Your Cameras. Your Footage. Your House Rules.

How RamVault works

What "private / self-hosted" actually means

Stripped of the jargon, a self-hosted system means your video has a physical home, and that home is your building — not a data center in another state. Here's how the pieces fit together in plain English:

• A local recorder (an NVR — network video recorder) sits in your home or business and writes every camera feed to a hard drive inside it. That recorder, and that drive, belong to you.
• Your cameras talk to that recorder over your own network. They are configured so they are not phoning home to a manufacturer's cloud — the "P2P" and cloud-relay features that send video off-site are turned off.
• Because the system is configured to record on-premises with cloud and relay features disabled, there's no vendor account sitting between you and your recordings the way there is with cloud cameras — so there's no company login to your footage for an attacker to breach. The storage is in your hands and the credentials are in your hands.
• If a request for your footage ever came up — say, a legal demand — it would come to you, the owner, because you're the one who holds the video. There's no third-party company holding a copy to hand over on your behalf.
• An honest caveat, because we don't do hype: "private" depends on the system being set up correctly. A local recorder that's been carelessly exposed to the open internet can still be attacked. The value isn't magic — it's proper isolation plus owner-controlled access, done right the first time. That's the job we do.

How access control works — so you stay the gatekeeper

A private system is only as private as its locks. We build yours so that you are the gatekeeper, not us and not a vendor.

• At handover, YOU set the administrator password on the recorder and on every admin interface. We don't keep a copy. We don't keep a "service backdoor." When we walk out the door, the only credentials that exist are the ones in your head and your password manager.
• We set up strong passwords and, where the equipment supports it, multi-factor authentication on the recorder and admin logins — the same kind of layered protection that significantly reduces the risk of account-based camera breaches.
• Your cameras and recorder are isolated from the public internet by default — no automatic port-forwarding, no UPnP punching holes in your router, no cloud relay quietly streaming your feeds out of the building.
• If you want family members or staff to view the cameras, you decide who, and you create those accounts. Access is something you grant, not something a company manages on your behalf.

Local storage and how long your footage is kept

With a self-hosted system, how much history you keep is a function of one thing you control: drive space. There's no tier you have to upgrade to, no "last 60 days" paywall.

• Footage records continuously (or on motion, or on a schedule — your call) to the drive inside your recorder. We'll size that drive to the retention you want and the number of cameras you're running.
• Want weeks of round-the-clock footage? Want months? It comes down to drive capacity and recording settings, and we'll spec it to your goal during planning so you're not surprised later.
• When the drive fills, the system loops — overwriting the oldest footage first — so you always have the most recent window without ever touching a subscription.
• Drives are physical hardware and they don't last forever, so we'll be straight with you about eventual drive replacement as a maintenance item. That's an honest cost of owning your data outright — and it's still a one-time part, not a recurring fee for the right to see your own video.

Optional remote viewing — over YOUR connection, not a company's

Wanting to check your cameras from your phone shouldn't mean handing your video to a cloud. We set up remote access the private way.

• The clean approach is a VPN that runs on your own equipment — your router or a small dedicated device on your network. When you connect, your phone behaves as if it's sitting on your home network, and you view your cameras directly.
• Your video stream never routes through a manufacturer's servers to reach you. It goes from your network to your device, over an encrypted tunnel you control.
• No vendor app is required as the middleman, and there's no off-site copy created just so you can watch from the couch or from out of town.
• Prefer to keep it local-only, viewable just inside the building? That's a completely valid choice too, and arguably the most private of all. We'll set it up however you're most comfortable.

Coverage that's planned, not guessed — indoor, outdoor, doorbell, and entry

Cameras only protect you if they're pointed at the right things, at the right height, with the right field of view. We plan the layout before we run a single cable.

• We walk your property with you and map the spots that matter: entry doors, driveways, gates, garages, blind corners, package drop zones, and high-value interior areas.
• Outdoor cameras are positioned and rated for weather and for the lighting conditions they'll actually face — including low light and glare — not just mounted wherever's convenient.
• Indoor coverage is planned with your privacy in mind. You decide where cameras go and, just as importantly, where they don't.
• Doorbell and entry coverage gives you a clear view of who's at the door and who's coming and going — captured to your recorder, on your terms, without a recording subscription attached.
• We aim for overlapping coverage on critical approaches so a single blind spot doesn't become the gap someone walks through.

White-glove install and clean cable management

A private system should also be a tidy, professional one. We treat the install like it's our own home.

• Cabling is run cleanly and concealed wherever it's practical — through walls, attics, soffits, and conduit — not stapled across the siding in plain view.
• Connections are properly terminated and tested, mounts are solid and level, and cameras are aimed and focused before we call anything finished.
• We clean up after ourselves. No drywall dust left behind, no spare cable coiled in a corner, no "we'll come back for that."
• Equipment — the recorder, drive, and network gear — is placed somewhere sensible, ventilated, and accessible to you, and we label things so you know what's what.
• Outdoor runs and penetrations are sealed against weather so the install holds up season after season.

Handover: you hold every credential

The handover is where a RamVault install becomes truly yours. This isn't an afterthought — it's the whole point.

• You set the admin and viewing passwords yourself. We don't store them, and we don't keep a backup login.
• We walk you through the live system: how to view feeds, scrub back through recordings, export a clip if you ever need one, and adjust recording settings.
• We document the layout — what each camera covers, where the gear lives, and how your remote access works — and hand that to you.
• From that moment on, access is in your control. If you ever want us back for changes or maintenance, you grant us access for that visit, and you can change your passwords the second we leave.
• Plain answer to the obvious question: by design, we keep no access. At handover you set the administrator and viewing passwords yourself; we don't keep a copy and we don't build in any service backdoor of our own. Once we leave, we have no login to your system.

No recurring cloud fees — and an honest word on cost

The mainstream cloud camera model leans on subscriptions: on many popular systems, recorded video history is generally only saved if you're paying an ongoing plan, and without one you're often left with little more than a live view. A self-hosted system removes that dependency entirely.

• There is no mandatory monthly subscription to record your footage or to keep it. Recording to your own drive is just how the system works.
• You own the hardware and the data outright — not a license to access them, the actual equipment and the actual recordings.
• We'll be upfront that there are real one-time costs: the cameras, the recorder, the drive, network gear, and the installation labor. We quote these honestly. Expect a starting point around [starting price] depending on camera count and site complexity, with a firm quote after we plan your layout.
• Over a multi-year horizon, skipping recurring cloud-storage fees is part of why owning your system can cost less than renting access to someone else's — though we won't pretend there's zero ongoing cost, since drives and maintenance are real.
• Any equipment warranty terms come from the hardware manufacturers; we'll point you to what applies. Our workmanship is backed for [warranty length].

The install, step by step

1. Walkthrough and planWe visit your property, talk through your concerns, and map exactly where cameras should go — entries, blind spots, driveways, interior priorities — and where they shouldn't. You'll know what each camera will cover before anything is ordered.
2. Honest quote and equipment specWe spec the cameras, recorder, and drive sized to the retention you want, plus network gear, and put it all in a clear, itemized quote. No surprise line items, no mandatory subscription buried in the fine print.
3. Professional installationWe mount the cameras, run and conceal the cabling, set up the recorder and storage on your network, and aim and focus every camera. Clean work, sealed outdoor runs, and a tidy cleanup when we're done.
4. Private configuration and lockdownWe isolate the cameras and recorder from the public internet, disable cloud-relay features, and — if you want it — set up encrypted remote viewing over your own VPN. Strong passwords and MFA where supported.
5. Handover and you take the keysYou set every password yourself. We train you on viewing, playback, and exporting clips, hand you the documentation, and leave with no login to your system of our own. From here, the system is yours.

RamVault vs. typical cloud cameras

Comparisons reflect publicly documented incidents and how mainstream cloud camera systems are generally structured. Vendor policies and pricing change over time; we describe documented events in the past tense and don't claim any current wrongdoing.

Frequently asked