Google searches for Best Virtual Tour Software has increased by over 500% in the past year! This mainly due to new and better single shot 360 cameras being brought out onto the market (such as Ricoh Theta, Samsung Gear and Insta360 ONEX to name but a few) and more and more people are now looking to build their own virtual tours online.
To help you search for the best virtual tour software out there, I have tested the top 5 virtual tour software of 2019 using the trusted review platform Capterra to compare them all.
The top 5 virtual tour software of 2019 are:
- Live Tour by iStaging
- EyeSpy 360
- Animoto
- My360
- Kuula
- BONUS… keep reading
So lets start from the top:
Live Tour by iStaging
This software has been around for some years now so it is no wonder they were number one in Capterra. Their software is sleek and very well thought through – it has many features and is often compared to Matterport Quality tours.
Their software works for any 360 images taken with a smartphone – so the quality of your tour ultimately depends on the quality of your phone lens, but they do offer their own lens to add to your phone which supposedly increases the quality quite a bit.
The iStaging LiveTour software is not for a novice to the virtual tour world though – as it has many features and can give you some really complex tours, if you are new to the business this might overwhelm you a bit.
The other thing I noticed is that when viewing the tour it used up a almost all of my CPU power on my laptop – and we’re apple lovers with lots of power – so I can only imagine what the “normal” viewer using a windows computer or older phone will experience…
Lastly, to use LiveTour from iStaging, it is recommended you also purchase their lens which you connect to your phone’s camera – this lens is free when you purchase the Ultra plan (yearly) – so the pricing is a little confusing if not a little bias because no where on their site does it say how much this lens costs if you were to buy it separately…
The software does work with other gyroscopes on mobile phones, but there are quite a few people complaining that their phone is not compatible and thus they had to buy the Ultra bundle…
Their support was also lacking a bit. I asked a question in their chat on the site but was told (after leaving all my details) that support was “closed until tomorrow”- This was on a Tuesday so I am not sure why. My question was about the price of the gyroscope if I wanted to buy it separately, but the answer (which came 40 hours later) was only to buy the bundle – no price was actually given for the gyroscope on its own.
Quick overview
Capterra rating : 4,5 out of 5 stars
Pricing: starts at 25€ per month for up to 15 live tours (or 50G) – need to purchase the lens separately
Time to create a tour with 10 images: 45 minutes
EyeSpy360
EyeSpy comes in a close second in the list and is another innovative software that has many great features including customisable hotspots, floor-plans, sharing options and info labels. The software itself is a little complicated to use, with so many options, sometimes it is hard to see the forrest through the trees, but I imagine for a professional photographer this will be a positive point. For a beginner, this might be just as overwhelming as the iStaging software mentioned before.
Another “plus” feature is the open house option where you can guide people through the home while you are miles away. The only downside is that there’s a limit on how many minutes you can do this for in some of their plans – that makes it a little stressful when you’re talking to your client.
The pricing is another downside to this software – unfortunately EyeSpy have made it very complicated and restrictive with limiting the amount of tours, limiting the number of agents, limiting the amount of minutes one can use “EyeSpy Live” for and the list goes on.
Even though they advertise to sell their software at €0,90ct per tour… the reality is, if you have just 10 tours, you pay 3,50 per tour per month. Still not a bad price for the quality of the software, but there are many other software out there with similar features, less restrictions and lower prices.
EyeSpy’s support was reasonably quick, even though on their website they have another one of those chat bots that gets you no-where, when I emailed them it took them less than a few hours to get back to me. Not great, but at least I received an answer!
Quick overview:
Capterra Rating: 4,5 out of 5 stars
Pricing – from 30€ per month for up to 10 tours
Time to create a tour with 10 images: 1 hour
Animoto
Animoto is not really a virtual tour software – so I am not quite sure why they appear in the top 5 virtual tour softwares on Capterra (get that sorted will you!)
Having said that, it is a great tool for estate agencies to promote their properties, so I left it in just to see what the difference is.
With Animoto, you can create beautiful video tours – that’s right – not a virtual tour with images, but a video tour with … well… video footage…
The upside to this is that you can simply walk through a business or property with your camera and film away. You the use the Animoto video editing software and voila-.. you have yourself a video tour!
So if you are looking for a video of a virtual tour, then this software could do a good job for you. Of course, some virtual tour software already include this feature as standard but if yours doesn’t this is where to go!
We didn’t actually test this software as I was only looking for virtual tour software, not video tours, so I will not go into any further details – just know it’s out there for you to try!
Quick Overview:
Capterra rating: 4,5 out of 5 stars
Pricing: from 54€ per month for unbranded videos
My360
My360 claims to be a virtual tour software created for estate agents. I am not an estate agent but I signed up to their 2 week free trial anyway to see what the difference is.
This software was in all fairness my absolute favorite. They have all the features of every other virtual tour software and no hidden charges or limitations to the accounts.
I could sign up and create as many users as I liked, create as many tours as I wanted with as many images I needed.
The tour editor was intuitive and very easy to work with – I wasn’t overloaded with 1000’s of options – there’s an option to pre-set all your tour settings so you only have to do this once and then the workload is 90% reduced.
Best of all, I found that when I contacted support, I got an immediate answer – they have a live chat function (without an annoying bot) and my questions were answered immediately. I even received some tour feedback from a real person. It seems that My360 has their support down to a T!
The whole editor and platform itself has been kept to a minimum so the whole process is super fast and smooth.
I would have liked to have seen some more features such as live chat and adding video and text pop-ups but I was told (by the super fast chat support) that this was on their development list and would be added free of charge for all users in the next month or so.
One feature I saw that I missed on any other software was the option to check if all your images are linked. I make tours with over 50 images sometimes and it is hard to remember where you linked your images to. With My360 they have a handy check tool for that that quickly shows you where the missing links are – very clever!
They also explained that, because their software is built for people the have no experience building virtual tours, they have kept many settings to a minimum so people don’t get overwhelmed with options that are generally not necessary.
I actually thought that was a great idea as I found the whole process simple and easy and still ended up with a stellar virtual tour that could beat it’s rivals. Furthermore, they have just 1 plan with all the features included for anyone to make as many virtual tours as they like. Genius!
When I enquired about me not being an estate agency how I could still make tours of businesses, it turns out they have a separate plan for photographers that can make virtual tours for multiple clients, each tour with their own logo and personalisation. This plan is 49€ per month and includes Google StreetView support which I didn’t go into any further but am told is a great deal indeed!
Quick Overview:
Capterra Rating; 5 out of 5 stars
Pricing: 39€ per month for unlimited tours without any extra cost (49€ if you are a photographer with many different client accounts)
Time to create t tour with 10 images: 15 minutes
Kuula
This company has been around for a while but have started making a lot of noise on forums & social media so I was exited to see what they had built and if it was as good as they themselves claim to be.
The signing up process was pretty straightforward, but once I had signed up the excitement quickly dissipated… The software itself does what it says on the box but it is very very basic.
I mentioned not wanting to get overwhelmed with features…. well I didn’t want to get underwhelmed either!
And the features that WERE there, had so many additional settings, my finger hurt for having to click so many times!
The good side… the platform looks pretty. It has a good pricing structure a little more than My360, it has a plan with everything included for around 45€ per month.
However, their editor (the most important part of the software!) has so many settings for each tour, it gave me a headache… just wanting to embed the tour you could add padding, margins etc. These are things that the normal user would not worry about and is making things a little confusing.
Furthermore I disliked the fact there was no “autosave” – which meant I had to click “save” about 30 times every time I wanted to navigate to a different image. I could not check my images so I had to go back many times to try and make sure all my images were connected.
So I guess the software is nice if you have around 10 images in your tour, but any more and you will soon throw in the towel.
Another feature I was missing was the ability to add video to my tour and the final result of my tour could also be a little better. I did not find any share buttons or email buttons, and my all important VR mode button was not there either. (but this might have been a chrome problem as I hear Google is blocking this on some devices)
Support-wise, I understand that the Kuula team is very small so this might have been the reason, but it took over a day to get a reply to my (simple) question. There is no chat function and the only way to get support is by searching their site or complete a contact form online.
Even though the paid accounts get priority support, it was not as fast as I would have liked. I am not sure how fast the priority support in the advanced account is, but if that’s faster then it is worth the extra charge for sure!
Quick overview
Capterra Ranking: 5 out of 5 stars
Price: 45€ per month for unlimited tours including all features.
Time to create a tour with 10 images: 40 minutes
BONUS
Since Animoto is not really a virtual tour software I decided to add a bonus software that I heard a lot about recently. The chosen software is “Cupix” which is a software often compared to Matterport.
Cupix is indeed very much like matterport but without the hefty price tag. – Having said that, Cupid is certainly not the cheapest tour software out there.
It does have some features none of the above have, including the ability to create the tour itself. That’s right! You don’t have to do anything, simply upload your images and voila, 24 hours later the tour is done!
There’s some downsides to this process though. For one, it takes 24 hours to process, then there’s the mistakes, anything made by a machine needs to be checked and if you have 100 images, this might take a while… The system is not 100% fool proof so it is very likely you have to go back in and fix broken or incorrectly placed hotspots.
“Then just make less images” – I hear ya… but that is not possible. See the only way for Cupix to work properly is if you make an image with your 360 camera every 2 meters, so for a 2 bed apartment or medium size business you will end up with 50 to 100 images – regardless…
The final result, once you get there, though is very very nice. It has this 3d effect (even if you shoot with a regular camera such as the Ricoh Theta) just like Matterport and the tours are a joy to look at.
Support fo Cupix is standard. You get a good response though in my case it was not instant, it took a few hours. To me that was a bit of a let-down.
Pricing-wise… remember how I said that Cupix was cheaper than Matterport? Well, it is, BUT it is still pretty steep.
They charge by disk space. So the heavier your images, the more expensive the tour. And since you HAVE to shoot many images to create your tour, you will pay a lot per tour.
I have calculated that for their cheapest plan of around 20€ per month you will get 2 to 3 tours, since each tour is around 1G – This also depends on what type of camera you are using so you could get 3 or 4 tours out of this.
Their next plan up is 65€ per month so the step to go up (for just 6G more) is pretty hefty.
Quick Overview:
Capterra rating: 4 stars out of 5
Pricing: from 20€ per month for up to 3G of space
Time to create a tour with 45 images: 24 hours to process + 1 hour checking the links
Conclusion:
So having tried these top 5 best virtual tour software, I can honestly say that comparing quality, features and support plus pricing, the one that comes out on top has to be My360.
I was honestly very impressed with their service and the fact they are not trying to have me over with hidden additional costs or limitations to its use gives me a good feeling about this company.
There are other software out there that probably have more features, but I truly think, a tour with the necessary features to get the viewer to take action (call for an appointment, visit the store or restaurant etc) is enough – too many bells and whistles and your viewer will switch off. Less is more people!
So My360 is the winner this time! I tried to be as fair as I could with this review and I have not been paid by anyone, in fact it cost me money to subscribe to some of these! So I hope this will save you some time (and money) when you’re out there looking for the best virtual tour software on the market today!
Cheerio!
Alexander V
Professional 360 Photographer.
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