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Every Vivint Smart Home system includes a one on one product consultation, free professional installation, and 24/7 customer support and monitoring. The suite of products typically included in a Vivint Smart Home security system includes:The total cost of a home security system can be measured in three phases: purchase price, installation costs, and operating costs over time. Purchase price varies by provider, equipment package, and payment options. Vivint Smart Home, for example, offers a consumer financing option that gives customers the ability to customize a state of the art smart home security package for little to no upfront cost. Learn more about consumer financing here. Some of the lower quality home security systems come with only basic door and window sensors that customers can easily install themselves. More high end equipment packages—like the ones Vivint Smart Home provides—come with a touch screen control panel and the option to add outdoor home security cameras, all of which require professional installation. Professional installation services may cost up to $250, although special offers that waive installation fees are common. Learn more about professional installation services here. The home security market offers many plug and play equipment packages that center around an audible alarm to deter intruders who trigger a door or window sensor. They do not offer professional monitoring, so there’s no monthly service contract involved.

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Some systems store recorded video locally on an SD card or a solid state drive, while others offer cloud storage. Locally stored video is a good choice for do it yourselfers on a budget, but you have to be careful not to overwrite video you may need later. Cloud storage makes it easy to store and access recorded video, but it can cost hundreds of dollars per year depending on your subscription. Some systems offer both cloud storage and local storage, and some provide a dedicated storage drive that gives you DVR capabilities with time lapse recording, which makes it easy to find a video event that took place at a specific point in time. All of the systems we've tested feature an app that lets you use your smartphone as your command center to arm and disarm the system, create rules, add and delete components, and receive push notifications when alarms are triggered. Most apps also allow you to do things like view live and recorded video, lock and unlock doors, change thermostat settings, and silence alarms. Some apps will even use your phone's location services to automatically arm and disarm the system according to your physical location. The more expensive systems usually come with a wall mounted panel that acts as a communications hub, with a touch screen display that allows you to do everything the app does. The display lets you communicate with a professional monitoring service when an alarm is triggered and view video from any of the installed security cameras. While many systems use wireless components that are installed using double sided tape, some high end systems use components that require professional installation. These soup to nuts systems typically cost considerably more than DIY systems and offer 24/7 professional monitoring, but you may have to enter into a multi year contract and pay a hefty termination fee if you break it.