Vexcel vs Nearmap Aerial Imagery for Roofing: A Contractor's Buying Guide

If you measure roofs, document storm damage, or target neighborhoods for canvassing, the imagery you buy quietly shapes every estimate you write. Two names come up over and over when contractors start shopping for something better than free satellite tiles: Vexcel and Nearmap. They both fly aircraft, both sell high-resolution top-down and angled views, and both let you pull measurements without climbing a ladder. They are not interchangeable, though, and the differences show up in the exact places that cost you money: how recently a neighborhood was flown, whether you can prove a roof looked fine before a hail date, how tight your squares come out, and how much you pay per pull when volume climbs.

This is written from the contractor's chair. The goal is to help you pick the provider that fits how you actually estimate and sell, not the one with the slickest demo. We will walk through resolution and what it really buys you, oblique angles for slope and facet work, the history archive (which is the part most roofers underweight and later regret), measurement accuracy and how to sanity-check it, hail and wind documentation, coverage gaps, licensing models, and where each tool fits in a real sales and production workflow. Then we will be honest about what imagery can and cannot do for a storm claim, because that line is where a lot of roofers get themselves in trouble.

The short version, then the long version

If you want the one-paragraph answer before the deep dive: Nearmap tends to win on capture frequency in dense suburban and urban markets and on a polished, fast in-browser measurement experience that estimators pick up in an afternoon. Vexcel tends to win on the depth and consistency of its historical archive, on very high-resolution oblique imagery built for damage assessment, and on its post-event storm captures that get flown after major hail and wind. Both are dramatically better than eyeballing a satellite tile. Which one is right for you depends mostly on three questions: How dense is your service area? How much do you live or die by pre-storm and post-storm dated imagery? And how many measurements or report pulls will you run per month? The rest of this answers those questions with enough detail to actually decide.

What these tools are (and are not)

Both Vexcel and Nearmap are aerial imagery and geospatial data companies. They fly fixed-wing aircraft on regular schedules over populated areas, capture overlapping photographs, and process those into orthomosaics (the corrected, map-accurate top-down view) plus obliques (the angled views from north, south, east, and west). On top of the imagery they layer tools: measurement, 3D, change detection, and in some cases automated roof reports.

What they are not: they are not a substitute for a physical inspection, and they are not a claims service. Imagery tells you the geometry of a roof and the visible condition of its surface on the date of capture. It does not tell you what a carrier will approve, it does not establish causation by itself, and it does not replace getting on the roof to verify. Keep that framing as we go, because it matters most in the storm sections.

A third category is worth naming so you do not confuse it with these two. Companies like EagleView sell finished roof measurement reports as a product. Vexcel and Nearmap primarily sell the imagery and the platform; you (or your software) do the measuring. Some roofers run all three: a report service for clean ordered measurements, plus an imagery subscription for the history and the obliques the report service does not hand over. We will come back to that stack.

Resolution: GSD and why bigger numbers can mislead

Resolution in aerial imagery is described as GSD, ground sample distance, the real-world size of one pixel on the ground. A 5 cm GSD means each pixel covers about two inches. Lower GSD numbers mean sharper imagery and the ability to resolve smaller features: a single shingle tab, the spatter pattern around a vent, the line of a cricket behind a chimney.

Both providers publish imagery in the few-centimeter range for their best urban captures, with obliques often even sharper because the camera is closer to the structure on the angled passes. In practice, the headline GSD number is less useful than three things you can only judge by looking at imagery over your own market:

• Consistency across the tile. A provider can quote a best-case GSD that only applies to the densest urban core. The honest question is what your typical suburban subdivision looks like, not the downtown demo.
• Time of capture and sun angle. Imagery shot near midday with high sun washes out the subtle relief that makes hail spatter and granule loss visible. Lower sun angles cast the small shadows that reveal damage texture. This single factor changes whether a roof surface reads as damaged or pristine more than a centimeter of GSD does.
• Compression and clarity at zoom. Two providers can quote the same GSD and look very different when you zoom to a single facet, because of how the imagery is processed and served. Always zoom to the working distance you actually estimate at.

The practical takeaway: do not pick on the spec sheet GSD. Pull the same five addresses in both platforms, zoom to the level where you would count a facet or look for damage, and compare. We will give you a structured way to run that bake-off later.

What different GSD numbers actually let you see

It helps to translate centimeters into roofing reality. At roughly 7 to 8 cm GSD (about three inches per pixel), you can confidently read roof outline, count slopes, identify large penetrations, and measure planes. You can see that a roof is old and tired, but you cannot reliably count individual shingle tabs or read fine granule texture. At roughly 5 cm (two inches), individual three-tab courses become legible, ridge and hip caps resolve, and large hail spatter starts to read as texture under the right sun. At the sharpest captures, often the obliques, you approach the point where a vent boot crack or a creased shingle from wind becomes visible. None of this replaces the on-roof look, but it changes how much you can scope and verify before you ever set a ladder.

A useful mental rule: top-down imagery answers how big and how many, obliques answer how steep and what kind, and only the physical inspection answers how bad. Buy your imagery so it nails the first two reliably over your market, and stop expecting any pixel to settle the third.

Top-down vs oblique: where the real roofing work happens

The orthomosaic, the corrected top-down, is what measurement tools key off of, because it is geometrically true: a length on the image maps to a length on the ground. That is where your squares, ridge, hip, valley, eave, and rake numbers come from.

Obliques, the 45-degree angled views, are where you do the work that flat top-down cannot show:

• Reading slope and stories. A two-story with a steep main and a low-slope porch is obvious in oblique and ambiguous from straight down.
• Counting penetrations and seeing their sides: chimneys, crickets, dormer cheeks, sidewall and headwall flashing runs, step-flashing lines.
• Spotting the stuff that drives waste and accessories: skylights, satellite mounts, solar arrays, multiple layers visible at a rake edge, drip edge condition.
• Assessing surrounding conditions: tree overhang, height and access for crews, where a dumpster and ladder can stage.

Both providers deliver four cardinal obliques. Vexcel has historically pushed very high-resolution obliques aimed squarely at insurance and damage assessment use, and it shows in how clean the angled imagery is when you zoom into a single slope. Nearmap's obliques are strong and, in well-covered metros, frequently updated. For a roofer, the deciding factors are usually (1) how sharp the obliques are at the facet level over your market and (2) whether there is an oblique from the date you need, which is really a history question.

A quick worked example of an oblique-driven estimate

Say you are bidding a 1990s two-story in a tract subdivision. From the top-down you measure roughly 28 squares of footprint-projected area. Good, but the top-down does not tell you the pitch, and at 28 squares the difference between a 6:12 and a 9:12 is several squares of actual material plus a steep-charge labor line. You flip to the south and east obliques, count the courses against a known fascia height, confirm it is a 9:12 main with a 4:12 rear addition, and now your area and your labor tier are defensible. You also catch, in the oblique, a second layer peeking at the rake and two skylights the top-down hid behind glare. That is four to six line items you would have missed or guessed. That is the oblique earning its keep.

The part roofers underweight: the historical archive

This is the single biggest differentiator and the one new buyers consistently underestimate. Anyone can sell you a current image. The value compounds when a provider has flown the same neighborhood many times over many years and kept every pass dated and retrievable.

Why history matters to a roofer:

• Pre-event condition. When you are documenting storm damage, the most powerful thing you can show is the roof's appearance on a dated capture before the storm. A clean roof on a pre-storm date, then visible surface change on a post-storm date, is a factual, dated record. You are not interpreting coverage; you are documenting what the imagery shows and when.
• Establishing what changed, not who pays. A roofer's job with imagery is to document condition and date. Whether a carrier covers it is the carrier's decision and the homeowner's claim to file. More on that line below, but the history archive is what lets you document honestly instead of asserting.
• Age and replacement signals for targeting. Multiple dated captures let you see when a roof was last replaced (a roof that is dark and uniform in 2016 imagery and again dark and uniform after a 2021 capture was clearly redone in between). That is gold for figuring out which homes are due.
• Permit and dispute support. Dated imagery helps with everything from confirming a structure existed before a permit cutoff to resolving a he-said-she-said about pre-existing condition.

Vexcel's pitch leans heavily on archive depth and on event captures: after major hail and wind events in covered regions, it flies the impacted footprint so there is a fresh dated post-event image. Nearmap's strength is capture frequency in its core markets, which over time also builds a deep, closely spaced timeline; in a dense metro Nearmap may have flown a neighborhood several times a year, giving you tightly spaced dates.

The nuance: frequency and depth are not the same thing. Frequency (Nearmap's edge in dense markets) gives you closely spaced dates, which is great for pinning change to a narrow window. Depth and event-triggered captures (Vexcel's emphasis) give you a long runway of history and, often, a capture specifically after the storm you care about. For storm-driven roofers, the post-event capture is frequently the deciding feature.

Measurement accuracy and how to actually verify it

Both platforms will give you tight measurements when the imagery is good and the operator is careful. Accuracy is a product of three things, and only one of them comes from the vendor:

1. Orthorectification quality (the vendor's job): how well the imagery is corrected for terrain and lean so that a measured length equals a true length.
2. Pitch handling (shared): area is footprint times a pitch multiplier. Get the pitch wrong and your area is wrong by a fixed percentage no matter how sharp the image. A 6:12 carries about a 1.118 multiplier; a 12:12 about 1.414. That is the difference between 30 and 38 squares on the same footprint.
3. Operator discipline (your job): tracing to the drip edge, not the gutter; closing facets cleanly; not skipping the small dormer.

How to sanity-check any aerial measurement before it goes on a contract:

• Field-truth a known dimension. Measure one eave with a wheel or a tape on a job you are already on, then measure the same eave in the platform. If they agree within a few inches, your orthorectification and your tracing are sound.
• Re-derive area from facets. Sum your facet areas and compare to the tool's total. A mismatch means a facet is open or double-counted.
• Cross-check pitch two ways. Read it from the oblique (count courses against a known fascia) and from any pitch tool, and make sure they agree before you trust the multiplier.
• Add real-world waste. Aerial area is net roof area. Your cut and starter waste, hip and ridge, valley metal, and accessories are still yours to add. The image does not know your install method.

A blunt truth: the gap between a good estimator and a bad one on the same imagery is larger than the gap between Vexcel and Nearmap on the same roof. Buy the imagery that fits your market and history needs, then make your estimating discipline the variable you actually optimize.

A worked measurement walkthrough

Let us run a full example so the abstractions land. You are estimating a hip-and-gable home. From the corrected top-down you trace the perimeter to the drip edge and close every facet, and the tool returns 2,640 square feet of footprint-projected roof area. That is the number a careless estimator writes down. Here is what a disciplined one does next.

First, pitch. From the south oblique you count the courses up a gable end against the known eight-inch fascia and read a 7:12 main. A 7:12 carries a pitch multiplier of about 1.158, so actual roof area is 2,640 times 1.158, or roughly 3,058 square feet, which is about 30.6 squares. That single correction added almost five squares of material over the flat footprint number.

Second, the secondary slopes. The east oblique shows a 4:12 porch roof you had folded into the main trace. Its 320-square-foot footprint should carry a 1.054 multiplier, not 1.158, so you split it out: 320 times 1.054 is 337, while the rest is 2,320 times 1.158, or 2,687. Total corrected area is 3,024 square feet, about 30.2 squares. Pulling the porch out of the steep tier fixed a small over-count and, more importantly, lets you price its labor at the correct lower tier.

Third, the linear quantities the area number ignores. From the top-down you measure 96 feet of ridge, 64 feet of hips, 48 feet of valleys, 210 feet of eave, and 120 feet of rake. Those drive your hip and ridge cap (count it as 160 linear feet of cap), your valley metal or closed-valley shingle waste, your drip edge (330 feet of eave plus rake), and your starter (210 feet of eave). The oblique confirms two pipe boots, a furnace flue, one bathroom power vent, and a 3-foot chimney with a cricket, so flashing and accessory line items get their own rows.

Fourth, waste and access. On a cut-up hip roof with valleys you add field waste, typically in the low double digits as a percentage depending on bundle coverage and your cut pattern, plus a steep charge for the 7:12 main and a height factor for the two-story access. The image gave you none of that; your install knowledge did.

The finished estimate is built on the aerial geometry but is not the aerial geometry. That discipline, not the choice between two excellent imagery vendors, is what makes your number defensible and your margin real.

Hail and wind documentation: what imagery can honestly do

This is where contractors get excited and where you have to stay precise, because the legal line runs right through it.

What aerial imagery genuinely helps with on a storm file:

• Dated pre- and post-event surface condition. A pre-storm capture showing an intact, uniform surface and a post-storm capture showing visible change (displaced or missing shingles after wind, spatter or granule-loss texture after hail) is a factual, time-stamped record. You are documenting the image and its date, period.
• Mapping where to inspect. Obliques tell you which slopes faced the storm track and where to focus the physical inspection: the windward slopes, the soft metals, the accessories.
• Scope completeness. Imagery helps you confirm you have captured every facet, penetration, and accessory in your repair estimate so nothing is left off the documentation you prepare.
• Wind specifically. Wind damage (lifted, creased, or missing shingles, displaced ridge) is often more visible from the air than hail, because it changes the surface geometry rather than just the granule texture. Post-event obliques are strong for this.

What aerial imagery cannot do, and what you must not claim it does:

• It does not prove causation by itself. Surface change between two dates is consistent with a storm; the physical inspection and the storm date evidence (more below) build the rest. Hail bruising in particular is often a tactile, on-roof finding that no aerial pixel resolves.
• It does not establish coverage. Whether damage is covered is the carrier's call on the homeowner's policy, not something an image decides and not something you should represent.

Staying on the right side of the line

This matters enough to say plainly, because it is where roofers create real liability for themselves. As a roofing contractor you may inspect a roof, document its condition with photos and dated imagery, and prepare an accurate repair estimate for your own scope of work. You may state facts about your scope and hand your documentation and estimate to the homeowner.

You may not, for a fee, negotiate or adjust or otherwise handle the homeowner's claim, interpret their policy or what is covered, promise a specific approval or payout, promise that their deductible will be waived or absorbed or made to disappear, advertise a free roof, or represent the homeowner against their insurer. In most states that crosses into unlicensed public adjusting, and it is a fast way to lose your license and your reputation.

The safe and honest frame: you document thoroughly, you write an accurate, Xactimate-aligned repair estimate for the work, and you give it to the homeowner. The homeowner files the claim. The insurer decides coverage. Aerial imagery is one of your documentation tools inside that lane, not a tool for arguing the homeowner's coverage. A do-not-say checklist worth taping to the wall:

• Do not say or write: covered, approved, we will get your claim approved.
• Do not say or write: your deductible is waived / we will eat the deductible / no out-of-pocket.
• Do not say or write: free roof, free new roof, you owe nothing.
• Do not say or write: we will handle / negotiate / fight your claim for you.
• Do say: here is the dated imagery and our photos, here is our documented repair estimate, you file with your carrier and they will make the coverage decision.

Stay in that lane and dated aerial imagery is a genuinely powerful documentation asset. Step out of it and no imagery provider will save you.

Pairing imagery with hard storm data

Imagery shows surface condition on a date. To document that a hail or wind event plausibly affected an address, you pair the imagery with independent storm data. The free, authoritative sources every storm roofer should know:

• NOAA Storm Prediction Center storm reports for dated, located hail and wind reports.
• The NOAA/NWS Storm Events Database for the official record of events, magnitudes, and dates by county.
• Local National Weather Service offices for event summaries and, after big events, public service statements.

When you can show (1) an authoritative storm report at or near the address on a date, (2) a pre-event image with an intact surface, and (3) a post-event image with visible change, plus your on-roof photos, you have built honest, factual documentation. You have not made a coverage argument; you have assembled facts and handed them over. That is exactly where you want to be.

A documentation packet checklist

For a storm file you are preparing on the contractor side, a complete, defensible packet usually contains:

• The address and a dated pre-event aerial capture showing the roof surface condition before the storm.
• A dated post-event aerial capture, ideally a post-event flight, showing visible change, with obliques of the storm-facing slopes.
• The authoritative storm report or Storm Events Database entry tying a hail or wind event to the location and date.
• Your on-roof photos: overview shots of each slope, close-ups of representative damage with a reference object for scale, soft-metal and accessory shots, and test-square photos where you marked impacts.
• Your measurements with pitch confirmed from the oblique.
• Your accurate, Xactimate-aligned repair estimate for your own scope of work, with each line tied to documented evidence.

Notice what is not on that list: any statement about whether the loss is covered, any promise of an approval or payout, any mention of the deductible being handled, and any language representing the homeowner against their carrier. The packet is a factual record plus your repair estimate. The homeowner submits it; the carrier decides. Keep the packet clean and you keep yourself clean.

Coverage: the question that decides it for many roofers

The best platform is the one that has actually flown your market, recently, at the resolution you need. Both providers concentrate on populated areas and update dense metros far more often than rural fringes. Before you sign anything, check coverage and capture recency for your real service area, including the edges where you still take jobs.

A concrete coverage test:

• Pull ten addresses that represent your true footprint: two urban, four core-suburban, two exurban, two near the rural edge of where you sell.
• For each, note the most recent capture date and whether obliques exist.
• Then pull the same ten on a date range around a past storm you worked, and see who has a usable pre- and post-event pair.

Whoever wins that ten-address test for your specific area wins, regardless of which has the better national reputation. Coverage is local. A provider that is unbeatable in Dallas may be thin where you work, and vice versa.

Rural and edge-of-market reality

Most imagery dollars and flights concentrate where the people are, which means the further you get from a metro core, the older and sparser the captures tend to be from either provider. If a meaningful share of your jobs sit on acreage, in small towns, or on the rural fringe, do not assume a subscription solves your imagery problem there. Check those specific addresses. You may find recent metro coverage is excellent but your county-road farmhouse was last flown years ago, or has no usable oblique at all.

This is where a stack mindset pays off. For your dense work, the subscription carries you. For the rural edge, you may fall back to a per-report measurement service that pulls fresh imagery on demand, or to publicly available historical imagery from federal sources for the dated-history piece, or simply to a more thorough physical measurement on site. Knowing in advance which addresses your subscription cannot serve keeps you from quoting a job blind and discovering the gap after you have promised a homeowner a number.

Capture cadence and what fresh actually means

There is a difference between a provider that flies your metro twice a year and one that flew it once eighteen months ago. For pure measurement, an eighteen-month-old capture is usually fine, since roofs do not move. For storm work and for targeting, recency is everything: you want a capture close to the storm date on both sides, and for targeting you want imagery new enough that recently replaced roofs show as replaced. When you run the recency test, write down the actual capture dates rather than a green checkmark, and weigh them against how you make money. A storm-driven shop should treat a stale archive as close to a dealbreaker; a retail repair shop in a stable market can tolerate older captures without much pain.

Licensing and cost: how you will actually be billed

Neither company posts simple per-roof pricing, and both sell annual subscriptions priced to your usage, region, and the modules you want (imagery only, measurement, 3D, change detection, integrations). That makes a clean side-by-side dollar figure impossible to publish honestly, so instead understand the cost levers and model your own number:

• Subscription vs per-pull. Subscriptions reward volume: the more roofs you measure, the lower your effective cost per roof. If you pull 5 roofs a month, a per-report service may be cheaper; if you pull 150, a subscription usually wins. Find your monthly pull count first, then price.
• Coverage tier. Pricing scales with the area and resolution tier you license. Buying national coverage you do not use is wasted spend; buying just your metros is leaner.
• Seats and integrations. More estimator seats and connectors into your estimating or CRM stack add cost. Decide who actually needs a login.
• History access. Confirm whether the historical archive and event captures are included in your tier or cost extra. For storm roofers this is the line item that justifies the whole subscription, so do not let it be an afterthought.

Build a simple model: estimated monthly roof pulls times months, divided into the annual quote, equals your real cost per roof. Run it for both vendors and for a per-report alternative. The cheapest sticker is rarely the cheapest per usable measurement.

A cost-modeling example

Numbers make this concrete. Suppose a per-report measurement service charges you a flat fee per finished report and you pull 40 roofs a month. That is 480 reports a year at the per-report rate; at a hypothetical mid-range report fee your annual spend lands in the low five figures, and crucially you only pay when you pull. Now suppose an imagery subscription quotes you an annual figure for your metro coverage plus measurement and a couple of seats. Divide that annual figure by your 480 pulls and you get your effective cost per roof on the subscription, but with two differences that do not show up in the division: the subscription gives you unlimited additional pulls at no marginal cost, and it gives you the history and obliques a report service does not hand over.

The break-even logic is straightforward. Below some monthly pull count, the pay-per-report model is cheaper because you are not paying for capacity you do not use. Above it, the subscription wins on marginal cost and throws in history and obliques as a bonus. The mistake is comparing a subscription sticker to a single report fee; compare total annual spend at your real volume, and value the history and oblique access separately because for a storm shop that access can be worth more than the measurements. Re-run the model honestly at your actual numbers and the right answer usually becomes obvious within a few minutes.

Side-by-side: how the two stack up for roofing

Treat this as a starting hypothesis to test against your own market, not a verdict. Capture recency and coverage in your exact service area can flip any row.

Where imagery fits in a real workflow, end to end

Imagery is one input. The roofers who get the most out of it wire it into a repeatable workflow instead of pulling one-off measurements. Here is a clean version:

1. Target. Decide which neighborhoods and which homes to pursue, using roof age signals and storm exposure, not gut feel.
2. Document. For each target, capture dated pre/post imagery, obliques, and the storm data, and build the home's evidence record.
3. Reach out. Put a personalized, accurate offer in front of the homeowner (mail, door, microsite) that reflects what you actually documented, staying inside the legal lane.
4. Measure and estimate. When a homeowner engages, pull the tight measurement, confirm pitch from obliques, and write the Xactimate-aligned repair estimate.
5. Track. Follow the lead through your pipeline and measure cost per lead and cost per win so you know which neighborhoods and which messages actually pay.

Imagery powers steps 2 and 4. The other steps are where deals are won or lost, and they are exactly where a measurement tool or a report service leaves you on your own.

Two ways the same workflow plays out

Consider a storm-driven shop the week after a hail event. The team pulls the SPC reports, draws the impacted footprint, and ranks the homes inside it by roof age so the oldest, most exposed roofs get worked first. Canvassers run routes through the worst-hit blocks with leave-behind QR codes; mail goes to the homes the crews could not reach. For each homeowner who engages, the estimator pulls the dated pre/post imagery and obliques, confirms pitch, writes the repair estimate, and assembles the documentation packet described above. Every lead lands in the pipeline with its first-touch source locked, and two weeks later the owner can see cost per lead by neighborhood and decide where to send the crews next. The imagery is essential, but it is one tool inside a machine that targets, reaches, documents, and measures.

Now consider a retail repair and replacement shop with no storm. The same workflow narrows: targeting leans on roof-age bands rather than storm exposure, outreach is more mail and microsite than door-knock, and the documentation step is a clean measurement and an honest estimate rather than a storm packet. The imagery does less heavy lifting on the storm side and more on the measurement and age-signal side. Either way, the contractors who win are the ones who treat imagery as an input to a repeatable system, not as the system itself.

Where RoofPredict fits with your imagery subscription

Vexcel and Nearmap are excellent at one thing: handing you imagery and measurements. They do not tell you which roofs in a ZIP code are due, they do not turn that into a tracked mail or canvassing campaign, they do not manage the lead after it comes in, and they do not help you assemble a clean repair-estimate documentation packet. That is the gap RoofPredict is built to fill, and it is meant to sit alongside your imagery, not replace it.

Here is what you actually do with it:

• Build a ranked due-roof audience. Instead of measuring random addresses, RoofPredict scores every home in a service area by roof-age band (recent, mid-life, due, overdue) plus per-roof storm exposure and an opportunity score, then hands you a ranked, house-by-house target list with a why-this-home evidence chain. Be clear on the honesty here: the scoring is roof-age-plus-storm-exposure heuristics, not magic prediction, and roof age is a range, not an exact install date. It tells you where to point your imagery pulls and your crews, which is the decision imagery alone never answers.
• Turn the list into tracked outreach. The due-roof list becomes a tracked direct-mail campaign with personalized proofs (brand, copy, and address checks), vendor release, per-piece delivery and return tracking, and an up-front cost quote. Every targeted home also gets a personalized microsite and PDF report (roof profile, storm history, cost-of-waiting) with a lead-capture form, plus per-home and lookup QR codes for mail pieces and doors. For canvassing, you build door-knock routes, assign canvassers, and run a mobile field app with next-stop, outcome forms, voice notes, and leave-behind QR.
• Manage the lead and prove the ROI. Leads flow into a pipeline (new, contacting, appointment, inspected, won/lost) with an immutable first-touch source, and two-way sync to 13 CRMs including JobNimbus, AccuLynx, ServiceTitan, HubSpot, Roofr, and SalesRabbit so you are not double-entering. The results funnel tracks delivered, views, form fills, calls, leads, and wins with cost per lead and cost per win, and shows actual versus estimate versus industry benchmark so you learn which neighborhoods and which messages pay.

Think of it as the targeting, outreach, and pipeline layer that decides where your Vexcel or Nearmap imagery should be aimed and then converts what it documents into booked jobs. The imagery proves the roof; RoofPredict gets you to the right roofs and tracks whether the spend worked.

On the storm and supplement side

If your business is storm-driven, the documentation does not stop at the measurement. For the claim file the homeowner submits, RoofPredict's RoofClaim side handles the repair-estimate and documentation work that lives strictly on the contractor side of the legal line. You upload the carrier and contractor estimates, photos, and related documents; the system auto-classifies and OCRs them and maps the estimate line items against a roofing knowledge base to flag missing scope, code-required items, and missed supplement opportunities, each with an evidence anchor and pricing.

It also runs a recoverable-depreciation checklist (completion evidence plus final invoice), tracks deductibles, and scores packet completeness with a follow-up cadence, producing supplement packets, depreciation-release letters, deductible invoices, and missing-docs letters on locked, compliance-gated templates. Every one of those outputs is contractor documentation of your own scope, the homeowner files and the insurer decides coverage. The tool will not let you draft a coverage argument or promise an approval, by design, because that is the line you do not cross. Paired with dated Vexcel or Nearmap imagery and authoritative storm data, it is how you build an honest, thorough, defensible documentation packet fast.

A practical decision framework

Use this to pick in an afternoon instead of agonizing for a month:

1. Run the ten-address coverage and recency test described above. If one provider clearly has fresher captures and better obliques across your real footprint, you may be done right here. Coverage trumps everything.
2. Run a five-address bake-off on imagery clarity. Same addresses, both platforms, zoomed to your working distance. Judge facet-level sharpness and whether sun angle reveals or hides surface texture.
3. Test the history that matters to you. Pick a past storm you worked. Can each provider give you a clean dated pre/post pair and a post-event capture? For storm roofers, weight this heavily.
4. Field-truth one measurement on each. Compare a known eave and a pitch reading against reality.
5. Model your real cost per roof from your monthly pull volume, not the sticker price, and compare both subscriptions against a per-report alternative.
6. Decide the stack, not only the vendor. Many roofers land on an imagery subscription for history and obliques plus a separate measurement-report service for clean ordered numbers, and a targeting and pipeline layer like RoofPredict on top to decide where to aim and to track ROI. There is no rule that you pick exactly one tool.

Common mistakes contractors make with aerial imagery

• Trusting area without confirming pitch. The most expensive estimating error in the trade. Always confirm pitch from the oblique before you trust the multiplier.
• Measuring to the gutter instead of the drip edge. Small per-eave, large per-roof. Trace to the actual roof edge.
• Forgetting waste and accessories. Aerial area is net. Cut waste, starter, hip and ridge, valley metal, and steep and access charges are still yours to add.
• Buying on national reputation instead of local coverage. The provider that is best nationally may be thin where you work. Test your own footprint.
• Treating one capture as the whole story. A single image is a snapshot. The value is in the dated sequence, which is why history and post-event captures matter so much.
• Letting imagery tempt you across the legal line. A dramatic post-storm oblique is documentation, not a coverage decision and not a license to promise approvals, erase deductibles, or advertise a free roof. Document, estimate, hand it over.
• Optimizing the imagery and ignoring the funnel. The tightest measurement in the world does nothing if you are pointing it at random houses and losing leads after the inspection. Targeting and pipeline are where the money actually moves.

Bottom line

Vexcel and Nearmap are both far better than free imagery, and either will improve your estimates the day you start using it. Nearmap tends to reward dense markets, high pull volume, and estimators who want a fast, polished measurement experience. Vexcel tends to reward storm-driven work where archive depth, very sharp obliques, and post-event captures are the whole point. The decision is local and usage-driven, so run the ten-address test, the bake-off, and the cost model on your own market before you sign.

Then remember that imagery is an input, not a strategy. It proves the roof in front of you; it does not tell you which roofs to chase, it does not run your outreach, and it does not manage the lead or prove the spend worked. If you want to point that imagery at the right homes, turn documented opportunity into tracked mail, microsites, QR, and field routes, run the lead through a pipeline that syncs to your CRM, and (for storm work) assemble an honest, compliance-gated repair-estimate packet, that is the layer RoofPredict adds on top of whichever imagery you choose. Pick your imagery for coverage and history, keep your estimating discipline tight, stay strictly inside the documentation lane on every storm file, and let the targeting and pipeline layer turn good imagery into booked, paid jobs.

FAQ

Is Vexcel or Nearmap better for roofing measurements?

Both produce tight measurements from corrected top-down imagery, and the difference between a careful and a careless estimator on the same image is larger than the difference between the two vendors. Pick based on which one has recent, high-resolution coverage and good obliques over your actual service area, then make pitch confirmation and clean tracing your real accuracy levers.

Which provider has better historical aerial imagery for storm dates?

Vexcel emphasizes archive depth and flies targeted post-event captures after major hail and wind in covered regions, which is often the deciding feature for storm-driven roofers. Nearmap's high capture frequency in dense metros builds closely spaced dates that help pin change to a narrow window. Test a past storm you worked: whoever gives you a clean dated pre/post pair and a post-event image for your market wins.

Can aerial imagery prove hail or wind damage for an insurance claim?

Aerial imagery documents the visible surface condition on a dated capture, and wind damage in particular is often visible from the air. It does not prove causation by itself and it does not establish coverage. Use it as one factual, time-stamped documentation tool alongside on-roof photos and authoritative storm data, then hand your documentation and repair estimate to the homeowner, who files the claim while the insurer decides coverage.

How accurate are aerial roof measurements?

Accuracy depends on the vendor's orthorectification, correct pitch handling, and operator discipline. Area equals footprint times a pitch multiplier, so a wrong pitch skews area by a fixed percentage regardless of image sharpness. Field-truth a known eave against the platform, re-derive area from your facets, confirm pitch from the oblique, and add real-world waste and accessories the image does not show.

What does GSD mean and does a lower number always mean better imagery?

GSD is ground sample distance, the real-world size of one pixel; a lower number means sharper detail. It is not the whole story. Sun angle, capture date, consistency across the tile, and how the imagery is served at zoom often matter more for spotting roof condition than a centimeter of GSD. Always compare the same addresses zoomed to your real working distance rather than trusting the spec sheet.

Do I still need to inspect the roof if I have aerial imagery?

Yes. Imagery shows geometry and visible surface condition on a date; it does not replace a physical inspection. Hail bruising in particular is often a tactile, on-roof finding. Use obliques to decide which slopes to focus on, then verify on the roof before anything goes on a contract or into documentation.

How much do Vexcel and Nearmap cost for a roofing company?

Neither posts simple per-roof pricing; both sell annual subscriptions priced by usage, coverage tier, seats, and modules. Model your real cost by dividing the annual quote by your estimated monthly roof pulls times months. At low volume a per-report service may be cheaper; at high volume a subscription usually wins. Confirm whether the historical archive and event captures are included in your tier.

Can I use a contractor's aerial imagery to advertise a free roof or waived deductible?

No. Promising a free roof, a waived or absorbed deductible, or a guaranteed approval, or offering to handle or negotiate the homeowner's claim for a fee, generally crosses into unlicensed public adjusting and is a serious risk. Stay in the documentation lane: document condition, write an accurate repair estimate, and give it to the homeowner, who files while the insurer decides coverage.

How does RoofPredict work with Vexcel or Nearmap?

It sits on top of your imagery. RoofPredict ranks which homes in a service area are due using roof-age and storm-exposure heuristics, turns that list into tracked mail, microsites, QR codes, and canvassing routes, runs the lead through a pipeline that syncs two-way with 13 CRMs, and reports cost per lead and cost per win. Your imagery proves the roof; RoofPredict decides where to aim it and tracks whether the spend paid off.

Should I buy imagery, a measurement report service, or both?

Many roofers run a stack: an imagery subscription for history and obliques, a per-report measurement service for clean ordered numbers, and a targeting and pipeline layer to decide where to aim and to track ROI. There is no rule that you pick exactly one. Decide by your pull volume, how much you rely on dated history, and whether you need finished reports or are comfortable measuring yourself.