Questions Ownership Updated on
Who owns your virtual tour, and what if the supplier stops?
The short answer
That depends entirely on where the tour runs and what your agreement says, and with most providers it says nothing.
If your tour runs on a platform subscription, it disappears the moment you stop paying, even if you paid for the capture yourself. If the panoramas are yours and you have them in hand, someone else can build a new tour from them without coming back on location. The distinction that matters is therefore not who made the tour, but who has the source files and who holds the plug.
- A tour consists of three things: the capture, the build and the hosting.
- With a platform subscription the tour goes offline as soon as the subscription stops.
- A new shooting day is the most expensive step; you do not want to pay for it twice.
- Omnitour hosts the tours itself, and the capture of your location is yours.
A tour consists of three separate things
It pays to pull them apart and ask about each one: who owns this, and where is that written down.
Read moreShow less: A tour consists of three separate things
- The capture is the panoramas as they come out of the camera. That is the expensive part, because the day on location sits in it. It is also the only part that cannot be made again without coming back, and for a renovated or cleared room not at all.
- The build is everything you added to it: the links between viewpoints, the information points, the texts, the floor plan. Work, but repeatable work.
- The hosting is the place where it runs and the link you share. This is the part you pay for monthly or yearly, and the part where the dependency sits.
Most providers lump those three together.
The four questions you ask in advance
- Do I get the panoramas in full resolution if I ask for them?
- What happens to the tour if I stop paying?
- At what address does the tour live?
- Can I make changes myself or does that go through you?
Read moreShow less: The four questions you ask in advance
- Do I get the panoramas in full resolution if I ask for them? This is the most important one. If they say yes, you can always carry on, even with a provider that ceases to exist tomorrow.
- What happens to the tour if I stop paying? There are three possible answers: it stays up, it goes offline, or it goes offline but you get an export file. All three are defensible, but you need to know which one it is.
- At what address does the tour live? If it sits on a subdomain of your own domain, you keep the link even when you switch. If it sits on an address of the supplier, you lose every link anyone ever shared when you move, and there are more of those than you think.
- Can I make changes myself or does that go through you? No wrong answer, but a difference in how locked in you are.
Why this only hurts later
Nobody picks a tour builder based on what happens at the parting. You choose on the work and on the rapport, and that is logical too.
Read moreShow less: Why this only hurts later
The problem comes two or three years later: the subscription has become more expensive, or you want to extend the tour and the builder has no time, or the company no longer exists.
If you have the panoramas, it is annoying but solvable. If you do not, everything starts again at the shooting day, including the amount that comes with it.
That is the moment you find out whether you own a tour or a rental contract.
How Omnitour has arranged it
The tours run on our own hosting, and so do the 3D viewer and the future tour.
Read moreShow less: How Omnitour has arranged it
That is a deliberate choice and not the cheapest one: we are not on someone else's platform, so we cannot suddenly be at the mercy of a price increase or a service that shuts down.
The capture of your location is yours. If you ask for it, you get it. We have no interest in holding it back as leverage, and besides, we do not think that would be right: you paid for that day.
If you want the tour at an address within your own domain, for example tour.yourbusiness.com, that is possible. Then the links stay yours too.
A few follow-up questions
Am I tied to a contract with Omnitour?
No, there is no term you are locked into. Hosting continues per year for as long as you want the tour online, and stops when you say so.
Can another party use my Omnitour capture?
Yes. You get the panoramas and they are in a standard format, so any tour builder can work with them. That is exactly the point of giving them to you.
And if Omnitour ceases to exist?
Then you have the capture and you can carry on with someone else. That is not meant casually: it is the reason we arranged it this way.
My scan is on Matterport now. Can I move?
Yes. With the E57 export, which you order once from Matterport, we put your scan in our own 3D viewer, on our hosting. Read how that works.
Continue reading
- What determines the price of a virtual tour? What determines the price of a 360 tour: viewpoints, shooting days, interaction and hosting. Plus the four questions that make prices from providers comparable.
- I already have a Matterport scan. Now what? With the E57 export of your Matterport scan we put it in our own 3D viewer: look around, measure, floor plans per storey and furniture at true size.
- How do I get my 360 tour onto Google Maps and Street View? Publishing to Street View goes through Street View Studio and no longer requires certification: Street View Trusted has ended. What has to be right technically and organisationally.