A focused Pix4D Cloud alternative for sharing

Pix4D makes serious photogrammetry software. PIX4Dcloud and the wider Pix4D suite take your drone or terrestrial imagery and turn it into orthomosaics, meshes, digital surface models and point clouds, then host the results so you and your team can review and share them. If you need processing, that is exactly what it is for, and it does that job well.

This page is for a narrower situation. You already have a finished point cloud. Maybe you processed it in a desktop package, maybe it came off a lidar sensor, maybe a Pix4D step produced it and the project is now done. All you actually need is to put that cloud in front of a client in the browser and let them spin it around, measure on it and read your notes. For that one job, a full processing cloud is more platform and more money than the task requires.

Processing platform versus sharing layer

The honest framing is that ViewerFX and Pix4D Cloud are not the same category of tool. ViewerFX does not do photogrammetry. It will not stitch images, build a mesh, generate an orthomosaic or compute a surface. It takes a point cloud you already have, in LAS or LAZ, and turns it into a shareable interactive 3D viewer. That is the entire scope on purpose.

So this is not a claim that ViewerFX replaces Pix4D. If you need to process imagery, you still need a processing tool, and Pix4D is a strong one. The question is whether you should keep paying processing-platform pricing for what has become, by the end of a project, a sharing problem.

What this costs

Pix4D products are priced for the processing they do. As of this writing, cloud and software plans in the Pix4D lineup start in the rough neighborhood of one hundred dollars a month or more when billed annually, with higher tiers for more processing volume and capability. Those numbers move and there are several products under the Pix4D name, so check their current pricing rather than taking a figure here as gospel. The point is simply that you are paying for a processing engine, whether or not a given month involves much processing.

ViewerFX is priced as a sharing tool, which is a smaller and steadier cost.

• Starter is $29 a month for 50GB and up to 10 stored files.
• Pro is $79 a month for 250GB and 40 files.
• Business is $199 a month for 1TB and full white-label.

Every tier includes every feature. Measuring, annotations, password protected links and unlimited free client viewers are on all of them. You pay for storage and file count, not for tools, and the clients you share with never pay or sign up.

Side by side

The cells we could not verify with confidence say so. Pix4D has more than one product and revises pricing, so confirm anything that drives your decision on their site. The comparison that holds regardless of the exact numbers is the shape of the cost. One tool charges for a processing engine. The other charges for storage and sharing.

Who each one is for

Stay on Pix4D Cloud, or whatever you process in, if you are actively building outputs from imagery and you want processing, hosting and review in one place. If your monthly work is mostly running new projects through the engine, you are getting what you pay for.

ViewerFX makes sense when the processing is already done and the remaining job is delivery. That covers a lot of real workflows. You might process in a desktop tool and only need a client to see the result. You might already own processing software and not want to pay a second cloud subscription just to share. You might run a small shop where most of the cost of a processing platform sits idle between projects. In all of those cases a $29 to $199 sharing layer with unlimited free viewers and permanent links does the delivery part for a fraction of the cost, and you keep your processing tool for what it is good at.

How to decide

The cleanest test is to take a point cloud you have already produced and share it. ViewerFX has a free viewer you can open now to see how a cloud behaves in the browser, including measuring and annotations. The pricing page shows exactly what each tier includes, and you can create an account in a couple of minutes, upload one finished cloud and send the link to a client or a colleague. If the delivery experience is what you want, you have found the cheaper half of your stack without giving up the processing tool you rely on.