Choosing a surveillance platform is one of the most consequential decisions you will make for your property. Get it right and the system serves you quietly for a decade. Get it wrong and you inherit years of expensive infrastructure, complex support calls, poor user adoption, or — at worst — a platform carrying known cyber security risks on your network.
At ProCCTV, we design and install surveillance across Brisbane, the Gold Coast, and South East Queensland, and we work with the platforms we believe in rather than whatever is cheapest on the shelf. This comparison covers the four platform categories we encounter most: Ajax, Verkada, Hanwha Wave, and conventional Chinese-manufactured systems such as Dahua and Hikvision.
We have built it from real installation and support experience, not vendor marketing. Each platform is rated across nine categories that genuinely affect how a system performs and what it costs to own — from how easily your team finds footage after an incident, to how the platform behaves when the internet drops, to the real total cost of ownership over its life.
Our default recommendation is Ajax for its simplicity and true cloud management. We step up to Verkada when a project demands proactive AI security or advanced platform features. Hanwha Wave is reserved for specific no-cloud or specialist camera applications. We do not sell or install Dahua or Hikvision — and the comparison explains why.
Use the interactive comparison below to explore each category, or tap “Find the right platform” for a guided recommendation.
Why platform choice matters more than camera specs
It is easy to fixate on megapixels and price per camera, but the platform — the software that runs everything — is what determines your day-to-day experience for the life of the system. A brilliant camera attached to clumsy software is a daily frustration. Reliable, intuitive software attached to good cameras is a system your team actually uses well.
The biggest differences between these platforms are not in the cameras at all. They are in how footage is stored and protected, how quickly an incident can be investigated, whether the system keeps recording when the network drops, how secure it is against intrusion, and how much it truly costs to own once infrastructure, support, and replacement cycles are accounted for.
Every site is different. The right platform depends on whether the property is residential or commercial, whether you need to review footage after the fact or be alerted in real time, and whether your environment has any specialist requirements.
If you would like to talk it through, our team offers a no-obligation consultation across Brisbane, the Gold Coast, and South East Queensland.
