Not All Freight Tech Is Created Equal: The Real Difference Between Real-Time Rating, Spotboards, APIs, and RPA
Breaking down the complexity of automated spotbidding:
In the race to automate spot quoting, brokers hear a lot of noise—real-time rating, auto-bidding, spotboards, APIs, bots.
Let’s break down what each actually means and how they work.
Below are the three core automation methods you’ll see across the industry:
Real-Time Rating (3-Second Fully Automated SLA)
Spotboard API Bidding
RPA Bots
At the end, we’ll show how LiveQuote brings all of them together under one roof.
⚡ 1. Real-Time Rating (3-Second SLA — Fully Automated)
What it is:
Real-time rating is the fastest possible bidding workflow. When a shipper sends an API rate request, your pricing API has under 3 seconds to respond—or the quote is thrown out.
This is 100% automated, meaning:
✔ No human review
✔ No editing
✔ No exceptions
✔ No manual steps
Your API fires the price automatically based on your logic.
How it works:
Shipper sends a real-time request
Your API returns a price in ~1–3 seconds
Quote is accepted or ignored instantly
Best for:
High-volume shippers requiring instant responses.
Benefits:
Fastest possible SLA
Required for certain premium shipper connections
Zero labor required once logic is set
Trade-Offs:
No human judgment
Bad logic = bad outcomes
No opportunity to review or override
Bottom Line:
Real-time rating is pure automation.
Great for volume, unforgiving if your pricing logic isn’t sharp.
📡 2. Spotboard API Bidding
What a spotboard is:
A shipper’s digital marketplace where brokers submit rates via API instead of logging into portals. Examples: E2Open, Uber Freight, OTM, Emerge.
How it works:
You connect to the shipper’s spotboard API
Your system submits bids automatically or semi-automatically
The shipper processes and ranks your bids in their system
Best for:
Brokers bidding frequently into large shipper portals.
Benefits:
No more logging into portals
Faster response times
Scales across hundreds or thousands of daily bids
Works with your pricing logic
Trade-Offs:
Logic must be tailored to each shipper’s rules
Less flexible if you don’t have a centralized tool
Easy to lose visibility if quotes are fully automated
Bottom Line:
Spotboard APIs are fast and scalable—crucial for high-volume shippers—but work best when tied to a platform that can manage multiple connections consistently.
🤖 3. RPA Bots (Robotic Process Automation)
What it is:
Bots that mimic human actions—logging into portals, reading load details, and submitting quotes when no API exists.
How it works:
Bot logs in like a human
Bot reads load opportunities
Bot enters and submits your rate
Bot repeats until the UI changes
Best for:
Shippers with no API or old portals that cannot be integrated traditionally.
Benefits:
Allows automation where APIs don’t exist
Lower upfront cost than custom integrations
Fast to deploy
Risks:
Easily breaks when portals change
Hard to monitor
No intelligence or decision-making
High long-term maintenance cost
Bottom Line:
RPA is a useful patch—but not a long-term strategy.
🚀 4. LiveQuote — The Platform That Brings Everything Together
Here’s where LiveQuote stands out:
It centralizes every quoting method into one unified platform.
LiveQuote is not just a bidding tool—it becomes the control center for your entire spot quoting operation.
LiveQuote supports all three capabilities:
1️⃣ Real-Time Rating (3-Second SLA)
Plug your pricing logic into LiveQuote and automatically respond within 3 seconds for shippers that require real-time bids.
2️⃣ Spotboard API Bidding
Submit bids directly to shipper spotboards (E2Open, Uber, OTM, Emerge, etc.) with automation, logic layers, or optional human review.
3️⃣ RPA for Non-API Portals
LiveQuote routes RPA-based submissions for portals that don’t support API connections.
Why LiveQuote Is the Modern Quoting Hub
One platform for every shipper workflow
Full visibility and audit trails
Centralized logic and margin strategy
Automation when you want it, oversight when you need it
Analytics, performance scoring, and reporting across all channels
Consistent process no matter how the shipper requires bids
Instead of juggling 15 different workflows, LiveQuote gives your brokerage one clean system to manage everything from 3-second real-time rating to RPA-powered portal bidding.
Final Thought: Your Strategy Should Drive the Automation — Not the Other Way Around
Real-time rating is fast.
Spotboard APIs are powerful.
RPA fills the gaps.
But LiveQuote is the platform that unifies them—giving brokers a scalable, controlled, and strategic way to win more freight across every type of shipper connection.
