Commercial Video Surveillance & CCTV

For planning: a small business running 4 to 8 cameras typically lands between $3,000 and $9,000 installed. A mid-size commercial system of 8 to 24 cameras runs roughly $9,000 to $35,000. Large, multi-site, or compliance-driven systems go well past that. Cameras are rarely the expensive part. Labor, cabling and pathways, and storage sized to your retention window are what actually move the number, which is why two quotes for the same camera count can differ by a factor of three.

Labor and pathways, far more than cameras. Running cable through a finished ceiling, coring a wall, trenching to a detached building, or working on a lift over a warehouse floor all cost more than the camera hanging at the end of the run. That is why a quote for eight cameras in an open-plan office and a quote for eight cameras across a yard are not comparable numbers. Ask for installation broken out from equipment, and ask what the bidder assumes about pathway access.

Start from four inputs: camera count, bitrate per camera, hours recorded per day, and retention days. A useful rule of thumb for continuous recording is about 1 TB per camera per month at 1080p and roughly 2 TB per camera per month at 4K. So 16 cameras at 1080p for 30 days is around 16 TB, and the same system at 4K is around 32 TB. Add 20 to 50 percent headroom for real-world bitrate variance, and confirm which compression codec is assumed, because H.265 versus H.264 can change the answer dramatically.

There is no single national answer, and for most ordinary businesses nobody dictates it, so 30 days is a common default driven by insurers and practical incident timelines. Regulated businesses are different. Cannabis operators in particular face state-mandated retention that commonly runs 30 to 90 days, with California requiring at least 90 days and some states going far longer. Because these rules vary widely and change, verify your window with your state licensing agency, not with a camera vendor.

Analog CCTV sends video over coaxial cable to a DVR. IP cameras send digital video over network cable to an NVR, carrying their own power on the same cable via PoE. IP is the default for new commercial installs because it supports higher resolution, cleaner remote access, and on-camera analytics. Analog still shows up in retrofits where existing coax can be reused with encoders, which is sometimes genuinely the cheaper path. Ask which you are being quoted and why.

Yes, and it is standard on any current commercial system. What differs is the security around it. Ask whether each user gets their own account rather than a shared password, whether there is an access log showing who viewed what, whether multi-factor authentication is available, and how the system gets firmware updates. Remote access is the part of a camera system most likely to be attacked, and it is rarely discussed in a sales meeting.

Recording gives you footage after the fact. Monitored video adds a human or an analytics engine watching in near-real time, so someone can intervene or dispatch while it is happening. Monitoring costs meaningfully more per month and pays off mainly where there is something to protect after hours and a real response plan: yards, lots, construction sites, warehouses. For a locked office, recording plus a good alarm is usually the better spend.