Home inspection · refereed
HomeGauge Desktop vs HomeGauge Companion and Web Writer
This is not a comparison between two companies. It is a migration inside one product, and it is the most resisted one in home inspection — inspectors who have run HomeGauge Desktop for twenty years are trying the newer tools and going back.
Who wrote this, and what we sell
We make ReportWalk, a competing inspection app. We wrote this because nobody else has: HomeGauge does not explain its own product split anywhere we could find, and the people affected are making decisions without a plain description of what the options are. Our own product is mentioned once, at the end.
The short answer
HomeGauge Desktop
Stay on Desktop if the report itself is the work — long narratives, heavy editing, your own accumulated wording. It is the strongest offline story in the category and it is what the holdouts are holding onto.
HomeGauge Companion and Web Writer
Move to Web Writer or Companion if you want to write on site rather than at a desk that evening, and if your reports are more checklist than narrative. That is the trade the newer tools are built around.
If you are being pushed off Desktop and do not like what you are being pushed toward, you are not unusual and you are not stuck. Inspectors in this exact position name Scribeware, Spectora, Home Inspector Pro, Inspector Nexus and Horizon as where they went.
Who actually switched, and why
Two further threads are worth knowing about: Michael Senty has described planning to leave Web Writer for Scribeware, and Ray Thoroman has expressed concern about losing his desktop licence. We have not been able to confirm the outcome of either.
Desktop → tried both, rejected both
“Been using HomeGauge (desktop) since 2003”
He tried Companion and Web Writer and stayed on Desktop. A rejected migration with a stated reason is rarer evidence than a completed one, because nobody markets it.
HomeGauge → Spectora
“Did not like the webwriter”
The Web Writer is named as the reason for leaving the product entirely, not just the reason for staying on Desktop.
Where they genuinely differ
What each one actually is
Desktop is a Windows application. The report is written on the machine, and the vendor's own documentation states you can complete the whole thing offline and only need a connection to upload.
Companion is the phone app for capture in the field. Web Writer is browser-based report writing. They are complements to each other and, increasingly, an alternative to Desktop rather than an addition to it.
HomeGauge does not publish a clear statement of how the three relate or which one it expects you to be on in two years. That absence is why this page exists.
Why the holdouts are holding out
The complaints we found are about editing, not about features. Long-form narrative work in a browser is slower than in a desktop application, and inspectors who have spent fifteen years shaping their own wording feel that difference immediately.
It is also the group with the most to lose: a template refined over two decades is not something you rebuild in an afternoon. One inspector in a comparable migration elsewhere in the category reported more than forty hours rebuilding a template and still not having it working.
What each is honestly better at
HomeGauge Desktop
Report quality and speed for a practised writer. Full offline operation with no caveats. And stability born of age — a product that has been shipping since before most of its competitors existed has had a long time to have its edges knocked off.
Companion and Web Writer
Finishing on site. If your current process is to inspect, drive home and spend the evening typing, the newer tools genuinely remove that — and for a newer inspector without twenty years of accumulated wording, there is much less to give up.
What we could not verify
- Whether HomeGauge has any plan to retire Desktop. No end-of-life has been announced and we found no roadmap statement in either direction.
- Ray Thoroman's concern about losing his desktop licence — we have seen it raised but found no vendor statement addressing it.
- Whether Michael Senty completed his move to Scribeware.
- Reddit was unreachable in every session, and home inspectors' most active discussions happen in Facebook groups that require a login. Our community evidence comes from InterNACHI, which is public — and which is only part of the picture.
If neither fits — a third shape of tool
If you are leaving Desktop because you want the report finished on site but you do not want to type it in a browser either, that is a third option rather than a compromise between these two. ReportWalk is built around speaking findings rather than typing them, on a phone, offline, with the PDF produced before you leave. It does not import HomeGauge templates automatically — but if you send us yours we will rebuild it by hand, which is the part of this migration that costs the most.
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Last updated 15 September 2026