Before you pick where to go next, do one thing first: get your own data out of Horizon and into your own hands. Once the software shuts off on December 15, 2026, whatever is still trapped inside is hard or impossible to reach. Getting a clean copy now costs you an hour. Losing it costs you years.
This is a plain checklist of what to pull out, in what order, and the one piece almost everyone forgets.
Why do this now, even before you have chosen a new tool
Two reasons. First, exports get slow and support lines get long when everyone moves at once, and that rush is coming. Second, your data is yours no matter where you land, so there is no reason to wait on a software decision to protect it. Get the copy, then shop with a clear head.
The five things to get out of Horizon
1. Your finished reports. Every past inspection report you might ever need to pull up again, for a client question or a legal reason. Save them as PDF files you keep somewhere safe. This is your record of work.
2. Your comment library. This is the years of wording you built, the sentences you reach for on every inspection. This is the piece that matters most and the one people forget. More on it below.
3. Your templates. The structure of your report: the sections, the order, the way you lay out a house. Rebuilding this from memory is painful, so capture what you have.
4. Your client and contact list. Agents, past clients, and anyone you might need to reach or prove you worked for. This is also business you can market to later.
5. Your photos. If Horizon holds photos tied to past reports and you want them, pull those too.
How to actually pull it
Horizon has its own export tools, and the exact buttons live inside the software and in Carson Dunlop's own help. Two honest tips. First, if you cannot find a clean export path for something (your comment library especially), contact Carson Dunlop support directly and ask them for it in writing while support is still running. Second, do not assume it is all in there. Open what you exported and confirm you can read it outside of Horizon.
The one file that is easy to miss: your comment library
Most people remember to save their reports. The comment library is easy to miss, because it never lived as its own file. It just sat inside the software, doing its job for years.
That library is your voice. It is what makes a report sound like you instead of like a stranger. If it stays trapped in Horizon, you either lose it or you rebuild it from scratch somewhere new. So make it its own line on this checklist: get the comment library out as a file you hold.
After you export: check three things
- Can you open the files on your own computer, without Horizon?
- Is your comment wording actually in there, readable, not just a list of report titles?
- Do you have it backed up in a second place (a cloud drive, an external drive) so one dead laptop cannot erase it?
If you want a hand with it
Exporting cleanly can be fiddly, and Horizon was never built to make leaving easy.
This is exactly what the Mach One Reports rescue path handles for you. Our importer reads 7 different file types, so whatever shape Horizon hands you your library in, we can take it and bring your exact words across, unchanged. Nothing gets rewritten into robot text. And when you move to us on the rescue rate, monthly or annual, a real person sits with you one on one, during your free 30 days, and does the import and the template rebuild with you on the call.
Your software is shutting down. We import the library you spent years building.