A quick rebrand note
In late 2025, Circuit rebranded its team dispatch product as Spoke Dispatch and its driver app as Spoke Route Planner. [6] Throughout this article, "Circuit/Spoke" refers to the team product.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | Alchemira | Circuit / Spoke Dispatch |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Starter ~$99/mo (5,000 orders); Growth ~$299/mo (20,000); Scale ~$799/mo (75,000); Enterprise $2,000+/mo | Stop-volume-based team plans [6] |
| Multi-tenant / multi-customer | Yes — built in from day one | No — single-operator architecture |
| Primary orientation | Dispatch-first, multi-customer | Driver-first, small team |
| Multi-vehicle route optimisation | Yes — time windows, avoidance rules | Yes |
| Toll / highway / ferry avoidance | Yes | No |
| Auto-clustering by terminal/customer/geography | Yes | No |
| Driver mobile app | Native iOS & Android, offline-capable | Yes |
| Offline driver support | Yes — queues and syncs on reconnect | Limited |
| Configurable scan workflows per customer | Yes | No |
| Proof of delivery | Photo + signature + GPS + consignee + notes + timestamp | Photo + signature |
| Structured failure reasons | Yes — 7 categories with driver notes | No |
| Billing report (CSV export) | Yes — by customer, date range, status | No |
| On-time delivery report | Yes — with variance in minutes | No |
| Per-customer services, rates, webhooks | Yes | No |
| Production / test environment separation | Yes | No |
| Address validation | Yes — USPS via SmartyStreets [15] | No |
| Stop volume cap on plans | None (Pro plan) | ~1,000 stops/month on most plans [6] |
The fundamental design difference
Circuit/Spoke was built driver-first. Its strengths reflect that origin — clean UX, quick route setup, easy driver onboarding. As operations scale, the existing design assumptions become strained. The stop-based pricing model leads to escalating costs as stop volumes grow, and the platform lacks essential capabilities for modeling multi-customer operations, structured billing, and per-customer scan workflows. [6]
Alchemira was built dispatch-first. Multi-tenancy, customer account configuration, billing reports, and structured exception handling are core features. [1]
Pricing and scalability
Circuit/Spoke prices team plans based on monthly stop volume, capping at approximately 1,000 stops per month on most tiers. [6] For a courier doing 50 deliveries per day over a standard working month, that ceiling is reached before the month ends. Costs then escalate or the operation is capped.
Alchemira's hybrid base + per-order model [2, 21] doesn't meter individual deliveries against an arbitrary plan ceiling. Starter is $99/month with 5,000 orders included; Growth is $299/month with 20,000 orders; Scale is $799/month with 75,000 orders. Overage pricing steps down as volume grows. An operation scaling from 1,000 to 10,000 orders per month faces the same predictable tier cost, not an escalating per-stop charge.
The verdict
Circuit/Spoke is a well-designed tool for small, driver-first delivery teams. Alchemira is built for what comes next — when dispatch becomes its own function, when customer accounts need isolation, and when a routing tool stitched to a driver app isn't enough. [1, 6]