“How much does a 360° virtual tour cost?” has no single answer, because it depends on who takes the photos, where it is published and how much your business changes over time. What can be done is to take the cost apart, so you know what you are paying for and where you can save.
We are not going to give you an “average market price”: photographers' and agencies' rates vary with the city, the size of the premises and what the service includes, and any figure we put here would be a guess. What are facts are ViewNexo's prices, and those are complete further down.
The three parts of the cost
Every virtual tour, whoever makes it, is paid for at three moments:
- Capture: taking the 360° photos of each room. You pay once, and again each time the premises change.
- Software and hosting: the platform where the tour is built, published and kept available at a link. Usually a monthly payment.
- Upkeep: keeping what the tour shows current. It is the cost you see least at the start and the one that weighs most later.
1. Capture: do it yourself or hire someone
Doing it yourself
Today 360° photos can be taken with an iPhone. The ViewNexo 360 app is free: it guides you to turn on one spot, takes the photos and joins them into a 360° image that lands directly in your tour. The cost in money is zero if you already have the phone. What you put in is time: a few minutes per scene, plus tidying the shop beforehand.
A tripod or monopod is not required, but it improves the result a great deal and is a small purchase that lasts. If your premises are very large or you are going to capture many spaces, a dedicated 360° camera saves time; in which camera to use for a 360° virtual tour we explain when it is justified.
Hiring a photographer or an agency
It makes sense when you have no time, when the space is large and complex, or when the image is the product, as in an upmarket hotel or a high-value property. A professional brings equipment, experience with light and the craft of choosing the spots.
Before accepting a quote, ask these things, because they are what moves the price and what causes surprises later:
- How many scenes does it include? Some charge per scene, others per visit or per square metre.
- What is delivered? The 360° photos in a standard file (2:1 equirectangular) you can use anywhere, or a tour hosted on their own platform?
- Who pays for hosting, and for how long? If the tour lives in the photographer's account, ask what happens after a year.
- What does coming back cost? If you refurbish an area in six months, is that a whole new visit?
- Who updates prices and products? If you have to call someone to change a price, that is a cost that repeats.
Hiring the capture and using your own platform are not mutually exclusive. You can pay a photographer for the 360° photos only and upload them to your tour yourself: ViewNexo accepts any 2:1 equirectangular photo in JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC.
2. Software and hosting
Photos alone are not a tour. You need a platform that shows them as navigable panoramas, connects them, puts interactive points on them and publishes them at a link that loads quickly on a phone. That is paid for, nearly always, as a monthly subscription that includes hosting.
When comparing platforms, look at what the price includes beyond “showing the photo”:
- Does it have a product catalog with prices? Or is the tour only for looking?
- Does it come with built-in ways to get in touch? WhatsApp, bookings, quotes.
- How many tours and how many scenes does it allow?
- Does it give you a public link, a QR code and code to embed it in your website?
- Can you edit it yourself without technical knowledge?
3. Upkeep: the cost that decides everything
A business changes all the time. Prices go up, stock arrives, a product sells out, the menu changes. A tour showing old prices is worse than no tour, because the customer arrives expecting something that is no longer true.
That is why the important question is not how much the tour costs to make, but how much it costs to change. There are two models:
- The information is in the image. Prices are labels stuck on the photo or, worse, whatever can be read on the shelf. Each change forces you to edit the tour or reshoot.
- The information is in a catalog. The photo shows the space, and products are loaded separately. Changing a price means editing a number.
ViewNexo works the second way. Products live in your catalog, and the tour's shelves refer to categories in that catalog. You change a price or mark something as sold out from the dashboard and every tour shows it instantly. You only reshoot a scene when you rearrange that space and, if you take the photos with your phone, that costs no money either.
What it costs with ViewNexo
These are the current plans, in US dollars (USD) per month. All include the 360° editor, Smart Shelves, the WhatsApp button, the public link with QR code and the capture app for iPhone.
The always-current table, with every limit, is in plans and pricing.
How to read the table
- Free is for publishing your first tour and seeing whether your customers use it: 1 business, 1 tour of up to 10 scenes and 10 products, free for 3 months and with no card.
- Starter is for a shop that already wants to sell from the tour: it adds the cart with orders over WhatsApp, the AI assistant that answers visitors and room for 50 products.
- Professional is for a wide catalog or more than one branch: 500 products, 3 locations, 3 team members, your brand colours in the tour and no ViewNexo branding.
- Business is for groups and chains: 5 businesses, 25 tours and unlimited products.
Two points that affect your pocket. First: paid plans are activated by writing to support; online payments are not available yet, so nothing is charged automatically. Second: cart orders are not charged online either. The customer puts the order together and you collect payment as usual, by bank transfer, in cash or with a card terminal.
Three examples with numbers
The sums below use only the prices in the table. We assume you take the photos with an iPhone you already have, so capture adds no money.
A neighbourhood shop that wants to try
One shop, five scenes, its ten best sellers. It fits entirely in the Free plan: $0 for the first 3 months. That is enough time to share the link, put the QR code on the door and see how many people come in and write.
A clothing shop that wants to receive orders
One shop, an eight-scene tour, about forty products and the cart switched on. Starter plan: $19 a month, that is, $228 in a year. See how it is put together on the clothing shops page.
A furniture shop with two branches and a wide catalog
Two locations, several tours, three hundred products and the brand's colours. Professional plan: $39 a month, $468 in a year. Example on the furniture shops page.
To put it in perspective, compare that monthly fee with what you already spend on making your business known: flyers, social ads, a sign. The difference is that the tour does not end when the campaign does: it stays open every day, at every hour.
Where the real savings are
- Start with few scenes. Five well-chosen scenes do more than twenty. Fewer scenes means less capture time and a tour that is easier to walk through.
- Take the photos yourself. With the phone and a quiet hour. We explain it in how to make a 360° virtual tour with a phone.
- Load your best sellers first. There is no need to upload the whole catalog on day one.
- Choose a system you can update yourself. Every change that depends on someone else is a future invoice.
- Move up a plan once the tour is already bringing customers, not before.
How to know whether it is worth it
There is no need to guess. A tour leaves a trail: how many people visit it, which products they tap, how many write to you on WhatsApp, how many requests for information, quotes or bookings reach your dashboard and, if you switched on the cart, how many orders come in.
The sum is simple. Take what you earn on a typical sale and ask how many sales a month would have to come from the tour to cover the monthly fee. If a single sale leaves you more than the fee, the answer is one. If in the three free months the tour brings you more than that, it pays for itself. If not, you know without having spent anything.
To see what the customer gets in return, open the demos by type of business. And to get sales out of the tour once it is published, continue with how to sell on WhatsApp with a virtual tour.