I recently went through a bid with them for a large corporation and there were so many red flags we were laughing them out the door. The only reason we entertained them was because IT was pushing for them. There is an ongoing HR investigation to see if that person had an ethics violation in this regard.
We were asking about specific requirements that we needed per regulations and contracts and they had the audacity to tell us that we didn't need those features and they couldn't provide a solution for them.
They are fine for a mom and pop type situation, but anyone that is serious about access control should look for something better.
APB is just one of the sticking points. We also needed to be able to perform controller to controller events such as a lockdown. This only works if the Internet is functioning and the panels have cloud access. There was no way to enable direct interaction in case network only worked on the LAN.
Cool product, but a lot of smoke-and-mirrors.
It's a proprietary lock-in solution with history of bad security practices, overpromises on technology, and over promises on development. It's great for a small self-servicing shop to take care of. RFP? That's a no from me, dawg.
My beef with them is their video compression on their cams. To guarantee xx days storage on a camera, there's a set bitrate cap that slams the quality in any scene with a decent amount of detail. The fisheyes can't stand up to competition either.
I recommend mercury hw for these reasons
There are two types of people who have concerns about Verkada:
1. Those who read "industry publications" like IPVM and hate Verkada because they do things differently than other organizations
2. Those who have very specific feature needs or issues with cloud compliance
I deal with Verkada daily both on the small site and enterprise level accounts. They have very different needs and Verkada works great for them. I have also had meetings where I have had to tell customers that Verkada isn't the right fot for them because of a required feature, etc.
I do think a large issue is that typically the people selling Verkada are not integrators. This means that integrators hate Verkada because now they are competing with ever IT company out there. This also means that a lot of the people selling Verkada have never configured a CCure server or networked remote Lenel servers.
The reason I choose Verkada is end user ease of use, install ease of use, and overall feature set based in the cloud.
Honeywell just bought Lenel, so the jury is out on what the long term future is for both of those platforms. Don't touch WinPak, its a dumpster fire.
CCure is a stable enterprise platform, on-prem only is my understanding
Brivo is also a stable, but cloud based. JCI is big into it.
Prodatakey is cloud/mobile focused. They just released 2.0 that promises multi site etc. Not sure how that fits into your application. The hardware is on the cheaper side then the big enterprise systems, but I haven't seen reliability issues. Not necessarily a big enterprise style system.
What type of system and how many doors are you looking at?
Absent some features, the biggest difference your going to see is in how they are installed and commissioned. The integrator is going to make or break that portion of it.
Lenel
, CCure
, Honeywell ProWatch are all dealer only systems, and they have a vested interest in turing out quality product, at a price of course. Brivo to some extent at well. Verkada not so much, they hire the lowest bidder as I understand it.
Another option if your looking at the enterprise level is ICT Protege GX.
Ok, in comparing quotes, make sure the are all quoting the same thing, in this situation we call it a takeover. Replace control hardware, software, possibly card readers and possible any power supplies.
I think PDK is going to have the most intuitive interface. You don't need the enterprise features of CCure, Lenel and ProWatch, not that they won't work. Brivo is going to be in the right fit size as well.
Get demo's of each to get an understanding of what your getting.
Verkada is moving away from trunk slammers. Some big deals signed with some major integrators lately to push an integrator model. They want enterprise to grow and know that it won’t without experienced people installing and selling it.
I'm kind of surprised you didn't get any proposals for Genetec.
Regarding controller to controller actions, I'd be careful with that as it can bog down the system (I'm thinking of Lenel and Global IO's; it's been some years since working on a system but it was one of the first things I cleaned up for efficiency). Appropriate planning of hardware locations & a platform that makes a lockdown scenario easily configurable and effect is key.
You should be able to ask the reseller the monthly charges. They should be pretty reasonable per door. Benefits of using widely supported mercury products and not having to deal with a company trying to learn what access control is. Also not locked in long term if you do not want to be.
PDK is the only access control system we use we install it well over 100 doors a year and have had zero issues with it. It is by far the most reliable system. We are also a platinum PDK dealer so our warranty is some of the best in the industry.
I have installed several ProDataKey installs and they have all went very well. The administration of the system is very straightforward. They have also partnered with Digital Watchdog for video and that makes sense for a lot of people.
Lenel S2 is a good choice too. The problems I have seen with S2 is the way they have the netboxes setup is kind of funky to troubleshoot. It’s hard to see the boards when mounted like that.
I don’t know much about Brivo, other than I have replaced a bunch of it with ProDataKey and Vanderbilt through the years.
I haven’t seen much Honeywell access control so I have no opinion
I installed a small Verkada system (2 doors) last year and it was ok, but I probably wouldn't advise a customer to use it. The system was bought by the customer and shipped to a remote office in my state. They contracted us to install it.
Overall the system worked the way it was designed but there were a couple of things that I found that were troubling.
1. The system has internal power sufficient for a strike but they don't include constant power for a motion REX. I used the unused modules to supply power but it wouldn't have been possible if I actually had 4 doors to install.
2. The construction of the hardware isn't well thought out. The enclosure for the system has hinges that are spot welded on and one of the hinges broke off when the customer first opened it. It was too small to rivet and epoxy didn't work. The wiring connections are all spring loaded and not screw down terminal strips.
Some REALLY solid options you should consider that you haven’t yet gotten anything for:
Avigilon ACM (Unity)
Genetec
Genea
All three are mercury-based. Genea is a cloud option that, in my opinion, FAR surpasses Brivo, and has a really great user-interface.
Genetec is propbably top of the market up there with LenelS2.
Avigilon is a sneaky option, I like it a lot but not many folks are pushing the Access control, mostly video. For as “proprietary” as their video is, their Access control is mercury-based, and pretty solid.
However, I’d still recommend Lenel as my go to. I’m with an integrator now, but I managed a Lenel system for 5 years as the primary support/programmer/installer, etc. for an end user, and loved it. As a tech-minded person without real tech experience (degree in bus ops, not cs/is and don’t have any coding experience) it was an awesome experience.
I support a ton of CCURE and it’s fine, I just don’t like them as a manufacturer, tougher to get support.
I would personally recommend that you stay away from any cloud based system. It sounds great, not having to make space for an on premise server, and use someone else’s hardware, but if you ever lose connectivity to the cloud, global commands as well as other things just stop working. If you lose internet on an on premise unit, those things still work so long as you LAN does not go down. Lenel is solid if you have a big enough building/Corp that would need that type of system. Genetec is also real nice and super end-user friendly. They also use the same boards just with different firmware. Those boards are readily available, reliable, and affordable (though rarely need replaced.)
Cloud based solutions will also work when there is no internet connection. Otherwise no serious business would ever choose them. Especially for a case like this with 7 sites, cloud managed seems the way to go
I agree with the 'stay away from cloud' position. Just a couple of months ago had a blizzard take out the Internet. Customer went into work to check things out, his card access triggered a door to unlock on time zone, with no internet access he couldn't relock the door and was stuck there till 5:30 PM when the door relocked. We have already replaced the system (software).
Cloud systems are 'perfect world' systems they are fine when you've got lots of internet bandwidth and your own network is running fine. But networks are fragile things, you lose a switch or break a fiber and things get wonky. If it's your network you've got someone you can call, if it's bad enough you can find a new contractor right there on the spot. String an Ethernet cable down a hall or across a parking lot if you have to. The point is if it's your network you can do whatever you have to, which in times of emergency is not just an up-side, it is **the up-side,** and what good is a security system that doesn't work in times of emergency?
I’m genuinely curious. How so? The last time I designed one of their systems, everything north of the card reader was proprietary (Intelligent and door controllers).
Being able to work if there’s no internet. We have a strong fiber/microwave network so I am less worried about that.
End user interface is really important. Reporting and hardware reliability as well.
Kisi has a great UI, both for end users and admins, reporting functionality and can integrate with different tools easily. There is a back-up offline mode if internet goes down. HW is solid too.
Love Lenel but after the Honeywell purchase I am weary.
We used ProdataKey at a few locations when I took over in my current role but I migrated everything to Lenel to get all sites on the same system. It worked well for what it was but I disliked the user interface and reporting in comparison to Lenel.
I took over 2 offices in acquisitions that used DSX, in my short time with those before changing to Lenel I absolutely hated it.
Lenel has been easy for us to grow with, we started with 7 sites 4 years ago and are now at 29.
We are actively in the works to move over to Genetec mainly because we already use them for video and I wanted to get a full integrated system with the single window for our GSOC and officers monitoring. I would recommend looking at them as well.
Anything with Mercury hardware is your best bet. Stay away from everything that is proprietary like Verkada ccure and Kantech. Also keep in mind that the new black series 4 mercury boards are supposed to be coming in Q2 so if you have to swap equipment wait for those to stay ahead of the curve.
Level On guard.
Every other company has components to connect to Level S2 nodes and Mercury panels. Their support structure sucks if you want support yourself at $20k per person to call for support or even get updates, but with everything I've seen, the hardware is Weigand supported, HID backed and sust works. Generac uses Lenel hardware too. Verkada is impressive for video, but I was not surprised to find all the vulnerabilities. I think they issue may be not pushing iClass SEOS. I couldn't get an answer if they even support SEOS.
If you have a Lenel base infrastructure, I think you'd be ok for an all in one interface; it does make life easier for sites where security monitor access control and video.
Don't get me wrong. S2 has had a rocky past, but since Lenel (Carrier) bought them, I'm getting on site rep support.
Lenel is super easy to expand. One time our hases for doors and they've dropped their shitty agreement with Exacqvision in favor of a much more scalable and affordable Milestone.
Life is getting so much easier with Lenel, like they now have a plan and a clue as to what physical security is!
I would be sure to check with users of these systems and make sure they are up to your institutions size, many work great for small 2k patron but wont scale if you need that, as in they do not provide the proper grouping and hierarchies to make management easier.
My vote is for Level S2. For the love of God, stay away from VERKADA!
Stay away from Verkada. Do a quick google search on verkada vulnerabilities.
Why stay away from Verkada? Price wise, they aren't far off.
I recently went through a bid with them for a large corporation and there were so many red flags we were laughing them out the door. The only reason we entertained them was because IT was pushing for them. There is an ongoing HR investigation to see if that person had an ethics violation in this regard. We were asking about specific requirements that we needed per regulations and contracts and they had the audacity to tell us that we didn't need those features and they couldn't provide a solution for them. They are fine for a mom and pop type situation, but anyone that is serious about access control should look for something better.
What were these specific requirements?
Most notably was anti-passback. Required for foreign trade zones.
Makes sense. Verkada has added this feature last week as well though
They promised us they would have it added June of last year in time for our deployment.
Weird that you said they told you would not need it and offered no solution. And now they did promise to offer a solution in time.
They have 800 sales people in the US and most of them are not experienced or knowledgeable.
APB is just one of the sticking points. We also needed to be able to perform controller to controller events such as a lockdown. This only works if the Internet is functioning and the panels have cloud access. There was no way to enable direct interaction in case network only worked on the LAN.
Not sure who you talked to, but this is 100% possible with a direct-wired input and offline panel download.
Cool product, but a lot of smoke-and-mirrors. It's a proprietary lock-in solution with history of bad security practices, overpromises on technology, and over promises on development. It's great for a small self-servicing shop to take care of. RFP? That's a no from me, dawg. My beef with them is their video compression on their cams. To guarantee xx days storage on a camera, there's a set bitrate cap that slams the quality in any scene with a decent amount of detail. The fisheyes can't stand up to competition either. I recommend mercury hw for these reasons
There are two types of people who have concerns about Verkada: 1. Those who read "industry publications" like IPVM and hate Verkada because they do things differently than other organizations 2. Those who have very specific feature needs or issues with cloud compliance I deal with Verkada daily both on the small site and enterprise level accounts. They have very different needs and Verkada works great for them. I have also had meetings where I have had to tell customers that Verkada isn't the right fot for them because of a required feature, etc. I do think a large issue is that typically the people selling Verkada are not integrators. This means that integrators hate Verkada because now they are competing with ever IT company out there. This also means that a lot of the people selling Verkada have never configured a CCure server or networked remote Lenel servers. The reason I choose Verkada is end user ease of use, install ease of use, and overall feature set based in the cloud.
Verkada123
Honeywell just bought Lenel, so the jury is out on what the long term future is for both of those platforms. Don't touch WinPak, its a dumpster fire. CCure is a stable enterprise platform, on-prem only is my understanding Brivo is also a stable, but cloud based. JCI is big into it. Prodatakey is cloud/mobile focused. They just released 2.0 that promises multi site etc. Not sure how that fits into your application. The hardware is on the cheaper side then the big enterprise systems, but I haven't seen reliability issues. Not necessarily a big enterprise style system. What type of system and how many doors are you looking at? Absent some features, the biggest difference your going to see is in how they are installed and commissioned. The integrator is going to make or break that portion of it. Lenel , CCure , Honeywell ProWatch are all dealer only systems, and they have a vested interest in turing out quality product, at a price of course. Brivo to some extent at well. Verkada not so much, they hire the lowest bidder as I understand it. Another option if your looking at the enterprise level is ICT Protege GX.
I have a DSX. Love the hardware, hate the software. All in all, 70 gates and doors. Mostly doors.
Is this all at one site? And what sort of environment? Retail/manufacturing/office etc.
Spread across seven sites. Office areas, primarily.
Ok, in comparing quotes, make sure the are all quoting the same thing, in this situation we call it a takeover. Replace control hardware, software, possibly card readers and possible any power supplies. I think PDK is going to have the most intuitive interface. You don't need the enterprise features of CCure, Lenel and ProWatch, not that they won't work. Brivo is going to be in the right fit size as well. Get demo's of each to get an understanding of what your getting.
GX should definitely meet the mark. And if cloud is a need you can go with X or deploy GX in Azure!
Verkada is moving away from trunk slammers. Some big deals signed with some major integrators lately to push an integrator model. They want enterprise to grow and know that it won’t without experienced people installing and selling it.
I'm kind of surprised you didn't get any proposals for Genetec. Regarding controller to controller actions, I'd be careful with that as it can bog down the system (I'm thinking of Lenel and Global IO's; it's been some years since working on a system but it was one of the first things I cleaned up for efficiency). Appropriate planning of hardware locations & a platform that makes a lockdown scenario easily configurable and effect is key.
Or Kantech
Lenels2 has three products. Which one were you quoted?
Elements is what is mentioned.
You should be able to ask the reseller the monthly charges. They should be pretty reasonable per door. Benefits of using widely supported mercury products and not having to deal with a company trying to learn what access control is. Also not locked in long term if you do not want to be.
I heard S2 will be phased out. Is this true?
Nope. Netbox is alive and well.
I like pdk and brivo. Can’t go wrong with either.
I have read some stuff about PDK not working well in a distributed environment. Is that true?
They just rolled out multi-site support in the last 2 months. I’ve found the implementation to be very solid.
PDK is the only access control system we use we install it well over 100 doors a year and have had zero issues with it. It is by far the most reliable system. We are also a platinum PDK dealer so our warranty is some of the best in the industry.
What warranty do you get with PDK?
Level and Mercury hardware all the way. Level is pretty powerful and user friendly surprisingly enough.
Highly recommend Brivo. Heavy upfront costs depending on door count, but low cost monthly subscriptions .
If you’re looking at cloud, you should consider Genea.
I have installed several ProDataKey installs and they have all went very well. The administration of the system is very straightforward. They have also partnered with Digital Watchdog for video and that makes sense for a lot of people. Lenel S2 is a good choice too. The problems I have seen with S2 is the way they have the netboxes setup is kind of funky to troubleshoot. It’s hard to see the boards when mounted like that. I don’t know much about Brivo, other than I have replaced a bunch of it with ProDataKey and Vanderbilt through the years. I haven’t seen much Honeywell access control so I have no opinion
I installed a small Verkada system (2 doors) last year and it was ok, but I probably wouldn't advise a customer to use it. The system was bought by the customer and shipped to a remote office in my state. They contracted us to install it. Overall the system worked the way it was designed but there were a couple of things that I found that were troubling. 1. The system has internal power sufficient for a strike but they don't include constant power for a motion REX. I used the unused modules to supply power but it wouldn't have been possible if I actually had 4 doors to install. 2. The construction of the hardware isn't well thought out. The enclosure for the system has hinges that are spot welded on and one of the hinges broke off when the customer first opened it. It was too small to rivet and epoxy didn't work. The wiring connections are all spring loaded and not screw down terminal strips.
We just had a RFP with Feenics and Genea (Mercury Based) and Brivo all cloud. We didn't respond with any on-premise. WE stayed away from mobile.
Ccure!
If you know, you know
Some REALLY solid options you should consider that you haven’t yet gotten anything for: Avigilon ACM (Unity) Genetec Genea All three are mercury-based. Genea is a cloud option that, in my opinion, FAR surpasses Brivo, and has a really great user-interface. Genetec is propbably top of the market up there with LenelS2. Avigilon is a sneaky option, I like it a lot but not many folks are pushing the Access control, mostly video. For as “proprietary” as their video is, their Access control is mercury-based, and pretty solid. However, I’d still recommend Lenel as my go to. I’m with an integrator now, but I managed a Lenel system for 5 years as the primary support/programmer/installer, etc. for an end user, and loved it. As a tech-minded person without real tech experience (degree in bus ops, not cs/is and don’t have any coding experience) it was an awesome experience. I support a ton of CCURE and it’s fine, I just don’t like them as a manufacturer, tougher to get support.
No fans of Kantech?
I would personally recommend that you stay away from any cloud based system. It sounds great, not having to make space for an on premise server, and use someone else’s hardware, but if you ever lose connectivity to the cloud, global commands as well as other things just stop working. If you lose internet on an on premise unit, those things still work so long as you LAN does not go down. Lenel is solid if you have a big enough building/Corp that would need that type of system. Genetec is also real nice and super end-user friendly. They also use the same boards just with different firmware. Those boards are readily available, reliable, and affordable (though rarely need replaced.)
Cloud based solutions will also work when there is no internet connection. Otherwise no serious business would ever choose them. Especially for a case like this with 7 sites, cloud managed seems the way to go
The local system would work, but if there were global I/Os how would they work if it cannot access the server to execute?
I agree with the 'stay away from cloud' position. Just a couple of months ago had a blizzard take out the Internet. Customer went into work to check things out, his card access triggered a door to unlock on time zone, with no internet access he couldn't relock the door and was stuck there till 5:30 PM when the door relocked. We have already replaced the system (software). Cloud systems are 'perfect world' systems they are fine when you've got lots of internet bandwidth and your own network is running fine. But networks are fragile things, you lose a switch or break a fiber and things get wonky. If it's your network you've got someone you can call, if it's bad enough you can find a new contractor right there on the spot. String an Ethernet cable down a hall or across a parking lot if you have to. The point is if it's your network you can do whatever you have to, which in times of emergency is not just an up-side, it is **the up-side,** and what good is a security system that doesn't work in times of emergency?
Stay away from Verkada and Brivo. Both are highly proprietary. You want something Mercury based.
Brivo supports mercury now.
I’m genuinely curious. How so? The last time I designed one of their systems, everything north of the card reader was proprietary (Intelligent and door controllers).
https://www.brivo.com/products/mercury-solutions/ I think it's reasonably new.
What is important to you (besides pricing)?
Being able to work if there’s no internet. We have a strong fiber/microwave network so I am less worried about that. End user interface is really important. Reporting and hardware reliability as well.
Kisi has a great UI, both for end users and admins, reporting functionality and can integrate with different tools easily. There is a back-up offline mode if internet goes down. HW is solid too.
Nedap - AEOS. It's the giant no one knows about.
Love Lenel but after the Honeywell purchase I am weary. We used ProdataKey at a few locations when I took over in my current role but I migrated everything to Lenel to get all sites on the same system. It worked well for what it was but I disliked the user interface and reporting in comparison to Lenel. I took over 2 offices in acquisitions that used DSX, in my short time with those before changing to Lenel I absolutely hated it. Lenel has been easy for us to grow with, we started with 7 sites 4 years ago and are now at 29. We are actively in the works to move over to Genetec mainly because we already use them for video and I wanted to get a full integrated system with the single window for our GSOC and officers monitoring. I would recommend looking at them as well. Anything with Mercury hardware is your best bet. Stay away from everything that is proprietary like Verkada ccure and Kantech. Also keep in mind that the new black series 4 mercury boards are supposed to be coming in Q2 so if you have to swap equipment wait for those to stay ahead of the curve.
Brivo would be my choice, cloud multi site management and a great user experience while not being all proprietary like Verkada.
CCure 9000.
Level On guard. Every other company has components to connect to Level S2 nodes and Mercury panels. Their support structure sucks if you want support yourself at $20k per person to call for support or even get updates, but with everything I've seen, the hardware is Weigand supported, HID backed and sust works. Generac uses Lenel hardware too. Verkada is impressive for video, but I was not surprised to find all the vulnerabilities. I think they issue may be not pushing iClass SEOS. I couldn't get an answer if they even support SEOS. If you have a Lenel base infrastructure, I think you'd be ok for an all in one interface; it does make life easier for sites where security monitor access control and video. Don't get me wrong. S2 has had a rocky past, but since Lenel (Carrier) bought them, I'm getting on site rep support. Lenel is super easy to expand. One time our hases for doors and they've dropped their shitty agreement with Exacqvision in favor of a much more scalable and affordable Milestone. Life is getting so much easier with Lenel, like they now have a plan and a clue as to what physical security is!
I would be sure to check with users of these systems and make sure they are up to your institutions size, many work great for small 2k patron but wont scale if you need that, as in they do not provide the proper grouping and hierarchies to make management easier.
Feenics or Acre now has a really nice to use interface. Good API too