Switching from WhatsApp to Taxi App: The guide
Pros and cons of using WhatsApp for taxi business
Using WhatsApp or any other messenger is a low-threshold and popular choice for companies starting a ride-hailing business. If you’re a taxi company using a messenger to operate your car fleet, should you switch from WhatsApp to ride-hailing apps just because everyone else does? Let’s discuss pros and cons of using WhatsApp for taxi business.
WhatsApp for taxi business: Pros
- Most people already use it. They don’t need to install any additional app to work with your service.
- It’s cheap! Unlike ride-hailing app purchase or in-house development, you don’t need to invest in WhatsApp.
- WhatsApp has handy features like real-time location sharing. With WhatsApp, drivers can talk to dispatchers quickly and share where they are. Drivers can also manually update passengers on where they are if the driver shares their live location with the passenger.
WhatsApp for taxi business: Cons
Using WhatsApp as a booking management system for a taxi business means your business will always be stuck where it is. There is no room for attracting an unlimited number of drivers and customers, growing and scaling. Here’s why:
WhatsApp for taxi business: Cons
- WhatsApp lacks specialized fleet and booking management features, such as automated scheduling and payment integrations.
- Relying solely on WhatsApp will eventually lead to difficulty tracking and managing multiple bookings simultaneously, especially during peak hours.
- Messengers don’t have the features for your ride-hailing business to catch up with the very competitive taxi market: ratings, referral programs, gamified design, etc. all of which attract drivers and motivate them to work more.
- Using WhatsApp doesn’t influence the company’s brand recognition.
Switching to software specifically designed for ride-hailing and taxi businesses can help you grow your business and not miss out on the market share. It can also save your business from failing when more innovative competitors take over.
Pros of switching to taxi software
Working with taxi applications streamlines booking processes, improves operational efficiency for your company, and allows you to reach more customers. Passengers get a much better, safer user experience and are more likely to have your taxi company as a preferred transportation method.
Pros of using taxi software
- Payment flexibility. Most types of taxi software offer multiple payment system integrations to offer your passengers a wide range of payment options, anywhere in the world.
- Scalability. Automated order dispatching, fair order distribution, driver billing, custom driver plans, and trip pricing models allow you to operate no matter how much your company grows.
- Business data analytics. With detailed reports and business data analytics, your company can tap into informed decision-making and optimization.
- Better customer experience. Your clients will enjoy features like real-time trip tracking, fare estimates, multiple stops, different services in one app (super app), driver ratings, cashless payment, referral discounts, and more.
- Community, education, and technical support. Companies offering taxi software often have more features, such as extended technical support, educational materials, marketing assistance, or even business conferences for taxi businesses.
- Independence from the Meta infrastructure. While very reliable, the infrastructure of Meta (parent company of WhatsApp) is known for user data leakages and lack of end-to-end encryption. Besides, as data storage & processing stability is crucial for a taxi business, it’s always better to pick an infrastructure you can trust 100%.
- Easier customer and driver acquisition. Dedicated taxi applications often have built-in features such as referral codes to attract new employees and customers. Besides, a software business partner such as Onde assists your company with app store optimization, online and offline marketing, and more. All for your taxi business to grow steadily.
Cons of switching to a taxi application
- Initial investment. You’ll need to pay a setup fee, which varies depending on the software provider you choose. While a reliable company won’t keep you waiting indefinitely, it’s wise to expect about a month for setup and familiarization with the taxi solution.
- Learning curve. Time and resources are required to train your operators, dispatchers, managers, and drivers on the new system.
- Dependency of back-end and tech infrastructure. Not all taxi apps are created equal. Some software solutions, such as Onde, come with perfectly functional data storage and processing to cover high demand. However, custom taxi software solutions often require a taxi company to take care of the cloud infrastructure themselves. Uber clone apps do require this, too. This often limits taxi businesses’ growth.
How switching from WhatsApp to a ride-hailing app works?
A proficient taxi software provider can make your transition from WhatsApp to a fully functional app seamless. Here’s what we do at Onde to smooth out the migration process:
Step 1: Organize a personalized demo for you, where you can share your business needs and software requirements, and go through the Onde demo to see if it fits.
Step 2: Import all drivers with their current earnings and send them automatic invites to the new app.
Step 3: Release Customer and Driver mobile apps in the App Store and Google Play.
Step 4: Replace the Customer app or provide a redirect to the new Customer app.
Step 5: That’s it, start working with the new apps!
How to choose the right ride-hailing app for your taxi business
When choosing the software for your taxi company, focus on 4 factors: functionality, scalability, solution reliability, and support.
Using WhatsApp | Working with Onde | |
|---|---|---|
| Solution stability | ❌ | ✅ |
| Space to scale & grow | ❌ | ✅ |
| Relevant payment gateways | ❌ | ✅ |
| Top-notch features for taxi, ride-hailing, delivery | ❌ | ✅ |
| Regular software updates | ❌ | ✅ |
| Account manager | ❌ | ✅ |
| 24/7 technical support | ❌ | ✅ |
| Marketing and promotion assistance | ❌ | ✅ |
| Super app and Delivery app options | ❌ | ✅ |
| Brand awareness in the market | ❌ | ✅ |
| Experience in taxi & ride-hailing industry | ❌ | ✅ |
| Unique knowledge base & use cases | ❌ | ✅ |
| Free product demo | ❌ | ✅ |
| Unique community of entrepreneurs | ❌ | ✅ |
This table almost talks for itself. But hey, what can be more convincing than real cases from actual taxi companies? We’ve got some!
Find a ride-hailing solution that is right for your business
- Book a free consultation call
- Discuss your current business status and goals
- Consult our team to see if Onde platform fits your business needs. If not, we'll recommend a different solution
- Make an informed decision about your business
Reasons to choose ready-made ride-hailing apps by Onde
Scale your business indefinitely
We process 2 million orders daily and have 99% uptime. Most solutions have a daily limit (often it’s no more than 10,000 trips per day!) - we don’t.
No matter how large your business grows and where you plan to expand, we have the capability, resources, maps, and languages to support you.
Get updates every month for free
At Onde, we never stop improving our features and adding new ones. All apps are updated every month, and you get every new feature for free, forever.
Experience superior 24/7 customer support
Our dedicated support team is always ready to assist you with any issues and answer any of your questions. We’re told, it’s a rare thing in the ride-hailing tech platform business!
Get your apps to the top of app stores
With every Onde purchase, you get a starter pack of App Store Optimization as part of the package. And that’s not it: Onde’s marketing experts are ready to help you with advanced ASO, creating ads, targeting, SMM, and other marketing strategies you want to apply.
No time for marketing? No problem, we got you covered.
Benefit from our expertise
Onde has been in the ride-hailing industry for over 12 years. We’ve seen taxi companies succeed and fail, learned with our clients, and passionately collected best practices for years.
When you get the Onde platform, you also get a dedicated and experienced partner. We are directly invested in your success as our business model depends on your business growth.
Switching to Onde ride-hailing platform and becoming a market leader
- Kaiian, a ride-hailing company in Saudi Arabia, started with 18 drivers. Now they are one of the top ride-hailing companies in the country. They also offer three brands: Kaiian, Wsslini (women driving women), and Hemam (for special needs individuals). They are soon launching another ride-hailing service.
- TaxiBit was founded in Michoacán, Mexico in 2015. In just two years, shortly after the company had switched to Onde’s software solution, TaxiBit became the only serious local competitor to Uber. At the moment, it’s the fastest-growing ride-hailing platform in Central America.
