Sully vs a camera roll and Word: which is best?
Sully is the alternative to the camera roll and Word for firms whose write-up is eating the evening: the walk comes back as a cited draft, and you still write and sign the report.
Jimmy Horan · Reviewed walk 00:14:52 · 143 photos · 14 findings
…north elevation here, the render's got a hairline crack running under the eaves — cosmetic though, not structural…
What is Sully?
Sully is the AI scribe for site walks. Walk the site as you always do, shooting video or photos and talking as you go. Sully reads the footage with what you said and hands back a summary with action items, every line cited to its frame.
You turn the draft into the report, schedule or quote, and you sign it. It lands in Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, Gmail or Google Drive. Made by Hey Sully in Australia; in early access now.
What is a camera roll and Word?
A phone camera, a voice memo or a notebook, and Word, or the template your firm built years ago. Free, familiar, and still how most condition, building and fire-safety firms write up.
Sully vs a camera roll and Word comparison
Scored against how the work actually gets done, last reviewed 31 Aug 2026. “Not published” means their material doesn’t say, and we don’t guess. Numbers point to the notes below.
| Feature | Sully | a camera roll and Word |
|---|---|---|
| Company | ||
| Made by | Hey Sully, Australia | You, over years |
| Pricing from | A$49 a month · free trial, no card | Free, apart from the evening1 |
| Status | Early access | Working, more or less |
| Capture on site | ||
| Video walkthrough | Yes | Partly2 |
| Photos | Yes | Yes |
| Talk as you go | Yes | Partly3 |
| Works offline, hands-free | Yes | Yes |
| No platform to adopt | Yes | Yes |
| The AI | ||
| Reads the video together with what you said | Yes | No |
| Free-form summary, not a fixed form | Yes | Yes4 |
| Every line cited to its frame and words | Yes | No5 |
| Drafts the report, schedule or quote | Yes6 | No7 |
| Ask questions across walks and projects | Yes8 | No |
| Lands in Teams, Outlook, OneDrive or Drive | Yes | Yes9 |
| The record | ||
| Kept if you stop paying | Yes | Yes10 |
| Compare baseline and post-works walks | Yes11 | Partly12 |
| Search by what was said on site | Yes | No13 |
| Trust | ||
| The AI drafts; you review and sign | Yes | Yes |
| Drafted vs verified, on the record | Yes14 | No15 |
| Australian data residency | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft 365 sign-in | Yes | Yes |
| Never trains models on your data | Yes | Yes |
- 1camera roll & Word: Industry figures put the write-up at about 22 minutes a report, and a 1–4 hour condition walk at 3–5 days to a finished report. Vendor-sourced and directional.
- 2camera roll & Word: You can shoot it; nothing reads it.
- 3camera roll & Word: A voice memo you transcribe yourself.
- 4camera roll & Word: By hand.
- 5camera roll & Word: “IMG_4471” isn’t a citation a client can follow.
- 6Sully: Team plans and up draft them straight from the record.
- 7camera roll & Word: It is the report. That’s what takes the night.
- 8Sully: Any walk or project on Solo; the whole workspace on Team and up.
- 9camera roll & Word: Wherever you save it.
- 10camera roll & Word: Your files, in your folders.
- 11Sully: Firm plans.
- 12camera roll & Word: Open both folders and compare by eye.
- 13camera roll & Word: Findable if the folder naming holds; unsearchable by what was said.
- 14Sully: Drafted lines stay marked until a person verifies them.
- 15camera roll & Word: “What was drafted, what was verified, by whom” has no answer but “me.”
No product to check here; the industry figures are vendor-sourced and directional.
Got something wrong? Email hello@heysully.ai and we’ll fix it and note the change.
Sully vs a camera roll and Word: which is right for you?
Sully is built for people who visit sites they don’t own (surveyors, architects, fire-safety practitioners, inspectors, trades) and owe a client a write-up afterwards.
The camera roll and Word are built for everyone, and scale to exactly one person’s memory: matching a hundred photos to what you saw, retyping notes, recalling calls you made on site.
Keep the old way if you do a handful of walks a month and the write-up is an hour, or every report is a fixed template of instrumented measurements. And if you don’t want another subscription, fair enough.
Choose Sully if the write-up is eating evenings or margin, the post-works walk needs diffing against the baseline, or someone will one day ask what was said about the north wall in March.
Bring us a walkFAQs
Do I have to stop using Word?
- No. The draft lands in Teams, Outlook, OneDrive or Drive, and the report gets finished where it does today. Sully replaces the reconstruction before the writing, not the writing.
What does Sully need from me on site?
- Walk as you always do and talk as you go. Video or photos, either works; video gives a richer summary. Hands-free through site noise, offline, gloves on. Nothing to fill in.
What can’t Sully see?
- Anything that needs an instrument (crack widths, moisture, levels) and anything behind a finish. Those are your measurements and your calls. It also can’t see what you didn’t point the camera at, which is why the narration matters.
About Jimmy
Jimmy Horan is the founder of Hey Sully, the Australian company building Sully. He checks every comparison on this site against the other product’s own documentation rather than its advertising — the last check was on 31st of August 2026 — and would rather answer a hard question now than have you find out later.
More about why we’re building thisReady to try Sully?
Free trial, no card. Or bring a recent walk and we’ll build the summary live in thirty minutes.