CargoWise (WiseTech Global)
| Vendor | WiseTech Global |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Sydney, Australia (US presence via acquisitions such as Trinium) |
| Ownership | Publicly listed (ASX: WTC) |
| Deployment | Cloud (single-platform SaaS) |
| Target market | Freight forwarders, customs brokers, NVOCCs, and 3PLs, from midsize to global enterprise |
| Industries | Freight forwarding, customs brokerage, 3PL warehousing, land transport |
| Pricing | Not published; modular, user- and transaction-based licensing quoted individually |
| Website | cargowise.com |
What CargoWise is
One database, one platform, and everything a freight forwarder does running on top of it. CargoWise combines international forwarding, customs brokerage, warehousing, land transport, and a fully integrated accounting layer in a single cloud system built by WiseTech Global. The vendor markets it as an operating system for logistics service providers. In directory terms it is an industry ERP for companies that move freight on behalf of others, which is a different animal from a manufacturing or distribution ERP for companies that own the goods they ship.
Vendor, history, ownership
WiseTech Global was founded in Sydney, Australia, in 1994 and has traded on the Australian Securities Exchange under the ticker WTC since 2016. The platform carried the name CargoWise One for years before it was shortened. Growth has come substantially through acquisition: dozens of logistics software companies, among them the US-relevant additions Trinium (intermodal trucking) and Blume Global (rail and intermodal). The 2025 agreement to acquire supply chain platform e2open for 3.25 billion US dollars is the largest transaction in company history. WiseTech reports that CargoWise is licensed in 195 countries and used by 46 of the top 50 global third-party logistics providers. Those are vendor figures, but they match the weight the platform visibly carries in US forwarding.
Modules and capabilities
Forwarding operations span air, ocean, road, and rail, including rating, quoting, booking, and consolidation. Customs functionality supports electronic filing with US Customs and Border Protection alongside declarations in many other jurisdictions. Further modules address warehouse operations (WMS), transport and container management, compliance screening, and document management. The native financial layer is what separates the product from point TMS tools: general ledger, receivables, payables, multi-currency, and job-level profitability sit on the same database as operations, which is why the label logistics ERP sticks. Connectivity to carriers, ports, and customs authorities runs over EDI and APIs.
Best-fit companies, and what it costs
The audience is freight forwarders, customs brokers, NVOCCs, and third-party logistics providers, from midsize regional operations up to global networks; in the US the platform is widely used in international forwarding and customs brokerage. Shippers, manufacturers, and distributors fall outside the target market and belong in conventional ERP suites. Delivery is cloud only, on a single global platform, with no on-premises edition. Licensing is modular and largely transaction- or user-based, WiseTech publishes no price list, and costs depend on modules, volumes, and geography. Training deserves its own budget line, given the size of the certification ecosystem around the platform.
Where it wins, where it loses
In international forwarding and customs brokerage, CargoWise appears on nearly every serious US shortlist, and the reason is structural: a single database with integrated accounting beats a TMS bolted onto a separate finance package the moment job costing and multi-currency start to matter. That is the case for buying it. Against it, three things. Implementation and training effort are substantial. Pricing stays opaque until you are deep in a sales cycle. And each WiseTech acquisition, e2open most recently, increases how much of your operation depends on a single vendor. Manufacturers and shippers hunting for a general-purpose ERP should not be in this evaluation at all. A small US forwarder with a handful of trade lanes and light customs work will fund depth it never touches, and should weigh lighter cloud forwarding tools during software selection.
What the CargoWise (WiseTech Global) website looks like
Current view of the vendor homepage, captured by our editorial team.
