Airmagnet or Ekahau?

I've been using Airmagnet for about 14 years, but it's expensive and Tamograph is a bit like early versions of it, so not a bad choice (cheap) and then there's the 'industry leading' Ekahau. (Which isn't cheap either)

I've recently conducted a multi floor survey for a client who specified that I use Ekahau, and these are my concerns with it.

(I don't work for, or have any interest in, any of these software companies, I'm just a WiFi Surveyor and posted this as an FYI for anyone interested)

1. If you conduct a survey on a site that already has multiple deployed AP's (or even use APoS), it doesn't use the physical data collected when you place Simulated AP's, it ignores all sources of attenuation and displays the Simulated AP signal propagation as if the walls Etc. don't exist. You need to add these attenuation sources manually, which then skews the results of the physical survey, since you are adding attenuation on top of attenuation. (Airmagnet bases the simulated attenuation and signal strength on the data already collected from the physical survey, and I'm sure Tamograph does as well).
2. SNR visualisations appear to be way off. i.e You can select two adjacent AP's broadcasting on the same channels on each band and its shows no issues. (They will interfere and they will have an impact on SNR)
3. Channel Interference (as above) is off. It shows the amount of interfering radios (see 6.), not the value of interference.
4. You can't turn off the survey paths in survey mode, best you can do is grey them out, which clutters the floor plan. A nightmare when you have a complex floor plan and conducting multiple surveys.
5. The entire building survey is a single file, so there's no easy way tor export particular parts of it. (You can open it with WinRar (it's an archive like docx), but it's a pile of json files etc, so impossible to pick apart.)
6. You can't filter single SSID's for each AP (not sure how it works with Ekahau, but with AM we filter them out, as multiple SSID's seen on a single radio show as sources of (self) interference...might be OK though, jury's out on that until I give it more thought)

Don't get me wrong, Airmagnet can be a pain in the hoop at times (i.e. having to enter separate MAC addresses etc. for every simulated AP on each band and intermittent crashes during surveys, even more when running Sims)....but you can hit Save at least without stopping the survey, unlike Ekahau which has to be paused/stopped, which also has a habit of locking up all your USB ports after disconnecting the adapter. (If you don't see the notification that it's dropped the adapter you can find yourself conducting a survey that isn't collecting any data.)

Upshot is, I'm not impressed with Ekahau, it's only as good as your planning was before you deployed the AP's.

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#1 is a massive issue though.

Real World Data is Gold, but it ignores this for estimations based on how thick (attenuating) you think a wall might be, rather than how much it was measured to be.

By ignoring the collected data, you essentially have to start with a clean sheet every single time you add or move an AP.

Fine if you have a room or two with a requirement for data traffic only, but when you have a high density deployment for voice & data with 40 or 50 AP's per floor requiring channel planning, it's a damn nightmare.