Tai TMS alternatives for freight brokers

What is on the record

• Descartes announced the acquisition of Tai for $100M on 24 August 2026 (its press release, FreightWaves and Transport Topics all carry it).
• Eight days later it announced Extensiv for $120M; Digital Commerce 360 called it Descartes' second AI-fulfillment acquisition in two weeks.
• An independent analyst (beri.net) argues that a Tai customer's leverage sits in the 60 days before renewal. Treat that as one analyst's view, not a contract fact; we have not checked them against the actual contract terms and do not repeat his contract-clause analysis. (beri.net, 30 September 2026)

Choose Tai if

• You are a brokerage happy with the product and you get renewal terms in writing before the deal changes anything.
• You value being part of a larger company's product family more than independence.
• Switching cost is high and the improvement you would gain does not cover it.

Look elsewhere if

• You want price terms you can hold: read the renewal and price-increase clauses in your contract before you renew.
• You would rather own the system than subscribe to it.
• The warehouse or yard is part of the same business: ask where those workflows live in the product you are buying.

Before you decide anything

1. Find your renewal date. Everything about leverage runs through it.
2. Request the current terms in writing: price escalators, data ownership on exit, support commitments.
3. Run the same broker workflows in every alternative demo, from email to quote to load to invoice.
4. Check what happens to your data at exit, in the contract, not on a marketing page.

Where we fit

We build a system you own: the code and the data are yours, on your own server, which we set up for you. The price is the build, quoted by scope, with no per-truck, per-dispatch or per-client fees; most builds are handed over in 14 days; your timeline is confirmed in writing after the onboarding call. After 3 months of free support, your IT team is trained, or you take 24/7 support for a fixed monthly fee, quoted with the build. We migrate you free with any Cargohold build: we review your data with you, agree what moves where, and move it into your new system at no cost. Migration time is agreed at onboarding and comes on top of the build. If your current vendor makes exporting hard, we work with their support or build a workaround. Choose a subscription product instead if you would rather subscribe than own. You can walk our system before deciding either way: request sandbox access to see what is live today.

Extensiv, ShipHero, Logiwa, Tai, Turvo and Descartes are trademarks of their owners. Cargohold and Microsive are not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any of them; the names are used only to identify their products. Cargohold builds systems that compete with them.