Cove vs. Vivint Home Security Systems

When we pit DIY system Cove against professional giant Vivint, Cove is the unlikely winner. Although Cove doesn’t have the smart home automation or brand recognition that Vivint has, it’s less expensive and doesn’t have Vivint’s current reputation problems.

However, if you really want the best smart home setup money can buy, you’d be better off with Vivint in spite of its customer service issues.

Cove and Vivint both offer proprietary equipment and professional monitoring for their home security systems. But despite these similarities, a Vivint system and monthly monitoring can cost twice as much as a Cove system and monthly monitoring.

Cove sells custom packages where you pick and choose the equipment you buy. The $249 price tag includes the control panel, a window sensor, a door sensor, and a motion detector.

Vivint’s starter kit is about $599, although you won’t see that price on the website since Vivint doesn’t share prices directly with the public. This starting package typically includes a control panel, two door sensors, a water sensor, and a motion sensor.

Cove’s prices are pretty standard in the DIY industry. Unfortunately, though, you have to pay for the more expensive plan for mobile app access and smart home support.

Still, Cove’s most expensive plan costs less than Vivint’s cheapest.

View Cove Plans | Read the Cove Home Security Review

Like some of its other traditional home security counterparts, Vivint is quite expensive. And to get the best use from the system, you have to subscribe to the most expensive plan. Otherwise, you won’t get all of its features like smart home support, or video storage.

You’ll notice that the most expensive Vivint plan costs nearly twice the amount of the most expensive Cove plan. We can’t stress this enough: Vivint is not for folks who want to save money on their home security. If you want a bargain, Cove is the better choice.

To learn more, read How Much Does Vivint Cost?

View Vivint Plans | Read the Vivint Home Security Review

Although Cove and Vivint both make their own equipment, their focuses are very different.

Cove’s equipment is more basic, and the buyer installs it. Vivint has more advanced equipment, with a wider selection, and it only offers professional installation.

Vivint’s equipment is massively more expensive than Cove’s. And Cove prices are much more in line with what we expect to see in home security: Vivint is an outlier.

However, Vivint equipment comes with some perks you won’t see with Cove. Vivint sells tons of smart home equipment in addition to the standard stuff you see in the table. Those items include locks, lights, garage door controllers, and thermostats. All of the equipment syncs directly with the system and can be controlled with the sophisticated Vivint app.

Cove, on the other hand, doesn’t really offer anything in the way of smart homes.

Neither Cove nor Vivint has exactly what we look for in security cameras. Cove’s cameras are low on features, but they’re more reasonably priced. Vivint’s cameras offer more extras, but they cost way more than good home security cameras should.

Unfortunately, as far as we know, neither of these systems connects to any other cameras. So if you want video coverage in your home security setup, you’re stuck buying what the companies sell.

Cove doesn’t have much in the way of cameras. But the cameras it sells have cloud and local storage, which is a plus.

The camera prices are a little more expensive than we see with standalone cameras. While they aren’t outrageous, we don’t see all the features we’d like to justify the price tags.

Interestingly, Cove doesn’t make its cameras. It uses a manufacturer called YI, which offers its own storage plan structure.

The 7-day plan is good for only one camera while the 15- and 30-day plans allow for up to five cameras. And the more cameras you have, the more cost-effective the plans are.

For not being a camera-centric company, Vivint has a rather robust camera line with an outstanding doorbell camera.

The highlights of these cameras are as follows:

• The indoor camera offers one-button video calls to a preprogrammed number of your choice.
• The outdoor camera has person detection and a feature called Smart Sentry that deters loiterers.
• The doorbell camera has the outdoor Smart Sentry feature plus package detection and protection.

Vivint doesn’t sell separate camera plans. You need to subscribe to the $44.99-a-month Smart Home Video plan if you want a camera. And if you want more than one camera, you’ll need to pay $5 more per month for each camera you add.

It definitely gets expensive, but at least there’s a limit to the spending—you can only add up to five additional cameras for a grand total of six.

So how does that compare to the YI plans that Cove offers? Once again, Vivint comes up short on price. We ran the numbers, and any 15- or 30-day camera plan with Cove for five cameras is a better deal than getting six Vivint cameras.

As mentioned, Cove doesn’t offer many smart home devices. And it doesn’t directly connect with many devices, either, just the two most popular smart home speakers.

Cove smart home integrations:

• Amazon Alexa
• Google Assistant

You can connect other devices to Amazon Echos and Google Homes, too, to create an indirect connection between those items and Cove. With just a few words to your speaker, you’ll be able to both arm your security system and perform other smart home functions.

However, you won’t be able to access any of those devices through your Cove app. You would need a direct connection, such as Z-Wave, to do that.

Vivint smart home integrations:

• Amazon Alexa
• Google Assistant
• Z-Wave

Vivint has the direct Z-Wave connection that Cove lacks, opening up more smart home opportunities.

Cove definitely wins here.

While Cove is still building its reputation and fan base, it offers unbeatable customer service hours (24/7) and doesn’t have a history of lawsuits like Vivint does.

Vivint, despite its amazing smart home offerings, has lost a lot of trust in the industry with shady sales tactics. It was slowly starting to build a better reputation, but a huge lawsuit in spring 2021 has once again set it back.¹

To reach either Cove or Vivint, call their customer support phone numbers or make use of their live text chat features.

• Cove customer service number: +1-877-456-2683
• Vivint customer service number: +1-800-216-5232

If you want standard security for an affordable price and aren’t a smart home junkie, Cove is right for you. But if an amazing smart home setup matters to you, try Vivint.

• Prices and monitoring plans: Cove. Cove offers far better prices for its monitoring services than Vivint does.
• Security equipment: Vivint’s the best of the best, but it charges an arm and a leg, while Cove charges more modest prices for its equipment.
• Cameras: Vivint’s three cameras are state-of-the-art, while Cove offers more basic cameras.
• Smart home integrations: Vivint’s use of Z-Wave and its own smart home functions put it far ahead of Cove’s smart speaker-only compatibility.
• Customer service: Cove pulls ahead in this category by default since Vivint’s customer service reputation has taken a big hit.

Read the Cove Home Security Review | Read the Vivint Home Security Review

Comparing security systems is no easy feat. We’ve broken our comparison points down into the five following categories:

• Price
• Equipment
• Home automation
• Cameras
• Customer service

We’ve spent a lot of time testing the Vivint system and have done thorough research on both Cove and Vivint. All of our conclusions can be backed up by findings from our testing and research.

• Vivint vs. ADT Home Security
• SimpliSafe vs. Cove Home Security
• Best Home Security Systems
• ADT vs. Cove Home Security
• Best Professionally Installed Security Systems

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