Why Pay for Commercial Security Cameras?
So, you’ve got a business that needs some security cameras. You’re considering upgrading from Ring or ADT, but aren’t sure if the extra investment is worth it. How do you decide?
Sometimes, commercial-grade equipment isn’t the right choice. Consumer or retail equipment can work just fine for many very small businesses, but as needs scale, they can fail to meet basic use cases.
Consider the factors in this guide to decide whether a simple Ring camera will work for you or whether a more robust installation will be worth the money. If this list looks long, just contact us and we’ll work through these things for you. Estimates are always free!
NUMBER OF CAMERAS
COVERAGE AREA
REMOTE VIEWING NEEDS
MONITORING NEEDS
BANDWIDTH (if you have MSP or network admin)
NETWORK
RETENTION & ARCHIVING
LIFESPAN
PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
SECURITY ENVIRONMENT
BUDGETING
CONTRACTUAL FLEXIBILITY
PRIVACY
TEAM ACCESS
ALARM & ACCESS CONTROL INTEGRATION
API & INTEGRATION NEEDS
INSTALLATION COMPLEXITY
GROWTH EXPECTATIONS
PROCESS OPPORTUNITY
Let’s look at each factor in a bit more depth:
NUMBER OF CAMERAS
The number of cameras you need is the simplest way to determine whether they will need to be commercial hardware. More cameras are a good proxy for many of the other factors discussed in this guide. More cameras generally mean more bandwidth, more coverage, more risk to mitigate, more employees, more systems to integrate with, etc.
Settler Security’s standard heuristic is that a system with more than 5 cameras should be commercial grade. While there are always exceptions, systems above this level normally benefit from being engineered to ensure proper network support and use case fit.
COVERAGE AREA
Larger areas are more difficult to cover with retail hardware. More attention needs to be paid to communication, power delivery, camera resolution, and lens angles. Wi-Fi or even ethernet cabling will begin to fail as cameras get further and further from routers and server cabinets. While a warehouse or ranch, for example, may need fewer than 5 cameras, these types of installations will still benefit from being professionally designed and engineered. If you are trying to cover more than 5,000 square feet of space, consider a professional installation.
REMOTE VIEWING NEEDS
By now, almost any internet-connected camera system will have an app available, including off-the-shelf systems. But if you need to monitor more than a single site, consumer apps may have you juggling multiple logins or digging through mountains of video feeds. Business-grade video management software (VMS) will allow you customize views, filter video, and search for video across multiple sites or a single selected site. Finding video of key incidents is often easier too, with support for natural language searches (like “man in black t-shirt”).
MONITORING NEEDS
Monitoring your video feeds can provide a significant upgrade to the deterrent and responsive capabilities of your system. Violators can be notified of observation via speaker, private guards can be dispatched or rerouted from patrol, and police often respond much more quickly to video-verified alarms. Insurers often provide discounts for properties protected by monitored systems too.
If you want your cameras monitored, whether at an onsite video station or a central station, you will need commercial cameras and VMS to provide integration, signals, and permissions controls (see below).
BANDWIDTH
A significant factor in recommending commercial systems for systems larger than 5 cameras is bandwidth. Video feeds require significant amounts of bandwidth (especially upload speed). Poorly managed camera bandwidth can cause loss of video or dramatically slow network performance for other users. For businesses that rely on internet connections for mission-critical systems like point-of-sale terminals, bookings, or telecommunications (like VOIP), the wrong camera system can literally halt business.
Commercial systems provide hardware and software support to ensure existing bandwidth is used wisely (e.g. off-hours or as-available) before increasing bandwidth from ISPs.
NETWORK
For larger, more complex networks, bandwidth is a concern, but not the only concern. Internet-based cameras and storage devices will need to be configured to align with network security protocols, IP address provisioning methods, rack space, and more. We recommend commercial hardware for any installation covered by a networking managed service provider (MSP) or full-time network administration staff. The system can be designed in partnership with these professionals for optimal performance of the cameras and of other network equipment (like computers).
RETENTION & ARCHIVING
If your business has a particular need to keep video - regulatory, legal, or operational - you should consider a commercial-grade installation. Retail cameras record video, of course, but offer less flexibility to define when video recording is triggered and how long video is kept afterward. Based on the large size of video files, any specific storage needs should be planned for in advance.
LIFESPAN
How long do you want your cameras to last? Consumer equipment is generally designed for home or very small business use, where duty cycles are light. In those contexts, they often last for several years. In many business contexts, however, higher duty cycles and exposure to elements often lead to frustratingly short lifespans for off-the-shelf hardware.
Commercial hardware often does cost a bit more up front, but can easily pay for itself over several years just because it does not need to be replaced as frequently. In fact, many of the cameras Settler Security carries offer lifetime guarantees - if it breaks, you will only pay the cost to swap the camera out, not buy a whole new unit.
PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
Lifespan becomes an especially important consideration in harsh environments. Cameras that will be exposed to rain, wind, harsh sun, heat, cold, or humidity will need to be built tougher. Commercial cameras with outdoor housing and features like IP66 water resistance should be considered.
For manufacturers or any other site that handles volatile chemicals or combustible dusts, cameras with explosion-proof housings are essential for ensuring that electronic charges (which could be an ignition source) are isolated from those materials.
SECURITY ENVIRONMENT
Consumer systems are best suited to sites with few existing security concerns. These include both crime and the cyber/political nature of your site. If there are active security concerns in either case, a professionally planned and installed system that integrates with the Response and Recovery phases of your security plan will be essential.
Ambient crime will pose a risk to lightly-constructed plastic enclosures. These will be easy targets for vandals or for more serious criminals who seek to disable security systems prior to other activities. Commercial systems with vandal-resistant housing aren’t impossible to break, but are more difficult. Criminals know that higher-end systems also generally provide greater coverage and redundancy than a simple doorbell camera. Sites at risk of targeted crime (e.g.locations that handle high cash volumes or hot inventory) will need to be carefully planned.
For sites with activites that would be politically sensitive or attractive to espionage (industrial or political), cyber security will be important. Hardware must be selected that matches the threat profile (e.g. being NDAA compliant for government sites or contractors).
If downtime is likely or is likely to pose significant risks, the system should be installed with higher levels of redundancy, potentially both of camera coverage and of key systems like power and communications.
BUDGETING
For clients who need to provide security within a specific budgeting framework (i.e. OpEx or CapEx), professional installers will be best-placed to provide each option. Settler Security offers cameras that can be purchased up-front, paid over time, or simply leased.
Budget variance and predicability can also be provided for. In-house facilities and security professionals need to know ahead of time what their budget can deliver. Leasing options, combined with robust hardware warranties and service contracts, can provide close to 100% predictability of spending. No more mid-cycle requests for additional budget because a camera died early.
CONTRACTUAL FLEXIBILITY
Many consumer camera systems like ADT are sold with long contracts - many as long as three years. This raises the total cost of ownership (TCO) for the system - in some cases, even higher than a comparable commercial installation. It also makes them a poor fit for any business use case that needs flexibility. Temporary locations, test markets, pop-ups, turnarounds, or other businesses with unusual timing needs may be well-served by evaluating commercial options, especially via leasing programs.
PRIVACY
While all camera providers are sensitive to privacy concerns, most consumer products have standardized privacy policies that may or may not meet a business need. If your business has specific privacy concerns driven by things like legal environment or customer concerns, consider a commercial installation with a VMS that can provide additional layers of privacy, default video encryption, fine-grained access controls, and access logs.
TEAM ACCESS
In addition to privacy concerns, many business beyond a certain size need to grant video feed access to certain employees and contractors. A location manager, case worker, legal team, investigator, or other person may need to see some video feeds or clips but not others.
Commercial solutions will provide flexible, scalable options for granting team members access to the video they need to see. This can be done with custom views, filtered feeds, exports, or archive folders.
ALARM & ACCESS CONTROL INTEGRATION
Integration with a basic alarm and an app is a function that vertically-integrated off-the-shelf systems do very well. If you have a small installation and want everything to work together seamlessly from one or two smartphones, then consumer grade is generally better here.
The more systems you need to control, however, the more seriously you should consider moving to a commercial solution. While these take more configuration work up-front, they will be more powerful and more flexible along most of the dimensions discussed here.
A notable highlight in this area is access control. If you want your cameras and security systems to actively lock or unlock doors and gates, decision access, and record visits, commercial systems are practically a requirement.
API & INTEGRATION NEEDS
If you have a custom solution for your video or your facilities which will need to be connected to your video, you will need to select a commercial provider who offers a high-quality API for managing their hardware and video feeds.
INSTALLATION COMPLEXITY
No matter how many cameras you need, if the installation is going to be complicated, consider a professional installer.
What is complexity? Many of the dimensions discussed here are some form of complexity. Complexity can also come from working with other contractors (e.g. during construction), unusual buildings (like old construction or elevated ceilings), regulatory requirements, expedited timelines, or other constraints. The more of these areas in which you have specific needs, the more complex your installation.
GROWTH EXPECTATIONS
Growing companies will need to consider how their needs may change. They may need additional coverage or video storage. They may need to add sites or staff logins. A well-designed commercial system will be ready to facilitate any expected growth.
In this case, growth refers primarily to planned and ready-to-operationalize growth. A coffee shop that hopes to eventually outgrow its first location may not need to step straight to commercial-grade security systems. A coffee shop that is planning to sell 100 franchise licenses in the next two years, however, may want consider offering its franchisees pre-engineered, pre-priced security systems that easily integrate with HQ solutions.
PROCESS OPPORTUNITY
A final consideration is whether the cameras can be used to improve the business itself. Modern, AI-equipped commercial cameras can provide heat-mapping, object counting, activity-based alerts, and other analytical functions that can be used for process improvement. A business that aims to boost its camera ROI by utilizing these functions should look at commercial hardware and software. Consumer cameras do offer AI functions, but these are generally heavily standardized and do not provide the level of customization or quantitative outputs required for business projects.
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If you’ve read this and decided you’d like to consider commercial-grade cameras for your site, please get in touch!
If you’ve skimmed this guide and decided you’d rather have some help selecting the right camera system, please get in touch for that too!
We love helping our clients solve their camera questions and estimates are always free.