Delivery networks
A delivery network is somebody else’s courier fleet, available on demand. Four are supported: DoorDash Drive, Uber Direct, Shipday and Nash.
They earn their place in three situations: you have no drivers of your own, your drivers are all busy, or the delivery is somewhere your fleet does not reach.
The four, and how they differ
Section titled “The four, and how they differ”They are not four versions of the same thing. Two are a single company’s own courier fleet; two are aggregators that sit in front of several fleets and pick one per delivery.
| Network | Shape | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| DoorDash Drive | Own fleet | DoorDash couriers, quoted per delivery. One provider’s coverage and one provider’s pricing — good where DoorDash is strong, unavailable where it is not. |
| Uber Direct | Own fleet | Uber couriers, quoted per delivery. Same trade as above, different coverage map. Your order is not listed on the marketplace; only the driving is bought. |
| Shipday | Aggregator | One connection to the local and third-party couriers Shipday covers in your market, with a tracking link pushed to the customer. |
| Nash | Aggregator | Routes each delivery to the best-priced courier network available in your area, so a busy evening does not depend on one provider having couriers free. |
The practical difference is what happens when a fleet is stretched. An own-fleet provider either has a courier or does not. An aggregator has somewhere else to look, which is why an aggregator is often the sensible last entry in the priority order below even when a direct fleet sits first.
Coverage is the constraint that decides most of this, and it is per-provider and per-area rather than per-country. Check yours before ranking them: a network with no couriers where you trade is not a fallback, it is a delay on every order that reaches it.
Connecting one
Section titled “Connecting one”Each network is an integration, connected with credentials from an account you hold with that provider. The general shape — credentials, conditions, testing, health — is in Integrations overview. Two things specific to networks:
- A callback URL must be registered in the provider’s dashboard, or delivery status will never update on your orders. See Webhooks & the menu API.
- Test the connection before relying on it. Networks have their own coverage areas and account states, and a connected-but-not-live account looks identical to a working one until an order needs a courier.
When a network is used
Section titled “When a network is used”Two settings decide this.
Precedence — whether the platform tries a delivery network first or your own drivers first. Own-drivers-first is the usual choice if you have a fleet; network-first suits an operation with no drivers, or one using its own fleet only for particular outlets.
Priority order — networks are ranked, and tried in that order. Put your cheapest or most reliable first; the others become fallbacks.
Auto-dispatch can also weigh the cost of your own driver against a network quote before choosing, if you have your in-house costs configured.
Quoting the customer
Section titled “Quoting the customer”You can have the customer’s delivery fee come from a live network quote at checkout rather than from your own zone fee — either from a specific network or auto-detected. Configure a fallback to your zone fee for when no quote comes back, or a customer with no quote sees no delivery option at all.
Live quotes are accurate and vary; zone fees are predictable and sometimes wrong. Which you want depends on whether your customers value certainty over precision.
What staff see
Section titled “What staff see”Once a network has the order, its courier appears on the order card like any driver — status, and tracking where the provider supplies it. The customer sees matching tracking and generally cannot tell the difference, which is the point.
Watching it
Section titled “Watching it”Delivery Network (/reports/delivery-network-summary) covers per-provider
volume, fees, success rate and delivery times.
Read it monthly against what you are paying. A network that is cheaper per delivery but slower may be costing you repeat orders, and that trade does not show up on an invoice.
When a network fails
Section titled “When a network fails”Networks have outages, and a repeatedly failing provider is skipped automatically for a period rather than being retried into the ground. Once the cause is fixed, that can be reset from the dashboard.
If no network can take a delivery and you have no driver available, the order sits unassigned and the outlet is notified — which is the point at which a human has to decide between waiting, delivering it themselves, or cancelling.
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”| Symptom | Try this |
|---|---|
| Orders never go to a network | Check precedence, and that the network is active with its conditions matching |
| Deliveries always go to one provider | That is priority order working; reorder them |
| Status never updates | The callback URL is not registered, or its secret is wrong |
| No quote at checkout | Outside the provider’s coverage, or the account is not live — set a fallback to your zone fee |
| A provider stopped being used | It is likely being skipped after repeated failures; test the connection, fix, then reset |
| Fees are higher than expected | Live quotes vary with distance and demand; compare in the network report |
Related: Auto-dispatch · Drivers · Integrations overview · Reports
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