Ring Doorbell Alternative

[SithLordHood]

Not going to be paying the £50 subscription this year, they are taking the p1ss...
Any good alternatives out there?

I have a Hikvision CCTV system and seem to remember they offered one, but does it allow remote playback?

 

[Jurassicspark]

I've got Unifi protect and it's better than rings overrated doorbells.

 

[foxhole]

https://amzn.eu/d/5tiGu94

Have one of the these, all the usual features, with secondary bell helps hear the bell from the garden.
Subscription not essential .

 

[Mottie]

Not going to be paying the £50 subscription this year, they are taking the p1ss...

Same here. Luckily ours had just renewed at the old price before the price increase. I’ll be looking to replace it too when the time comes.

 

[Bargain Bucket]

I have a Eufy doorbell cam. Rings the main unit, our phones (via Eufy app) + an extra ringer I purchased. No subscription required. provides remote playback and live interaction. Works well but occasionally fails to detect human activity on the approach to our front door.

 

[T1GERIII]

Eufy doorbell no subscription

 

[opps]

I have a Eufy doorbell cam. Rings the main unit, our phones (via Eufy app) + an extra ringer I purchased. No subscription required. provides remote playback and live interaction. Works well but occasionally fails to detect human activity on the approach to our front door.

Personally I think the Amazon offering is taking the pee given that they are probably sniffing the metrics with a view to monetising them. Do Eufy have set commitments with regards to online storage space or might it be the case that in a year or two they too will go down the subscription path once they have a given number of users (switch and bait)?

 

[SithLordHood]

Thanks for all of the replies guys

 

[SandyLyon]

Not going to be paying the £50 subscription this year, they are taking the p1ss...
Any good alternatives out there?

I have a Hikvision CCTV system and seem to remember they offered one, but does it allow remote playback?

I looked into getting a Hikvision Video Doorbell to integrate with my Hikvision CCTV system, I’ve got a POE switch that can connect and power the doorbell, alerts etc can be set up to view on the hik-connect app, the only thing I’m struggling with is linking it to a internal chime

 

[FunkMaster]

If I had POE at the front door I’d have gone with Unifi but alas I don’t.

I had ring for about a year but literally just moved to the Eufy. Like that there is a Homebase and subscription free with local storage that is upgradable.

Early days for me with Eufy, so time will tell but so far so good.

 

[Benny5]

If I had POE at the front door I’d have gone with Unifi but alas I don’t.

I had ring for about a year but literally just moved to the Eufy. Like that there is a Homebase and subscription free with local storage that is upgradable.

Early days for me with Eufy, so time will tell but so far so good.

Any positives/negatives so far.

My Nest Hello is failing, that coupled with high annual charges is forcing me to look elsewhere. I’m looking at Eufy or Reolink. The Eufy will accommodate my current hardwired set up, with mechanical chime, I don’t believe the Reolink will.

 

[SithLordHood]

I have ditched my Ring and fitted a Eufy C31 with a MiniBase chime and also integrated with Alexa.
Working great after a few initial frustrations.
128GB card set for constant recording gives just over 2 weeks of recording time.
Glad I ditched the Ring!

I have it set to record directly onto a SD card in the doorbell, but you can have it set to record onto a MiniBase/Chime indoors. I don’t like this though as someone with a WiFi blocker active, or if your WiFi went down this would effectively prevent the doorbell from recording. If you set it to record onto its SD card then this problem goes away, although if the doorbell is stolen you have lost everything. Lesser of two evils.

I also have Hikvision CCTV system with front and rear door coverage if the Eufy did get stolen or failed.

 

[Benny5]

I have ditched my Ring and fitted a Eufy C31 with a MiniBase chime and also integrated with Alexa.
Working great after a few initial frustrations.
128GB card set for constant recording gives just over 2 weeks of recording time.
Glad I ditched the Ring!

I have it set to record directly onto a SD card in the doorbell, but you can have it set to record onto a MiniBase/Chime indoors. I don’t like this though as someone with a WiFi blocker active, or if your WiFi went down this would effectively prevent the doorbell from recording. If you set it to record onto its SD card then this problem goes away, although if the doorbell is stolen you have lost everything. Lesser of two evils.

I also have Hikvision CCTV system with front and rear door coverage if the Eufy did get stolen or failed.

Really appreciate your take on the Eufy.

With the Nest I’ve had my Internet go down and then the system reports ‘Offline’, so am I correct in thinking that in such instances nothing was stored.

One thing I believe is absent from the Eufy is the ability to scroll back, a nice feature on the Nest.

Sorry forgot to ask, but do you know if a mechanical chime and the Eufy chime be used in tandem. Ideally these would be located in different location.

 

[SithLordHood]

Not quite sure how the Nest works, but logic says that if it is a WifI doorbell that records to the cloud, when the WifI signal is degraded/blocked and/or your Internet connection drops, then it will not be able to do this and therefore it wont record anything.
The only way around this is if the doorbell has a portion of local storage that it records onto if it cant upload to the cloud for any reason, doing it when connection is restored. Although even if it had this it would be a finite amount of storage so wouldnt hold recording(s) for that long. I suspect it doesnt do this and you just loose any recordings. Easy enough to try out the theory.

The Eufy does have the ability to scroll back.
See screegrab below, i have mine setup so it is always recording, when the doorbell detects movement it highlights this in the timeline so you can easily scroll to this time and review the footage.

As for the Chime, as far as im aware if using a wired doorbell (C31 in my case) the chime must be bypassed therefore you will need to use a MiniBase or other chime, you can have more than one of these though).

 

[Benny5]

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond.

That image quality is really impressive.