The 5 Questions You Should Ask Before Buying a Security Camera

Dave Crosby
2026-01-12T16:39:12-08:00

By Dave Crosby, Cofounder of Wyze.

If you’re thinking about putting a camera in your home, there’s five questions you must ask before buying anything:

1. What does it cost?

2. Can I use it without a subscription?

3. If there is a subscription, what does it cost and what does it actually do?

4. Is the company U.S. based and serious about security?

5. Is the company owned by another major corporation without full time attention on users?

Here’s why I think Wyze wins in every single one of these categories, and it’s not even close.

1. Cost: Why Are Security Cameras So Expensive?

We launched our first camera for $20 back when Ring cameras were $200. People always asked us….why are you so much less expensive?? And our answer is literally…why is everyone else so expensive? Other companies want you to think that there is some added value by paying more. There is not.

Wyze literally exposed the industry and had everyone scrambling to bring prices down, but even today they can’t get as low as what Wyze offers.

Wyze treats users like friends.

2. No Subscription Required

Here’s something that blows my mind.

Not trying to pick on Ring here cause they aren’t the only one...but If you buy a Ring camera and the camera detects motion, you DO NOT get a photo of the motion unless you pay a subscription. You'll get a generic "motion detected" text which is completely useless.

But worse, there is NO option for storage on the device, the only way to see what the camera has actually recorded is to..pay monthly??

How do you sell a camera to a customer that can't do things that a camera does?

Even viewing the live stream of the camera is restricted to 10 minutes!

With Wyze, the camera works out of the box. You get:

Motion alerts with free thumbnails

A microSD card slot with full access to your footage

Unlimited live streaming

We like subscriptions as much as anyone, but we treat customers like friends first.

3. Subscriptions: Better AI, Lower Prices

If you want a subscription for cloud storage and AI, Wyze is still the best option. You'll pay less and get better AI.

Wyze Subscription:

$3/month for a single camera

Even less per camera on unlimited plans

Most companies charge $4, $5, sometimes much more.

And what do you actually get? Wyze has been leading the industry in the AI era:

Wyze is:

First with descriptive alerts that tell you what’s happening

First with video search

Industry-leading person, pet, vehicle, and package detection

First to launch the No Big Deal filter to cut the noisee.

We are all in on AI and the best camera software on the planet.

The only area you could say Wyze is different is our days of storage. Some companies have 60 day storage while we keep our lower tier plans at 14. That's because we know the data on our higher tier plans, which shows almost NOBODY looks at footage past 14 days. It’s literally like .0000001 %. We like to price our products towards things people actually use.

4. U.S. Based and Serious About Security

In this industry, every company works with Asia in some capacity for manufacturing or engineering, but most companies like Eufy, Kasa, Tapo, Reolink, and many more are just straight up Chinese companies.

These companies have headquarters, CEOs, board of directors that sit and make decisions in China and follow the laws and regulations of that country, subject to the Chinese government.

Wyze is proud to be one of the ONLY U.S. based camera companies, founded in Seattle.

Even in the US, security is not easy in this industry. Amazon settled a $5.8M lawsuit with the FTC for employees or contractors looking at user cameras and not implementing basic security features. Eufy was fined $450k for misleading privacy claims and leaving camera URLs unprotected. The list goes on and on. Wyze has not been fined, but we've made mistakes too. We own that.

We have chosen to respond in a serious way.

Last year Wyze invested millions of dollars into something we call VerifiedView.

VerifiedView doesn’t just protect your account, It cryptographically secures every single photo and video. Like a double lock.

Not only do we protect the outside wall of your account but we build a second wall around each picture and video clip the camera takes. It’s honestly overkill, but we’re proud of how effective it has been.

5. Independent, Founder-Led, and Built for Users

Ring is owned by Amazon.

Blink is owned by Amazon.

Nest is owned by Google.

Most American camera brands are just side projects inside massive corporations.

If one of them disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn’t even show up on an earnings call.

That matters. Because it slows innovation, limits ecosystems, and disconnects users from the real decision-makers.

At Wyze. We are founder led. We don’t need approval from some boss’s boss’s boss, we make decisions quickly. This business means EVERYTHING to us. Years of sweat and blood have gone into this. We're finally at break even with 12 million users. We interact daily with our users in the communities and forums. We have NO BACKUP plan. This is our life.

We will do everything we can to make Wyze the best camera company on planet earth.

And we work with multiple ecosystems, not just Alexa, Google, or IFTTT..

So… Why Wyze?

When you walk through the five questions that actually matter:

Price

Subscriptions

AI + Cloud value

Security

Independence

There’s only one company that checks every box.

WYZE.