How To Track Your Packages Online

As more and more of us are ordering our products online, through sites like Amazon and other big name online retailer, there is a delay of shipping. Waiting for the package to arrive at the carrier’s facility, leaving the carrier’s facility, out for delivery.

Using the shipper’s built-in tracking service on the website with multiple packages and multiple carriers can take a long time to look up and track all of the packages. The best solution to this, is to use a 3rd party package tracking service to track all of your packages in one central location.

We’ll be taking a look at one of our favorite package tracking services today.

Online Service

Fara (Free) / Packagetrackr (Free) – Both Packagetrackr and Fara are the same service, track multiple shipping carriers at once, and operated by the same company. Even though the sites look completely different, the back-end is essentially the same. Technically Packagetrackr was the first company to start in January 2008, and Fara in 2009.

Looking at both services, they both have their advantages to each other, even though they are exactly the same company. While Fara has a nice design to their service and a iOS app, Packagetrackr has more features, which includes RSS, carrier ratings based on other Packagetrackr users, easy to use mobile web site, and add ons to various browsers, bookmarklet, operating systems. The both have email/SMS/Twitter notifications, almost the same carrier support list (Packagetrackr has one more than Fara for some reason), and the same layout summary of the package (carrier name, carrier contact, tracking number, status, shipped from/to location, type of shipping service, weight of package, shipping logs, and a map showing an estimate of package’s trip).

No matter what you choose, after you sign up for an account, you should be able to use either website with the same account.

iOS App

Fara (Free) – Much like its online service, Fara tracks multiple shipping carriers at once and displays it much like its website. It shows you the status of the item and show you the carrier name, carrier contact, tracking number, status, shipped from/to location, type of shipping service, weight of item being shipped, shipping logs, and a map showing an estimate of package’s trip.

The combination of the service and iOS app allows easy use between a desktop and mobile device. You can add your packages using the online service and use the iOS app to check up on your package when you are on the road.

Android App

Parcels (Free) – For Android, we prefer Parcels due to its functionality. While the app has a large carrier tracking support, it also has ability to have background notifications to tell you any new updates on the package and shows you a map estimating the package’s trip. It also labels and color codes every individual package for east reference and can automatically delete delivered package after a set time. The only downside is that you have to manually enter in the tracking number.

If you are going to do a lot of shipping out, then we recommend which has the ability to use the camera to capture the barcode of the package. It also has a bigger list of shipping carriers. The only downside is that the UI is more difficult and has no background notification support.