AfterShip Package Tracker is a free app that does exactly what it says in the name: It tracks your packages. You can see all your orders in one place, when they will arrive, and how close they are geographically to you. Push notifications are fast and alert you when your items are on their way.
Plus, unlike just about every other package-tracking app for iOS, AfterShip Package Tracker is totally free, with no in-app purchases.
AfterShip Package Tracker is totally free and full-featured
Keeping track of everything you and/or your family members order online can quickly become unmanageable. (It’s especially bad if you go on a buying frenzy snapping up Apple deals on Black Friday or something.) With various retailers using various shipping partners, and all of them utilizing various apps of wildly varying reliability, it can prove maddeningly difficult to know what’s supposed to arrive when.
However, if you don’t want your precious goods sitting on the stoop for hours — at the mercy of porch pirates and inclement weather — being able to accurately track delivery times becomes necessary. And that need spurred a range of delivery-tracking apps, which try to ease the pain of online shoppers barraged by emails and push notifications from retailers and delivery companies.
Great apps take a lot of time and money to make, though. Usually, you have to pay upfront or through a subscription; apps that are given away for free are usually paid for by selling ads or tracking your personal data.
Track packages from FedEx, UPS, DHL and more than 700 other shippers
In that regard, AfterShip Package Tracker is an anomaly. It’s totally free, with a pretty clean App Privacy Report and no ads or in-app purchases. And yet the app makes it extremely easy to track packages sent via FedEx, UPS, DHL, the U.S. Postal Service and more than 700 other shippers in multiple countries. And it works with Amazon, eBay, AliExpress and other big companies.
How is this possible? Because the consumer-friendly package-tracking app is basically just a side hobby for the company’s primary business. What’s that? I’ll admit, after looking at AfterShip’s website, I don’t entirely understand. (It’s something to do with data and logistics.)
The business model apparently is kind of like how fast food restaurants give away free napkins and plastic cutlery or how gas stations let you use their windshield cleaner.
An easy-to-use package tracker
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
To use AfterShip Package Tracker, just copy a tracking number from an email or shopping app and open the AfterShip app. Allow it to paste the number from your clipboard, and AfterShip will look up the shipment. Give the package a descriptive name and add it to your list
If you connect your Gmail or Outlook account, the app will automatically pull out tracking numbers from your email that it detects. It doesn’t work with iCloud, unfortunately, so I haven’t been able to test this feature yet.
You’ll get notifications any time there’s an update on your package. Tap on one to see the full history of updates, the estimated arrival day, and where the package is on a map.
In my experience, push notifications from AfterShip usually come before notifications from Amazon about the same package.
If you’re an Amazon fiend, or if you ship out packages for work, you’ll make great use of AfterShip’s Home Screen widget. You can see your top three orders at a glance, and with a single tap, jump straight into adding a new shipment.
Download from: App Store
