Takeaway: Being locked into a singular drone or a drone ecosystem is often inadequate for comprehensive surveying, O&M, and marketing needs—and you typically pay more. Instead, work with a platform like Scanifly that integrates with any drone (i.e. drone agnostic), enabling you to select the right model, price point, and feature set for your business.

Drones are an increasingly popular tool in the solar industry, with nearly 40% of solar professionals having flown one.

While the most common use case for drones is taking pictures of completed projects for marketing purposes, drones have valuable applications for both surveying and O&M as well. In order to leverage drones in a way that makes sense for your organization, you need optionality to choose the right drone hardware.

Unfortunately, some solar platforms force you to use specific drones with their software rather than building a drone-agnostic tool. Here's why that is risky, limiting, and costs way more than needed.

Why getting locked into a singular drone model is a bad business move

1. Your drone could be discontinued

Drone manufacturers discontinue drone models — just look at the Mavic 2 Pro. It was launched in 2018 and became one of DJI's most popular drones. But it was discontinued three years later in 2021 once the Mavic 3 was introduced.

Contractors forced to use this drone are stuck buying second-hand, refurbished drones, often with parts “Frankensteined” together. In this case, we do not recommend trusting the specs, as any adjustment to sensors or firmware could notably distort a photogrammetry process that relies on geocoding and other parts of a drone's hardware stack. On top of that, the manufacturer doesn’t honor any warranties or recalls.

There's a reason the drone is not supported anymore, as better technology exists or the drone may be troublesome to keep up.

2. You often pay a premium

When a platform requires you to buy their drone, you’re stuck paying whatever they charge.

For example, some locked-in platforms charge as much as $4,000 for their drones. Meanwhile, drones used for Scanifly or photogrammetry processes can cost as little as $600 all-in. For about $2,000, you can get a powerful drone with obstacle-avoidance features and high-end batteries.

And if the drone breaks or crashes, you’re stuck working on your providers’ timelines and paying their prices, which are almost always more than manufacturer-led maintenance such as DJI Care or Autel Care.

To avoid these time delays, you could store extra drones and make them available if anything happens — but that’s even more money to spend.

3. The drone manufacturer could stop updating the software

Even if the drone isn’t discontinued, you may lose support for your preferred operating system.

For example, drone manufacturer DJI announced that it will no longer update its iOS software development kit (SDK).

This means developers for third-party platforms that use iOS software APIs and integrations will be working on an unsupported protocol. In the announcement, DJI recommends all developers switch to the Android platform going forward.

While the complete impacts are not yet known, a few things could happen:

Hardware issues:

You may be forced to buy a new drone from your provider (at the same markup premium).
You may be forced to replace all your other technology because you’re locked into a drone ecosystem (e.g. needing to buy Android phones to use their mobile app).
The drone manufacturer will not honor warranties or offer maintenance care.

Software issues:

No more security patches, which increase cybersecurity risks such as your drone getting hacked.
No bug fixes, which could reduce certain features’ effectiveness (or eliminate the feature altogether).
Embeds could stop working at any time or require significant developer resources to maintain manually.

Ultimately, the real danger is not having clarity and waiting for something last minute. Because software changes like this often come as a surprise and their impacts are hard to predict, it’s easy for Contractors to be left in the lurch. This is one big reason why many Contractors simply use the app that comes with the drone (for free).

4. Automated flight paths may not be enough for your needs

Typically, when a platform forces you into a drone, it’s because they’ve altered some drone settings (and components potentially), to fly in a certain way that connects to their platform.

These features may not be comprehensive. Lawnmower survey flight paths, for example, are top-down images that don’t capture angles properly. This could lead to inaccurate shade analysis because the lack of oblique imagery means that the surrounding scene isn't modeled well— when that happens, shade has to be simulated, and therefore can be compromised.

Locking into a singular drone model or ecosystem delivers a couple of short-term benefits. First, bundling software and hardware means one centralized payment to start a drone program, though this really only benefits your Payables department. Second, pairing the drone to a flight path allows for maximum automation, but that includes giving up any control for unique situations or if the wrong address is programmed.

The benefits of drone optionality

There are several notable benefits to being able to fly whatever drone you want for your surveying or maintenance programs:

Budget flexibility: You have the freedom to shop around for the drone that best fits your feature needs and budget.

Use case flexibility: Choose the drone that best suits your use case, rather than trying to make a single drone work for everything.

Easier maintenance and quicker replacement: Buy what you need quickly (including additional maintenance like DJI Care or Autel Care). You can also easily buy hardware parts and replacements from Amazon, Best Buy, B&H Photo, or any other drone distributor if you're in a bind.

You can rely on the specs: Buying from the manufacturer or a reseller means no doctoring — so all warranties will be intact and you can rely on the software, firmware, and sensors included.

Perhaps most importantly, drone optionality means you can do what you want in your business rather than being told what to do by a third party. If you want your whole company to use a single drone type, that’s your prerogative. However, you can also change whenever you see fit, because no software company or external vendor is forcing you to commit.

Get the right drone for your needs

Drone technology is rapidly evolving and prices are on a downward trend — don’t get stuck with an expensive drone from a software provider that can’t give you optionality.

Instead, look for a platform (like Scanifly) that makes it easy to work with multiple data sets, quickly upload data from the field to save time, and supports the full project lifecycle.

When you work with a platform that powers drone optionality, the whole project process gets easier — and that makes it easier for you to run your business.

Don't Get Locked into a Specific Drone: Here Are 4 Reasons Why