☰ Worst NVR / VMS Manufacturers 2020 By: IPVM Team, Published on Feb 10, 2020 For the second time in a row, a global manufacturer has been selected by integrators. 200+ integrators answered: In the past year, what VMS / NVR system have you had the worst experience with? What happened? While the #1 repeated, a VMS moved into the second spot. Multiple NVR and software providers were in the third tier of negative results. The results include a breakdown of responses from inside vs outside the US. In this report, we share detailed feedback from integrators and examine key themes impacting the overall market. Executive Summary Hikvision dominated the worst NVR/VMS rankings both inside and outside the US, with, outside the US, double the number of negatives of the next 2 manufacturers and more than double inside the US. Exacq received the next highest negative responses in the US. However, was minimally fewer negative than Dahua outside of the US. Exacq was however still a net positive from integrators when ☰ comparing to our Favorite VMS / NVR Manufacturers 2020, but signi cantly lower than other VMSes. Dahua received the 2nd most negative responses outside the US, but less than half of Exacq within the US. Overall, Dahua's favorability was neutral. #1 Hikvision - Cameras Disconnecting / UX Issues Negative responses for Hikvision commonly noted issues with cameras disconnecting from the NVR, rmware upgrade failures and software interface issues: "Hikvision. Still cleaning up for the thankfully short time when one of our larger customers “forced” us to use them. The operating system is terrible. They’ve never addressed the issue where if a camera is disconnected you can’t review prior footage on the mobile app" "Hikvision Had some issues the cameras substream dropping o . Mainstream will work ne, but get error that camera does not support substream although it has all along." "While the Hikvision VMS platform works for some, it is tougher to secure from the outside which is a major requirement for me than others because of its port requirements and inability to use updated TLS" "Hikvision. Customer had purchased from another vendor the system for a large commercial property and it didn't deliver the integration they needed and we had to address it" "Hikvision. If a camera is down, there are 20 reasons why that might be so. Sending someone out to diagnose then again to repair equals two billable charges to our clients which doesn't leave a great taste in their mouths." "2 slightly older (2-3yrs) Hikvision nvr's. We cant get rmware to upgrade - even though it should. will have to throw away and get something else" "Hikvision, hate dealing with them only installed a few for cheaper systems and regret every one" "Hikvision takeover. Cameras would not work with new system. Firmware..." "Hikvision. Their VMS is clunky and di cult to use, even for our installers." "Hikvision iVMS4200. It's buggy, not as user friendly, very poor user interface" "Hikvisions new GUI comes with many headaches and technical glitches" "Hikvision, community had a hard time using the software" "Hikvision, existing systems which we took over" "Hikvision, the software is clunky and hard to use. " ☰ "Hikvision - dead NVR. Unfriendly software" "Hikvision, limited capabilities" "Hikvision, cyber attack" Why Hikvision NVRs? While Hikvision NVRs are widely used, this is primarily driven by their relative strength on the camera side and the low prices of their recorders. The combination of these things, along with Hikvision's relative lack of focus on NVR development, is a core driver of their unfavorability. Moreover, in the past few years, Hikvision has rapidly prioritized o ering a paid CMS / VMS, HikCentral, which has so far, been a di cult t in the market. While HikCentral is less expensive than enterprise VMSes, like Milestone and Genetec, that have increasingly isolated Hikvision, HikCentral does not, at least yet, o er the same depth and breadth of functionalities. And on the SMB side, where Hikvision has done best in the West, HikCentral is far more expensive than Hikvision NVRs. #2 Exacq - Poor Support, Quality Issues, Licensing Problems Exacq was a net positive again in 2020, but following Exacq's decreasing favorability results in 2019, they had more negative responses than any other VMS. Integrators reported issues with support and product reliability: "Exacq. Server crashed. Support told us to reimage the machine which we did. Crashed again. Sent the unit to Exacq for repair. After waiting 4 weeks for repair we reinstalled the machine and it crashed again. Ripped my regional manager a new one and found out that Exacq just reimaged the machine again after we had already done that unsuccessfully before sending it to them. Good news: Exacq supplied a new NVR. Bad news, Customer was pissed because of all the issues and downtime" "Exacq. Migrating all our existing Exacq systems to something di erent. Their mobile app is horrendous and customers are very frustrated with it not working consistently. This is unacceptable for a system that annual 'maintenance' fees are being paid on. Tech support is unhelpful and condescending. I would rather talk to an o shore call center. " "Exacq support and product quality continues to deteriorate after their acquisition. We have receive high dollar NVRs with loose and disconnected internal components. Our vendors are continually unfamiliar with the product. Our reps are slow to respond and help. Tech support takes a terribly long time." ☰ "Exacq, because I have sold so many of them, I can't easily leave. Their app had to be deleted and reinstalled on several phones, and CEOs don't like to waste time have our tech reinstall the exact same thing on their phone to make it work exactly like it was." "Exacq. Slow to release support of newer camera models. Licensing costs continue to increase without meaningful software updates. Updating licensing is painful." "Exacq, paid for license renewal but never got license activation key. Got bounced around exacq and tyco reps nally customer gave up." " Exacqvision. I had two customers this year that wanted to add cameras to there system and we had to relicense everything." "Exacq, they tend to not keep up with current driver changes on Arecont causing issues with reliability" "Exacq, terrible support. Trying to get an RMA is like pulling teeth." "Exacq. Just a bad experience with licensing and support available" "Exacq is horrendous." #3 Dahua - Integration / Camera Support Issues Dahua was a net neutral, receiving slightly more negative response in the US compared to outside the US. There was no common theme from integrators, with support, integration and reliability issues noted: "Well, My worst experience has been Dahua's constant changing of their IDMSS and GDMSS Mobile VMS as they have made major changes. It creates customer issues and we have lost connection to make of the Alarm/ Audio connected systems. We have had to nd work-arounds to get clients back up and running." "Dahua. They don't ship their consumer grade units with drives. So when warranty support happened the team shipped it to them with the hard drive. Delayed repair exponentially" "Dahua systems are always our least favorite systems to service. We do not install them, but will service for customers" "Dahua. Had a secondary display port burn out on a brand new nvr. I also noticed alot of software aws and inconsistencies." "Dahua NVR. Common inconsistency with onvif compliance and camera setup." "Dahua, Integration is more di cult " "Dahua seems to only get worse." "Dahua nvrs - they don't work as they should." ☰ Additionally, responses for Dahua, positive or negative were down overall, indicating the cybersecurity hacks that drove dissatisfaction in 2018 results have caused integrators to stop selling their NVRs. #4 NVR OEMs / Honeywell Issues OEM NVRs also received a signi cant number of responses, in some cases, integrators noted the OEM (e.g. Hikvision, Dahua), however, Honeywell received the most negative responses of any relabler, citing issues with integration and support: "MAXPRO! We recently installed a large system using Flir combination thermal/visible light cameras. I even shipped a camera to Honeywell to test, and they reported that everything worked ne. We installed them on site and the PTZ control didn't work" "Honeywell maxpro nvr server db errors resulting in rebuils and video footage loss" "Private labeled Hikvision. Too many call backs. will not use in the future." "OEM Dahua NVR, mobile application was not upgraded for new smartphones, unable to update rmware with original dahua FW" "I have one employment that used a Honeywell NVR. That we inherited from anther company. I would never install them. The product is ne but there tech support and warranty is just awful" "Honeywell- Features on their "enterprise" cameras do not work with their "enterprise" NVR/VMS. Speci cally the equIP series sheye." "Honeywell.. Took over a system from another vendor and it is a mess and unreliable" 3rd Tier of Responses - Milestone, OnSSI The 3rd Tier of negative responses included multiple VMSes, but the top 2 recipients were OnSSI and Milestone. Milestone received the 2nd most negative responses of any VMS, while remaining a net positive overall. OnSSI received moderately fewer negative mentions, but no favorable responses. Negative responses for Milestone reported recording issues, and software upgrade/licensing di culty: "Milestone. Repeated problems with index_cache corruption causing recorded video to become unavailable until a manual rebuild is initiated. The rebuild can take several days, and customers always notice the issue after a critical incident." "Milestone. On the surface it has the best integration capabilities and expansion capacity. It has not changed much at all over the ☰ years. It is very sensitive to the resources and hardware. I have had recording stop problem on every Milestone VMS installed. " "Milestone. Just never worked right. Cameras kept dropping out. Calls from end users for more training. Asking how to do certain things. Not very user friendly." "Milestone. On several systems the Milestone services and/or LPR server stopped recording and we have struggled to get them working properly" "Milestone, There is a terible upgrade and migration path to move from an older version to the current version." "Milestone. Not intuitive, di cult to navigate, too many ways to do the same thing" "Milestone, service (you call the technical support for service, no help)" OnSSI responses indicated confusion for integrators, related to the product roadmap and software support: "OnSSI....what the hell is going on with them. They haven't told the partners what is going to happen, no road map, no vision on the new company etc... OnSSI will not let us train on Qognify products, forced the customers/resellers to have support contracts to get tech support" "OnSSI (Qognify); too many issues with system services crashing and too little exibility within the system (moving cameras between servers takes up licenses, etc)." "OnSSI Ocularis Finding that they are not supporting camera manufacturers rmware updates as quickly as before the purchase by Qognify" "OnSSI, outdated software" No Issues Many integrators, nearly 1/3 of the responses, stated they had no standout negative experiences. In this category, a few integrators gave speci c reasons why they did not have notable worst experiences, emphasizing the advantages of dictating speci cations and working with a limited number of manufacturers: "Honestly, we try and install and support VMS solutions we have vetted and are trained on. Sticking with manufacturers we are familiar with limits issues and "worst experience" scenarios. In the past year, we have not run into any major issues with any of our VMS installs. " "We haven't really had a bad experience with VMS. We are deploying more Avigilon these days" "We really haven’t had any major issues. We tend to over-spec the NVR and undersell its capabilities so the customers ☰ expectations are not out of line with reality." "Not enough challenges with any particular platform to note. We don't sell hardly anything else but Avigilon." "We only do Security Center and XProtect. Both are very userfriendly, and are easily deployable" "None to note really, as I said we pretty much only use Genetec and have been quite happy." "None: We avoided bad camera installs in 2019. There were a few bugs but nothing major " "None really. I'm fortunate in that I usually spec what I work with, so we only use quality mfgs" "None really, we only use Avigilon / Genetech and really didn't have any disasters." "N/A our engineering department vets the product lines before sale and deployment." "n/a, no bad experiences last year" 3 REPORTS CITE THIS REPORT: Worst Products on Aug 01, 2020 Security integrators periodically report on their favorite and worst products... Free IPVM All Access - Concluded! on Mar 18, 2020 The 2-day event has concluded. Thanks to everyone who accessed the IPVM... VMS 101 on Mar 03, 2020 This guide teaches the fundamentals about video management... COMMENTS (27) Only IPVM Members may comment. Login or Join. Undisclosed Manufacturer #1 Feb 10, 2020 ☰ No surprises here. These results are in line with the feedback I receive within a much smaller geographic footprint. Undisclosed Integrator #2 Feb 10, 2020 Agree that Hik's NVR interface is poor, especially direct o the unit. I always encourage people to log in via the web interface, it is far more intuitive and user friendly (relatively speaking). Kyle Folger IPVMU Certi ed | | Feb 11, 2020 This is always my big complaint with Dahua, Hikvision, etc. NVRs. The interface should be the same on the device and the web page so you aren't learning two di erent interfaces. I used to use Nuvico recorders for SD, and when the new interface came out, it was easy to use, but the only issue was that it was slow on the recorder itself. The web page interface was faster, but it was also very similar to the interface on the unit. Another gripe I have is when certain features are available in the unit, but not from the web page. Many of those issues have gone away, but I know the DW Spot Monitor had that issue. I'm not sure if the issue is still present, but I couldn't setup everything from the interface. That unit was basically a stripped down recorder interface. Undisclosed End User #8 | Feb 12, 2020 I've seen that on Speco. 9000 dedicated buttons on the unit and no way to access them remotely. Undisclosed Distributor #3 Feb 10, 2020 Just wondering, I was told exacq oem from promise NVR. How accurate is this information ? Also, any feedback on AxxonSoft VMS? ☰ Undisclosed Manufacturer #4 | Feb 10, 2020 I can guarantee you that they do not OEM from Promise NVR. Sean Patton IPVM | | Feb 11, 2020 Axxon was only mentioned 3 times; 2 favorable mentions and one negative. None of the responses were very detailed or descriptive, with pros for analytics, and the single con for LPR performance. Ryan Hulse | Feb 11, 2020 Undisclosed Manufacturer #4 is correct. Exacq does not OEM NVRs from Promise. I am the sr. product manager for the exacqVision product line. Undisclosed Distributor #3 | Feb 12, 2020 Good morning Ryan. Thank you for your con rmation. We had noticed a huge price di erence with Promise NVR's and wondered why the substantial di erence ourselves. At some point in time same a fellow distributor for another product line had heard of this so we thought it might make sense with the pricing di erence especially it coming with the storage mandatory. The camera licensing price is very high as well nowdays. Robert Fuller Feb 10, 2020 we need a group plan now to see these reports? ☰ John Honovich IPVM | | Feb 10, 2020 No. Where did you get that from? The whole report is above the comments for all logged in members, like yourself. Robert Fuller | Feb 10, 2020 Does the PDF report have more info that the above? When I try to DL the PDF I am prompted to upgrade to a group plan John Honovich IPVM | | Feb 10, 2020 No it is just a copy in a well formatted PDF. Undisclosed Manufacturer #5 | Feb 11, 2020 There is a workaround, makes me feel a little like Bashis. Samer Alkila | Feb 11, 2020 I got same message here too! Undisclosed #6 Feb 12, 2020 and on top of all that raised prices by 32%!!" Is this true? I would like the details. ☰ John Honovich IPVM | | Feb 12, 2020 Good catch / question. I removed that section pending con rmation / feedback from the manufacturer since it is a speci c directly veri able claim. Tony Perrone | Feb 12, 2020 I've been buying Dahua for years - my prices did not rise at all. Tony Perrone Feb 12, 2020 You guys are so biased. It's funny that I didn't need to log in to read this post, but I need to log in to read most others. It's like, you love to bash Dahua and other brands and really want others to see it. Dahua recently released a new rmware that makes the user interface on the NVR really nice and very friendly. The apps are all my customers favorite. I do think it's crap that most of the articles are for paid members, but articles that bash Dahua and Hikvision speci cally are always free. Christopher Wargo | Feb 12, 2020 This site is very anti-Hikvision but you just have to take it with a grain of salt. I for one welcome the criticism that they get because it creates a lot of business for my company. Since everyone is afraid to use Hik they have no idea that they are actually a couple years ahead of any other manufacturer out there in terms of performance, while also being a third of the price. John Honovich IPVM | | Feb 12, 2020 Since everyone is afraid to use Hik they have no idea that they are actually a couple years ahead of any other manufacturer out there in terms of performance ☰ We test Hikvision all the time so we know very well where Hikvision stacks up, e.g. in the past month: Integrated IR Camera Shootout 2020 - Avigilon, Axis, Bosch, Dahua, Hanwha, Hikvision, Panasonic, Uniview, Vivotek, Camera Analytics Shootout 2020 - Avigilon, Axis, Bosch, Dahua, Hanwha, Hikvision, Uniview, Vivotek, etc. Undisclosed Integrator #2 | Feb 12, 2020 I agreed with your post but I think some context is in order. IPVM is "anti-Hikvision" in the sense that Hikvision is a CCPcontrolled entity, provides product domestically for human rights abuses, and has had various security concerns. Those are all legitimate and serious problems that deserve attention and is where a lot of the Hik hate stems from. On the other hand, IPVM has favorably reviewed many Hikvision products, e.g. more recently the ColorVu line was lauded for its ultra-low light performance and is arguably the best bang for your buck right now. When their hardware and software are good, IPVM does a good job of saying so. Now believe me, I love Hik products for the very reason you mentioned. The performance to price ratio is outstanding. But saying they're a "couple years ahead of any other manufacturer" is a bit of a stretch. They have a sampling of excellent products that unquestionably perform better than anything out there. BUT. Their NVR interface is atrocious. Their web interfaces use confusing terminology (e.g. enable "Rules" to view dynamic motion analysis WTF??) and there is ZERO help built in; I have to make do watching DVS tutorials on YouTube to gure a lot of stu out. There are bugs in rmware like increasing WDR beyond 40 makes the image go black. Their analytics in anything but the DeepInMind series are below par compared with lots of other manufacturers. AND, after all this time they STILL haven't gured out how to export clips in a format that is usable by most players. Dave Davies | Mar 7, 2020 ☰ Glad you like the YouTube channel , we hope to keep helping where we can 🙏 John Honovich IPVM | | Feb 12, 2020 You guys are so biased. It's funny that I didn't need to log in to read this post, but I need to log in to read most others. Tony, thanks for your rst comment! This post is member's only. If you don't believe me, try clicking the link to this post in incognito mode and you will hit the paywall. Here is what it looks like: You may have been logged in already and therefore did not need to log in again but it's a member's only post. This is a survey, so it is a re ection of integrators, we run what they say, e.g., far more integrators complained about Hikvision than Dahua, so Hikvision got the bulk of the criticism. Undisclosed Integrator #7 | Feb 12, 2020 > 50% of the time I can click on the link in the emails and it opens my Firefox web browser and shows the entire article without me having to rst login. Below shows what it looked like today. If I click on a link to a new article only then does it tell me that I need to login to read it. So I can see where people may be able to read an article without ever logging in. ☰ John Honovich IPVM | | Feb 12, 2020 > 50% of the time I can click on the link in the emails and it opens my Firefox web browser and shows the entire article without me having to rst login. Yes, that's a convenience feature we o er for member's only. New Feature: First Click From Newsletter And New Article Email - No Login Required Larry Tracy Feb 12, 2020 I have had no issues with Dahua since I started with them a year ago. Now Hikvision is another story , too many problems and we are the beta testers for every product, lots of bugs. ☰ MEMBER LOGIN Email address Password Login Remember Me Forgot your password? | Join now RELATED REPORTS Worst Camera Manufacturers 2020 on May 06, 2020 Which camera manufacturer have integrators had the worst experience with in... Favorite Access Control Manufacturers 2020 on Sep 28, 2020 200+ Integrators told IPVM "What is your favorite access control management... Worst Over But Integrators Still Dealing With Coronavirus Problems (June Statistics) on Jun 30, 2020 While numbers of integrators very impacted by Coronavirus continue to drop,... ☰ ADT Slides Back, Disappointing Results, Poor Commercial Performance on Aug 06, 2020 While ADT had an incredible start to the week, driven by the Google... 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