Horizon is shutting down. Here's how to pick your next platform.

If you run your inspection business on Carson Dunlop's Horizon, you already know: the platform is being retired at the end of this year, and a lot of inspectors are suddenly shopping for software they weren't planning to shop for.

That's a frustrating position to be in — especially if you've been on Horizon for years, and doubly so if you came up through Carson Dunlop's training and Horizon is the only system you've ever used. Nobody enjoys migrating a business mid-season.

This post is not a sales pitch dressed up as advice. The first half is what we'd tell you if we'd never met: what to do this month, regardless of where you land. The second half is an honest account of what InspectorDesk is, what it isn't, and whether it's worth a look.

First: get your data out. Don't wait on this.

Before you evaluate a single alternative, export everything.

Carson Dunlop has indicated that export tools will remain available through December 15, 2026. Migration deadlines have a way of arriving faster than expected, and "I'll do it after the busy stretch" is how inspectors end up locked out of their own history. Confirm the current dates directly with Carson Dunlop — don't take a blog's word for it, including ours — but get the export done well ahead of whatever date they give you.

At minimum, pull down:

Completed reports. Your delivered PDFs are your record. If a claim surfaces two years from now, you'll want the report you actually handed the client.
Client and agent contact history. This is the asset that's genuinely hard to rebuild. Referring agents are your pipeline.
Templates, comment libraries, and boilerplate. Years of refinement lives here. Even if your next platform can't import it directly, having the text means you're rewriting instead of reinventing.
Agreements and signed documents. These carry real legal weight. Keep them.

Store it somewhere you control — your own drive, your own backup — not just inside whatever tool you pick next. The lesson worth taking from this whole episode is that a platform you don't control can change plans on you.

The default path is a fine path

Carson Dunlop has named Spectora as its recommended replacement and is offering one-click migration.

We'll say the obvious thing: Spectora is a capable, mature product with a large user base and a strong report writer. For plenty of inspectors it will be the right answer, and the one-click migration is a real convenience when you're short on time. If that's where you land, you'll be fine.

But "recommended by the company that's shutting down your current software" and "the best fit for your business" are two different claims. The migration button is optimized for ease of transfer, not for fit. You're being handed a default, and defaults are worth at least one afternoon of scrutiny.

The forums are already surfacing the usual friction — pricing being the loudest note, particularly from newer inspectors and solo operators for whom a monthly software bill is a real line item, not a rounding error.

You're going to have to do a migration either way. That's the cost you can't avoid. Since you're paying it regardless, it's worth asking what you'd actually choose if nobody had chosen for you.

The question worth asking: do you need one tool, or two?

Here's the thing most "all-in-one" pitches skip.

Writing a great inspection report and running a great inspection business are two different jobs. Report writing is on-site work: photos, comment libraries, defect templates, working fast in a crawlspace with one hand. Running the business is everything around it: getting booked, confirming appointments, chasing signatures, sending invoices, keeping agents happy, following up.

Bundling both into one product means one of them is usually the strong half and the other is the tolerated half. Ask any inspector which half of their current software they actually love.

So before you pick, decide which problem is actually hurting. If your report writer is fine and your business side is duct tape and text messages, a bigger report writer won't fix that.

Where InspectorDesk fits — and where it doesn't

Let's be direct about this, because we'd rather lose a signup than earn one under false pretenses.

InspectorDesk is not a report writer. We don't do on-site photo capture, comment libraries, or defect templates. If you're looking for a like-for-like Horizon replacement that writes your inspection reports, we are not that, and you should keep looking.

InspectorDesk is the business platform that runs everything around the report. You keep the report writer you like — we connect to Scribeware, so your inspection data flows over without re-typing it — and we handle the rest of the operation:

Scheduling with two-way Google Calendar sync, so your inspections live on the calendar you already check.
A public booking page where clients self-schedule against your real availability, with per-day hours, date overrides, and buffer time built in.
Contacts and agent management, including CSV import so you can bring your referral list with you.
A leads inbox that catches inquiries from your website form, chatbot, or voice agent through our API — so nothing sits unanswered in an inbox.
Digital agreements with e-signature, sent and signed without a third-party signing subscription.
Invoicing, with optional payment links and QR codes printed on the invoice.
A branded client portal where clients view reports, sign agreements, and see invoices using their email and a short access code — no account, no password, no friction.
Email delivery tracking, so you know whether the report actually landed or bounced.
Team scheduling with pooled availability, if you've got more than one inspector on the calendar.
Automated follow-ups — attach a task to a service and it schedules itself, like a radon pickup 48 hours after the inspection.

If that list describes the part of your week that's actually painful, we're worth an afternoon.

What it costs

$50/month. One plan, everything included, cancel anytime.

That's early-adopter pricing, and it's locked: the rate goes to $75/month for new users at some point, and if you're on $50 you stay on $50 for as long as your subscription stays active. There's a 30-day money-back guarantee on top of that.

You don't have to decide today, either. You can run your first three inspections free — no card required. Given that you're already being forced into one migration, we think you should get to kick the tires on the alternative before paying for it.

The honest pitch: small, active, and listening

We're not the biggest name in this space and we won't pretend otherwise. Here's what we think we offer instead.

We're actively building. InspectorDesk ships improvements constantly, and the roadmap is driven by what inspectors actually ask for. Several of the features listed above exist because a single inspector said "I need this" and we built it. That is the entire product development process, and we like it that way.

You'll talk to a person. Support isn't a ticket queue that eventually routes to someone reading a script. When you write in, you reach the people building the software. If you find a bug, it doesn't go on a backlog to be triaged next quarter — it usually gets fixed.

We're an alternative, not a monopoly. The lesson of the Horizon sunset is that consolidation isn't automatically good for the people doing the actual work. A market with real options is one where your software has to keep earning your business. We'd like to be one of those options.

Where to start

If you're mid-migration, do this in order:

Export your Horizon data now, before the deadline. Whatever you choose next, you need this done.
Separate the two decisions — which report writer, and which business platform. They don't have to be the same vendor.
Try the alternatives before the deadline forces a rushed pick. You have time right now. You won't in December.

You can start free — three inspections, no card — or read the docs first if you want to see how it works before signing up. If you'd rather just ask a human whether InspectorDesk fits your operation, get in touch. We'll tell you honestly if it doesn't.

Sorry you're going through a forced migration. Make it count — pick the stack you'd have picked anyway.