are gaining more and more popularity. It seems that nowadays you can get any product delivered to your doorstep in no time, like by a wave of a magic wand, no matter whether it is a takeaway meal or a luxury yacht. There are all kinds of delivery service apps that make logistics of goods convenient and extеnd its potential greatly.
Mobile apps for food delivery services are getting more and more popular. People do not have time for grocery shopping and cooking or simply do not want to waste it on doing these things. Instead, a growing number of urban residents prefer to make a few taps in a food delivery app and enjoy their favorite meal within an hour. Today, let’s take a closer look at Postmates, an on-demand delivery application, extremely popular in the United States.
What is Postmates?
Launched back in 2011, Postmates intended to deliver to people things they forgot somewhere or items they wanted to pass over to someone else. Nevertheless, very few people used the service for its original purpose. Users would ask couriers to buy and deliver what they need, in most cases food. Until 2012, Postmates ignored those requests. However, they decided to make a pivot after all and became an on-demand delivery service for anything the customers needed. This decision attracted thousands of new users to the Postmates app in no time. From 2015 on, Postmates Merchant Program allows restaurants establish a partnership with them. As for now, the application functions as an on-demand food delivery service, but there are other types of delivery requests made and executed.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the core features of the service. So, how does Postmates work?
As you can see, the principles of Postmates delivery are rather simple and convenient for all of the sides engaged: the customer, the vendor, and the delivery person. The customer always gets real-time information about their order processing, dispatch, route, time and progress. The operation scheme of Postmates beats its standard alternatives because it creates opportunities for the fastest and most convenient delivery.
Being a useful and convenient service, Postmates can also boast of a user-friendly and modern application. Now let’s move to the main features of this delivery app. They are as follows:
- Registration (facebook login);
- Location services;
- Payment transactions;
- Integration of loyalty system.
Of course, there are numerous functions that were added as the app expanded. The core features advanced as well. There is a Postmates app for the carriers that differs from the original Postmates application.
How much does it cost to develop an app like Postmates?
If you think of developing a delivery app like Postmates, you should start with researching the market in the area where you plan to launch it to make sure it will be needed. You may contact vendors who do not have their own delivery services and establish collaboration with them. A thorough market research is a foundation from which everything starts. When it is done, it’s about time to get down to writing a functional specification. After this, choose a development team you can trust and finally start building your application. Hire dedicated developers who will treat your project as their own. The best decision is to begin from an MVP because this way you will be able to enter the market within the shortest time and at the lowest budget possible.
Ideally, an MVP of an on-demand delivery app like Postmates should consist of the courier app and the customer app.
The courier application will have the following main functions:
- Reply to delivery requests (accept/decline);
- Status updates (pickup/delivery);
- Delivery history.
The customer application will have more functions:
- Registration;
- Location services;
- Cost calculator;
- Order tracking;
- Payment processing;
- Reviews and rating;
- Order history;
- Push notifications.
To learn more about approximate cost of creating an app like Postmates both for couriers and customers read the full article on MLSDev blog.
