Air Inspection Automation (AiA) vs Pointly Comparison

Why choose Air Inspection Automation (AiA)

• Higher Support score (7/10 vs 6/10)
• Higher Ease of Use score (7/10 vs 6/10)
• Better fit for drone service providers (9/10 vs 7/10)

Why choose Pointly

• Higher Scalability score (9/10 vs 5/10)
• Higher Integration score (7/10 vs 5/10)
• Better fit for energy companies (7/10 vs 5/10)
• Includes Digital Twin, which Air Inspection Automation (AiA) lacks

Air Inspection Automation (AiA)

Pros

• Finds towers in LAS and LAZ scans of a whole line automatically, including towers split across two files.
• Checks every photo stop, launch site, and path segment for clearance, climb, line of sight, and camera limits before export, then plans a collision-free path.
• Splits a route into battery-sized flights with launch and pickup sites and estimates of distance, duration, and battery use.
• Photo stop templates per tower design, editable in a 3D tower editor, make repeat inspections consistent.
• Works offline, with maps, imagery, roads, and terrain stored in each project, and an offline licence for computers without internet.
• Support comes directly from the team that builds the software.

Cons

• Exports only for DJI enterprise drones, through DJI Terra KML or DJI Cloud API KMZ files.
• Runs only on Windows 10 and 11.
• Prices are not published; the website offers a free trial and contact by email.
• Built for electric towers, so it does not plan inspections of other asset types.
• Matching photos to stops after the flight is still marked as beta.
• There are no team accounts, work orders, or integrations with asset management systems.

Pointly

Pros

• Monthly prices are published, from 99 euros for 500 million points, and there is a free tier for testing
• Pointly Box allows on-premise and air-gapped processing for data-sensitive operators
• It holds ISO 27001 certification, and cloud processing defaults to EU data centers on Azure
• Custom classifiers can be trained on a customer's own class catalog
• There are extensions for Esri ArcGIS and Bentley MicroStation, and it exports in many formats

Cons

• It only covers classification, with no asset management, work orders or maintenance tools
• Vectorization and custom classifier training are quoted per project, not list-price items
• There are few independent user reviews on G2, Capterra or Reddit
• The pricing page has a yearly billing toggle but shows no annual prices