New drone operations management platform saves UK operators 45 minutes of admin per flight

Dronedesk is a bootstrapped startup established by a commercial drone operator in the UK.

They developed this beautifully simple web application because they wanted to shrink the
admin burden of planning, recording and managing safe and compliant drone flights.

Exeter, United Kingdom | October 12, 2020 – Dronedesk today announces the launch of
its drone operations management platform out of public beta. Dronedesk has been in testing for a full 14 months. During that time they’ve worked with dozens of established commercial drone operators to build an application that really does do everything.

Beta users have reported that, on average, since switching to Dronedesk they’re saving 45 minutes of admin time on every flight they plan.

With Dronedesk, operators can manage their entire drone business end to end. The application provides fully-integrated and comprehensive flight planning, asset management, team management as well as incident, maintenance and flight logging capabilities. It also incorporates several Customer Relationship Management features, meaning users are able to generate, record and track new business leads, issue quotes for projects or individual jobs, send invoices and record payments.

Dronedesk has unlocked, integrated and democratised access to industry-leading data sources including; UTM (via Altitude Angel), eAIP and NOTAMs (NATS), Weather (DarkSky) and numerous others and made it available to all drone operators in one beautifully simple, intuitive and cost-effective application. Data security is deeply baked-in to Dronedesk with encryption used in transit and at rest so users can be confident that their, and their client’s data, is safe and secure.

Dorian Ellis, Founder & Director of Dronedesk and a PfCO holder himself, commented;
“Dronedesk was born out of my frustration with managing spreadsheets, documentation and visiting ten different websites to plan even the simplest of flights. Realising that most other pilots shared that frustration gave me the impetus to start developing a solution.

That was 18 months ago. I believe that the application we’ve now created, through unprecedented collaboration with industry professionals, is game-changing in terms of its ability to make the complex simple, safety a given and compliance a breeze.”

Dronedesk is used every day by over 600 PfCOs in the UK who now run their drone
businesses efficiently and safely through the application. They’ve written dozens of glowing five-star reviews for Dronedesk across TrustPilot, Capterra, Yell, Facebook and Google.

Dorian continued, “I’m incredibly proud of the positive feedback we’ve received. But I’m even more proud of the positive impact that Dronedesk is having on the lives of commercial drone operators. The time they’re saving on admin means they’re able to spend more time flying and earning money!

And on top of that, many of them are reporting that any concerns they may previously have had, about managing compliance and CAA audits, have completely evaporated because they know everything they need to record is now securely stored and instantly accessible in the cloud.”

About Dronedesk

Dronedesk is a trading name of Grey Rock Innovations Ltd a company registered in England and Wales with Company Registration Number 11621288.

It is a “bootstrap startup” based in Exeter, Devon. The project was begun by Dorian Ellis who previously ran a commercial drone operation (Sky View Imagery). It is entirely self-funded by its founder and has no external investors whatsoever. The benefit of bootstrapping is that the company is not answerable to anyone except its users. That means the development of Dronedesk goes in the direction users want instead of the direction that would give investors the best RoI – things which often conflict.

Dorian currently does everything himself from development through to marketing but the
company has plans to recruit over the next several months to help support and expedite the delivery of the product roadmap.

Dronedesk is only available to UK operators at present but it will be expanded to cover the EU, USA and the rest of the world over time. It is offered on a “freemium” pricing model.

There is a basic version, suitable for single-person PfCO operators, which is offered free
forever. Then there are tiered “Pro” versions which offer more features and are priced
according to team size. There is a 20% discount on annually paid plans.

“Dronedesk Search and Rescue” is offered free of charge to charitable SAR organisations
and there is a “Dronedesk Emergency Services” available too. There are also plans to
release an Enterprise version soon which will offer customisations and system integrations for large corporations.

The company also welcomes enquiries from Recognised Assessment Entity businesses who are interested in integrating Dronedesk into their training packages as part of a revenue share partnership.