Case study · Logistics software · SaaS
Fretolia
Fretolia is a delivery and logistics service for businesses in Mauritius. A shop creates an account, sends orders through the dashboard or the API, and Fretolia groups them into delivery batches, optimises the route, prices each drop-off and lets the customer follow the parcel live.
- Role
- Product and platform engineering
- Status
- Live — businesses can sign up at fretolia.com
- Location
- Trou d’Eau Douce, Mauritius; delivery island-wide
- Website
- fretolia.com
The challenge
Small and growing businesses in Mauritius often want to offer delivery but cannot justify vehicles, drivers and dispatch tools of their own. Ad-hoc couriers make it hard to give customers a price up front, a delivery time, or a way to follow the parcel.
Fretolia was set up as a shared logistics layer: one network that any shop can plug into, so fast, tracked, affordable delivery is available without running a fleet.
What has been built
- 01
Delivery batches and optimised routes
Orders are grouped into delivery batches with capacity limits. Each batch gets an optimised route with Google’s route optimisation, including routes longer than the 25-stop limit, alternative routes and custom start and end points.
- 02
Pricing a customer can understand
The island is divided into hexagonal zones (H3). A delivery starts from a base amount and adds a fixed amount for each zone crossed, fuel based on road distance and a surcharge above 5 kg, rounded to the nearest Rs 5. The same formula powers the public price calculator.
- 03
Live tracking
A public tracking page and a live dispatch dashboard update in real time as couriers move, so businesses and customers see the same picture.
- 04
An API for businesses
Businesses get API keys and webhooks to send orders and receive status updates from their own systems. Miel.mu uses this to quote, register and track its deliveries automatically.
- 05
Notifications
Order confirmations and arrival-time updates are sent by email, and phone numbers are verified at sign-up.
How it is built
- Stack
- Next.js and React on a Supabase Postgres database with row-level security on every table, Google Maps for routing, distance and geocoding, Supabase Realtime for live positions, Resend for email and Twilio for phone verification. A NestJS service exposes courier, batch, partner, pricing and tracking APIs with Swagger documentation.
- Production and delivery pipeline
- Changes are tested on a staging environment, then promoted to production through a release pull request. Deployment applies database migrations, builds the application and checks that fretolia.com responds before finishing.
- Performance and observability
- Fixing repeated database queries on the business dashboard cut its load time from 23 seconds to 1.9 seconds. PostHog and OpenTelemetry logs show how the platform behaves in production.
- Quality
- Continuous integration runs formatting, linting, type checks, a dependency audit and unit tests; Playwright covers the main flows end to end. A courier mobile app built with Expo is in development.
Outcome and status
Fretolia is live and takes deliveries across Mauritius.
Miel.mu delivers its online orders through Fretolia’s API, so one venture’s logistics already run on another.
Production telemetry from Fretolia and Miel.mu formed the basis of a talk on monitoring given at coders.mu in 2026.
Questions about Fretolia
What is Fretolia?
Fretolia is a delivery and logistics service for businesses in Mauritius. Shops send orders to one shared delivery network, which batches them, optimises the route and offers live tracking, without the shop running its own fleet.
How does Fretolia calculate the price of a delivery?
Fretolia divides Mauritius into hexagonal zones. The price starts from a base amount and adds a fixed amount for each zone crossed, fuel based on road distance, and a surcharge for parcels over 5 kg. Its published pay-as-you-go pricing starts from Rs 50 per parcel; check fretolia.com/pricing for current rates.
Can I connect my online shop to Fretolia?
Yes. Businesses can enter orders in the Fretolia dashboard or connect their own systems with API keys and webhooks, as Miel.mu does.
