The part of this software I spent the least time thinking about turned out to be the part that decided whether any of it worked.
I was focused on my end — camera, upload, storage. The homeowner's end was an afterthought, because from where I was standing it looked like the easy half. It is not the easy half. It is the half where you lose people.
The only spec that matters is zero install
A web viewing inspection system means the person watching uses a browser they already have. No app, no account, no password, no camera permission prompt.
Every one of those is a place somebody stops. And the people who stop are not randomly distributed. The homeowner who is already unsure about you, who is watching two more estimates come in this week, who does not love giving companies their email — that is the person who does not complete an app install to watch a roof. That is also the exact person the whole exercise was meant to convince.
I have watched a man tap a link in his truck at a job site and watch four minutes of his own roof. He would not have downloaded anything. He did not need to.
What the link has to survive
Assume the worst about the conditions on their end, because they are usually worse than yours.
- A phone, held one-handed, in daylight. Not a desk. Not a laptop. Whatever is legible on a bright screen at arm's length.
- A tap from a text message. Which means the link opens in whatever in-app browser their messaging app uses, and that browser is often not the one they think of as their browser.
- Being handed sideways. The person you sent it to forwards it to a spouse, a property manager, a business partner. That is normal behaviour and the system should have an opinion about it rather than being surprised.
- Being opened late. They tap it during a meeting, put the phone down, come back after you are off the roof. What they see then matters as much as what they would have seen live.
What they are actually looking at
Not what you think. You are looking at condition. They are looking at whether this is real.
For the first thirty seconds they are not evaluating shingle. They are establishing that this is their house, that it is happening now, and that the person narrating is the person they spoke to. Say the address out loud. Show the street, then the elevation, then the roof. Give them the two seconds of orientation that let them stop asking the question underneath the question.
After that they will follow you anywhere, and the technical part of the walk lands, because they have stopped wondering whether the footage is stock.
When the viewer is not the homeowner
The same link goes to people with completely different jobs.
A property manager wants to know whether this becomes a work order and how urgent it is. They are half-watching, and they will make a decision from the narration more than the picture.
A general contractor wants the detail that does not match the drawing, and will want to interrupt.
An absentee owner wants to know that somebody competent was on the property. Ninety seconds of a clean, ordered walk does that better than an hour of close-ups.
You cannot tailor the walk to all three. What you can do is keep the order consistent and say what you are looking at, so each of them can find the part they came for.
What good looks like from their side
Judge any tool by watching a real walk on somebody else's phone, not on your own.
The link opens in under a couple of seconds. It says what it is before the video starts. It plays without a login. It degrades to something watchable when the connection is poor rather than freezing on a close-up of a pipe boot. When the walk ends, they are told what happens next and how to get back to the recording.
If you want to see the whole thing from that side, walk through how it works and open a link on your own phone the way a customer will. It is a different product from over there.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a client need to watch an inspection online?
A browser and the link. No app, no account, no password, no camera permission. Every install step you add costs you viewers, and the ones you lose are disproportionately the people who were already unsure about you — which is who the walk was for.
Can the viewer link be forwarded to somebody else?
People do it constantly — spouse, business partner, property manager — so the system should have an opinion about it rather than be surprised by it. The link is good for the inspection it was made for and then it stops working, which keeps a forwarded link from turning into permanent access to somebody's property.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.