Drone business management software
You invested in the aircraft, the batteries, and the Part 107. ShootPortal runs the client side of commercial drone work: quotes with travel fees, shoot times that survive weather delays, video revisions, payments, and delivery of photos, video, and maps in one portal branded to your business.
The business behind the footage
Real ShootPortal screens over aerial footage from a working drone business.
What ShootPortal is for drone businesses
Most "drone management" software is about the aircraft: flight plans, logs, batteries, airspace. ShootPortal is about the customer: the quote, the date, the revisions, the invoice, and the files. Here is exactly where the line sits.
ShootPortal runs the business behind the footage
Handles
Use a specialist tool for
Keep your flight app and your processing software. ShootPortal sits between the client and everything you deliver.
Where drone jobs get messy
The aircraft does what you tell it. Clients, calendars, and invoices are less predictable. These are the six places aerial businesses lose time, and what changes in ShootPortal.
Acreage, altitude, stills or video, edited or raw: no two aerial jobs are priced the same way.
Build estimates from your own service catalog, then adjust line items per job.
A 70-mile drive to a rural site is easy to forget when you quote from your phone.
Travel fees are added from ZIP-to-ZIP distance, using your tiers or a per-mile rate.
Wind or rain grounds the flight and the rescheduling starts over by text.
Propose a new time on the same project; the client accepts or counters.
A few minutes of high-bitrate footage breaks email and clutters shared folders.
Resumable uploads attach finished files to the project, not to a loose link.
"Can you change the part near the start?" arrives three emails deep.
Clients leave comments at exact timestamps on each numbered video version.
The footage is out, the invoice is in someone's inbox, and you're following up again.
Request payment from the project and keep downloads locked until it's paid.
See it in action
A 35-second tour of a real drone project in ShootPortal: the request, the official estimate, the pipeline, video notes, Stripe payment, and the share link.
Real ShootPortal screens from a live account. Client details are blurred. No sound.
Estimates & services
Aerial work is varied, so your pricing should be organized, not improvised. Publish packages once, then build each estimate from them.
Listing aerials
From $175
Residential listings and land.
Aerial video
RecommendedFrom $350
Property films, events, and promos.
Site progress visit
From $295
Construction and development sites.
Add-ons
Travel fees, handled
When a request comes in, ShootPortal can build a preliminary estimate from the service the client picked and add a travel fee calculated from the straight-line distance between your base ZIP code and the job's. Use mileage tiers, or a free radius plus a per-mile rate with a cap.
Then refine it: add the twilight flight, remove the raw footage, send the official estimate. The client approves or asks for changes in the portal, and every version is kept with its expiry date and a PDF.
Estimate
Ridgeline Estates · Phase 2 progress
Prepared for Dana Ruiz, Atlas Build
Scheduling
Clients don't book open slots on their own. You propose a time that suits the forecast and the light, and they respond in the portal.
Pick a time from the project and the client accepts, declines, or suggests another. If the forecast changes, propose a new time on the same project: the history stays with the job instead of scrolling away in a text thread.
Scheduled shoots push to the Google Calendar you choose, and your Google events appear read-only inside the ShootPortal calendar, so a dentist appointment doesn't collide with a sunrise flight.
Projects & clients
Each job moves through eight fixed stages, from new request to delivered. You see what's waiting on a quote, a shoot time, client review, or payment without opening five apps.
Contact details, notes, a timeline of messages and activity, lifetime revenue, outstanding balance, and last payment.
Every address you've flown for a client, with the projects and revenue for each. Ideal for repeat sites.
Two-way messages stay attached to the project, with email notifications to the client.
Payments
Payments go straight to your own Stripe account through Stripe Connect. Stripe's standard processing fees apply.
Take a percentage or flat deposit when the client approves the estimate, or skip it and bill in full later.
Upload the finals. With “unlock downloads after payment” on, the client can view everything but can't download yet.
The client pays the balance by card through Stripe Checkout. The project can move to Delivered and downloads open.
Email receipts go out automatically, and you can mark a check or bank transfer as paid by hand. If you're weighing a dedicated billing app instead, compare the options in our photography invoicing software roundup.
Deliverables
Aerial clients rarely get only photos. Put everything for the job on the project and choose which sections the client sees.
Download as Print (original) or MLS (2048px long edge), one file or a ZIP.
Upload finished films with resumable uploads, or embed a YouTube link.
Embed aerial panoramas so clients can look around the site.
Attach a site plan, shot list, or report you produced elsewhere.
Process where you already do. Deliver it alongside everything else.
Paste the share link from your mapping or modeling platform and the map or model appears on the client's project, next to the stills and the flyover video. ShootPortal displays it; the processing stays in the tool that made it.
Want delivery in more depth? See ShootPortal's photo and video delivery software.
Video review & revisions
Drone films live or die on pacing. Let clients point to the exact moment.
Clients comment at the exact moment in the film, and can pin a comment to a spot on the frame.
Answer a note in place: "The reveal is slower in v3, take a look."
Mark notes resolved as you fix them; reopen if the client disagrees.
Upload v2 and v3 on the same deliverable, so nobody reviews the wrong cut.
For stills, maps, and documents, clients approve or reject each deliverable with written feedback and can submit a revision request, so "looks good" and "redo #14" are both on the record.
Your client portal
Clients get one portal with your logo, your brand color, and a light or dark theme, at yourname.shootportal.app or your own domain.
Your logo and colors on every page and email. It's a branded portal, not a fully white-labeled one.
Connect portal.yourcompany.com with DNS verification, and send email from your own domain.
Show your services and showreel, and take requests that land as new projects.
Separate tools vs. one system
Most drone operators run the business on a spreadsheet, an inbox, a transfer service, and a payment app. Each one is fine. The gaps between them are where time goes.
For the bigger picture on cutting manual steps, read our guide to automating a photography and drone workflow.
Drone workflows
Same system, different jobs. These are example workflows with fictional clients.
Real estate aerials
Construction progress
Roof & inspection imagery
ShootPortal delivers inspection imagery; it doesn't analyze it, measure roofs, or generate reports.
Who it's for
Solo Part 107 pilots
One flat plan covers every feature, and ShootPortal installs on your phone as a web app for checking jobs between flights.
Growing drone media businesses
Give each staff member an account with the permissions they need, and assign them to the projects they fly or edit.
Run your next aerial job through it, from quote to paid.
Try it on your next flightBuilt by a working drone photographer
ShootPortal was built by Jackson Bridges. Founder & Developer of ShootPortal · Owner of Swift Aerial Media · FAA Part 107 Certified Drone Pilot. The weather reschedules, travel fees, video revision rounds, and payment-before-download flow all come from running a drone and real estate media business.
Pricing
Simple pricing
$29/month
Or $24/month billed annually. One flat Studio plan with the full feature set: no per-listing or per-delivery fees. Card payments from your clients go through your own Stripe account at Stripe's standard rates.
FAQ
The term covers two kinds of tools. Flight operations software handles flight planning, logs, fleet maintenance, and airspace. Business management software handles clients: quotes, scheduling, payments, and delivery. ShootPortal is the second kind, built for aerial photo and video businesses.
No. ShootPortal doesn't plan flights, keep flight logs, track fleet or battery maintenance, request airspace authorization, or handle Remote ID. Keep a dedicated flight operations app for that and use ShootPortal for the client side.
Yes, as embeds. Process the map or model in DroneDeploy, Pix4D, Agisoft, or another supported platform, then add its share link to the project. ShootPortal also embeds Cesium, ArcGIS, MipMap, Matterport, Polycam, Sketchfab, and Kuula 360 tours. It doesn't process imagery itself.
ShootPortal measures the straight-line distance between your base ZIP code and the job's ZIP code, then applies your mileage tiers or a free radius plus a per-mile rate with an optional cap. The fee shows up as a line on the estimate, which you can edit before sending.
Propose a new time on the same project. The client accepts, declines, or suggests another time in the portal, and the confirmed time pushes to your Google Calendar. Clients respond to times you propose; they don't pick open slots themselves.
You connect your own Stripe account, and clients pay by card through Stripe Checkout. You can take a deposit on approval and turn on "unlock downloads after payment" so clients can preview the work but download only after the final payment.
Yes. 14 days free, no credit card required. Sign up with Google or a five-field form, then a guided setup walks you through branding, services from templates, and connecting Stripe. Any step can be skipped and finished later.
Keep reading
Flight apps keep you legal and mapping tools process your data, but neither sends a quote or collects a deposit. Here is the software that runs the business side of a drone operation.
Published drone rates range widely, and most of the numbers online are guesses. This guide separates what clients report paying from what pilots suggest, then shows you how to build a price from your own costs.
A practical, step-by-step path from FAA Part 107 certification to your first paying clients, with a startup checklist, a 90-day plan, and the systems that keep a drone business organized.
Put your next aerial job through ShootPortal: quote it with the travel fee, confirm the date, collect the deposit, and deliver the footage in a portal with your name on it.
14 days free. No credit card required.
