iScape: Landscape Design Reviews

by Jess62609

I’m so disappointed, I had high hopes for this but as usual I watched the video & got sucked in. After going through the login process & giving my email, taking a few pictures of my backyard, I searched the free area to add (of course) the beautiful pictures I saw in the video. There is minimal “free” to choose from amongst 3 categories of trees, flowers, & furniture/arbors with about 6-10 pictures in each. If you want different flowers, more trees, different furniture, waterfalls, pools, edging, grass, stone etc... you’ll have to hand over $20 a month ($10 the first month) or ready for it.... $200 a year (or $100 the first year & $200 after that). For a furloughed pilot during COVID, we’d love to be able to design & buy a few plants here & there when money allows but for $100+ a year we could buy a lot of plants with that instead =(

by Rdyornot

I just completed a stone retaining wall around a new flower bed and decided I would try out the full version of iScape (I had tried the demo before - original review is below) - I was enjoying myself as well. I had known iScape 's plant image library was limited but the user is able to insert their own photos in the upgraded version of iScape , which was acceptable.

iScape does not allow you to insert your own photo directly into your project, it must be uploaded to this app's server first - and to do that you must first agree to give up all rights to your photos to the vendor, to use, sell, distribute, or just plaster all over their office as some corporate stalkeresque wallpaper. This is insane. I know my pictures aren't going to be hanging in any gallery, but they are *mine* and i'm not going to give them away to a peddler of overpriced software.

What it actually is is a demo for yet another app that wants a monthly subscription to access any meaningful features. The 'free' (demo) version gives you access to 16 trees, 7 shrubs, and no constructed elements (paths, gazebos, boarders, etc.) Which makes is almost completely unusable. iScape itself seems perfectly fine, just unusable without a subscription.

by Su-Per5

Let’s start with the free version. There are only about 20 plants it will give you to work with, which is useless. I could do more plant design just playing the Sims.
Second it’s extremely slow. It can take up to a 10 count for it to change screens. And they want you to pay $20 per month??? For that? No way.
And what about a cheaper (or free) trial version. Come on. You really want to charge a person $10 for a trial. What if they open it once, it’s slow and clunky (like the free version), doesn’t have what they’re looking for, and they don’t use it again? I’m not paying $10 for that.
I’d happily pay you $10/month if it was a well built app, not slow, and it worked for my purposes. I have a lot of garden to design. I would not ever pay $20/month. If you want that price, you’re limiting your clients to professional designers and landscapers. And maybe that’s what you want, but you would make more money by offering it to the everyday homeowner for a more fair price. You could sell this to 1 landscaper for $20/month ($220), or 5 everyday middle class consumers for $10/month ($600)...after a FREE 7 day trial...because who doesn’t offer that? As another reviewer pointed out $220 is a lot of plants I could buy. Or I could pay an actual landscaper and not have to do the work, but what fun is that.

by Hermia H.

I downloaded this because it was well reviewed, but after downloading it and pulling it open I can’t get it to do anything. I tried both the 2D design and AR options, it takes a while for the screen to switch and once it does and you should be able to start to create it’s just a black screen with either the camera options around it, or some green indicator lines and nothing else. The camera image never actually loads, and no other options ever appear on your screen. You also can’t go back and so have to close out the whole app in order to try again, which is futile because it’s the same problems over and over. As time consuming and slightly frustrating as sketching everything out to scale by hand is, it’s honestly preferable if you’re just looking to do something for your yard.

by Essex Horticulture

I think this could be a fun app if you own an iPad and want to play around with a project for your home, but it’s a waste of time if you’re a pro. I can’t believe no developer has seized the market for pros looking to do some light duty design on the iPad. If pro use wasn’t mentioned in the description (or it were free) I wouldn’t have given it a two star rating so if you’re a DIYer it may be a better experience for you then it was for me.

Suggestions that would make this a much better experience drafting something up on the fly in front of a client in the field: allow markup within iScape and the use of a finger or, even better, Apple Pencil. I would imagine that would be really easy to integrate into iScape (but I’m not a developer). Secondly, give your paying clients an adequate plant database (without having to upload a bunch of photos, for approval, by myself) labeled by a common name and the botanical name with the search feature. The names are a mess. I searched for a Pieris japonica / andromeda as the first plant for my first ‘design’ with iScape, and it wasn’t there. I think that’s a pretty darn common plant in high production in the majority of the US.

If those changes are made I’d be happy to try a subscription again (I used the trial for a few days) and give an updated rating.

by LMc FL

iScape is easy to use, unlike some other garden apps I test drove, but the trade off is that it is really just a toy. You can’t do much with the free version (unless your garden has fewer than 10 plants in it, in which case you probably don’t need an app to keep track of them), so I sprang for one month of the pay version to play around with. This provided some mild entertainment for a couple of hours, particularly because of the cool feature that lets you take a photo of your existing landscape and add plants to it. But, ultimately, it is just not a useful tool. The in-app plant catalog is so limited that I had to identify surrogates for virtually everything I wanted, and the lack of any sizing function meant it took a lot of fiddling around to make similarly tall plants appear about the same height. Even this step involved referencing other sources, as the in-app plant descriptions tended toward the sparse side. The only reason I think anyone would want to keep an ongoing subscription to this is because they forgot to tell iScape Store to discontinue it (which is, unsurprisingly, not as straightforward a process as it should be).

by Designer•••

I was excited to use iScape, but it kept crashing and glitching. I had to rebuild my project 5x before I finally got it to save before glitching and freezing up. Very frustrating and wasted a lot of time. Inventory list does not scroll down, so I had to re-search a plant every time I wanted to repeat it in the design. The augmented reality feature does not handle changing light conditions at all which is detrimental when using it for outdoor purposes. So now I can’t get my project to load at a different time of day from the same “starting point”. I really wanted iScape to work as described because it is a great idea, but it’s just not ready with all the bugs. Please consider hiring more or better qualified developers, especially if you’re going to charge so much and say it’s for pros.

by MorsesCode

iScape is a bit of a joke. It has very basic image insertion with zero ability to manipulate the background image. There is minimal access to layers and the plant selections are scant. You can upload your own images but this is rudimentary as the background of uploads is not transparent so you have a square bush. It is also buggy and the undo stack gets corrupted often. I have signed up for an initial pro trial but I'm canceling the auto renew as soon as I finish this review. You are better off with a tablet version of Photoshop or even Linea sketch.

Also, no 1 week trial for pro is lame. I can see why there is no trial as most people would probably never pay once they saw how little iScape can do. Not worth the price at all.

by Bkbegetter

This tool appears to have great potential. I’m even fine with the premium content subscription. My issue upon first use is that I have to actively be working on a project to start zeroing on design themes and plants as well as climate.

It would make much more sense to have an option to establish all of this (growing zone, style such as “English Garden”, shade or sun and then finally plants) in a profile or preliminary project file. We cannot browse the pictures, plants and objects unless we begin a project... This is especially key if you plan to use the AR function which had us standing in the sun sweating through our clothes as we tried to search for and select simple items. We finally abandoned our efforts and moved back to scrubbing the web for ideas on Houzz.

by Ben819

The idea of iScape is great but it’s hard to Crete a custom landscape with. iScape has very limited choices that are able to be inserted it needs to expand what can be dropped in quickly just by searching also everything is already pre designed I want to be able to take an idea that I. My head and build it in iScape this goes for all the customization you sell a customer on I do a lot of hard scaling in addition to landscaping I wish iScape allowed me to map out an exact design shaped the way I will custom lay make it the height I want it the color I want it I get it there’s only so many you can possibly have pre loaded but allow me to upload one pic of a single block and a single cap and let me build a wall or raised bed border block by block the pre loaded images are useless when creating something custom every yard is shaped differently and each customer has there own specific wishes. It’s not really designing a custom landscape when you can change anything making it custom means it’s specially shaped and designed for a yard so even tho I have thousands of images on my phone from previous projects there very difficult to use because every project is different

by IAMWAM

There needs to be a mid-tier price range. I'm thinking about getting into a design career, whether it be indoor or outdoor design... I'm not sure yet. I got extremely excited when I found iScape, especially for the AR mode. I felt I'd finally be able to test my skills and see how I feel redesigning my yard (a former Japanese Garden that's seen better days...). I was blown away when I saw the ONLY asking price was $30 a month or $300 a year... Now I do feel iScape is worth it to the right person, it definitely holds its value it's very top notch... But my issue is at just how little you get access to with the free option. There are only 29 objects TOTAL. That includes furniture, trees, and bushes. That's not possible to work with. I don't actually work in this line of work and want to use this for personal use/entertainment. The price just simply does not work for me. Not at all. And it really is unfortunate because I don't think there's another app on the store anywhere like it.

Look up a game called "house flipper" on PC. I've dumped MANY hours into that game. This could very easily take influence and benefit from that game, especially with a one time payment of some sort.

by Kurshi BeJahaal

I do landscaping on the side and wanted an option to do my designs so I can give the clients a nice mock up to help them visualize the end goal. However, I didn’t realize that the free option was as limited as it is. I don’t do enough large scale projects to make it worth the $30 a month. I predominantly do small installs, trimming/clean ups, replacement and treatments.

iScape also regularly crashes, freezes and becomes unresponsive on my iPhone 8. It may work a little more seamlessly on a newer iPhone or iPad.

This would be worth it for someone actively doing larger installs, but not someone like me who only does 2-3 large projects a year. Kind of a bummer because it could really be useful to help me get more work. But until then, I’m going to have to pass.

by Thebmrust

Freaking too expensive for a casual user/avg homeowner. It’s a bit hokey with results like being a first time photoshop user. The premise is great. The execution is mostly good. You will not be able to make everything look realistic in the current iteration and object catalog. Soooo many variables with light, texture, distance, etc.
Because it’s $20 a month, it’s not worth a homeowner unless you are willing to pay the price and/or doing multiple projects within a time frame where $20 a month is saving you money. For a pro, this is a no brainer. Perfect because you can roll the expense into your overhead. If I were a pro iScape wouldn’t even be questioned. Of they have a single price or take out the AR, I’ll be back. But for now, the cost can not justify the time used.

by FRANCESCTA

I love iScape as I’m a landscape designer and it’s always a struggle to explain your vision to clients without showing them pictures. When I show them the this app renders, they love it. And I love that you can add your own image to the database like a clients playground set they’re looking to buy but want to see how it looks placed in the landscape. Editing your own image is tricky but it’s a great feature when it works. And my app always crashes when I try to upload my own images which is frustrating so I reach out to customer service for help. And Diana has been awesome with responding back to messages within 24 hours or sooner, much appreciated when you’re trying to meet a deadline. I’m hoping they beef up their landscape database with high quality image, right now it’s a mixture of high resolution digital images and photographs of the plants which could look weird when putting a design together. All in all, love iScape and I’m sticking around for their upgrades. Thanks!!

by Clpritch

Although iScape provides a nice virtual reality type look at what your area will look like once improvements are installed, it has serious limitations and I don’t recommend for home owners. There app only shows your intended drain when it senses the space. Each time you want to work on your design you must go outside and scan the area. It won’t remember that space and permit design work to continue. More serious, iScape doesn’t permit sharing or downloading plans once you’ve designed a space. That means you must purchase a long term subscription if you want to see your design or use it. Buying a one week subscription is money wasted without the ability to export the design.

by Lathegirl

I have the earlier version and like many others on here, was upset to learn that I will have to pay more to update. I might find it worthwhile if I knew up front what I would get for my money. The previous version gave a limited supply of plants, MANY of which cannot grow in my cold Wisconsin climate (Zone 4). You may now have that option but I don’t want to pay a base price to find out. I can say the program is slick, easy to use, and I am willing to pay for if I didn’t feel tricked into being nickeled and dimed.

by Nicknamesssssssssss

That’s right... $200 and I can’t get iScape to load 9 times out of ten.
I have used iScape over a year. When first using it, it would usually load without problems, nut this is getting beyond ridiculous!
The iPad is new, I have removed and installed iScape , I have adjusted my iPad settings for optimum performance, and still... it just spins like it’s trying to load and ultimately I have to close it out and try again and again, and yet again.
It really is a great app, when it loads. I’ll be cancelling this subscription.

by Ky2099

iScape is so well done. I use it everyday and my clients love it. It really helps my clients visualize my plans within their own space which is invaluable. By adding more items to a design I’ve been able to land more than just the initial quoted service—all because they could see it in their space and liked it. New content is added all the time and their support staff is extremely helpful. Aside from being fun to play around with, iScape has a very user friendly interface that makes it easy to learn how to make use of all the features. It saves me time, which saves me money. 5/5 stars

by Miyako2

With your decision to switch to a subscription model, I can no longer access the image packages I purchased in the earlier version of this app. I opened up my iPad app last week, and found out the hard way (after my design crashed when I tried to save it) that you had abandoned the earlier version I had invested in. It appears you aren’t giving any credit for those earlier investments your customers made. Not only is that a terrible marketing decision, but it shows a lack of integrity and customer loyalty that I think should be pointed out.

To add insult to injury you also sent an invalid link asking me to use it to confirm my email. Neither Safari nor Google can open it.

You have a good product that deserves at least 4 stars for product development, but companies are judged on so much more than product.

by Mcjcmakao

Wow! So this would be a great application if it wasn’t such a complete failure on functionality. Im sure I cannot possibly be the only one that has tremendously slow operating speeds in app on all 3 of my apple devices. So slow that it constantly crashes wether I have full signal or perfect WiFi, it does not seem to matter.

I cannot begin to describe how embarrassing it is that I trust iScape so much to work properly as I give a presentation to a client. Lo and behold without fail each time it either runs so slow I need to apologize too many times or it’s just crashes all together for an hour or until it decides to work correctly.

Honestly I hope im the only one with these operation struggles, but if im not alone on this then we his application for landscape design is a complete failure 😁👍🏼

by Chris G TN

I work at a large landscape company and was sold in this app for the past 3 years. It was awesome. They’ve made many updates and now it’s not good. In fact, I can’t even open it anymore. It opens, shows their logo, and goes back to iPad home screen. Since they’ve added this AR feature (not sure what it does since it’s not able to run on iPad) it’s been unusable. Freezes, loses designs, doesn’t save. I have hundreds of designs I can’t access now. Not worth a single penny at this point and I have spent hundreds of dollars on iScape over the years. Please fix it, and take this garbage and restore it to the amazingly useful app it was. Do not buy until fixed.

by Basevol

I bought the original version in Feb of 2017. The past few months it would not update. This morning I decided to look into it and figured out that I was screwed. I already felt ripped off when I bought the full version only to find that there was more to buy if you wanted everything. Now, I have nothing. One response to another review was that they offered a discount on the new app to previous owners (apparently we didn’t own anything). I could not find where I was ever given an offer for a discount. The proper thing would have been to grandfather in owners of the original app because they purchased iScape before it was a subscription model. Very bad business in my opinion!

Since my review the original app has been restored. I’m glad the developers made the decision to do the right thing.

by Jàne

I bought the original version and purchased the add on plant packages now the database won't work. I feel like I supported this company when it was first starting out and now they are not being supportive in return. I volunteered to do a garden for my children's school and now iScape that I purchased won't work. This is so disappointing and has really put me in a bind. I think if a person purchases something it should not be disabled later because the company wants to charge its customers more. This is poor business practices and unethical. I think there should be loyal to the original customers.

by 2010stupido

Neat concept but fell way short.
I bought the three month subscription after doing the trial and it’s not much better. It actually got worse and glitchy. After saving a design, had to close app and reopen it to start a new design(bug does not see photos on iPad Pro photo folder either).
A big pet peeve, is not being able to change the angle of view of any given asset. The only way to design from photos is to design from a straight ahead view and perspective not angled as the assets can’t be angled to adjust for the perspective. I have not tried the AR portion as it might be better but remains to be seen. If you buy, don’t buy any more than a month at a time.

by ZachieOh!

I think this could be a fun app if you own an iPad and want to play around with a project for your home, but it’s a waste of time if you’re a pro. I can’t believe no developer has seized the market for pros looking to do some light duty design on the iPad. If pro use wasn’t mentioned in the description (or it were free) I wouldn’t have given it a two star rating so if you’re a DIYer it may be a better experience for you then it was for me.

Suggestions that would make this a much better experience drafting something up on the fly in front of a client in the field: allow markup within iScape and the use of a finger or, even better, Apple Pencil. I would imagine that would be really easy to integrate into iScape (but I’m not a developer). Secondly, give your paying clients an adequate plant database (without having to upload a bunch of photos, for approval, by myself) labeled by a common name and the botanical name with the search feature. The names are a mess. I searched for a Pieris japonica / andromeda as the first plant for my first ‘design’ with iScape, and it wasn’t there. I think that’s a pretty darn common plant in high production in the majority of the US.

If those changes are made I’d be happy to try a subscription again (I used the trial for a few days) and give an updated rating.

by JaFreit00

Upon opening it and wanting to try the AR, it tells me my device is not compatible. Well, what is compatible? Give me more information!?! My device is fairly new.

So, next I create a project with a photo of the backyard. After adding a coupe of items, I notice there is no attempt to automatically scale the item. I had a flower come in as big as one of the existing trees! Silly. After a couple more items added, it freezes and I force it to quit. Open it up again and the project as well as the photo is gone for good. I might give it another shot but it is unlikely.

by Houstonaki

I am really enjoying using this but I am surprised about the plants that aren’t there like Butterfly bush, flowering spiraeas, japanese forest grass, blue fescues, juncas.... just to name a few. So I did upgrade to the pro package because I’ve been working in a high end garden center for the last 8 years so I know I’ll use it often enough but also because I have quite a few photos of plants that I wanted to add to the database. But every time I try to upload an image it says there is an error and sometimes it closes iScape .
Would love a fix of this or my money back because that’s the most I’ve spent on an app and if the function I want doesn’t work then ... whiskey tango foxtrot
Over all good quality of images that are in the data base.

by ExoticDelerium

I know my way around design apps. I am proficient in Illustrator and Photoshop. The issues I constantly had with iScape are:

I can’t lock layers. I want to be able to select and move an object, or resize the screen, without accidentally selecting and moving the grass or some other ground coverage, which is then 99% impossible and very time consuming to put in the correct spot again

Auto save. Having to hit save every 5 minutes in case your phone dies, or you forget to save and close iScape is silly.

I did not find the crop tool shown in the instruction video.

I do like that the objects blend into the photo nicely. I also like the option to edit the color and lighting of each object.

Overall, fun app. Great for visualizing your perfect landscape. Not enough features to tempt me to purchase iScape .

by Snellgro

I really like the idea of iScape and it’s the best one out there for designing your garden. However, I wish iScape could do a couple of things:
1. I wish you could layer items however you want as in put flowers behind a hedge/shrub, etc. I wanted to see how my garden would look with foxgloves behind my box woods, but iScape won’t let me do that.
2. Wish there were more variety of flowers/plants and more variety of colors. There are a few plants that I’ve looked for that are pretty common that aren’t in there.

Other than those two major things, I really like iScape . It is the best one out there. Hopefully it will improve over time.

by N Liv

I haven’t paid for the upgrade yet, but plan to use this when I get my first place. I am interested in flipping properties and think this save me so much money rather than paying a landscaper. I hate having to look up common landscaping plants and love the way iScape has photos and names of the most commonly used plants in landscaping. This makes it easier to orders seeds, bulbs, or live plants from a catalog when they are on sale rather than buying what is on sale locally just because it is on sale.

by JoDrant

I have been designing landscapes for 44 years. this app allows my clients to see what I am imagining in both 2D & Augmented Reality. I have been using iScape for two years, my sales have quadrupled. I notice more items in the data base. I have requested additions which were made. What they don’t have, I substitute with explanations knowing full well that this app will ultimately have an even broader scope of both soft and hard scape materials to use. Carry on !

by Red Oaks Landscaping

Best free landscaping app I have ever downloaded shows my customers what there yards could look like and I have landed more work because of iScape love it and you will to just needs more plants options will be buying the full version soon great app for small business owners like my self thanks I-scapes for making this awesome tool