Matterport Subscriptions – A Brief Guide
Why do I need a Matterport subscription?
The iPads and tablets used in the field for data capture (taking the scans) are not sufficient to process the large amount of Lidar data and photographs taken during a scan.
To give the very high quality of stitched images resulting in your tour and to ensure accuracy of your tour this requires the Matterport Cortex AI (https://matterport.com/cortex-ai).
To access this technology, you need a subscription. Additionally, to make the tours available for public use they need to be warehoused. Subscription is the recognised means of doing this.
Like other technology providers Matterport provides low-cost subscription models for introductory users. Below you will find details of what each subscription entails.
Types of subscriptions
The following is a short introduction to each subscription type, focusing on the features that matter to most people.
Starter
You cannot process a model on this subscription. You can transfer in a model that has been processed on a Professional or greater subscription. Useful for one off or smaller projects.
Professional
This is the minimum subscription that allows you to upload, process, and publish a model. This is the one most businesses will opt for to start with.
Start small, you can always upgrade.
Business
Once the demand grows the move to the larger Business Subscriptions becomes seamless.
Enterprise
For companies with very substantial need, the Enterprise solution is bespoke and arises from dialogue with Matterport’s Enterprise Team.
Allow clients to own their own models.
Free
The purpose of this is to allow people to access Notes on a model and collaborate. An example of this would be a construction company that hosts the model, and sub-contractors access the collaborative Notes feature using free accounts.
Why are the differences between Subscriptions?
The difference between subscriptions is largely the number of active models permitted.
With any Matterport Subscription you have an allocation of a certain number of ‘Active’ models.
· A model of up to 200 scans counts as one Active model.
· A model of up to 500 scans counts as two Active models.
· A model over 1,000 scans count as three Active models.
You may have any number of ‘inactive’ models, they do not count towards your
allocation.
Why in an active model?
A model is a single building or structure that has been captured and processed into a virtual tour. An active model is one where:
· The virtual tour is live and accessible.
· Add-ons such as schematic floorplans and E57 Point Cloud files can be
ordered.
· Still photographs can be created from the tour.
For those who require the data and still images only, the model can be made inactive once the data and images have been downloaded.
If you need access to the virtual tour, then it must be active.
Inactive models can be made active again at any time, with a certain number of reactivations being free each month. Additional reactivations need to be paid for.
The Bottom Line
Enterprise Subscriptions are for very large organisations.
Business Subscriptions are just bigger Professional Subscriptions.
So, park them.
A Professional Subscription is required to process models.
A Starter Subscription can be used to host a model after it has been processed on a Professional Subscription and transferred across.
A Free Subscription can be used to give people without paid accounts access so that they can collaborate with Matterport ‘Notes’ on projects.