Setup Check

Starting a smart home is mostly a sequencing problem. Buy in the wrong order and a $30 bulb quietly commits you to an ecosystem, or a lock you love turns out to need a hub you'd never have bought. Setup Check is a written plan for your house: what your situation rules out, what to buy in what order, and where the remaining choice is genuinely yours.

Who it's for

People at the start, not the end. You've just moved in, or you've decided this is the year, and you want lights and a lock and to see who's at the door — but every review site tells you what's "best" without knowing anything about your house, your phones, or what you refuse to pay monthly.

It's also for people mid-way who don't want to strand what they've already bought. You don't need to have picked anything yet. If you have, that becomes a constraint we plan around rather than the subject of the report.

What you get

• What your situation rules out, and why — the most useful thing a plan does first is shrink. Every elimination is a consequence of something you told us, decided on documented facts.
• What to buy in what order — the sequence that keeps an early purchase from constraining a later one, including what to deliberately defer.
• Two or three real options per area, each with a table showing which of your constraints it meets and which it fails — plus what it costs, what it locks you into, and the honest catch.
• The architecture to build, and why — not just which devices, but what shape the system should take: whether to lean on the WiFi you have, commit to one ecosystem's Thread, run a bridge per brand, or put a universal hub in the middle. Every recommendation shows the rule that produced it and the thing you told us that fired it, so you can check our reasoning instead of taking our word. This is the part that reads on what you plan to add later, not only what you're buying now — which is why the form asks where you think you're heading.
• The subscription reality — which features are free, which are paywalled, and the five-year cost of the plans a starter list quietly assumes.
• What stops working when your internet is down — device by device. Some of what you're about to buy keeps running on your own network; some of it is a paperweight until the outage ends. It's rarely the split people expect, and almost nobody tells you before you buy.
• Lifecycle warnings on what you're about to buy — where a product is near the end of its life, already superseded, or running on a promise the manufacturer hasn't dated. Buying the model that's about to be discontinued is an expensive way to learn this.
• How many hubs the plan really needs — one per brand adds up fast, in boxes, power outlets and things that can fail. We say plainly where your list is heading and what consolidating would cost or save.
• What it would cost to change your mind — the exit price of the ecosystem you're being pointed at, before you're in it rather than after. Some choices are a weekend and a screwdriver to reverse; others mean replacing everything.
• What we couldn't settle — where the evidence ran out, where we made an assumption you didn't state, and what only you can check. We flag it instead of writing around it.
• Sources and dates — every load-bearing claim carries a source and a verification date, same discipline as the rest of the site.

Options, not a verdict — and why that's the honest version

We rank setups against the constraints you give us. We don't rank products against each other on quality, because we haven't physically tested them and we won't pretend otherwise — that rule governs this whole site, and paying us doesn't switch it off.

In practice that's a better deal than it sounds. "This is the best doorbell" is a claim about nobody's house. "Of these three, one is the only one that works for both an iPhone and an Android without a monthly fee — and here's what it costs you in resolution" is a claim about yours.

And when your constraints don't separate the options, we say so. Sometimes three locks all fit you perfectly and the rest is taste and $110. A report that manufactures a winner there would be inventing a tiebreaker we don't have — so instead we name exactly what's left to decide and hand it back. The sample report does this three times, on purpose.

You don't need to know the products — and they don't have to be in our library

Most of what we ask about is your house, not hardware: own or rent, how the switches are wired, what phones are in the household, who needs to get in, what you'll never pay monthly. You can answer all of it without knowing a single model number.

When you do name products, they don't have to be ours. Our public library holds 283 verified products today — that's what we've published so far, and it grows weekly. It is not the boundary of what we'll research. If something you name isn't in it, we research that product from primary sources for your report, the same way we research everything else: manufacturer documentation, certification registries, published sources, each claim dated.

Where you do name something, give us the exact model — the full name and, where it exists, the model number or SKU from the box or listing. "Ring doorbell" spans a decade of hardware with genuinely different compatibility; "Ring Video Doorbell (2nd gen), part B08N5NQ869" is answerable. If you're not sure which version you have, paste the retailer link or type whatever the box says — that's usually enough for us to pin it down.

Two honest limits. If a product is so new or so obscure that no primary source exists yet, we tell you that plainly rather than guessing — an unverifiable answer is reported as unverifiable, not filled in. And if the plan you're asking about turns out to depend mostly on products in that state, we contact you within one business day of your order and refund you in full before we research any further. You are never charged for a report we can't source.

What happens afterward: products we research for your report get added to the public library where the findings are general (compatibility, protocols, subscriptions, lifecycle). Nothing specific to you goes in — not your name, your home, your household, or your constraints. Your report is yours; the product facts become everyone's.

How it works

1. You'll tell us what you want your home to do — pick the areas that matter (locks, cameras, lights, thermostat, leaks, and so on) and say which are urgent and which can wait. What you pick here also sets your price: up to 3 areas is $49, the whole house is $99.
2. Then some questions about the house and the household: own or rent, roughly how big, what the wiring looks like, which phones are in play, who else needs access.
3. Then one about the future: what you think you'll add later, even vaguely. "Probably a lock eventually" is a useful answer — it's what lets the report recommend a shape that still fits in two years instead of one that only fits today's list. If you genuinely don't know, say so; that's an answer we plan around too.
4. Then the questions that decide between options. We explain each one before we ask it, because several of them turn on things nobody tells you up front — that some cameras record nothing without a monthly plan, for instance, or that where you'd mount one decides whether it can be plugged in at all. You'll only ever see questions your chosen areas actually need, and the form tells you up front roughly how long it takes.
5. At the end, we read your answers back to you — so you can see we listened and fix anything we've misread — then ask where to send the report.
6. You pay on this site, and your report arrives within three business days. Nothing sits in between waiting on us — no interview to schedule, and nothing to wait for in your inbox before you can buy.

You don't need to know the right answers, or even the right questions. That's the job you're paying us for. Where you're not sure, say so — "not sure" is an accepted answer to everything. We apply a conservative default, tell you in the report exactly what we assumed, and you can correct it.

Every question exists to rule something out. If an answer wouldn't change the plan, we don't ask it — which is also why we never ask for your address.

Written for someone who's new to this

Reports open with a plain-language primer: every technical term the report uses is defined before it's used, and linked to a free guide on this site if you want more. You should be able to read yours top to bottom having never heard of Matter or a Thread border router. If you'd like to get ahead of it, start with smart home for beginners — it's free and it covers most of what a report assumes.

About prices

Reports quote prices as we found them at the manufacturer, on a stated date. Prices change often and vary by retailer and seller. We don't track live prices, we don't quote a particular shop, and nothing in a report is an offer to sell. Treat the figures as a guide to what things cost, not as what you'll pay — and expect the gap to be widest around sales.

What this is — and isn't

Setup Check is a research service built on the same method as the rest of the site: manufacturer documentation, certification registries, and published sources, checked by a human before delivery. It is not hands-on product testing, and we'll never pretend otherwise. It's also not electrical, security, or other professional advice — anything involving household wiring may need a licensed electrician under your local codes.

Nothing in a report is paid for by a manufacturer. Reports disclose our affiliate relationship with every product recommended — and as of July 2026 we have none at all (our disclosure page). Reports carry no retailer links either; every link goes to our own product pages, where the sourcing lives.

Service terms

• Refunds: full refund any time before your report is delivered. If we find your plan depends mostly on products no primary source covers, we tell you within one business day and refund you before research proceeds — you don't have to ask. If a delivered report doesn't answer the question you paid for, tell us within 14 days — we'll fix it or refund it.
• Accuracy: findings reflect manufacturer documentation and registries as of the delivery date. Firmware, cloud services, and product lines change; the report states its verification dates so you know exactly what was checked, and when.
• Coverage: we research whatever the plan needs, whether or not it's in our public library. Where no primary source exists for a product, the report says so rather than guessing.
• How we choose: options are ranked against the constraints you give us, never against our opinion of product quality. Where your constraints don't separate the options, the report says so and names what's left for you to decide.
• Your information: what you send us is used only to produce your report. It's never sold or shared, and it's stored privately with our cloud provider (Microsoft Azure, in the US) — not in a mailbox and not in our public library. We delete an order that never completed checkout after 7 days; your answers 30 days after your report is delivered (the fix-or-refund window is 14, so that leaves slack); and your report and our correspondence about it after 12 months — or sooner, any time you ask at contact. Product facts we learn while researching your report may be published in the public library; details about you, your home, or your list never are.
• The fine print: the site's Terms of Service apply, including the compatibility-data disclaimer. Missouri law governs.

Pilot pricing — may change as we learn what these take to do well. Questions first? Ask us anything.