William,
I used HHZ for a year and switched to Spectora and it was a good business decision to make. I used HHZ for over a year and I also work with the owner of HHZ for a year prior to that because it took that long that long to move my comments into HHZ. Plus, I wasn’t comfortable enough to use HHZ prior to that because it lacked so much. So, over a year advising and imputing comments and a year of use in the field and I’m walking away from HHZ. There are many reasons, but two are by far the biggest. First, is HHZ and HG were purchased by the same company, and no one really knows what the end product is going to look like. I used HG fifteen years ago and left and I do not want anything to do with HG. Secondly, HHZ has not released any meaningful improvements in months or even a new release to cleanup bugs. It’s not because the software doesn’t need improvement. It’s because HHZ doesn’t want to invest in HHZ if it’s going to go away when the two merge platforms. So, in the meantime the user gets screwed.
You asked if Spectora saves time post inspection. Yes, but let me qualify that. It all depends on the template, your inspection routine and your comments. We have always been able to deliver our reports onsite with any software we have ever used in my company. If you setup Spectora correctly, you will find that the review and corrections (if any) are reduced in time allowing you to upload faster.
As for your comment library. I imported over 4500 comments. I provided Kevin an excel doc and he uploaded all of my comments. You will still need to invest time to format and assign a recommendation. It took me 30 days to do this, but it was well worth it, and I was able to fix and change my comments. During the course of a year my comments became corrupted because of a few bugs HHZ has. Also, HHZ lacked spellcheck in some of the comment boxes, so typos needed to be cleaned up. Spectora provided this. Another problem with HHZ is the significance ratings. If you add or modify a comment the significance ratings are not the same, if you modified them at HHZ settings. They know this is a bug and they can seem to fix it. Just the other day I received an email from HHZ saying they can’t seem to recreate the problem and can’t fix it. Not my problem any longer. They have provided HHZ screen shots of the issues months ago, so I hope they get it fixed for the few remaining users. As for adding comments. Spectora is very easy to use. You create it on the app an can save it to your template or just have it as a one-time comment. Editing existing comments is the same.
Another feature Spectora is better at is connectivity. Spectora works with or without connectivity, unlike HHZ that would stop working if it lost connectivity. Yes, you will need some type of connectivity to upload the report. Also, Spectora allow multiple inspectors on one inspection to input data using the inspectors own login, unlike HHZ. Spectora has a sync feature that allows the data to be synced and you get to decide when to synced – i.e. every 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes or on-demand. We like the on-demand setting, so we aren’t wasting data.
Spectora is not HHZ. Spectora is a template based platform and the MLS doesn’t impact the report. Spectora is a location driven software and uses location identifiers to place in the comment. HHZ uses rooms to accomplish this. I’ll be honest, I did like the platform HHZ had…inspect by rooms and report by system. You can accomplish the same by using the location identifiers. You can set your template to mirror HHZ, but I wouldn’t recommend that. Just create a great template and use the location identifiers. Nothing will change – we still inspect the same way, but just enter the data slightly different. We did a side by side comparison and Spectora won. It takes fewer clicks to add a comment, with a location and photo. Clicks = time and time = money.
Both provide a HTML link, but Spectora’s PDF is superior to the junk PDF HHZ creates. Spectora has also released 4 upgrades since I’ve started with them. The new releases have fixed known bugs and provide enhancements from the users. Spectora uses a system to allow users to help drive the ship. Users have a say as to how and what the software looks like, unlike HHZ. Plus, Kevin and Michael have been great to work with and are available at the strangest hours of the day to get a response. They are working hard to make Spectora successful, not only for them, but for the users.
Hope this help. Like I said, I invested hundreds of hours trying to guide HHZ to a better place and hundreds of hours getting my HHZ account ready to go live and decided to walk away. Spectora has been good to me, good for my business. I wish HHZ much luck in the future.
John Villella, General Manager
All Pro Home Inspection
(716) 772-2548 - Office
www.AllProHomeInspection.com