baunow
An Austrian mobile and web app for documented site inspections. Photograph a defect, let the built-in AI write its title, description, recommended action and applicable rules, then send the finished PDF report by email.
What is baunow?
baunow is an inspection app for the construction and building-safety trades, published by the Austrian software company viingo GmbH in Enns, Upper Austria. It covers three families of rounds that the vendor advertises side by side — property inspections, fire-safety inspections and general safety walks — across infrastructure, building sites and fire protection.
The product sums itself up in four steps: walk, tap, save, send. An inspector opens an inspection on a phone or tablet, creates a defect and attaches up to three photographs, taken on the spot or picked from the gallery, which can be annotated and marked up in a built-in editor. Tapping Analysieren hands the images to the AI, which writes back a title, a description, a recommended action and the rules that apply. The inspector reviews those suggestions, corrects anything wrong and saves. A second AI function runs quietly alongside: duplicate detection compares images and flags those that are identical or very similar whatever angle they were shot from, leaving the user to decide what happens next. Where floor plans have been uploaded, a defect can also be pinned to its exact location on the plan.
Everything is built to survive a site with no signal. The app claims full offline operation and synchronises once a connection returns. When the round is over, baunow previews an automatically assembled report; the inspector closes the inspection, selects the recipients and sends the PDF by email, with no write-up afterwards.
The companion web platform at app.baunow.at holds the configuration: customers, projects, trades, participants, team members, assessment criteria and templates, plus two-factor authentication and an email whitelist. Every change is written to a revision history, defects can be assigned to internal staff or external partners, and tabular data exports to CSV or XLSX.
The AI is not viingo's own. The licence agreement names OpenAI among the third-party providers that receive and process the content submitted for analysis.
What it does
- Analyse an inspection photo and generate the defect's title, description, recommended action and applicable rules
- Assemble a complete PDF inspection report and email it to every participant
- Detect duplicate photographs automatically in the background
- Pin a defect to its exact position on a building plan
- Assign defects to internal staff or external contractors and trace every revision
- Record an entire inspection offline and synchronise afterwards
- Work through structured checklists and raise defects directly from them
When to use baunow / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if baunow is the right fit.
When to use baunow
- Safety consultancies and construction coordinators who run recurring site walks and lose billable time writing them up afterwards
- Engineering practices carrying out handovers, defect surveys and acceptance inspections
- Facility and property managers responsible for building, fire-safety and infrastructure rounds
- Field teams working in basements, plant rooms or remote sites where there is no mobile signal
- Organisations that want to stop re-typing handwritten forms and transferring photos after every visit
When not to use baunow
- Teams that need inspection data to flow automatically into another system: baunow publishes no API
- Anyone looking for a permanently free tool, since the only tier after the 14-day trial costs EUR 69 per user per month
- Non-German speakers, as the app, the website and the documentation are all in German
- Buyers who require a documented hosting location or a named ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certificate
- Users expecting duplicate detection and checklists to be self-service, as both are switched on manually by a baunow employee
How to use baunow
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Scan the QR code on the site, or download baunow directly from the App Store or Google Play
- Open the app and start a first inspection with the free-start button
- Explore using the demo data already loaded: a sample customer, project and inspection are provided
- Set up your own customers, projects, sites and participants in the web platform at app.baunow.at
- Create a defect with the plus button and attach up to three photographs from the camera or the gallery
- Mark up or draw on the images in the built-in editor and save the changes
- Tap the orange Analysieren button to run the AI image analysis and fill in the remaining fields
- Check and adjust what the AI produced, and pin the defect on the building plan if plans are loaded
- Preview the report, then close the inspection to finalise it
- Select or deselect the recipients and send the PDF report by email
Pros & Cons
Pros
- The AI analysis removes the manual write-up, with claimed savings of up to 90 minutes per inspection
- A named customer reports saving up to three hours per inspection and report
- Genuine offline operation, which matters on sites without coverage
- Reports leave ready to send, with no post-processing step
- Duplicate detection runs automatically, with no clicks and no manual comparison
- Complete traceability of every change, useful in client and contractor disputes
- Detailed public documentation and FAQ, and an identifiable Austrian publisher registered since 2016
Cons
- No API whatsoever: both /api/ and /docs return 404 and no page mentions one
- No permanent free plan; EUR 69 per user per month once the 14-day trial ends
- Duplicate detection and checklists are not self-service and must be enabled by a baunow employee
- Product and documentation exist in German only
- No hosting country or region is declared and no ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certificate is claimed
- The privacy page is thin, dated 2023, covers the website rather than the app, and redirects to another domain
- The terms cite a commercial register number that belongs to a different company, and the trial length is stated as both 14 and 7 days
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanently free plan. baunow provides a 14-day free trial covering the full feature set, after which the entry-level paid tier is PRO at EUR 69.00 per user per month on monthly billing, or EUR 59.00 per user per month when billing annually, a 15% discount applied to each user licence. An Enterprise tier is priced individually on request. Amounts are quoted net of VAT and subscriptions are invoiced at the beginning of each billing period. Monthly payment runs on an open-ended contract cancellable with one month's notice, whereas annual payment carries a minimum term of twelve months and three months' notice.
- AI image analysis
- projects
- email reports
- checklists
- user permissions
- external defect assignment
- standards-based recommendations
- duplicate detection
- PRO — EUR 69 per user per month billed monthly
- or EUR 59 per user per month billed annually
- everything in the trial plus a PRO logo on the PDF report and in the web app
- ENTERPRISE — individually priced on request
- all PRO features plus volume-based pricing
- a dedicated account manager
- an SLA with an availability guarantee and private cloud or on-premise deployment
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how baunow handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR is handled in the contracts rather than on a dedicated privacy page. The terms state that Viingo acts as a processor within the meaning of the GDPR and that a separate data processing agreement can be concluded on request; both the terms and the licence agreement also cite the Austrian Data Protection Act. The controller is named as viingo GmbH, Lorcherstraße 2a, 4470 Enns. Users may request an export or the deletion of their personal data. Two gaps stand out. No data protection officer and no dedicated privacy address are named anywhere. And the site's own Datenschutz page, dated 11 July 2023, is a generic notice covering the website rather than the application, while the Impressum points to a different domain for the full statement and still invokes the EU-US Privacy Shield, invalid since 2020.
Who owns the data?
All intellectual property in the software stays with Viingo: trade marks, copyright and patents are retained, and the customer receives only a non-exclusive, non-transferable right of use for the term of the contract. The inspection content itself remains the customer's. Tabular data can be exported from the web app as CSV or XLSX at any time, and deleting an account deletes everything attached to it. Customers storing third parties' personal data confirm they are entitled to do so under the GDPR and the Austrian Data Protection Act. One clause deserves attention: any feedback sent to Viingo may be reproduced, licensed, sold and commercially exploited, without limit in time or place and without payment.
Reuse rights
Customers may reuse their own inspection records freely. The tabular data in the web app exports to CSV or XLSX for further processing in tools such as Excel or Google Sheets, and no clause restricts what they then do with those reports or the PDFs they send out. What customers may not touch is the software itself: resale, sublicensing, modification, reverse engineering and decompilation are all prohibited, as is deriving other works from it. In the opposite direction, using the AI features means accepting that images, text input, voice recordings and other content may be passed to third-party providers, OpenAI among them, and processed under those providers' own terms and privacy policies rather than Viingo's.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
No hosting location is disclosed. The terms say only that data is held in server landscapes generally recognised as secure, naming cloud services from Microsoft or Amazon; the licence agreement repeats the clause but names Microsoft alone. Neither text identifies a country, a region or a data centre, and both mentions sit inside liability clauses rather than a hosting commitment. The terms add that for SaaS products the place of performance is the first internet connection point of the data centre hosting the service, without saying where that is. The homepage states that captured data is stored encrypted in the cloud. Enterprise customers are offered private cloud or on-premise deployment. For completeness, the marketing website itself resolves to an address operated by netcup GmbH in Nuremberg, Germany, but that is the WordPress site, not a declaration about where the platform holds customer data. AI features additionally route content to third-party providers whose location is not stated.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting baunow.
- The AI writes the defect, and the vendor explicitly disclaims the accuracy of what it produces: an inspector who stops reading the generated text is signing off wording nobody checked
- Generated descriptions and standard references can carry authority they have not earned, and inspection reports are documents that end up in disputes and liability files
- Content submitted for analysis leaves for third-party providers including OpenAI, under their terms rather than the vendor's, while the Google Play listing states that no data is collected or shared
- Leaning on AI wording round after round can erode the habit of describing a defect precisely, which is the core professional skill the report is meant to record
- Duplicate detection deciding two photographs are the same could quietly drop a genuine second defect if the user accepts the suggestion without looking
- No hosting country, region or certification is published, so where inspection photographs of client premises physically reside cannot be established from the site
- Customer data is deleted 30 days after a subscription lapses and backups are the customer's responsibility, so an unnoticed non-renewal can mean permanent loss of an inspection archive
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low on site, moderate to administer. An inspector scans a QR code, installs the app and can start immediately, since demo data is preloaded and no technical skill is required. The effort sits with the administrator, who must set up customers, projects, sites, participants, templates and assessment criteria in the web platform, and configure the email domain whitelist, without which reports are diverted to a collection address. Mandatory fields imposed by a customer template will block report dispatch if left incomplete. Duplicate detection and checklists are not self-service: a baunow employee must enable them.
Deployment
Apps stores
Behind baunow
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What does baunow actually do?
Where can I get the app?
How much does it cost?
How do I run the AI image analysis?
Whose AI is it, and where does my content go?
Does it work without an internet connection?
Is there an API?
Can I get my data out?
How long is data kept after the subscription ends?
Who is behind baunow, and is a DPA available?
Should you pick baunow?
baunow is a deliberately narrow tool, and that is its strength. It does not try to be a general assistant: it attacks one expensive, tedious moment in a very specific job, the write-up that follows a site inspection, and it uses AI precisely there, turning a photograph into a titled, described and rule-referenced defect. Duplicate detection, plan positioning, offline operation and automatic report dispatch round out a workflow that clearly comes from people who have walked sites themselves. The named customers and the quoted saving of up to three hours per inspection make the value proposition credible for safety consultancies, engineering practices and facility managers.
The reservations are real, though, and they are mostly about transparency rather than the product. There is no API, so baunow will not feed a wider system. Everything is in German. No hosting country is declared and no certification is claimed, while the AI quietly sends content to third parties, OpenAI included, which the Google Play listing flatly contradicts by declaring that no data is collected or shared. The published documents also contradict each other on smaller points: the trial is 14 days in two places and 7 in another, and the terms attribute to the publisher a commercial register number that in fact belongs to a different company at the same address.
None of that undermines what the app does on site. It does mean a buyer with procurement or data-protection obligations should ask viingo GmbH directly for the hosting location, the processing agreement and a clear statement on what OpenAI receives. At EUR 69 per user per month, those are fair questions to put before signing.
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