Yes — ProDocks Is Free. Here's What You Get.
If you searched for “free dock scheduling software,” you probably expected the usual answer: “there's no real free option, here's a 14-day trial.” That's not the case here. ProDocks' Free tier is the full core product, free forever, for a single warehouse. No credit card, no expiring trial, no “upgrade-or-lose-your-data” pressure.
We built it this way because Productiv — the Dallas-based 3PL that made ProDocks — already uses it to run four of its own warehouses. The product is paying its way through our operations, which means we don't need to charge every small warehouse an enterprise rate just to cover costs. The Free tier is how most single-warehouse operations will stay, permanently. The paid tier exists for the scenarios where scale genuinely adds operational work — multi-warehouse management, analytics, compliance reporting.
What's Included in the Free Tier
Every feature below is in the Free tier. This is the actual core product, not a stripped-down preview:
- Appointment scheduling — with real conflict prevention, buffer times, and capacity rules enforced at booking time
- Link-based carrier self-booking — carriers book through a shared link with no login, no portal account, no training
- QR driver check-in kiosk — drivers scan a QR code from their appointment email; timestamps and door assignments logged automatically
- BOL photo capture — BOLs uploaded at the dock attach directly to the shipment record; clean digital audit trail
- Real-time dock dashboard — live board showing arrivals, active unloads, exceptions, and door status
- Automated notifications — confirmations, reminders, and status updates go out to carriers and customers automatically
- Unlimited doors, unlimited appointments — no usage caps on the Free tier; scale your single warehouse as much as you need
When You'd Ever Need to Upgrade
Three specific scenarios trigger the $25/warehouse/month Multi-Warehouse tier:
You add a second warehouse. The moment you're running more than one site, you want one dashboard across both — consolidated reporting, per-site rules, role-based access. That's the core of the Multi-Warehouse tier. Each warehouse is $25/month, so two warehouses run $50/month, three run $75/month.
You need analytics. Dwell time by carrier, dock utilization rates, weekly throughput charts, carrier scorecards, exception pattern detection. For teams that want to measure and improve dock performance beyond the live dashboard, the Analytics module is part of the Multi-Warehouse tier.
You need vendor compliance reporting. Carrier performance scorecards, misappointment logging, compliance reports for customer audits. Most single-warehouse operations don't need this; larger 3PLs and distribution networks do.
If none of those three apply, you can run ProDocks free forever. See the full pricing page for tier details, or check out affordable dock scheduling options.
What You're Not Sacrificing by Going Free
The Free tier gets the same appointment engine, the same conflict detection logic, the same carrier self-booking flow, and the same QR kiosk check-in as the paid tiers. The paid tier isn't “the real product” — it's the same product with multi-site management and analytics layered on top. Feature-wise, Free is full parity on the core dock operations.
What you don't get on Free: multi-warehouse management (obviously — Free is single-warehouse), analytics, vendor compliance reporting, and the Enterprise-tier forward-deployed engineer for custom setup. None of those are features a typical single-warehouse operation needs.
What About Google Sheets or a Shared Calendar?
Spreadsheets and shared calendars are technically free, but they aren't scheduling software. They display appointments; they don't enforce capacity rules. When two carriers try to book the same slot in a shared calendar, the calendar doesn't care — both entries exist. The dock team discovers the conflict when both trucks show up.
The difference between “displaying appointments” and “enforcing scheduling rules” is what makes actual dock scheduling software valuable. ProDocks validates every booking against real-time dock capacity, door availability, and service-type constraints before confirming. The Free tier gives you that enforcement without charging for it.
How to Start
Sign up with just an email, name, and company — no credit card. Configure your docks, hours, and service types in about 30 minutes. Share a booking link with your carriers. Most warehouses have their first real appointment scheduled before end-of-day. If you later decide you need multi-warehouse or analytics, upgrade inside the product — no data migration, no re-onboarding.