Hail Canvassing Software: How to Work a Storm, Step by Step

The most common mistake after a hail storm is knocking the wrong streets first. A crew drives to the neighborhood that looked worst on the evening news, while the biggest stones fell two miles east on a street nobody has touched. Hail canvassing software exists to fix that, by putting the radar record of where hail fell on the same map your reps use to log every door. This guide walks through a storm week step by step and shows what four tools charge for it.

Cedar House publishes this guide and makes one of the products in it, Cedar House Field. Prices and features for HailTrace, Interactive Hail Maps (Hail Recon) and SalesRabbit were read on their own websites on October 27, 2026.

What is hail canvassing software?

Hail canvassing software is a map that shows where hail fell and how big it was, joined to the tools a sales team uses to knock those doors: territories, pins, routes and a record of every conversation. Some products start from the weather side and add canvassing. Others start from canvassing and add weather.

The hail data in most of these tools starts from the same place, the radar network run by the National Weather Service. NOAA's Multi Radar Multi Sensor system combines those radars into an estimate of the largest hail at each spot on the ground. Vendors then add their own work on top, such as review by meteorologists, ground reports from spotters, longer history, or alerts.

That matters when you compare tools. Two maps can disagree at the edge of a swath, and neither is lying. A radar estimate is a strong guide to where to look. The roof itself is the proof.

Do you need a hail map, a canvassing app, or both?

You need both jobs done, and the question is whether one product does them well enough or two products talk to each other well enough. A hail map without canvassing tells you where to go and nothing about who went. A canvassing app without hail data turns your reps into guessers.

• A weather first tool. Deep history, alerts and reports for claims. Canvassing is lighter or sold on a higher plan. Fits a company that already has a canvassing app it likes.
• A canvassing first tool with a weather add on. Strong rep management and gamification, with hail data as an extra per user. Fits a large sales team.
• One tool built for both. The swath, the territory and the knock share one map and one record. Fits a crew that wants fewer logins and one bill.

If you are still choosing the app for everyday door knocking, our roofing canvassing app checklist covers the rep side in more depth. This guide is about the storm.

Hail canvassing software prices, read October 27, 2026

Only two of the four tools publish a full price. The table shows what each company's own pricing page printed today.

Sources: Interactive Hail Maps pricing, HailTrace plans, SalesRabbit pricing and Cedar House pricing, all read October 27, 2026.

For a ten rep team, the published numbers work out like this. SalesRabbit Team with Weather is $90 per rep, so $900 a month or $10,800 a year billed monthly. Cedar House Field is $250 a month or $3,000 a year. A Hail Recon nationwide plan is $1,999 a year, and you would confirm with them how many logins it covers before comparing it per rep. HailTrace has to be priced on a call. Our roofing CRM cost breakdown prices the CRM side for three crew sizes.

How to work a hail storm with canvassing software

Work a storm in seven steps, from the season before the storm to the week after it. The tool matters less than doing every step in order, every time.

1. Set up before the season

Draw your territories, load your service area and decide which reps cover which towns. Most tools let you build a territory from a ZIP code or a county instead of drawing it by hand. Then set alerts: the hail size that is worth a drive for your market, and the areas each rep wants to hear about.

Also put a watch on the addresses you already care about. Past customers, open estimates and roofs under your warranty are the first doors you should knock after a storm, and a watch tells you the morning after hail crosses one of them.

2. Read the forecast the morning of

The Storm Prediction Center publishes a daily outlook with the odds of severe hail across the country. A good tool puts those odds on your map in the morning, so a manager can keep a crew close to home on a day the risk sits over your service area instead of sending it two hours away.

3. Confirm the swath the night of the storm

Before anyone gets in a truck, look at the radar swath, the stone sizes inside it and where the edges fall. Then replay the storm. Watching the hail move across the map in half hour steps shows you which streets took the core and which only caught the tail.

Check the map against what you know. Ask a crew member who lives in the area what they saw, and look for ground reports. A radar estimate and a photo of stones on a driveway together are stronger than either alone.

4. Pick the streets and split the work

Choose streets by stone size first and by roof age second. A neighborhood with large hail and roofs old enough to be near the end of their life is your best first day. Permit history helps here, because a roof replaced two years ago is a different conversation from a roof replaced in 2008.

Assign each street to one rep, then build a route through the houses you picked. Two reps should never knock the same street on the same morning.

5. Knock with the facts in hand

At the door, the rep should be able to show the homeowner the date of the storm and the estimated stone size at that exact address, not at the town. That turns a sales pitch into a conversation about their house. Leave something behind: a link the homeowner can open later, with the storm facts and the rep's name and number.

Some neighborhoods lose cell service after a storm. Save the map area to the phone before the crew leaves the office.

6. Log every door, even the no

Every door goes in the app with the time and the place, including no answer, not interested and come back Saturday. The no answers are tomorrow's list. The not interested doors keep a second rep from knocking them again. The pin also settles any argument about who knocked first.

7. Hand the lead off the same day

An inspection set on the porch should land in your CRM that afternoon, with the address, the storm date and the rep's notes. If somebody is retyping leads at night, the storm week will lose some of them. Our roofing CRM comparison covers what happens after the inspection.

How accurate are radar hail maps?

Radar hail maps are accurate enough to tell you where to knock and not accurate enough to tell you which roof is damaged. The radar measures the storm from above, and the size it reports is an estimate of the largest stones, not a count of what hit one house.

Treat the map the way a good adjuster would. It shows that hail of a certain size was likely at this address on this date. The inspection, with photos of the roof, the gutters and the soft metals, shows what that hail did. Never tell a homeowner their roof is damaged because of the map alone.

Hail Recon, HailTrace and SalesRabbit: where each one fits

Each of the three has a clear strength, and each one is the right pick for some companies.

Interactive Hail Maps (Hail Recon). The clearest public pricing of the weather tools, by state or nationwide per year, with more than ten years of history, Hail Replay, unlimited address monitoring and canvassing on every plan. It suits a company that wants deep history and a yearly bill it can see up front.

HailTrace. Its plans page says a team of meteorologists tracks and analyzes each event, and it covers hail, wind and tornado maps with weather history reports. Canvassing comes on the Enterprise plan, and it lists integrations with JobNimbus, SalesRabbit and SPOTIO. It suits a company that wants reviewed maps and already runs a CRM it plans to keep.

SalesRabbit. A field sales platform first, used well beyond roofing, with gamification, setter and closer scheduling and an API on the Pro plan. Hail data comes through the Weather add on. It suits a large canvassing organization that wants a mature sales platform and is ready to pay per user for the weather layer.

What Cedar House Field does in a storm week

Cedar House Field is our app, and the storm tools come in the same $25 seat as the canvassing. The hail map uses NOAA radar estimates with a history that runs back to January 2020, and any storm day can be replayed in half hour frames.

• Alerts. Each rep picks a stone size and the areas to follow, and gets a push when hail crosses them. A morning note carries the day's severe hail odds for the areas they follow.
• Watches. Put a watch on any pin or address, and hear about it the morning after hail crosses it.
• Territory and routes. Build a territory from a ZIP code or county, circle the houses you want, and get a driving or walking order.
• At the door. Every knock is pinned with GPS and a time. The rep can send the homeowner a storm report page with the date, the size and the rep's own photo and number, and Field tells the rep when the homeowner opens it.
• Offline. Save a map area to the phone before the crew loses signal.

Leads go into Cedar House Stack, our CRM, or out to the CRM you already use through an open API and webhooks. The roofing page shows how the knock, the inspection and the job connect.

When another hail tool is the better buy

Field is newer than the other three, and some companies will be better served elsewhere.

• You need hail dates before 2020. Field's history starts in January 2020. Hail Recon advertises more than ten years.
• You want maps reviewed by meteorologists. HailTrace makes that its main point. Field shows the radar estimate as it is.
• You run a large sales floor on gamification. SalesRabbit has built its platform around that, with setters, closers and leaderboards.
• You do not work storms at all. If hail is a small part of your year, a canvassing app without a weather layer may be all you need.

Before you knock: check the local rules

Many cities and counties require a solicitor or peddler permit for door to door sales, and some limit the hours. Call the city clerk in each town you plan to work before the crew arrives, and keep a copy of every permit in the truck. Respect every no soliciting sign and every do not knock request, and log it so no one on your team knocks that door again.

Storm crew questions about hail maps and door knocking

Is there free hail map software for roofers?

Some tools have a free level. On October 27, 2026, HailTrace listed a free plan with 1-star maps and paid plans by contact. Interactive Hail Maps listed no free plan, with yearly plans from $999. Cedar House Field has a 30 day trial with no card. A free map is fine for a look, but check how far back its history goes and whether it lets you log doors.

How far back should hail history go?

Far enough to cover the roofs you are selling. Insurance claims usually ask about a recent date of loss, so a few years of history covers most conversations at the door. Longer history helps when a homeowner asks about an older storm or when you are checking a roof's past. Cedar House Field's history starts in January 2020. Interactive Hail Maps advertises more than ten years.

Can a hail map be used to support an insurance claim?

A dated hail report can help show that hail of a certain size was likely at the address on the date of loss, and many contractors include one with their photos. It does not prove the roof was damaged. The adjuster decides that from the inspection, so the report works best beside clear photos of the roof, gutters and soft metals from the same visit.

Should I pay for a hail map if my canvassing app already shows storms?

Only if the extra map gives you something your app does not, such as longer history, meteorologist review, or reports your adjusters already know. Put the same storm in both tools for a street you know well. If they agree and your app already pins doors on top of the swath, a second subscription mostly adds a second login.

What stone size should trigger a hail alert?

Set it from your own inspections, not from a rule of thumb. Look back at the storms where your crews found damage worth a claim and note the radar size at those addresses. Start the alert a little below that size, so you hear about borderline storms, then raise it if the pushes come too often to act on.