PortFlow.tech's answer

PortFlow was built by someone who spent eight months at sea on the receiving end of bad agency work, not by a software company that read a case study.

That shows up in the specifics. The port call is held in the port's own time zone and the IMO FAL deadline is worked out from the ETA, correct when the clocks move. The disbursement account comes out in the four BIMCO and FONASBA sections your principal already reads. The captain reaches you through a private link instead of a WhatsApp number that sometimes answers.

A general logistics tool can be bent into a port call. It will not know what a FAL 5 is, or why an FDA belongs to the call rather than to a list of jobs.

PortFlow.tech's answer

Be honest about who the competitor usually is. For most agencies it is not another platform, it is a folder of spreadsheets, an inbox and a WhatsApp group. That setup feels free and costs a rebuild of the same port call every time a date moves.

Against the broad maritime ERPs, PortFlow does not compete on breadth. It does one thing: the port call, end to end, on one record, and it is quick enough that an operator uses it during the call instead of after it.

Against the newer agent-facing platforms, the difference is the captain. Most systems stop at the agency wall. PortFlow lets the master submit the ETA, request provisions, water or a crew boat and approve quotations without an account, and each request lands attached to the right call.

PortFlow.tech's answer

Maritime agencies, port agents, ship agents and husbandry agencies, from the two-person office up to a team running several ports.

The person who feels it first is the operations manager who rebuilds the same estimate every time an ETA slips, and the finance person who reconciles what was quoted against what was invoiced. If your agency runs its calls on spreadsheets, email and chat, you are the audience.

PortFlow.tech's answer

The founder ran a port supply company in Costa Rica for over twenty years, then spent eight months at sea as superintendent afloat.

On one call the agency never transmitted the ETA to the port authority. The ship arrived on a Friday afternoon to be told there was no ETA on record and no pilot available. Forty-eight hours drifting offshore. A wave hit the starboard side hard enough to fire a liferaft, which was destroyed. A formal note of protest followed.

Provisions were worse in a quieter way. Orders placed by spreadsheet and email arrived in two or three days and always short. What was ordered for twelve days lasted about eight, and the cook improvised for seventeen crew. Nobody could say what was coming or when.

None of it was a hard problem. It was a data problem, solved badly, over and over. PortFlow is the system that call needed.

PortFlow.tech's answer

Next.js and TypeScript on the front and the API, PostgreSQL on Neon for the database, Tailwind for the interface, deployed on Vercel. Tenant separation is enforced in the database itself rather than only in the application.