What happens to your documentation when you stop paying.
A question almost nobody asks at purchase, and the only one that matters if the capture is a compliance record, a warranty file or evidence.
Two different products that look identical
On a subscription platform, spaces go inactive when the plan lapses. For marketing content with a shelf life measured in months, that is a reasonable trade — you stopped needing it anyway.
For a warranty record, a life safety drawing, a claim file or a litigation exhibit, an off switch controlled by a vendor's billing system is a structural problem. Those records need to outlive the commercial relationship that produced them.
What "owning it" should mean
- You receive the actual files — DWG, DXF, PDF, JPG — not a login
- They open in software you already have
- Nothing expires, deactivates or degrades if you stop being a customer
- You can host the walkthrough yourself if you want to
- No re-purchase to regain access to something you already paid to create
The practical habit
Whatever provider you use, get the files delivered on every job and put them somewhere you control. A vendor can change terms; a folder on your server cannot. We deliver files by default rather than on request, for exactly this reason.
What if I already have tours on a subscription platform?
Keep them. Most clients who move do it for new capture where documentation matters, and leave existing marketing tours where they are until the subscription math stops working.
Can I really self-host the walkthrough?
Yes. It is a deliverable rather than a permanent tether to us.
What happens if we stop working together?
Every file you paid for keeps working. That is the whole point.
Two arrangements that look identical until you stop paying
The subscription model
You pay to have your building documented. The result lives on the vendor's platform, at the vendor's URL, viewable while your account is current. You are a licensee of a record of your own building. Cancel, and the link in every listing, every email, every marketing PDF and every embed on your site returns an error page.
Files delivered
You pay to have your building documented. You receive the files. They are on your server, in your archive, next to the contract documents. Nothing expires, nothing has to be renewed, and nothing depends on a company still existing in 2036.
The four questions to ask any vendor
- What exactly do I receive as a file? Not "access to" — receive. A DWG is a file. A login is not.
- What happens to the tour if I stop paying? Ask for the answer in writing. "It's archived" and "it's deleted" are very different sentences.
- Can I export it, and into what? If the export is a proprietary format that only their viewer opens, you have a hostage rather than an archive.
- What are my license terms for what I do receive? Some vendors deliver files and still restrict what you may do with them.
The ten-year test
The honest question about any documentation deliverable is whether it opens in a decade, because that is when as-built documentation is most often needed — a renovation, a dispute, a sale, a claim. DWG, DXF, PDF and JPG will open in 2036; they are decades old already and universally supported. A proprietary walkthrough format hosted by a company that may have been acquired twice is a different bet.
We deliver both: the open formats that will certainly still work, and the walkthrough, hosted without a recurring fee. If we vanished tomorrow, everything structural about your documentation would still be in your hands and still open.
Our terms, stated plainly
Files are delivered to you on completion and are yours to use, copy, embed, archive and hand to a third party without asking us. There is no per-view fee, no seat license, no expiry, and no fee to keep the walkthrough live. We retain a working copy for twelve months as a convenience to you, then delete it — so your archive is the archive. What the recurring alternative costs over five years is worth two minutes.