App Review: Managing Shipments with Overnight

Today we take a look at Overnight from Bottle Rocket. We have been sitting on this gem of an app for some time now and have finally gotten a chance to write a comprehensive review of it. If you are a small business owner or just someone who sends or receives multiple shipments monthly, Overnight is an essential utility for your iPhone. 

First off, let me say that Bottle Rocket has a really cool website! When you see their collection of apps for the iPhone, you will immediately agree with me that these guys really know how to make your iPhone look good! Their apps are colorful and intuitively designed, and easily stand out from the masses. Our focus app today, Overnight, is the most comprehensive shipment management app for the iPhone. 

Zip Finder

This is an entire app on to itself - and I don't mean this figuratively. Zip Finder is an actual standalone app (free) from Bottle Rocket that allows you to quickly find out the zip code of the area that you are in. You can also see an approximation of your proximity to neighboring Zip codes. It is conveniently built into the Overnight app to take advantage of its features while managing your shipments.

Track Shipments

You can track multiple shipments from all the major carriers. To begin, simply enter the tracking number and Overnight will automatically figure out the carrier. I especially love the fact that the developers have created a custom numpad to input tracking information. Most other apps use the default keyboard and you end up first having to switch to the numbers and symbols layout. Unfortunately, the numbers are really small and don't facilitate quick and easy input. We ran into a few bugs when tracking shipments from USPS, where they came up as Fedex shipments. (Tracking the shipment still worked properly, but it was tagged with the wrong carrier). From the tracking window, you can obtain a lot of valuable info about your shipments. The specific carrier icon is shown to the left of the tracking number and the status of the package to the right. 

The built-in map feature is a good idea, but it is rather poorly implemented. I could not figure out a way to zoom out or to pan around in the viewing area. I expect that with the new Google Maps APIs in iPhone OS 3.0, this feature will offer much more functionality. What would also be impressive is to be able to see a track of where my package is coming from overlaid on a map.

Locations

Need to find a drop off or pick-up location nearby? Overnight has a "Location" feature that uses the built in GPS in the iPhone to pin point your location and will find drop-off and pick-up locations close by. You can filter your results by carrier, distance, days of the week open and whether it is a staffed location. Additionally, you can optionally choose to use the metric system when measuring distances. 

Price

Another great feature of Overnight, is the ability to calculate estimates for shipping your packages with any of the four major carriers: DHL, FedEx, UPS, and USPS. That way, you can figure out the best price in a jiffy. While we did come across some discrepancies in pricing, this app has save us some valuable dollars over the last few months. 

Summary

Overall, we love the simple yet intuitive design and added functionality that Overnight offers. It is definitely the most feature rich shipment management app for the iPhone. Also, the app is designed to maintain the branded colors of each of the major carriers. e.g.  UPS shipments have a brown interface and FedEx has purple. Overnight is available in the App Store for $4.99. Be sure to check out our gallery of Overnight's interface screenshots and look out for reviews of other titles from Bottle Rocket in the future.

What We Would Love To See:

- Manual reordering of shipments

- Setting a name for each shipment - tracking numbers are boring

- Side by Side price comparison for multiple carriers