Frequently asked questions
Short, direct answers to the questions contractors ask before they switch. Each answer starts with the answer; the detail follows.
What is BuildPunch?
BuildPunch is construction project management software that puts punch lists, drawings, jobsite photos, daily reports, RFIs, submittals, inspections, safety, scheduling, live cameras, and GPS time tracking in one web and mobile app. It is built for general contractors, subcontractors, remodelers, and owner's reps who want Procore-class field workflows without per-seat pricing or an implementation project. You can sign up, create a project, and be working the same day.
How much does BuildPunch cost?
Viewing a project you were invited to is free forever. Participating as an individual is $4.99/month (Individual) or $14.99/month (Portfolio). Company plans that create projects and invite people are $59/month (Starter), $149/month (Professional), and $299/month (Business) — flat for the whole company, not per user. Enterprise is custom. Every paid plan starts with a 30-day free trial and is month-to-month with no annual contract.
Is BuildPunch really flat pricing and not per user?
Yes. Each company plan includes a set number of users for one monthly price, and extra users are $5/month each. Per-seat competitors bill every person on the job every month; BuildPunch bills the company. A 25-person company on the Business plan pays $299/month total, or $3,588 a year.
Do subcontractors have to pay for BuildPunch?
No — invited subcontractors can view a project for free, forever, and free viewers never count toward your seat limit. If a sub wants to do the work in the app (complete punch items, upload photos, comment, clock in) that is the $4.99/month Individual plan on their own account, not a seat on your bill. Subs can also open a project through a link you send without creating an account first.
Is there a free trial?
Yes. Every paid plan starts with a 30-day free trial with a card upfront, and it converts automatically unless you cancel. Viewing invited projects is free with no trial and no card at all.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes. There are no annual contracts and no cancellation fees. Before you go, export every project as a ZIP with your full-resolution photos, drawings, reports, and metadata — there is no export fee.
How does storage work, and what happens if I run out?
Each plan includes a storage allowance — 5 GB on Starter, 25 GB on Professional, 100 GB on Business — measured against the actual bytes stored, and you add more with storage add-ons starting at $15/month for 500 GB (+1 TB $30, +2 TB $55, +4 TB $105). Uploading the identical file twice within a project stores it once, so a re-upload does not spend the allowance twice.
Are jobsite photos compressed or resized?
No. BuildPunch stores the file you upload exactly as it arrives, at full resolution, and generates small thumbnails separately for fast browsing. When you export a project or download a photo you get the original file back, not a re-encoded copy — which matters when a photo has to prove what a wall looked like before it was closed.
Do jobsite photos end up on my crew's personal phones?
No. The in-app camera uploads straight to project storage and does not save to the device camera roll. Photos land in a date-grouped project feed with tags, search, comments, and annotations, so the record lives with the job instead of on somebody's phone.
Does BuildPunch work offline?
Yes, and the iOS and Android apps are the strongest at it: they cache project data on the device and queue punch updates and photos while you are out of signal, then sync when you reconnect. The web app installs as a Progressive Web App that caches the app shell and queues changes you make offline through background sync, but it is not a full offline reader for logged-in project data — for a basement, an elevator shaft, or a rural site, use the mobile app.
What devices does BuildPunch run on?
iPhone, iPad, Android, and any modern web browser. There are native iOS and Android apps built with React Native, plus a full web app that installs as a PWA on a phone or tablet home screen. Everyone sees the same live project data regardless of device.
Can I watch my site cameras inside BuildPunch?
Yes. Live Cameras lets admins, PMs, and superintendents add any internet-reachable RTSP camera — ecam/Orchid, Hikvision, Dahua, Axis, or an NVR with port forwarding — and watch it live on the web or in the mobile app. One tap saves a screenshot straight into the project's Photos. Professional includes 4 cameras per project; Business includes 36.
Does BuildPunch do construction timelapse?
Yes, from any camera you have already connected. Pick up to four times of day and BuildPunch grabs a full-resolution still off the camera's high-quality stream at each one, then assembles those stills into an MP4 timelapse with the date burned into each frame. You get a build-progress video without buying a separate timelapse camera or a second subscription, and frames can optionally flow into the project photo feed.
How do daily reports work?
Open the day, and BuildPunch fills in the site weather automatically from the project location. Add crew by trade, notes, delays, equipment, and photos, then export a branded PDF or email it to owners and architects who do not need accounts. Reports can also go out on a schedule so nobody has to remember to send them.
How do punch lists work?
Walk the job and capture each item with a photo, a description, and an assignee, optionally pinned to the exact spot on a drawing sheet. The sub gets notified, fixes it, attaches proof photos, and marks the item ready for review; you approve or reject with your own verification photos. Every status change is kept in the item's history, and the whole list exports as a branded PDF.
Can BuildPunch handle drawings and plan markup?
Yes. Upload PDF drawing sets, track revisions with versioning, mark up sheets with pen, lines, rectangles, circles, arrows, and text, link between sheets, and pin punch items to exact locations. You can also calibrate a sheet's scale with one known length and then measure distances, perimeters, and areas right on the drawing — on the web or on a phone in the field.
Can someone see a drawing or report without an account?
Yes. You can turn a plan set, a document folder, or a report into a public share link and send it to a sub, an owner, or an inspector — they open it in any browser with no login and no app install. Links are revocable at any time, and new sheets added to an active plans link show up automatically.
Can I control what each person sees?
Yes, per project and per invite. Roles cover owners, admins, project managers, superintendents, subcontractors, viewers, and clients, and you can build custom roles from individual permissions. Invites for people outside your company domain default to a client-safe scope: they see published reports and only the punch items you mark shared, not the whole project.
Does BuildPunch track crew time?
Yes — Punch Clock does GPS-stamped clock-in/out, geofenced job sites, kiosk mode for a shared tablet, break and auto-lunch rules, weekly overtime rules, supervisor approvals, and payroll-ready CSV export. GPS is captured at punches, not continuously, so it is a time record rather than worker surveillance. GPS mileage tracking is included at no extra charge.
How secure is BuildPunch?
All personally identifiable information is encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM on every tier, including free — security is not an enterprise upsell here. BuildPunch also keeps an append-only audit log of who did what and when (audit rows are written, never updated or deleted), and serves the site with a strict Content Security Policy and HSTS preload.
Can I get all my data out?
Yes. Any project downloads as a single ZIP containing full-resolution photos, drawings, reports, and metadata, with no export fee and no waiting on support. Your data is yours whether you stay or leave.
What happens to finished projects?
Archive them. An archived project becomes read-only, stops counting against your project limit, and keeps all of its data available for as long as your account is active — which matters when a question comes up a year after closeout.
Is BuildPunch a good alternative to Procore, Fieldwire, CompanyCam, or Raken?
For small and mid-size contractors, usually yes — BuildPunch covers punch lists, drawings, photos, daily reports, RFIs, submittals, and time at a flat company price instead of a per-seat or volume-based one. It is not a replacement for Procore's financials and enterprise integrations, and it has no BIM viewer. We publish head-to-head pages that say what each competitor still does better.
Why is BuildPunch cheaper than the alternatives?
Because of the pricing model, not a discount. BuildPunch is flat monthly pricing — $59, $149, or $299 per company, with unlimited projects on Professional and Business. It is not a percentage of construction volume (Procore's public model) and not per-seat (Fieldwire's and Raken's public models), so the bill does not move when you add a superintendent or win a bigger job. As of August 2026; verify on their sites, because everyone's pricing changes.
Can one person use BuildPunch, or do I need a company plan?
One person can buy it. Individual is $4.99/month for a sub or foreman working on jobs they're invited to, and includes 1 project of their own. Portfolio is $14.99/month for an owner or exec watching many jobs, and includes 3. Viewing is always free — if you were invited to a project and only need to look, you never pay. This is the only all-in-one construction platform we know of that sells a plan at that price to a single person rather than requiring a company subscription.
If I ask for a feature, will it get built?
Requests from superintendents in the field reach the developer directly; there is no ticket queue. Several have shipped the same day they were asked for — bullet points in daily reports, letting supers add subcontractors, camera timelapse, and a full-screen swipeable photo viewer all landed on the day they came in. That is a track record, not a promise: as we grow, not everything will be same-day. The dated Asked → Shipped list on the Why BuildPunch page and the release log at /whats-new show exactly what did.
What can't BuildPunch do yet?
There is no BIM/model viewer, no direct QuickBooks or payroll integration (timesheets export as CSV today), and drawing sheet hyperlinking is set up by hand rather than detected automatically. Those are on the roadmap, and we would rather you hear it here than find out in week two.