I am a long time user of Home Gauge and truly believe it is one of the best softwares available for home inspection. When we first began using the software, I was one of its biggest proponents. Over the past couple years I have seen limitations with the software I just don’t understand. Consider this a discussion or gripes and since this is the official forum I guess it should go here.
iOS - We have been promised for years it was coming. When it finally came it was broken. Updates are slow and do not appear to be properly beta tested by staff or developer prior to release. If I can find flaws or have it crash in 5 minutes it hasn’t been tested.
Desktop - No plans or desire for Mac version = buy a virtual machine and Windows if you want to use on a Mac. This is an added $200 expense, but if you want to use HG it’s possible. Let’s move on and buy the Windows laptop, but wait there is another issue. The better Windows laptops have higher screen resolution or DPI. Since HG doesn’t scale correctly it makes using the software more difficult. The font is too small and it is hard to edit photos.
Integration - integration with additional services have been slow or not fully supported. Examples would be RecallChek or ISN.
I am not sure why our beloved software which was a pioneer in our industry has fallen behind the curve. Maybe too many irons in the fire and a lack of single focus. While I love the look and feel of the new website. I would have rather had the other listed items.
We have been spoiled by HG. It is a great inspection software. But if a competitor could match some of the features and offered the above items we would have to give it a serious look. As a growing 6 inspector firm it would be hard to switch, but part of our success is dependent on the software.
If you want a pdf only software, a software that is cumbersome handling pictures and videos, a support desk social club, etc., then maybe HIP is what you need. Personally, I wouldn’t want to go backwards, hoping one day to go forward. HG is the best, get with the “program” Bobby
Thanks Larry for your feedback. We are making changes and improvements. It may not be as fast as you like and we did have a terrible developer of our ios HG Companion which has been replaced and fully expect the ios version to be ready for everyone interested soon.
Our Android version rocks and has for a few years now. We chose it first because most inspectors use windows.
Russell I know we don’t get too see the whole machine and what goes on behind the scenes. I love the Android version and had resigned myself to use it while iOS was completed. But then I buy one of our new guys a laptop and HG is nearly unusable with the display settings.
Also I use ISN and wish there was an auto upload.
Russell wasn’t there something about updates to HG scheduler? I would use it if it had a quick easy way to sign agreement and shower payment status.
Just curious. One of my buds in St Louis uses HG and he just bought a Lenovo with Windows 10 and he says its sweet. One of my inspectors uses Windows 7 and his works great (I still use XP and mine is OK … So what does yours NOT do?
It works, but with the higher DPI screen resolution. The font and photos are very small. HG has to make the software scaleable to display properly on newer laptops.
We are about to pull the plug on our old clunky scheduler. Our totally new appointment manager is about to be released. It will be basic at first. But we will be adding to it a lot faster as soon as it is released. We have been waiting on our new HG website to come out which it now has. So, we are making steps to release the new appointment manager.
I also have a question for you at the HG ios thread that I received from my developer.
Yes I agree. ISN was suppose to come out with something last year but they are only giving it to the big franchises I think. Shame. There a lot of things I wish I could do in homegauge but cannot as a multi firm. Like locking the template. I am not a developer but version 5 is getting old. Version 5 is also a little slow on tablets. I think our phones have gotten us used to updates every day. Oh well. What to do.
If we locked the template in version 5 your employees wouldn’t be able to improve auto-comments. This may be exactly what you want to keep them from doing. But many multi-firms want that to continue but want to be able to “approve” them and find them easily.
Version 6
… you said “There a lot of things I wish I could do in homegauge but cannot as a multi firm. Like locking the template.”
