Access control · priced per opening
Stop rekeying the building every time somebody quits
Access control is the one system in this trade where the price is genuinely knowable up front — because it's priced per door, and we can count your doors. Here's exactly how the number is built.
What a key actually costs you
Not the key. The system around it.
You can't audit it
A key opened your building at 2:14am. Which key? Held by whom? There's no answer, and that's the end of the investigation.
You can't revoke it
An employee leaves angry and keeps a copy. Your only real remedy is rekeying every cylinder they could reach — $60–$140 per door, every time.
You can't schedule it
A key works at 3am on a Sunday exactly as well as it works at 10am on a Tuesday. Access control doesn't.
You can't lock down
When something happens and you need the building secured in ten seconds, there is no key that does that.
The parts
What actually goes on a door
This is the part nobody explains, and it's the reason two quotes for "access control" can differ by $40,000. An opening is not one product — it's six or seven, and the condition of your existing door decides how many of them we have to touch.
| Component | What it does | When it drives cost up |
|---|---|---|
| Reader | Reads the card, fob, or phone at the door. | Rarely. Readers are the cheap, predictable part. |
| Credential | What the person carries. Card, fob, or mobile. | Mobile costs more per user but eliminates reissue and plastic entirely. |
| Locking hardware | Electric strike, mag lock, or electrified mortise that actually holds the door. | This is where quotes diverge. A fire-rated door needing an electrified mortise lock is 4–6× a simple strike. |
| Door position switch | Tells the system whether the door is genuinely closed. | Retrofitting into an existing steel frame means drilling. Sometimes ugly. |
| Request-to-exit | Lets people leave without tripping an alarm. Code requires it. | Occasionally requires replacing the push bar. |
| Controller & power | The panel that makes the decisions, plus battery backup. | Shared across doors — so door #5 costs materially less than door #1. |
| Cabling | Reader and lock runs back to the panel. | The single biggest variable. An open plenum ceiling is easy. Hard-lid drywall or a slab-to-slab firewall is not. |
The one thing worth knowing
If an integrator quotes you "access control" as a single lump number with no per-door breakdown, ask for one. Any honest shop has that spreadsheet already — it's how they built the number. We give you ours whether you ask or not.
What it costs
$1,800 to $3,400 per opening, installed
Real ranges from DFW work in the last twelve months. Your building will land somewhere in here, and after a walkthrough we'll tell you exactly where and why.
Volume moves the number
Controllers are shared. The first door in a building carries the panel, the enclosure, the power supply, and the battery. Door twelve carries almost none of that. A 20-door job prices materially lower per opening than a 3-door job — and we'll show you the curve rather than making you guess at it.
Phasing is normal and we'll help
Most clients don't do every door at once. We size the panel and cabling for the full building, then install in phases as budget allows. Doing it in the right order costs nothing extra; doing it in the wrong order means pulling wire twice.
How it goes
From walkthrough to badges in hand
Walkthrough — free, about 90 minutes
We walk every opening you're considering, photograph the existing hardware, check the ceiling and wall construction, and note anything that will surprise us later. You get the list whether you hire us or not.
Per-door proposal — within 3 business days
A spreadsheet with every opening priced separately, so you can cut doors from phase one without renegotiating the whole job. Fixed price against that scope.
Install — usually 2 to 5 days
We work around your hours. Doors stay functional throughout; nothing gets left non-secure overnight. Fire-rated openings get done to code and documented.
Enrollment & training — half a day
We load your people, set schedules, configure lockdown, and train whoever's going to run it day to day. Then we hand you the administrator credentials in writing.
30-day check-in
Every system needs tuning once real people use it. Schedules get adjusted, one door always needs its closer tweaked. We come back and fix it. Included.
Questions we get
Access control, answered plainly
Why is access control priced per door instead of per building?
Because the door is the unit of work, and doors differ enormously. An aluminum storefront runs $1,800–$2,200; the same building's fire-rated stairwell door runs $2,600–$3,400 because it needs an electrified mortise lock and a power transfer hinge. Pricing per opening is the only honest way to quote it — and it means you can cut doors from phase one without renegotiating the job. Full table above.
Can we keep our existing card readers and cards?
Sometimes. If you're on a common open standard we can often keep the readers and reuse the credentials. If you're on older proprietary low-frequency cards, we'll usually recommend replacing them — those are trivially cloneable with a $30 device, which undermines the entire point. We'll tell you which situation you're in at the walkthrough.
What happens during a power outage?
Every controller runs on battery backup sized for at least four hours. Locking hardware is specified fail-safe or fail-secure per opening based on code and on what that door is for — egress doors always fail in the direction that lets people out. We document the choice for every opening so the fire marshal has an answer too.
Do we need cloud, or can we keep it in the building?
Both work. On-premise means no monthly software cost and your data never leaves the site, but you own the server and its updates. Cloud means we handle the platform and you can administer from anywhere, at $3–$6 per door per month. Smaller sites with one admin usually prefer cloud; sites with IT staff and policy constraints usually prefer on-premise. We install either and we don't earn more on one than the other.
Can it tie into our cameras?
Yes, and it's worth doing. When a door is forced or held open, the system pulls the camera clip from that moment automatically. Instead of scrubbing footage for twenty minutes, you're looking at the ten seconds that matter.
Who owns the system when it's installed?
You do. Hardware, licenses, database, and administrator credentials, from day one, in writing. If you replace us, your next integrator gets full as-built documentation and takes over without re-buying anything.