A real-time delivery application is an application that provides the end-user with delivery updates in real-time as circumstances and conditions change.
Examples of delivery applications include
Parcel Delivery
Fleet Tracking
Taxi or Private Hire services (like Uber)
Food Delivery services (like Uber eats or Postmates)
An initial delivery route is created and provided to the customer. Updates to that route, such as traffic conditions causing a re-route or an update to the estimated delivery time, are provided to the customer as they change. Updates might be delivered as mobile push notifications, SMS messages, or emails with the user prompted to take action based on the update, such as requesting that the package is left with a neighbor.
The above diagram shows a typical real-time delivery application with real-time bidirectional communication between vehicles and clients (end users). Note that 3rd-party services are often used in real-time delivery apps to provide routing and mapping capabilities.
To learn more about how to create a real-time delivery application, please refer to our how-to guide, which will walk you through the process and explain some typical architectures.
