SimpliSafe vs Vivint

SimpliSafe and Vivint are two top-rated home security companies that both offer cutting-edge security systems, features, and monitoring services, but each caters to a different demographic. How do you know which one best fits your security needs though?

That’s where we come in. We bought both systems and installed them in our home to get a first-hand account on their pros and cons. Through our tests, we found that SimpliSafe offers the best security systems for renters but it’s not only for renters. They wowed us with their professional monitoring features too.

Vivint, on the other hand, takes a premium approach with high-quality, high-tech equipment and smart home automation that’s unparalleled in the industry. Its premium features came at a premium price tag though. So, which one’s right for you? Our home security experts liked Vivint more, but there are cases where SimpliSafe is the right choice. Let’s dig in

Key Similarities

Despite their different approaches to home security, when we installed SimpliSafe and Vivint in our home, we found a few key similarities:

• Wireless equipment: SimpliSafe and Vivint offer equipment that connects to the system wirelessly. They both have some hardwired equipment too.
• Security and safety equipment: It’s not just that they both offer wireless options, but they also offer similar pieces of equipment, including entry sensors, motion sensors, glass break sensors, and security cameras.
• Professional monitoring: With either company, you can get help from professionals in monitoring your security system. That includes police, fire, or medical emergency dispatch when necessary.

Key Differences

Of course, with Vivint being a premium provider and SimpliSafe being a value security system, we experience plenty of differences while testing them in our home too. The most notable differences include:

• Installation: While Vivint offers professional installation, SimpliSafe is DIY.
• Self-monitoring: In addition to professional monitoring, SimpliSafe gives users the option to self-monitor their system; Vivint doesn’t.
• Smart home capabilities: Vivint has far more advanced smart home capabilities since it can connect to Z-Wave and Zigbee smart home devices even from third-party brands. SimpliSafe lacks that, and it can only pair up with select smart home products.

Now that we covered the basics, let’s get into the details of our experience with each system.

SimpliSafe Vs. Vivint System Components

SimpliSafe and Vivint both offered us a lot of equipment options. But, they weren’t the same options. Vivint focused more on smart home products while SimpliSafe gave us more options for environmental sensors. Here’s a quick comparison between the equipment that makes Vivint and SimpliSafe stand out:

While Vivint might edge out SimpliSafe on the number of smart home components offered, their system cost us a lot more and that’s not because we bought more components. Vivint’s second gen outdoor camera for instance costs almost $400. You can get an entire SimpliSafe security system package that would protect a modestly sized home for that much.

>> Learn More: The SimpliSafe Outdoor Camera

Top System for Equipment — Tie

If you’re looking for variety, Vivint takes the cake. If you’re looking for value, SimpliSafe is the clear winner.

SimpliSafe Vs. Vivint Installation

The biggest difference we saw with Vivint and SimpliSafe was their installation process. Vivint sent an in-house technician who brought all of our equipment to us and installed it. SimpliSafe shipped our equipment to us with instructions on how to install it ourselves.

Installing SimpliSafe

Installing SimpliSafe requires no tools, no drilling, and no knowledge of security systems at all. It also didn’t cost us a dime since we installed the system ourselves.

The majority of the system is peel-and-stick, which a literal child could handle. Once the sensors are up, all we had to do was plug in the base station and sync everything in my SimpliSafe app. From start to finish, installing SimpliSafe only took around half an hour, so we think the work was well worth the savings. If you really want professional installation, though, SimpliSafe can arrange for a third-party installation service for a fee that starts at $125.

Installing Vivint

In our experience, Vivint’s professional installation service is nothing short of white-glove. The technician who helped us was polite and courteous, even putting booties around his shoes so as not to track dirt into our home.

It’s also evident that he’s knowledgeable about the system, even answering some of the questions we had about why he chose certain areas to place sensors. After the installation, he explained how Vivint works and how to do basic stuff like arming and disarming it before handing us the key to the system, which was the touchscreen control panel.

But, we didn’t get this service for free. Vivint charged us just under $200 to install our whole home security system, although fees start at $99. We never expect premium service to be free though and we found Vivint’s service to be one of the best professional installation services in the market.

Top System Installation — SimpliSafe

This is a matter of preference. Our experience installing both systems was great. Vivint’s all-professional installation service is one of the best we’ve seen, while SimpliSafe gives a choice between professional and DIY installation. That said, we’re giving SimpliSafe the win here. Even though we haven’t tried their professional installation service, just the mere fact that SimpliSafe lets users choose between DIY and professional installation makes it deserving of a point.

Professional Monitoring with SimpliSafe Vs. Vivint

When it comes to home security monitoring, there are two main options available: self-monitoring through your mobile app or 24/7 professional monitoring. If you choose the latter, you’ll get a team of people monitoring your system at all times. If one of your alarms goes off, it’s the professional monitors that will contact emergency services for you, if need be. This can be especially helpful if you’re on vacation or simply preoccupied.

We recommend professional monitoring whenever possible, but SimpliSafe gave us the choice to self-monitor our system for free or a lower monthly fee if we only wanted cloud storage for our security camera recordings. It’s one of our favorite self-monitored home security systems. Let’s get into more detail.

SimpliSafe Vs. Vivint Monitoring Options

With SimpliSafe, the cost of your monitoring will depend on the services you get, whereas Vivint bases it on the amount of cameras you have. Let’s start with SimpliSafe.

SimpliSafe Professional Monitoring Options

Both the Standard and the Core plans include 24/7 professional and environmental monitoring as well as cellular backup which kept our system in contact with SimpliSafe’s monitoring center even when our internet went down during a thunderstorm. We could also control our system from anywhere using our phone with the SimpliSafe app. That’s how we got our notifications too.

As for the Core plan, you’ll get all those plus live guard protection, secret alarms, and cloud storage for up to 10 cameras. Live guard protection is our favorite feature from SimpliSafe. It lets SimpliSafe’s monitoring agents connect to our Smart Alarm Wireless Indoor Camera and speak through the two-way audio feature in an attempt to scare away any intruders. To maintain our privacy, we kept our camera’s privacy shutter closed unless our system was armed.

Live guard protection gets expanded to the Wireless Outdoor Camera Pro with the Pro or Pro Plus monitoring plan. Those are too expensive for us though at $49.99 or $79.99 per month respectively.

SimpliSafe also offers cloud storage separate from any monitoring at a rate of $9.99 per month for up to 10 cameras , if you prefer. As we said, we prefer professional monitoring, so we went with the Core plan.

Vivint makes it a lot more simple. Our monitoring price was based entirely on the equipment we bought. That makes sense. More equipment means more for their professionals to monitor. Rates started at $30 per month and can go up to $50 per month when buying cameras. This ensures all Vivint systems come equipped with its full suite of capabilities.

Vivint’s prices aren’t terribly cheap, especially when we added our monitoring price to the monthly fee for our equipment financing. Vivint offers financing options where you pay for your equipment over four or five years, which is actually a good thing because Vivint security systems can be quite expensive. We took them up on their financing offer since it was zero percent interest.

That said, if you want to keep your monthly expenses low, you can actually pay up-front for the equipment, but it will run you at least $800.

Clearly, SimpliSafe has lower prices, with its highest option at $31.99 a month being slightly higher than Vivint’s lowest option at $29.99 a month. Keep in mind that the bill for our Vivint equipment was $844 compared to the $559 we paid for our SimpliSafe system, so you’re going to spend a lot more money with Vivint than with SimpliSafe no matter what.

SimpliSafe Vs. Vivint Contracts

While all SimpliSafe contracts are month-to-month, Vivint requires you to sign either a 3.5 or a five-year contract. Vivint charges a cancellation fee too, so we felt locked in with that contract. We prefer the flexibility SimpliSafe offers in case our financial situation changes.

SimpliSafe Vs. Vivint Moving Policies

As SimpliSafe has DIY installation, all we would have to do if we moved to a new place is uninstall our system and reinstall it in our new home. SimpliSafe still offers their third-party professional installation service for moving too, which would cost $125. Vivint, on the other hand, spelled out in our contract that we would need to pay them to reinstall our system in our new place. There are a few exceptions like if you’re in the military and are required to move, but they’re few and far between.

Top System for Monitoring — SimpliSafe

To me, the choice is clear. SimpliSafe’s monitoring is more affordable and flexible than Vivint’s, with monthly contracting and lower monthly prices. Okay, now it’s SimpliSafe two, Vivint zero. The next two rounds should be interesting.

Customer Support with SimpliSafe Vs. Vivint

Both SimpliSafe and Vivint offer customer support in the form of phone lines, live chats, and online help centers. SimpliSafe lets you send support an email or submit a form online too. Although SimpliSafe gives more options to contact their support, we liked Vivint’s support more when dealing with our system. Since Vivint professionally installed our system, they also offered professional support. That means if something went wrong with our system, they would send out a technician to fix it.

With SimpliSafe, that troubleshooting was put on our shoulders with the help of a support agent on the phone. And that’s not to say SimpliSafe’s customer support is bad. Every time we contacted them, they were helpful and got straight to the point. But, it’s hard to beat the peace of mind knowing that a professional technician will show up and fix an issue if it gets out of hand.

Top System for Customer Support — Vivint

We put Vivint and SimpliSafe customer support to the test more than once. Any issue we ran into, whether it was an unclear product description or help installing a video doorbell, we took it as an opportunity to test their customer support capabilities. And while both helped us resolve every issue we had, we preferred Vivint since they could send a technician to our house if we couldn’t fix an issue with our system.

SimpliSafe Vs. Vivint Apps

Now it’s time for the final round, the apps. We’re talking smart security here, so a user-friendly app is essential to monitoring and controlling your security system. Who will break the tie and reign supreme?

The SimpliSafe App

From the SimpliSafe app, we were able to arm and disarm our system, control connected devices, receive notifications, livestream and download footage. Those last two features were available to us since we subscribed to the Core plan. If we only got Standard monitoring or self-monitored our system for free, we would not have been able to download footage.

The app has amazing ratings, a 4.8 from the Apple store and a 4.5 from the Google Play store.

The Vivint App

The Vivint app has the exact same capabilities of the SimpliSafe app, plus it allows you to see and speak to visitors through your video doorbell. With ratings of 3.8 from Android users and 4.6 from iPhone users, the Vivint app works well for most users. The main complaint from Android users was it being slow and freezing from time to time.

Where Vivint’s app stands out though is its smart home capabilities. Since Vivint pairs with so many more third-party devices, we could control more of our smart home through the Vivint app than we could with SimpliSafe.

Top System App — Vivint

Both of these systems have some of the best apps in the security games, but overall, we prefer the smart home control of Vivint. It let us control more than just our home security system and cut down on the amount of apps we need installed on our phone.

Recap of SimpliSafe Vs. Vivint

Overall, we’re calling Vivint the winner. While SimpliSafe excels at what it does, and it’s actually better in many areas, Vivint’s premium home security capabilities made us feel safer. That said, we appreciate SimpliSafe’s flexibility even though it has a more limited equipment choice and fewer smart home features. There’s a lot to be said about not having to sign a long-term contract.

With all that being said, it’s really up to you. SimpliSafe and Vivint are both great. You just need to pick the one that works better for your unique home security needs. So here’s our recommendation:

Want to learn more about Vivint? Check out our review of the Vivint home security system.