Do other software offer similar features to ISN? I love the electronic signing, the connection to payment, online booking, and that they automate all the follow up emails, but I keep having problems with the inspection app not syncing and having to upload and insert everything manually. Even with great internet there site is so slow, It is really hurting my turn around time. I do inspections part time only 1-2 a month so it is hard to justify a crazy expensive software, but they gave me a crazy cheap rate for my first year. It is going up in January and wondering if there is another one stop shop like ISN, but actually works.
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ISN used to be the go to software for the type of service they offered. I used them for a number of years, then they were bought out by Porch and started raising prices, I’ve since slowed my business down and I finally decided to dump ISN and America’s Call Center a couple of years ago.
My software does pretty much everything I was using ISN for, but ISN was easier and they were linked to America’s Call Center, who I had answering all my calls. I used it for scheduling jobs, email notifications and sending out agreements.
ACC would answer all my calls, schedule and get confirmation for all my jobs, then everything flowed into ISN, then I downloaded from ISN directly into my software. It worked great for me back then when I was much more busier than I am now.
I now use my software for scheduling, outlook for sending out emails and InterNACHI for agreements.
I don’t know of another stand alone service that does what ISN does.
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I’m generally happy with ISN for the office running features but have not tried their report builder. Rather than abandon them totally I believe there are some pay per use software systems that integrate with ISN. I can’t think of one right off but someone might chime in…. or look over the links in ISN and you might get some ideas.
Dump it and do it yourself!
At only a couple of jobs a month, either they are harming your business, or you need better resources for SEO!
IMO, you need to figure out what’s happening, and the best way is to do it all yourself until you do.
There is NO justification to pay anyone for any services until you can honestly say that you are not on the way to failure and ‘closing your doors’!!
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Currently I am paying $20 a month, and there axillary services are great its mainly the mobile app and there writing service that sucks. I work full time with the state and too close to being vested to go anywhere. I live in a small rural area and started inspecting just to make a little bit to invest on the side.
Thank you I will look into that, the booking, payment, and agreement signing works pretty well other then having to tell the client to check there spam.
We use ISN for our back office. We will never use the report writer that they have, but I’m sure many do. As for problems, we have very, very few issues. When Porch acquired the old ISN, it had not been updated and was showing its age, and needed to be rebuilt. That is when the gremlins started to appear and cause some headaches at times…. From what I have seen, those issues have been taken care of, and the back office part that we depend on works fine.
I’ve definitely noticed some patterns - gmail generally gets through, hotmail is the worst, aol/yahoo are okay. .edu addresses have pretty poor success… not due to anything with the .edu but more to do with each institution’s security most likely. Overall, it is frustrating that an outfit like ISN does experience so many problems delivering a single email (as opposed to some ad campaign with thousands). It seems like one of those things that they could improve if they really focused on it.
It’s widespread anytime there is automation involved in sending emails. I think every “automated email delivery” system has similar issues. I know Spectora does. I (partially) solve it with an automated text that goes out with the email, telling the client to check their spam folder.
We (briefly) dabbled in sending out some mass marketing emails and it is a major PITA sending a bulk email/advertisement (makes me wonder how I get so many?). I figured since each ISN/Spectora email is unique (property address, inspection time, etc. in the emails are different) it would have less resistance but I guess not. Also, the inspection emails from ISN/Spectora are not sent as a large batch but rather at individual times. I have very little understanding of how this all works (probably obvious by my previous statements)…. it just seems that there would be a way for outfits sending legitimate emails like these to get it set up so they aren’t marked as spam.
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tell the client to check there spam.
This started once Porch bought them. I very rarely had an issue with this before. I have REAs that I have worked with for years and have sent paid invoices for WDI inspections and they always received them in their inbox, not anymore, and now it seems that every new PIA they send to new clients they end up in the spam folder.