“How much for cameras?” is the first question almost every buyer in Egypt asks, and it is the one question no honest supplier can answer over the phone. Not because the price is a secret, but because two projects with the same number of cameras can differ by a factor of three — and the difference is never the cameras.
This article breaks down what a real surveillance quote is actually made of, what moves each line up or down, and where buyers in Egypt most often save money in a way that costs them more within two years. No prices are quoted here on purpose: a number without a site assessment is a guess, and a guess is how projects end up with blind spots and re-work.
Why the same “16 cameras” can cost three different amounts
A camera count describes coverage, not requirements. Two warehouses may both need 16 cameras, but one needs to read a licence plate at the gate at night in the rain, and the other only needs to know that a door opened. The first needs a different sensor, a different lens, a different lighting technology, more storage and more bandwidth. Same count, different system.
So before any number exists, three things have to be decided: what each camera must prove, how long the footage must be kept, and what happens when the power goes out. Everything else in the quote follows from those three answers.
The seven line items in a real quote
| Line item | What moves it up | What most buyers get wrong |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Cameras | Resolution, sensor size, lens type (fixed vs varifocal vs PTZ), low-light technology, IP/IK rating, ANPR or AI analytics on board | Comparing models by megapixels alone. A 4 MP camera with a large sensor and hybrid illumination will out-perform an 8 MP camera in a dark loading bay every night of the year. |
| 2. Recorder (NVR/DVR) | Channel count, throughput, number of drive bays, RAID support, AI search features | Buying a recorder with exactly as many channels as today’s cameras, leaving no room for the second phase. |
| 3. Storage | Retention days, camera count, resolution, frame rate, compression, whether recording is continuous or event-based | Using desktop drives. Surveillance drives are built for continuous write; a standard PC drive is not, and it fails at the worst possible moment. |
| 4. Network | Cable runs and routing, PoE switch capacity, fibre for long distances, whether existing cabling can be reused | Assuming the existing office network can absorb the camera traffic. It usually cannot, and the result is dropped frames nobody notices until footage is needed. |
| 5. Power protection | UPS sizing, surge protection, how many hours of recording must survive an outage | Protecting the recorder but not the switch — so the recorder stays alive with nothing to record. |
| 6. Installation and commissioning | Site height and access, trenching, conduit, working hours (live sites often mean night work), mounting hardware, configuration and handover training | Treating installation as a percentage of hardware. It is driven by the building, not the bill of materials. |
| 7. Support and maintenance | Response time, preventive cleaning and re-focus visits, spare holding, remote health monitoring | Skipping it — then discovering after an incident that six cameras had been out of focus or offline for months. |
At Speed4Trading, installation is quoted as professional installation in Cairo & Giza, priced after a site assessment, precisely because items 4, 5 and 6 cannot be known from a drawing. Every system we supply carries a one-year warranty on the equipment.
The four “savings” that cost the most
1. Grey-market equipment
Equipment bought outside the official channel is usually cheaper for one reason: there is no warranty behind it, no firmware support, and often no way to prove where it came from. When a unit fails in month eight, the saving disappears in a single replacement. Buying from an authorized agent means the serial is traceable, the firmware is the right regional build, and the warranty is honoured locally rather than argued about.
2. Under-sized storage
Retention is where budgets get trimmed first, because nothing appears to break. It breaks later: the one incident you need is always older than the window you kept. Decide retention as a policy, not as a leftover.
3. No power protection
In an environment with frequent switching and surges, the recorder is the most vulnerable device on site — and it is the one holding all the evidence. A UPS that keeps the recorder and the PoE switch alive is not a luxury line item.
4. Cheap cabling
Cable is invisible in a proposal and decisive in operation. Substandard cable in a hot roof space is the most common cause of intermittent camera drop-outs, and re-pulling cable after ceilings are closed costs many times what the better cable would have cost.
What a site assessment actually produces
An assessment is not a sales visit. It produces the document that makes a price meaningful:
- A camera-by-camera purpose list — what each view must prove, and at what distance
- Lighting conditions at the worst hour, not at noon
- Cable routes, distances and where fibre replaces copper
- Power availability at each point, and the UPS load that follows
- Retention policy, and the storage that satisfies it
- A phasing plan, so the recorder and switches bought now still fit the system in two years
Ask for these six outputs from any vendor. A supplier who can produce them has designed a system; a supplier who cannot has priced a box.
Questions worth asking before you sign
- Is the equipment supplied through the official channel, with a traceable serial and a local warranty?
- What retention period does the quoted storage actually deliver, at the quoted resolution and frame rate?
- Which devices stay alive during a power cut, and for how long?
- Is the recorder sized for the next phase, or exactly for today?
- Who answers the phone when a camera goes offline, and within how long?
- What is covered by the warranty, and for how long?
Where this fits in the rest of the system
Cost decisions are easier once you can see how the pieces interact. Our guide to choosing the right surveillance system covers camera selection, Smart Hybrid Light explains why low-light technology changes the camera line, and AcuSeek NVR shows what a recorder does beyond storing video. For what this looks like at scale, see how a single centralised system covers Americana Group’s 450+ branches, and how design changes entirely in a hazardous environment at Sidi Kerir Petrochemicals.
Frequently asked questions
Why will you not give me a price per camera?
Because a price per camera hides the four lines that decide whether the system works: storage, network, power protection and installation. A per-camera number is comparable between two vendors only when both have specified the same retention, the same lighting performance and the same infrastructure — which almost never happens.
Is a bigger megapixel count always better?
No. Higher resolution increases storage and bandwidth on every single line of the quote, and it does not help at all if the limiting factor is light rather than detail. Matching the lens and the low-light technology to the scene usually delivers more usable evidence than raising resolution.
How long should we keep footage?
Long enough that an incident discovered late is still recoverable. In practice that means deciding the retention window as a policy first, then sizing storage to it — not accepting whatever the recorder happens to hold.
Is installation included?
Installation is quoted separately as professional installation in Cairo and Giza, priced after a site assessment, because it depends on the building rather than on the equipment list.
What does the warranty cover?
Equipment supplied by Speed4Trading carries a one-year warranty, honoured locally as the authorized agent for Hikvision and Western Digital in Egypt.
Get a real number, not an estimate
Speed4Trading has been the authorized Hikvision agent in Egypt since 1999, and we will tell you where your budget is better spent before we tell you what it costs. Book a site assessment and you will get a quote that lists all seven items above, not just the cameras.
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