Vivint vs. Ring: The Smart Home Specialist vs. The Security Cam Specialist

If you’ve spent some time searching for the right home security systems, you might have noticed the phenomenon where they all sort of blend together after a while. They all offer security cameras, they all offer motion sensors, they all have an app, and they all have some kind of monitoring.

What’s the difference?

Well, the devil is in the details, so they say. And today we’re going to be examining the details of two high-ranking security systems, Vivint and Ring. They both offer top-notch protections, but have differing philosophies and approaches to protecting their customers. So, we installed them both in our home to find out which approach works best.

Here we’re going to highlight their similarities and point out some key differences to help you get a better understanding of each so you can make a well-informed decision based on our personal experience. We’re going to compare their features, monitoring, and overall value. Ready to get started? Let’s dive in.

Vivint and Ring’s Key Similarities

Ring and Vivint both have the same goal: to protect your home from burglars, intruders, and other home security threats. As such, they had some key similarities while we were testing them. Here are some of them:

• Wireless equipment: Vivint and Ring are two of the best wireless security systems. Everything from sensors and cameras to keypads and control panels mesh together wirelessly.
• Security camera options: Vivint and Ring offer indoor and outdoor video coverage via security cameras and video doorbells.
• App access: Controlling a security system is easy with either brand, as both of them offer smartphone apps for quick and convenient remote control.
• Voice AI integration: In addition to remote smartphone control, Vivint and Ring work with Alexa and Google Assistant to offer voice control.
• Professional emergency response: Lastly, Vivint and Ring can both be monitored by a monitoring center, also known as professional monitoring. We bought both services’ professional monitoring plans too.

Vivint and Ring’s Key Differences

Outside of those things, we don’t see how Vivint and Ring could be more different. To give you an overview of how the two brands compare, here are the key areas where they differ:

• Cost: Ring positions itself as an affordable home security option, while Vivint stands on the opposite end as the premium choice for home security.
• Installation: Vivint technicians installed our system for us to ensure a smooth and successful setup. With Ring, we installed our system ourselves, although they offer professional installation through a third-party.
• Self-monitoring: We could self-monitor our Ring system to avoid monthly fees while Vivint required us to pay for ongoing professional monitoring to use the system.
• Smart home security: Vivint home automation offers a premium smart home security solution that we used to automate our smart devices such as our smart thermostat and lights. While Ring supports integrations with third-party smart devices, its home automation features didn’t offer us as much control as Vivint.
• Security camera options: Ring offers a wide range of security cameras and doorbell cameras, and most of these cameras offer special features such as an integrated smart light and radar-assisted motion detection. While Vivint’s security cameras are some of the most advanced we’ve tested, they only offer four options including their doorbell camera.

Now that we’ve compared Vivint and Ring on a high level, let’s zoom in.

Equipment Comparison

Security systems typically consist of a central control device, security and environment sensors, and security cameras. Vivint and Ring offer all those pieces, so we tested them all to see how their equipment compares.

Central Device

The central device that controlled our Vivint system is called the Vivint Smart Hub. It’s a tablet-like, touch-screen keypad.

On the hardware side, it features a built-in cellular chip for communication and it also supports Wi-Fi. That cellular chip ensured our system could keep contact with Vivint’s monitoring centers even if our Wi-Fi went down. On top of that, it has a 24-hour battery backup.

On the software side, the Vivint tablet runs Vivint’s custom security software that allowed it to control, access, and modify our security system. It even let us see our security camera footage right on the screen. Even with all of these capabilities, it was still easy for us to use with plenty of customizability.

Ring takes the complete opposite approach. Ring’s central device is a base station, which is essentially just a router-like device to which sensors connect wirelessly. It doesn’t have a touch-screen interface unlike the Vivint Smart Hub. Instead, it came with a wireless keypad we could place anywhere within the base station’s range to arm and disarm our system.

The base station connected to our Wi-Fi by default. It also came with a built-in siren and battery backup. If our base station lost connection to our Wi-Fi, the integrated cellular chip would kick on to restore connection. That’s different from Vivint’s system which always stays connected to both Wi-Fi and cellular. The cellular chip for Ring only activated when we paid for the professional monitoring plan.

Sensors

Vivint offers a wide array of sensors, all of them wireless, to connect to the Vivint Smart Hub. For security monitoring, Vivint offers motion sensors, different types of door and window sensors, and glass break sensors. Notably, Vivint offers a recessed-type door sensor that installs flush with the door frame so as not to interfere with your door’s design. And since Vivint professionally installs their systems, we didn’t need to break out the drill to get it hidden in the door frame.

Vivint also offers hazard sensors. These include smoke alarms, CO detectors, water and flood sensors, and freeze sensors. We took a closer look at these sensors in our Vivint home security review but the short of it is they offer more capabilities than we imagined possible and they were actually useful.

Ring, on the other hand, offers just the bare essentials. There are indoor entry sensors, outdoor entry sensors for detached sheds, motion sensors, glass break sensors, flood and freeze sensors, and smoke and CO alarm listeners.

Keep in mind that the smoke and CO listeners don’t detect smoke and gas leaks. They simply listen for the sound of smoke and CO alarms, so we needed to keep our existing smoke and CO detectors.

Security Cameras

Vivint offers three security cameras: the Vivint Indoor Camera Pro, Vivint Outdoor Camera Pro, Spotlight Pro, and Vivint Doorbell Camera Pro. These are some of the smartest home security cameras we’ve tested. For instance, in our review of the Vivint Outdoor Camera Pro, we mentioned how it uses AI to detect lurkers and ward them off. Vivint’s Spotlight Pro works in the same way. The other Vivint cameras use AI to improve detection and eliminate false alarms. Not to mention, they all have superb video quality (1080p HD to 4K UHD), night vision, and a memory card slot for local storage.

Vivint may have the upper hand in terms of quality, but when it comes to quantity, Ring takes home the trophy. It offers dozens of options, and even the premium options used less of our budget than the Vivint alternative. Here’s a quick rundown of some of their more popular options as well as their prices:

Equipment Winner

As far as equipment goes, Vivint is the clear winner. Vivint offers a more well-rounded selection of sensors, and even though Ring offers more security camera options, Vivint’s cameras are some of the best we’ve tested. On top of that, it’s great that Vivint’s touchscreen hub offers advanced controls. With it, we could access and manage our security system without pulling out our smartphone unlike with Ring.

Installation Comparison

This is one of those areas where your preference will decide the winner. Basically, go with Vivint if you prefer professional installation, or choose Ring if you want DIY installation. Despite their opposite approaches, we had a great installation and setup experience with both given that Vivint is one of the best professionally installed security systems and Ring is one of the best DIY security systems.

When we tested Vivint, a technician came to our house to install the system. He was very professional, and he took care of things every step of the way. He arrived with the right tools, and he seemed very knowledgeable about the system, even answering every question we threw at him. We just had to be there to oversee the installation and to listen as he explained how to use and maximize the equipment. Overall, it was a smooth experience that didn’t take more than a couple of hours.

When we reviewed the Ring Alarm system and Ring cameras, all the hardware came in boxes, and we had to set everything up ourselves. The upside of this was that it was free because we did all the work. Ring Alarm and Ring devices are designed for DIY setup, so they weren’t difficult to install. All in all, we spent less than 30 minutes installing and setting up the sensors, as well as a few minutes for each security camera.

In particular, we liked how easy it was to set up the Ring Indoor Cam. We simply plugged it in, connected it to our Ring app, and it was good to go. This easy setup is among the reasons why the Ring Indoor Cam is one of the best indoor security cameras on the market.

Monitoring and Monitoring Cost Comparison

This is another area where your preference will be the deciding factor. Vivint requires professional monitoring; Vivint security systems won’t function without it. On the other hand, Ring Alarm can be either self-monitored or monitored by a monitoring center.

If you want to self-monitor, definitely go with Ring. Self-monitoring is free, and we still got app alerts and siren alarms in case of emergencies while testing Ring without a subscription plan. However, we needed to call for help when necessary and if we didn’t respond to an alert, that alert went unanswered.

If you prefer professional monitoring, here are your options from Vivint.

Vivint Monitoring

Vivint monitoring plans cost $29.99 per month and up, and they include 24/7 professional monitoring, smartphone access, and additional features like smart home automation and video storage in the cloud. We’ve made a Vivint pricing guide that details how much the plans actually cost and what they include. Here’s an overview:

Vivint uses cellular monitoring, which is actually one of the most reliable monitoring methods. The Smart Hub’s built-in cellular chip sends alerts to the monitoring center via cellular signals. That makes it great for rural areas with limited Wi-Fi capabilities. Besides being fast and reliable, Vivint’s alarm signals are encrypted for your privacy and protection, making Vivint one of the best cellular security systems.

Ring Alarm Monitoring

Ring’s professional monitoring service is an add-on to its Standard or Premium cloud storage plans that costs an extra $10 per month. That means, to get Ring’s professional monitoring, we needed to pay at least $19.99 per month or $199 per year. With the Standard plan we got cellular backup, which is slightly different from cellular monitoring. Cellular backup means our Ring Alarm system normally uses Wi-Fi network to send alerts but switches to cellular if our Wi-Fi goes down.

There are other features included in Ring’s Standard plan too with even more in the Premium plan such as 180 days of video event history for all of our Ring cameras. Here’s an overview of what you can expect from each of Ring’s subscription plans:

Monitoring Winner

In terms of quality, our pick goes to Vivint, as Vivint’s monitoring plans offer more advanced features that you can’t get from a Ring monitoring plan. For example, Vivint’s mid-tier plan offers advanced home automation that controls smart thermostats, locks, and lights using schedules, scenes, and automation rules. While Ring still integrated with our smart home devices, it didn’t offer an interface to control them with.

That being said, Ring wins when it comes to affordability and value. A price of $20 per month for comprehensive security monitoring and cloud storage for unlimited cameras is hard to beat.

Home Automation Comparison

We’re going to jump straight to the point with this category because the winner is clear and that winner is Vivint. Here’s why.

Vivint Home Automation Capabilities

Vivint is one of the best smart security systems, primarily because the system offers native support and controls for a wide range of smart home products. Aside from the smart devices that Vivint offers, the hub has a Z-Wave radio chip that allows it to pair with third-party brands.

Once we paired them to our Vivint hub, we could control our third-party products as though they were a part of our Vivint system. We could turn smart lights on and off, set our smart thermostat’s temperature, and lock and unlock smart locks. Since our Vivint system could contol our third-party smart devices, that also means we could integrate them into our schedules, scenes, and automation rules to automate how they operate. To control Vivint and the connected devices with our voice, all we had to do was pair our Alexa or Google Assistant hub to our Vivint system.

Ring Home Automation Capabilities

Just because Ring didn’t win this category doesn’t mean it has zero smart home support. Ring also supports voice assistant integrations, and the Ring Alarm does have a Z-Wave radio built in as well, but so far, it pairs only with third-party smoke alarms, smart garage door openers, smart switches, smart thermostats, and smart locks. On top of that, Ring’s app doesn’t offer as much control over its supported third-party smart devices. For instance, we needed to use Alexa to automate our living room lights so that they turn on when our motion sensor detects someone in the room. Vivint let us do that directly in their app.

Home Automation Winner

That doesn’t mean that Ring has zero smart home support. Ring also supports voice assistant integrations, and the Ring Alarm does have a Z-Wave radio built in as well, but so far, it pairs only with third-party smoke alarms and smart locks. Ring has yet to fulfill its potential in smart home security, so for now, the home automation winner is Vivint.

Overall Cost Comparison

To cap off this comparison, let’s talk about how much it costs to buy and use Vivint and Ring systems.

One of the biggest differences between Vivint and Ring is the cost. Ring is one of the most affordable security systems, both in terms of equipment and monitoring, while Vivint is positioned as a premium security system, with premium prices to match. Let’s compare.

Equipment Cost Comparison

Vivint’s sensors cost at least $50 per piece. Some sensors cost more, but that’s the average price we paid. Security cameras, on the other hand, cost $200 and up. The Vivint Outdoor Camera Pro is the most expensive, at $400.

From that alone, you can see that a Vivint system won’t come cheap, but we didn’t pay for our equipment upfront and you don’t have to either. You can finance it and pay over a period of four to five years. If your equipment total is $800, for example, you can pay it off in 60 months at only $13 per month (plus monitoring).

With Ring, a basic security system costs about $250. From there, you can add sensors for about $20 to $40 per piece. As for security cameras, the price will depend on the model. The cheapest camera is the Indoor Cam at $60, but more advanced cameras like the Floodlight Cam can actually cost over $200.

Ring equipment is typically paid for upfront, but financing plans are available via Affirm. However, Affirm only lets us spread out our payments over the course of 18 months. So, that $800 equipment total we used as an example when talking about Vivint would cost $44.44 per month instead of $13 per month.

Monitoring Cost

We’ve discussed this earlier, but just to recap, Vivint monitoring costs $29.99 to $49.99 per month. Ring’s monitoring costs $19.99 to $29.99 per month.

One crucial factor to consider is the monitoring contract. Since we financed our Vivint equipment, we had to sign a contract that locked us into Vivint’s monitoring service for the full length of our financing plan. During this time, we couldn’t cancel our monitoring service unless we were ready to pay hefty penalties.

With Ring, we could cancel anytime or change our monitoring plan as all contracts are month-to-month (unless you pay one year in advance, in which case, the contract is one year). This also makes Ring a good security system for renters, as the absence of a contract gives them flexibility to move or change their monitoring plans.

Installation and Other Costs

Vivint and Ring generally don’t have hidden fees, but keep in mind that Vivint’s installation isn’t free. You’ll pay an installation fee, but as we mentioned earlier, Vivint sometimes has special deals that waive this fee. There’s also an installation fee for Ring if you opt for professional installation, although we found the install so easy we always recommend installing it yourself.

The Final Verdict: Who Won?

In terms of equipment, features, and monitoring, Vivint has the upper hand by a longshot, but it’s also true that these aren’t the only factors that should sway the decision of home security buyers. Cost, ease of use, and installation are other factors to consider.

Vivint and Ring are very different security systems, and depending on what you’re looking for, either one of them can protect your home. So here’s our recommendation:

Choose Vivint if you value:

• Smart home security
• Intelligent security cameras
• A variety of equipment options
• Premium features built around easy controls
• Professional installation
• Reliable 24/7 professional monitoring

Choose Ring if you value:

• DIY installation
• Affordable monthly rates
• Month-to-month contracts
• Security and doorbell cameras
• Affordable cloud storage plans

We hope this guide helped you make a decision, but if you need more options, here’s another guide that details what you should look for in a security system.