Frequently Asked Questions

Pricing is pay-per-estimate or a flat monthly subscription for unlimited estimates — see the Pricing section above. There's no setup fee, and you can switch between plans anytime from your own Billing settings.

Yes — once you register your shop, you can add technician sub-accounts from My Technicians. Each technician gets their own login and only ever sees your shop's own estimates, never another shop's data.

No — Estigator is focused specifically on generating itemized, priced repair estimates from photos, VIN, or OBD fault codes. Many shops run it alongside their existing management software just for estimating.

The vision model identifies damaged parts and prices them against real state labor rate cards and live parts sourcing — a strong first-pass estimate. Every estimate is fully editable, and a technician can add, remove, or correct any line before it's finalized.

Yes — the PDF report is built in a claims-familiar format (vehicle & claim information, labor rate card, itemized damage assessment, parts & paint materials) and can be reviewed and signed off by a licensed technician before it goes out.

Yes — when a VIN is provided, we pull the vehicle's factory-equipped safety systems directly from NHTSA data and automatically price recalibration for any camera, radar, or sensor near the damaged area, billed separately from body/paint labor.

Yes — OBD fault codes alone can generate a priced estimate, and a technician can also build a fully manual estimate line-by-line (labor hours, sublet cost, parts) for a teardown-only job with no AI analysis involved at all.

Yes — the Workbench has a dedicated Paint Job mode for a repaint-only job with no body damage, so you're not forcing a paint estimate through the collision-damage flow.

Yes — for a photo-analyzed estimate, each damaged part gets an automatically AI-cropped photo of that specific area attached to its line item, so the report isn't just numbers.

You can regenerate it with a note describing what was missed, and attach an additional photo if it helps — the AI re-analyzes with your correction in mind while keeping the same estimate/report link.

Yes — every logged-in role has access to a built-in help assistant that can point staff to the right settings page or walk them through creating a specific type of estimate, without having to contact support.

Yes — Sign in with Google is supported for both shop owner and technician accounts, as an alternative to a typed password.

Yes — your shop's own estimate history is searchable by VIN, claim number, or customer name, and every technician only ever sees your shop's own data, never another shop's.

Click "Register your shop" from the homepage, confirm your email address, and you're generating estimates within minutes — no sales call or onboarding call required to get started.

Yes. Once your shop is registered, the owner account can create unlimited technician sub-accounts from My Technicians, each with its own login.

On the subscription plan, no — it's unlimited estimates for a flat monthly price. On the pay-per-estimate plan, you're only charged for what you actually generate.

Yes, at any time from your own Billing settings — there's no lock-in period tying you to whichever plan you started on.

Like any AI system, it can occasionally miss something or misjudge severity — which is exactly why every estimate is fully editable before it's finalized, and why a free Regenerate option exists if you spot something off.

Yes — labor rates are scraped and refreshed from real market sources covering mechanical labor and state sales tax, and a shop can layer its own rate overrides on top for its own market, with a full audit history of every change.

When you provide a VIN, we decode it against NHTSA's vehicle database to confirm year/make/model/trim and pull the vehicle's actual factory-equipped safety systems — this is also what drives accurate ADAS recalibration pricing.

Up to 8 photos from any angle — front, rear, both sides, and close-ups of the damage work best. The more angles you provide, the more complete the damage assessment can be.

A claim-ready, itemized PDF: vehicle and claim information, a labor rate card, itemized damage assessment with photo evidence per part, parts and paint materials, and an estimate summary — built in a format familiar to adjusters and appraisers.

Yes, explicitly — every report states plainly whether it has been independently reviewed and signed off by a licensed technician, never presenting an unreviewed AI estimate as if it were a certified appraisal.

Yes — when mileage and vehicle condition are provided, the estimate is checked against the vehicle's actual cash value and flagged if repair cost crosses your shop's configured total-loss threshold.

Yes — labor, parts, paint materials, and tax are all itemized as their own lines, plus a labor rate card showing exactly what rate was applied, so nothing is bundled into an opaque single number.

Yes — enter a diagnostic trouble code and Estigator looks up the likely repair and prices it directly, no photos required.

You don't need the code itself — describe the symptom (e.g. "grinding noise when braking") and the issue is flagged for inspection and billed as diagnostic labor until a technician confirms the actual repair.

Yes — airbag deployment is priced by the specific position that deployed (driver, passenger, side-curtain), and automatically includes the matching seatbelt pretensioner and, for a driver-frontal deployment, the clockspring.

Yes — a shop owner creates and manages every technician sub-account, and a technician only ever sees their own shop's estimates. Deactivating a technician blocks their access immediately.

No — every shop's estimates, customer data, and technician accounts are strictly isolated to that shop. There's no cross-shop visibility of any kind.

Estigator prices labor, parts, and paint automatically against real state labor rates and live parts sourcing the moment damage is identified, instead of a technician looking each figure up manually — while still leaving every line fully editable.

Yes — OBD fault-code-based estimates cover mechanical diagnostic and repair pricing directly, separate from the collision-damage photo pipeline.

Yes — a shop can enable its own free, no-login lead-gen widget so a prospective customer can submit photos and get contacted, without needing to be walked through Estigator's own interface.

Yes — Estigator supports embedding its estimation capability inside a third-party shop-management platform, so an end user can land directly in the estimating workflow already signed in, without ever seeing a separate Estigator login.

Typically under a minute once photos are uploaded — you'll see live progress messages the whole time, so it's clear the analysis is actually running.

Any modern phone camera is sufficient — a minimum resolution is enforced automatically so an unusably small photo is rejected with an explanation before it's submitted, rather than silently producing a worse estimate.

Yes — every line (labor, parts, paint, disposition) is editable after generation, and a technician can supplement or correct an estimate at any time without starting over.