Most people buying CCTV are quoted a total and given no idea what is inside it. That makes comparing two quotes almost impossible, and it is how you end up paying for eight cameras when four in the right places would have done more. Here is what actually drives the number.
What drives the price
- Number of cameras — 4, 8 or 16 channel
- Camera resolution — 2MP, 4MP, 5MP or 4K
- Cable type and run length — longer runs add both labour and material, and routing through a finished building is the slow part
- Recording days — 1TB holds roughly seven days at 4MP; 4TB gets you a month
- Remote viewing and alerts — mobile app, motion zones, AI detection
What each size of system suits
| System | Cameras | Recording | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter 4ch | 4 × 2MP bullet | 1TB / 7 days | A small home, entrances only |
| Family 4ch | 4 × 4MP | 2TB / 14 days | A house with a yard and driveway |
| Business 8ch | 8 × 4MP | 4TB / 30 days | Shopfront, till points, stock room |
| AI 8ch | 8 × 5MP + AI | 4TB / 30 days | Sites needing detection, not just recording |
Placement beats camera count
The most common mistake we are called out to correct is cameras mounted high and wide, covering everything and identifying nobody. A camera at roof height gives you a lovely view of the top of someone’s head.
Useful footage comes from cameras at a height where faces and number plates are readable — typically covering the points people must pass through, rather than the open space in between. Two cameras on the gate and the front door will do more for you than six pointed at a lawn.
Night performance is where cheap systems fail
Almost every incident you will care about happens in the dark, and this is exactly where the difference between a budget camera and a good one shows. A camera that reads a number plate at midday can produce an unusable white smear at 2am, because headlights and infrared reflect straight back.
If low-light performance matters at a particular spot, and it usually does, that camera is worth spending more on than the ones covering a lit interior.
How long you keep footage
People consistently underestimate this. You do not always know something happened the same day — a theft from a stock room or a damaged vehicle may only come to light a week or two later. Seven days of recording sounds ample until you need day nine.
Retention is a straight trade against storage, and storage is one of the cheaper parts of a system. It is worth deciding what you actually need rather than accepting whatever the recorder came with.
Load-shedding
A security system that switches off with the grid is not much of a security system, and this catches people out constantly. The cameras, the recorder and the network switch all need to stay up, not just one of them. Decide this at the quoting stage, because retrofitting backup power afterwards costs more than including it.
What a site survey covers
We walk the property with you before quoting anything, and the visit is free. What gets worked out on it:
- What genuinely needs covering, and in what order of importance
- Mounting positions, heights and angles for usable footage
- Which positions need better low-light performance
- Cable routes, and whether anything needs to run outside or through a ceiling
- How long you want to keep footage, which sets the storage
- Power, including what happens during an outage
- Who needs to view it remotely, and on what
Coastal installations age faster
Salt air is hard on outdoor equipment. Housings, brackets and cable glands within reach of sea air corrode noticeably quicker than the same kit installed inland, and a bracket that fails takes the camera with it. It is worth specifying properly on exposed sites and worth checking the fixings every so often.
After the installation
We set up remote viewing on your phone before we leave, and show you how to find and export footage — the part that actually matters on the day you need it, and the part most people are never shown. Exporting clips under pressure, for the first time, months later, does not go well.
We maintain what we install, and we service existing systems installed by somebody else.
Brands we install
HiLook, Hikvision, Dahua, Ezviz and Uniview. We are a Hikvision-trained installer covering Ramsgate, Margate, Port Shepstone and the broader South Coast.
Free site survey
Email info@unlimitedits.co.za or call 039 314 4359 for a no-obligation quote. We bring camera samples to your site so you can see the difference between resolutions on your own property rather than in a brochure.
