Avigilon Vs Milestone Pros And Cons

Are you interested in VMS comparisons, access control, or both?

I'd recommend inviting a sales rep from each mfg. to present their solution to you and see which one best fits your customer needs as well as the input you'd receive from other integrators

Thomas, both have top tier VMSes. I believe the general consensus is that Avigilon is easier to use, better search, strong analytics but that Milestone has more overall features and integrations.

The companies really have sharply contrasting product philosophies. Milestone focuses on being 'open', they don't make their own cameras, they don't make their own analytics and their emphasis is on supporting lots of others as a platform to bring them together. By contrast, Avigilon focuses on tighter integration of its own cameras and analytics. While Avigilon is somewhat 'open', it's nowhere near as open as Milestone.

The other major contrast is business model. Avigilon is a tightly controlled channel, Milestone not so much.

Both are quite popular and strong, e.g., Favorite VMS Manufacturers 2016 so I don't think one is definitively better but you will need to see which companies product and business strategy best fits your approach.

Thomas, I am glad to help out on this as they are two products I have been heavily utilizing over the past few years.

Milestone has far better integrations with third party devices and does not rely upon Onvif as heavily as Avigilon.  I have only found one random camera in the past few years that would not integrate with Milestone.  Milestone has excellent server side motion detection available as well though camera side motion detection is a clunky process.  The amount of easily accessible customization within Milestone makes it possible to do far more than many products on the market.  Finally, Milestone has many enterprise grade features such as the ability to inherit camera databases of video when replacing a camera.  Milestone is truly an Enterprise grade product.

There are some drawbacks to Milestone as well.  Milestone can be difficult to support and has The confusing pricing model that requires a complex spreadsheet to figure out is often frustrating to newcomers and is only made worse with the (temporary?) split of the + products.  The Care package software support licensing model has been a complaint of customers for years (and the primary reason Avigilon competes well).  Renewal of licenses that are past due or for partial terms is a chore requiring both Milestone Sales Support and a distributor coordinate with the integrator.  Their support queues are lengthy and they do not, in theory, support the end user.  Milestone is purchased through distribution via the archaic call and ask for a quote —> distributor contacts Milestone for license info —> distributor provides you a price.  Milestone claims not to sell direct to end users but I know of one prominent example in my territory where that is the case.  Finally their client software is more difficult to setup properly and for the end user to use.  Again many of these items are expected due to the enterprise grade features.

Avigilon has numerous benefits.  Avigilon , at least in the US, only sells direct to dealers - no distributor markups or “value added services”.  I have not found an example of them circumventing the dealer to end user relationship.  Avigilon branded cameras are supported so well it makes setup incredibly easy.  Avigilon s client software is, in my opinion, very elegant and easy to use for end users.  HDSM is a great feature worth digging into and comprehending.  Avigilon pushes so much to the cameras.  Phone support queues used to be short but this appears to be getting worse lately.  Avigilon has, in my opinion, the easiest and most reliable analytics if that is of value for your use. The client software is so easy to use that I rarely have to train on it.

Avigilon has some fairly big disadvantages as well.  For a company that strongly pushes analytics the lack of analytics on around half of their camera line is an oversight, including some fairly popular models.  Avigilon makes setup so easy that it lacks troubleshooting features which essentially forces you into contacting supportz. Avigilon apparently always uses RTP/UDP with none of the many options to troubleshoot that Milestone has. 

I characterize the different approaches as Avigilon following the Apple OS X/iOS model of making the complete package, keeping as much as possible in-house, and supporting those items very well.  Milestone is more like the Android model where every technical detail is exposed and there is mammoth customization.  Your experiences with Smartphones may mirror your opinion of these brands. 

in my experience, once Avigilon was available to us we switched within a year to about 70% of our business being with Avigilon while only about 2%  remains MIlestone.

Thanks everyone for the information.  I appreciate you all taking the time to answer the question and doing a good job explaining it.

Thanks,

Tom

Just wanted to add this for what its worth...

One nice thing about milestone over avigilon is their system report for cataloging a system is excellent. It does not leave anything out. 

Avigilon does not have a comprehensive report, particularly if you are trying to document any custom rules or alarms. That part i found very frustrating with them.