Keelway vs Vooma — copilot on your TMS, or TMS with the AI inside?

Vooma launched in 2023 and grew fast on a clear wedge: brokers lose quotes to whoever responds first, so automate the quote. Its six agents — Quote, Build, Schedule, Cover, Track, and Collect (vooma.com, as of June 2026) — each take one workflow and run it on top of your existing TMS and pricing stack. The company raised $16.6M across seed and Series A, led by Index Ventures and Craft Ventures (announced December 2024), and its customer list includes Arrive Logistics, NFI, Mode Global, and Echo. The published results focus on quoting: responses 20 minutes faster and a 15% lift in email quote win rate, per vooma.com.

Keelway is an AI platform that automates carrier email triage for freight brokers — turning 40+ carrier replies per posted load into a ranked, vetted shortlist in under a second. The difference in architecture matters: Keelway is the system of record, so the email AI writes straight into the load — no API bridge to your TMS, no second vendor, no unpublished quote stacked on a per-seat TMS bill. One product at $799/mo flat, unlimited users, 30-day full-product trial.

What does Vooma actually sell?

Six agents, per vooma.com as of June 2026. Quote reads inbound shipper requests and answers with a price from your pricing engine. Build extracts shipment details from emails and PDFs and populates your TMS. Schedule books facility appointments by email, phone, or portal login. Cover posts loads to DAT and Truckstop and fields the carrier calls and emails that come back. Track monitors shipments and contacts drivers. Collect follows up on invoices and receivables. The claims attached: 20-minute-faster responses, 15% email quote win-rate improvement, 2+ hours saved per rep per day, 65%+ inbound calls deflected, 90%+ reduction in data errors. Pricing for the stack is not published.

What does Keelway do instead?

Keelway starts from the carrier side of the inbox. In Keelway's operating data from running freight at Triple C Trucking, a posted load pulls roughly 40 carrier replies — and Keelway customers typically respond to them within 5 minutes (Keelway product data, 2026). Keelway parses every reply across twelve quote formats, extracts the rate at greater than 95% accuracy, cross-checks the carrier against FMCSA's QCMobile API at the moment of reply, and ranks a vetted shortlist — inside the same TMS that posts the load, books the carrier, and settles the invoice. Implementation runs under one business day.

Where Vooma wins

Honest list — Vooma is the better buy in these cases:

• Quoting speed is your wedge. Vooma's flagship is shipper-side quote automation connected to your pricing engine, with published results (20 minutes faster, 15% win-rate lift, per vooma.com). Keelway's wedge is the carrier side; it doesn't automate shipper quoting against a pricing engine.
• You keep the TMS you already run. Vooma works on top of your existing stack — no migration, no retraining the team on a new system of record. If your brokerage is deeply invested in its TMS, a copilot is the lower-disruption path.
• Reference customers at scale. Arrive Logistics, NFI, Mode Global, Echo, Sunset, Kingsgate, AXLE Logistics (vooma.com, June 2026) — a stronger mid-market and enterprise list than a newer SMB-focused TMS can show.
• Breadth of agents. Appointment scheduling and shipment tracking agents are shipped products at Vooma. Keelway has no dedicated scheduling agent.

Where Keelway wins

• One product, one invoice. Vooma's unpublished price stacks on top of a TMS bill that already runs $200–$1,200 per seat at the established vendors. Keelway replaces the whole stack at $799/mo flat, unlimited users, $0 setup.
• Pricing transparency. Keelway's price is on the pricing page, month-to-month, with a 30-day full-product trial. Vooma's is demo-gated, per vooma.com as of June 2026.
• Carrier vetting in the ranking. Keelway scores every individual reply against FMCSA at scoring time — authority, insurance, out-of-service history — so fraud signals surface before you book. Carrier-side trust scoring is not a stated Vooma product focus.
• No integration seam. A copilot writes into your TMS through an API; schemas drift and bridges need maintenance. Keelway's email AI and load record are the same database.

The verdict in one paragraph

If you run an established mid-market brokerage on a TMS you intend to keep, and shipper quoting speed is the bottleneck, Vooma is a credible buy with named customers and published results. If you are an SMB brokerage that either hasn't committed to an enterprise TMS or wants out of per-seat pricing — and the daily pain is the carrier email pile — Keelway gives you the TMS and the triage in one product at a price you can read today. Different layers of the stack; pick the one that matches where your money already goes.