Hey guys
New to the biz and about to do my first inspection. What app do you all use for the inspections? FYI- I’m doing this as a side job so only doing 3-4 inspections per month. Thanks in advance
I use TapInspect because it allows you to purchase by the lot as opposed to a monthly subscription. $150 for 20 reports + 5 free practice reports. If you decide to go with them pm me. We both may can get additional discounts.
Good luck with your search and welcome to the forums!
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I have a few options, all reasonably priced. We focus on report writing. Most of my competitors try to throw in all kinds of other stuff like email, bookkeeping, and whatever else they can think of to jack up the price. We don’t do subscriptions. When you buy it, you own it. We also never have and never will sell your information or your customers’ information.
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Afternoon, Jeff. Pleasure to meet you. Hope to find you well.
Welcome to the InterNACHI members community message board.
How does 67.00 dollars monthly sound? Reports are keep for 7 years. Very versatile business, office and report writing home inspection business reporting software.
Look for now you are doing 4 inspections a month. Deduct >< $17 dollars for each report that is saved for 7 years. But it can turn into 15 or more as soon as your name takes off. Still $67.00 dollars.
I highly recommend it. HORIZON. Industry veteran. Carson Dunlop. I do not know of any older home inspection industry leaders in North America.
A high-end, full back office integrated reporting software may be overkill for what you would need as a part-timer, and the cost wouldn’t be worth it at 3 or 4 inspections per month. However, are you hoping to grow it beyond 3 or 4 a month? Are you going to limit the number of inspections you take? Or, if it grows, will you take all you can? Just some questions to ask as you search out your software.
I don’t know if you literally meant about to do your first. But if so, you should already have your software and be up to speed on it, lol.
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Home Inspector Pro
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I use the application of my senses of sight, hearing, smelling, touching, and sometimes taste for inspections.
Out of curiosity and too much free time, I tried to inventory the various HI report software programs.
Spectora
Inspector Toolbelt
HIP
ISN
Palmtech
Home Inspector Tech
Home Inspection Report
Horizon
Bestinspections
Fluix markets to home inspectors but I’m not sure about this one
Am I missing some?
Why do you list Spectora first? Is this a ranking of best software? 
Is report host still around? 
Isn’t that who owns Spectora after the lawsuit?
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There was no order at all. Although I am aware that Spectora is the 900lb gorilla, I don’t use it.
Actually, Bestinspections is interesting mostly because it is not a subscription. You buy it and own it. I hate the subscriptions, but that is the model that most of these companies are doing.
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Report host has a web page. Looks like they charge by the report.
Kinda interesting how hard it is to find HI software. None of the various ways I searched found Report Host or Bestinspections.
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I’m also a part time inspector and will be forever. I now use Scribeware. They have a very good summary section and easy to navigate report. They have a pay per inspection price that works for low volume inspectors. The system is inspection software only, no unnecessary business management tools. It’s ready to go with narrations included. Very powerful software with lots of time saving features. You do need to revise and add narrations that are applicable to your local area. It’s owned and managed by an active home inspector from the Northwest, so not a corporate managed software.
I started with HIP, but after getting feedback from clients and agents, I dumped it after a year or two. I was using Web Writer until it was dumped and turned off by Home Gauge. Use the software that will work for you long term. I can attest from experience that it’s very difficult to change software.
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When I got into this business more than 22 years ago, I did a deep dive into different inspection software and companies. I chose 3D because they fit the bill for everything I was looking for. Some may consider their software outdated, it isn’t, and for me, it still produces a report that looks just as good as any other on the market, I can manipulate the software to get the final product to look the way I want to, which is in a way that’s easy for clients to read and understand, and at a cost of $149.00 per year, is by far, without even a close second, the biggest bang for my $$.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, I own it.
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Scribeware
Lon, It’s BestInspectors.Net (Best Inspectors Network).
I don’t advertise much and I stopped going to conferences a few years ago. Most of my customers are inspectors who don’t like subscriptions and don’t like, or want, a lot of gimmicks. I focus on report writing.
I also have WindSurance.com, which is Florida specific software. I have wind mitigation, four-point, roof, electrical, mobile home tie-down inspection software. I also have most of the Citizens commercial reports. Everything is 100% Citizens compliant and is true to the Citizens formats.
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The inspection report software side of home inspection is a revolving door. If your list were 100% complete now, it wouldn’t be in six months. I used to try to keep up with all my competitors, but I gave up because they come and go so fast. Many would show up at a conference one time and would be out of business in less than a year.
For example, there was a guy at the 2007 InterNACHI conference in Toronto who said that in researching the home inspection industry, he found that inspectors wanted a stand-alone report writing system. He designed a system that came with its own computer with his software pre-installed. He said that he even developed a proprietary operating system. He had printed beautiful advertising literature. I don’t remember the cost of the system but it was very expensive. He was very frustrated because inspectors weren’t interested because of the cost and they didn’t really want a stand-alone system. He misunderstood what inspectors meant by stand-alone. Before the conference was over, he took thousands of dollars worth of his advertising literature and put it in the trash.
I told him that he was giving up too easily. It wasn’t that I wanted another competitor, but I didn’t want to see him give up in frustration because of one conference. The last I heard was that Mike Lemon was interested in partnering with him. Mike’s “Home Book” was rapidly declining in popularity. That was the last I ever saw or heard of either of those guys.
John Kerrigan was there too. You may remember that he had the Inspectware HIPPO inspection report software. John had been around a few years. He could hardly wait to tell me that my biggest home inspector competitor in my local market had dropped Mike Lemon’s Home Book and started using his HIPPO. John had just completed a major overhaul of HIPPO. He told me how much money he had put into overhauling it. It was a substantial investment. HIPPO disappeared shortly after that.
2007 was a turning point for the inspection report software industry. At every 2007 conference and every one after that, there were new software companies. Many would last one or two years then disappear. That was also the last time I saw HomeTech, which at one time was bigger, in terms of market share, than Spectora is today.
Another one who had been around for a long time and was very active on this message board was Jeff Knight. His Borealis software, and later InspectMate were major players for a few years, but I haven’t seen Jeff on this board or heard anything about his inspection software for a few years. Lorne Steiner and Kieth Swift parted ways and Lorne sold Porter Valley. The last I knew, Porter Valley’s Inspectvue was still around but I haven’t heard anything about it for a while.
Only a few of us have gone the long haul. Some, like Palm-Tech (1998) and HomeGauge(2003) still exist but were bought by someone else. 3D’s founder and owner Carl Fowler died not long ago. There was talk that he was going to sell 3D. I don’t know whether he sold it before he died or what happened to it. Carl started 3D in 1987.
Other than my company, Whisper Computer Solutions is the oldest continuously operating home inspection software company that is still under the original ownership that I know of. Larry White and Eric Himmer started Whisper in 1995. My company started in 1992, but I didn’t get involved with home inspection software until 1999.
In recent years, inspection report software is focused on almost anything but the actual inspection report. The software companies are capitalizing on the lack of business experience of most new home inspectors by selling them things for a monthly fee that they could get elsewhere at a lower cost, or even free.
My software is a one-time cost. I don’t have subscriptions or other hidden costs. I have many customers who go years between upgrades. Thousands of inspectors use one of the two reports that I have been giving to InterNACHI members free (one of which has been free for more than 20 years). At almost every speaking event I do, inspectors come up to me and tell me that they use the free reports because it meets their needs. I used to sell the free reports. The free reports have been updated many times over the years. In fact, I’ll soon be giving InterNACHI members a new free version of the InspectorLogic report that has been free to InterNACHI members since January 2017.
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A lot of names in your post that I haven’t heard in years, George. You have a good memory!
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