Intercom system for business entrances

Staff can view who's outside with a video intercom, while an audio-only model is more basic and often cheaper, as Aiphone explains. What you pay in hardware for each door comes down to the kind you choose.

Labor costs $50 to $100 per hour, and pulling new wire through finished walls is what changes the price most. Cloud IP describes an intercom that runs over your building's network rather than separate dedicated wiring.

Apartment buildings give each unit a tenant station so residents can open the door for visitors, and plenty of residents can answer through a mobile app too. Swiftlane puts the cost at $1,000 to $7,000 for each entry door, with many multifamily jobs totaling $5,000 to $50,000.

Cloud software typically costs another $5 to $15 per unit monthly, or $30 to $100 per door monthly. Swiftlane figures a 2-entry, 50-unit building lands at $11,500 to $43,000 in year one, not counting any unusual masonry or rewiring.

For deliveries and visitors, Swiftlane suggests single-use PINs, QR codes or virtual keys, so couriers can get in without a resident there.

Once the resident presses a key or taps the app, the electric strike or magnetic lock lets go, and the door secures itself again afterward. That strike or magnetic lock is the piece of hardware that physically releases the door when access is approved.

Analog intercoms stand alone, wired from one unit to the next. IP intercoms run on the building network, often over a single Ethernet cable that carries power too (known as PoE), and many can call desk phones or mobile apps, according to Swiftlane.

A telephone entry system keeps the same panel and directory but routes calls through phone or cellular lines. DoorVi says a DoorKing 1834 call box costs roughly $1,900 before installation, and it still requires phone, cellular or VoIP service.

If your project also needs door access control, the locks and readers already on the doors affect the installation cost. These access-control estimates are separate from the intercom prices. Your cost depends on what the doors already have.

A set of four doors that only have keys totals $4,800 to $10,000, while that same set with electric locks already working totals $2,000 to $6,000.

ButterflyMX stores a dated photo of each door release for 365 days and links the tenant directory to property management software. Its software runs $30 to $42 per unit per year.

The survey on our home page asks three quick questions about your doors: what's on them now, your building type and how many doors you have. It shows your price range, then you add your ZIP code and contact details and send it to a local installer, who will contact you about the doors and give the actual quote after seeing them.

Under the 2010 ADA Standards, entry intercoms need to provide audible and visual signals both. Call buttons have to be placed 15 to 48 inches off the floor, and handset cords need to run 29 inches or longer. An apartment building entry system has to handle voice and TTY communication with every dwelling unit. TTY is a text device used by deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

Ahead of the installer's visit, write down the closest power outlet and network point for each door, plus whether any doors are fire-rated. You'll find a label on the door's edge or frame if it is.