Comparison
A Beacon alternative for fresh produce importers
Beacon and Trackberry agree about the enemy and disagree about which half of it to kill. Beacon makes the tracking columns of your shipment spreadsheet fill themselves in. We take the typing out of the supplier document that fills the other columns.
Free while in beta, then €10 a container · No commitment · No card required
- Carriers supported
- 435
- Shipments tracked
- 249
- Built for
- Fresh produce
The same incumbent, opposite halves
"Imagine if your spreadsheet could update itself" is Beacon's line, and it is a good one, because the spreadsheet really is what most importers run on. Our own spreadsheet comparison starts from the same observation. Two companies agreeing on the diagnosis is worth saying plainly, because the treatments are not the same.
Open a produce importer's shipment sheet and the columns fall into two groups. One group is where the box is: vessel, ETA, discharge, gate-out. The other is what is in it: pallet number, variety, calibre, pack format, box count, net weight, the grower's lot. The first group is copied off a carrier site. The second is copied off a packing list the supplier emailed, and it is the group that takes the twenty minutes.
Beacon automates the first group. You upload the sheet you already keep, it connects to 160+ ocean and air carriers, and the tracking columns stop being stale. The second group is still typed, because their site describes keeping documents connected to POs and orders, which is filing, and the csv, pdf or excel you drag in is your own data rather than a grower's paperwork being read.
We do the reverse. The tracking is table stakes and we do it, but the reason to bother is that the packing list arrives in the inbox and is read into lines against the container, so the second group of columns is never typed at all. What manual data entry on shipping documents actually costs is the measurement behind that, published with the packing lists it was counted from.
Where the two products actually differ
| The job | Beacon | Trackberry |
|---|---|---|
| The spreadsheet | Keeps it as the interface and fills in the tracking columns. | Keeps it for analysis and removes the typing behind the cargo columns. |
| Carrier tracking | 160+ ocean and air carriers. | Comparable coverage, and the reason to bother is what it hangs the documents on. |
| Supplier documents | Documents kept connected to POs and orders. Filing, not line extraction. | Packing lists, B/Ls, certificates and invoices read into lines against the container. |
| Freight cost | Invoice reconciliation against contracts, spend against budget, CO2 reporting. | None of it. We do not audit what the carrier billed you. |
| Perishables | Not described on its site. | Export seasons, setpoints off the B/L, arrival inspections per pallet. |
| ERP | SAP, Oracle NetSuite, Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, Descartes, Blue Yonder named. | Integration quoted against the system you run, from €2,000 one-off. |
| Buying it | Sign up for free, or get a demo. No figures published. | Free while in beta, then €10 a container, published. |
When Beacon is the better buy
This is the longest of these lists on the site, and it is not padding.
- Your worst problem is the freight bill rather than the fruit. Reconciling invoices against contracts is their product and not ours at all.
- You have a finance team that wants logistics visible in its own terms: spend against budget, cost per lane, a number they can plan with.
- Air freight is a first-class mode for you rather than the occasional consignment.
- You already run SAP, NetSuite, Sage or Dynamics and want a vendor that names your ERP on its own integrations page today.
- Your team genuinely wants to keep working in the spreadsheet, and what you want is for it to stop being out of date.
- You want carbon reporting as part of the same tool.
What it costs
The one comparison here where both of us let you start without a conversation.
Beacon
Free to start, then unpublished
The site offers "Sign up for free" and "Try it free" alongside "Get a Demo", so there is a way in without talking to anyone. No monetary figure for the paid tiers appears on the site. Directory listings quote a starting price; we do not repeat it, because it is vendor-submitted, undated, and not theirs to confirm.
Trackberry
Free in beta, then €10 / container
No card and no commitment while we are in beta. €10 per container once the beta ends — you pay for containers that ship, not for seats or a monthly subscription. ERP integration is a one-off from €2,000 plus maintenance from €50 a month, quoted against the system you already run. All prices exclude VAT.
Questions buyers ask
- Beacon says it fixes the spreadsheet. So do you. What is the difference?
- Which half of the spreadsheet. Beacon fills in the tracking columns: you upload the sheet you already keep and it updates the vessel, the ETA and the milestones. Those columns were never the expensive part. The expensive part is the columns somebody types by hand out of the grower's packing list — pallet, variety, calibre, box count, net weight — and that is the typing we remove. If your sheet is mostly tracking, Beacon is the better fit. If it is mostly the contents of the container, we are.
- Do they read supplier documents?
- Their site describes keeping vital documents connected to POs and orders, which is filing rather than extraction, and the drag-and-drop of csv, pdf or excel is your own data going in rather than a supplier's paperwork being read. Those are different jobs. Filing answers where the certificate is; extraction answers what was on the pallet. Ask them which one you are buying, as you should ask us.
- Is Beacon a competitor?
- More than most on this site. It sells to the cargo owner rather than the forwarder, its named customers include food and drink importers such as Fever-Tree, Tilda Rice and Tata Consumer Products, and it tracks across 160+ ocean and air carriers. If a UK produce importer has heard of one visibility platform, it is more likely to be this one than any American name on this site.
- Our problem is the freight bill. Which one?
- Beacon, clearly. It reconciles freight invoices against contracts automatically, tracks spend against budget and reports CO2. We do none of that: we will tell you a container is late and what is inside it, and we will not tell you whether the carrier billed you correctly for it.
- What does Beacon cost?
- No figures are published. The site offers "Sign up for free" and "Try it free" alongside "Get a Demo", so there is a way in without a conversation, which is more than most of the platforms compared here. What the paid tiers cost is a conversation. Third-party directories quote a starting figure; we do not repeat it, because it is vendor-submitted and undated and the only source worth citing for a price is the company itself.
- How current is this page?
- Read the date at the foot of it, and treat this page as the one most likely to have moved. Beacon has repositioned more than once and now leads with financial clarity and operational control rather than with tracking. If what you find on their site no longer matches what is written here, theirs is right and ours is out of date. Tell us and we will fix it.
See every comparison — including the ones where somebody else is the better buy.
Sources
Every claim on this page about another company comes from what that company publishes about itself, and each is dated. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us at hello@trackberry.com and we will correct it.
Bring the sheet and one packing list
Twenty minutes settles this one faster than the page does. If most of your typing turns out to be tracking columns, we will tell you to look at Beacon.