The honest answer is “it depends”, but that isn’t much use when you’re trying to budget. So here are the numbers we actually see on Ottawa jobs, what’s included at each level, and the handful of things that move the price the most.

Typical Ottawa Price Ranges

For a professionally installed IP camera system with a recorder, most Ottawa homes land between $1,500 and $3,500 for a 4-camera setup. Add cameras and you’re usually adding $250 to $600 per camera installed, depending on the camera grade and how hard the cable run is. Small businesses with 8 to 16 cameras typically fall in the $4,000 to $12,000 range; larger commercial sites with dozens of cameras, PoE switches and long conduit runs go beyond that.

Those figures include the hardware, the cabling, mounting, recorder setup and getting the app working on your phone. They don’t include electrical work, drywall repair or a lift rental for tall exterior walls, which are quoted separately when needed.

What You’re Paying For

Roughly speaking, a typical job splits into three parts. Hardware is usually 40 to 50 percent: cameras, the NVR, hard drive, PoE switch if needed, and mounts. Labour is 40 to 50 percent, and most of that is cable. Running a clean Cat6 line from a soffit to a basement rack, fishing it through finished walls without damage, and terminating it properly takes far longer than screwing the camera to the wall. The rest is small stuff: junction boxes, weatherproofing, cable management, configuration.

What Drives the Price Up

Cable runs are the big one. A bungalow with an unfinished basement is quick; a three-storey home with finished ceilings everywhere and cameras on the far side of the house is not. Brick and stone exteriors take longer to drill and seal than siding. Camera type matters too: a 4K camera with a varifocal lens costs more than a fixed 4 MP camera, and specialty cameras like licence plate readers or PTZ units cost several times a standard dome. Finally, storage: 30 days of 4K footage from 16 cameras needs a lot more drive than 7 days from 4.

Where Cheap Quotes Cut Corners

If a quote is dramatically lower than the others, look at what’s missing. Common shortcuts are running cable exposed along the outside of the house instead of inside, using consumer Wi-Fi cameras that drop offline, skipping weatherproof junction boxes so the connectors rot after two winters, undersized hard drives that overwrite after a few days, and no proper camera placement, so you get pictures of the top of people’s heads. We cover placement in detail in our guide to where to place security cameras.

Getting a Real Number

The only way to get an accurate price is a site visit or, at minimum, a walk-through on the phone with photos. We’ll tell you how many cameras you actually need (often fewer than people expect), what grade makes sense for your property, and give you a fixed price. If your project also involves home theatre, whole-home audio or a boardroom system, our recommended partner avgeeks.ca handles that side of things.

Call 613-691-1091 or request a free quote and we’ll price your system properly.