A few years ago, I reviewed ADT’s Pulse home security and automation system, giving it our Editors’ Choice award for smart home security. ADT is phasing Pulse out for everyone but those who still have no or bad cellular service. Everywhere else, the company is now offering ADT Command. This service offers everything Pulse does, along with several enhancements, namely that ADT now owns all the sensor hardware end-to-end so it offers a much more seamless, intuitive experience. However, it also has the same major downside as Pulse, in that it’s the most expensive professionally monitored security system we’ve tested.
Compared with our Editors’ Choice winner for DIY security systems, the Abode iota, which starts at $279 for the kit and $8 per month for monitoring, ADT Command’s $599 starting price and $59.99 monthly service feels stratospheric. Even compared with other services that are also installed by technicians, like Vivint Smart Home, ADT comes out on the high end. On the plus side, the premium price you pay not only gets you an advanced security and automation solution that’s fully installed for you, it also gets you surprisingly personal service for the life of your contract.
What sets ADT apart is not just that everything simply works, it’s that you’re also getting a level of customer service the likes of which I’ve never experienced before, with multiple ways to contact human support no matter what your problem is, and the response time is pretty much immediate. For me, that helps makes ADT Command worth the high price, and an Editors’ Choice winner for smart home security systems.
ADT Command Plans and Pricing
Let’s get the pricing details out of the way first, since that will likely be your biggest hurdle with ADT Command. There’s no way around it: The system I reviewed is expensive. You’ve got some options, though.
I tested ADT’s Command Custom Home package, which is at the top of the company’s home automation and security offerings. The service requires at least two visits by ADT sales reps and technicians, one to assess your needs and build your system requirements (and probably set up your financing), and another to actually install the system. My system included a smart lock as well as modifications to some already installed thermostats, which required ADT to bring in subcontractors to handle the electrical and locksmith work. Expect the installation process to take up most of your day.
This version of ADT Command has all the bells and whistles, which is why I chose to review it. My overall installation for the original ADT Pulse system was over $3,000, and the upgrade to Command was another $1,422.99. Yes, that made my jaw drop, too, but ADT has several financing options that I’ll get to shortly.
Aside from the initial installation, there’s a monthly subscription fee that can rise as you add more devices. In my house, which is roughly 3,000 square geet, we installed two Command control panels, four cameras with motion sensors, four smart thermostats, a smart doorbell, a smart lock, two smart lights, a host of window and glass break sensors, smoke and carbon monoxide sensors on all three floors, two flood detectors, and a Google Nest Hub smart display, and my monthly charge is just a hair over $80 per month.
What I like most about the Command Custom Home system is that in addition to all the tech, it comes with a Gold service package (all Custom Home installations do). This not only gives you dedicated 24/7 phone support number that will be answered by a human with sub-two minute wait times, I even got both the sales rep and the lead technician’s cell phone numbers. When I questioned whether this was just because I was writing a review, the sales rep showed me his cell phone’s contact database with over 2,000 names in it. ADT does this for every Custom Home customer. Now, if something goes wrong with a device (which I’ll know through an email and SMS alert) or an alarm goes off that I don’t think should be going off, I can call either a quick-answer support number or my sales rep personally for help.
If the Custom Home price is simply too high for you, ADT also has a Command System Starter Kit that includes a Command panel, three door or window sensors, and a motion detector. This starts at $599 with installation and typically has various promotions available. It’s still installed by ADT and you can modify it to add different devices as you need, though doing so will raise your costs.
ADT’s standard monthly monitoring fee, which includes all of your smart home and video services, starts at $59.99. However, you can opt for an alarm-only monitoring service that starts at $38.99 per month. There is also a landline-based monitoring service that starts at $28.99 per month. If you’re not up for the Command system and just want a DIY system with ADT’s monitoring, there’s always ADT Blue, which starts at $19.99 per month.
As mentioned, ADT has several options to make that mammoth initial install price more palatable. An internal financing program, called FlexFi, lets you break up your monthly charge from 12 to 60 months with 0% interest and no down payment. You can also go for a 3-Pay option, which lets you pay nothing down and break the install price into three equal amounts over a 90-day period. If you’re OK with the paying the whole price right away, you still need to pay half up front and the other half when the installation is complete.
You have your choice of a 12- to 60-month contract agreement, though your rep will push your for the most common length of 36 months. Frankly, after all the work on my house, I’d want it for at least that length anyway. If you want to opt out early, you’ll face an early termination fee.
A Step Up From Pulse
As I mentioned above, my first ADT experience was the last-gen Pulse system. It has some software and third-party device issues, which Command not only solves, but takes to the next level.
Originally, when ADT assessed my Pulse installation prior to installing Command, the technician felt that several of the Pulse devices (window sensors and cameras) could still be used with Command, which would decrease my upgrade installation costs. However, once the installation technician arrived (a different guy), he realized that for the full Command experience, ADT was going to have to do a rip-and-replace on the Pulse system. If you’re in the same boat, your installation cost compared with what you paid for Pulse will still be less, but you’ll have techs in your house for at least a day upgrading and reinstalling every device.
Another thing you’ll need to do during installation is reestablish your ADT credentials if you’re a previous Pulse customer. Our process began with reassigning passwords from the website, then using those to log into the updated mobile apps. Unlike Pulse, the new Command Control app now uses multifactor authentication when changing passwords, which is good. Updating my wife’s phone followed the same pattern, with the added step of making her a new user on the Command system as she was only listed under Pulse. One slightly confusing aspect of logging in for the first time using the website console is that ADT puts all the logins for all its products on the same page, so you need to know the product name of what you’re looking to access.
For configuring how your system is going to work, I like the website interface best. It’s the easiest to see, well designed, and ADT has added a bunch of small convenience enhancements over what I previously experienced with Pulse. For example, under the Activity log, you can now group events, export the logs if you want to see them in another app, and collapse or expand events by day. Everywhere you encounter these new features that are different from Pulse, ADT has added pop-up description tours, so you’re walked through all the new features before using them for the first time.
Once installed, you’ll find that Command does everything Pulse does, and adds several niceties along the way. For one, the software experience, including your web interface, is all new. Unlike Pulse, which uses software developed by ADT, the Command software (called Control for both mobile and web versions) was built by Alarm.com, but is exclusive to ADT. That turns out to be a good move, as I found the interface much slicker, shortcut controls more accessible and central, and the camera quick-view experience to be better.
With Pulse, ADT is reselling Nest devices for thermostats, smart doorbells, and a few other things. The problem there is that the Pulse software doesn’t support those devices directly. You have to establish your own Nest account and manage the hardware using Nest’s app, which not only means multiple downloads and configuration sessions, but multiple logins and passwords. In Command, ADT’s software covers all of your devices in one app. Well, almost one app.
The mobile Control app (available for Android and iOS) lets you see and adjust all of your smart devices. You can see who is at the door and talk with them, adjust thermostats, turn alarms on and off, and more. However, Command also makes you download a second app, called MyADT, which is where you monitor your account status. Then there’s the web interface, where you can also see account status and access your devices, but it’s also the only place where you can perform certain advanced options, like the new video analytics feature (more on this below). Three apps is a little much, though at least you can share a single set of credentials across all of them, which you can’t do with Pulse.
The new apps also have some additional functionality, some of which is because ADT now controls all devices end-to-end instead of sharing them with a third party. For example, under Pulse’s Nest system, the doorbell only allows the camera and talk functionality. In Command, those abilities are there, but you also have one-button options directly on the doorbell screen that let you instantly lock your doors or set off a panic alarm.
Two significant new features are Scenes and video analytics. Pulse let you automate things like turning the smart light in front of your front door on a certain time, so it’s always on when you come home from work. Command does that, too, but extends it to something ADT calls Scenes. You can set this up in the Control app and basically build yourself custom one-tap buttons. So for example, you can make a Scene that adjusts your thermostats to a specific temperature with a one-click activation.
Scenes are also how you access Command’s geofencing feature. So let’s say Control senses that all household members have traveled a mile from the house (they’ll all need to have Control installed on their phones with geographic location turned on) and you’ve left your garage door open, you can set a Scene where the system notifies you the garage door is still open or simply shuts it automatically if you have an ADT garage sensor installed. You can build similar Scenes for other sensors or your primary alarms.
Video analytics is probably my favorite new addition to the system. At the time of this review, you can only do this using the web version of Control, probably because you want a good-sized screen. Once your cameras are installed (and they need to be Command cameras that are registered by the technician to activate analytics), you can log into Control and select Video on the left navigation bar. From there, click on Recording Rules, then on Add New Rule. Now you can select one of your cameras. You’ll get two buttons, one for Ground Zone and one for Tripwire. You can also select the size of the objects you want the camera to detect. It defaults to Large, but you can increase it to Very Large or drop it to Medium or lower, and the camera will react and start recording if objects of this size come into view.
If you select Ground Zone, like I did for my deck camera, you’ll see the image your camera is covering with a green square on top. I can then reshape the square to cover just the deck portion I want—the part in front of my back door. Now the camera will only react if an object of the size I selected comes into that area. You can go further and define what you want the camera to notify you about via either email or text. Here you can choose person, car, animal, or “other,” which means anything unidentified. I chose only people for the backyard deck camera, as my house is in the woods and I don’t want a text every time a deer walks by.
Tripwire is the same basic thing except instead of an adjustable field, you get a straight line. I put that across the top of my driveway, indicated the detection direction to be toward the house, and chose people and cars as the targets. So now if a person or car pulls into my driveway (not out of it), the camera reacts, records, and sends me an alert.
Pulse has cameras, but they lack this kind of granular adjustment. As I’m fairly close to the road, Pulse was constantly taking video clips of cars that were driving by my house on the street, but close enough for the camera’s motion sensor to notice them. That’s gone now that the camera knows to stop where my driveway ends. And just like Pulse, these cameras have dedicated cloud storage where you can keep your clips for up to 30 days and review them at your leisure.
Notable System Hardware
While you’ll probably do most of your ADT manipulations using either the mobile app or the website, the next best thing is your Command Panel. I had two installed at different ends of my house.
The Command Panel lets you turn the master alarms on and off, see all of your devices, do diagnostics, and bypass device alarms if you think they went off for the wrong reason. There are also quick-access panic alarms for fire, police, and “personal,” which translates to anything else, usually health emergencies. Finally, there’s a new camera built into the panel that snaps a quick picture of anyone standing in front of it when the alarm is deactivated. That’s great, but the panel was installed too low to catch the face on top of my 6′ 2″ body, so keep that in mind when having it installed.
I ran test alarms on the panic system and found that you’ll get a call from ADT monitoring in about a minute or less (which is still a long time to stand there listening to some very loud alarms). When I spoke with some of ADT’s executives in charge of its monitoring centers, they told me that dispatchers go through sensitivity training that’s separate for police, fire, and, health calls. That’s why you have three buttons instead of just one: You’re getting routed to whomever has the right training to handle your call. If you hit police, for example, the person calling you from ADT has gone through police sensitivity training, so they know how to listen for stress in your voice. So even if you say you’re fine, they might still call the cops if they think Hannibal Lecter is holding a knife to your throat while fava beans are cooking on your stove.
These execs also told me that ADT has to maintain an extensive database of local alarm ordinances covering how alarm responses need to happen. For example, in my area, pushing the police button gets you a call from ADT first and then a call to the police. If it’s a fire alarm, on the other hand, local laws say ADT has to contact my local fire department before they call me (so that’s not one I want to push accidentally). These laws vary from locale to locale, which is why ADT tracks them to always be in compliance.
A minor hardware convenience that I liked about Pulse, though it made me sloppy with remembering my alarm codes, is that it came with a small plastic token about the size of a quarter that you could attach to your key ring. Open your door and swipe the token across the panel, and the alarm would automatically deactivate. Originally, Command didn’t have this feature, but by the time my installation happened, ADT had a close second. The new token is sized more like a car fob, with buttons for alarm activation and deactivation, as well as panic. I don’t like this as much as the token version, since the token is much smaller and I already have a car fob, but it’s still a one-button control you can use without logging into your phone’s Control app or hitting the panel once you’re inside.
As stated above, if you have Pulse now, you’re looking at a full replacement of all your devices, including the alarm sensors, locks, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, cameras, and everything else. I decided to add an extra outdoor camera and a new internal camera. I put the indoor camera in the garage because that space was otherwise unmonitored. All cameras can support the video analytics feature described above as long as your technician registers them that way. They also have both day and night modes that kick in automatically.
Pulse uses a smart doorbell and thermostats resold from Nest. ADT now has its own version of these components and they’re fully integrated into the Command Control software.
The smart doorbell looks a lot like the one from Nest and works the same way, aside from the software enhancements described earlier. Note also that most of ADT’s smart sensor devices aren’t permanently attached. So if you want to add a different Z-Wave doorbell, for example, you just pop the current one off your wall and stick the new one on. Generally, I wouldn’t do that as the ADT devices are very good, and it was unclear from the sales pitch if you’d keep paying for the ADT doorbell component as part of your contract even if you decided to replace it.
That brings up another point for current Pulse customers: ADT doesn’t replace all the devices that come with Pulse. Some are simply deactivated and then new devices get installed, with the notable exception of the window and glass break sensors, cameras, doorbell, and locks. However, I still have the old smoke and carbon monoxide sensors on the ceiling, and the Pulse central switchbox in the basement (Command doesn’t require one of those, so it’s just turned off and hanging on the wall). I also have a cable connection to my office from the Pulse central control box that I’ve now unplugged, but that ADT wouldn’t have touched as part of my Command installation. ADT does replace the backup cell connection box from Pulse, since Command is an all-cell system. The company also switched the box from AT&T to Verizon, as the latter now has better coverage in my area.
Your next notable Command hardware addition is optional, the Google Nest Hub. This is the only third-party device you can get from ADT. Pulse and the early versions of Command were standardized on Amazon’s Alexa, and you can still get it to work with Command, though you’ll be doing it yourself. The new Google Nest Hub is what your technician will install if you want a smart display from ADT today.
Using the Nest Hub, you can turn your alarms on and off, lock your door, adjust your thermostats, and control any smart lights, all by voice command. I would love to see that extended to the cameras, too, so I can take a quick view around the house on a screen bigger than my phone, but that isn’t currently supported.
For my installation, I had to download the Google Home app separately, create a personal Google account (I didn’t have one yet), then configure it to see ADT’s devices inside Google’s app. I tested it on the alarms and door lock while the technician was at the house (by saying commands like, “Hey Google, lock the front door”), and all went well after about 30 minutes of fiddling. But a few days after the tech left, I tried to access the lock and other smart devices again, and Google didn’t know what I was talking about. Even though I was logged into both ADT’s Control and Google’s Home apps, my device connection had been lost.
Thanks to ADT’s Gold service, I simply called my sales rep and a tech is being sent to my house to set everything up again. That may sound lame for a tech geek like me, but for an 85-year old luddite, like say, my mom, that’s practically mandatory.
It’s worth noting that, at the time of my installation, integration with Google Home was only a month old. That made bumping into bugs inevitable, so if you’re on the fence you might want to give it a few months past this writing to let ADT iron out the kinks. You can still install Command now and opt to add the Nest Hub later on.
Your last hardware concern isn’t an ADT device, it’s your own Wi-Fi network. While Command is an all-cellular system for monitoring, most of the smart devices use your home’s Wi-Fi to connect. That means you should definitely practice good wireless security. If your network gets hacked, the bad guys won’t necessarily own ADT’s alarms, but they can potentially cause havoc with Wi-Fi-dependent devices. And if you’re one of the few Americans left who doesn’t have Wi-Fi or an internet connection, ADT’s techs will contact local ISPs for you and help you get internet and set up a network, though working with the ISP and paying them is still your chore to deal with.
On the cellular service side, Command will work on 3G and up. If you don’t have good coverage in your area, then ADT will sell you Pulse, since it’s a landline-capable system. Anywhere there’s cell coverage, however, your only option is Command.
If you want to add some other hardware to your ADT system, Command leaves the setup process to you, but its app has options for connecting to third-party Z-Wave devices.
Top-Notch Smart Home Security
Overall, I have no complaints about the ADT Command system aside from its price. The hardware options are plentiful, the software tools are sophisticated, the white-glove Gold service is the best I’ve experienced, and just about everything works as well as you can hope for. Compared with Vivint, another top pick, ADT is a bit pricier but offers superior customer service. Ultimately, this is the top high-end home automation and security system you can get on a national level, and this earns ADT Command PCMag’s Editors’ Choice award for smart home security systems. If everything it offers sound appealing and you have the budget for it, Command is the way to go.
For a more budget-friendly alternative, you might want to consider going the DIY route. As mentioned earlier, ADT also offers Blue, which lets you start small and add components as you need them. You can opt to monitor your home yourself using the mobile app, or pay $20 per month for 24/7 professional monitoring. SimpliSafe is another good choice, with affordable hardware and reasonable monthly monitoring fees that don’t require you to commit to a contract.
