IPVM earned its name on camera reviews and lab testing, and none of that is what this page is about. This is about the Design Calculator — the drawing surface sold alongside the research at $199 a year per person — and what EUR 50 buys instead, with a free tier so you can settle the question on your own site rather than on our say-so.
| Feature | CCTVplanner | IPVM |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (paid from €4.17/mo) | $199/year per person (Design Calculator) |
| Platform | Browser-based (any device) | Browser-based |
| Primary Focus | CCTV layout design & planning | Camera reviews, testing & training |
| Camera Placement on Map | Yes - drag & drop on satellite/floor plans | Not publicly documented |
| FOV Visualization | Real-time FOV cones with DORI zones | FOV calculator |
| Storage Calculator | Built-in with bandwidth estimation | Separate calculator tool |
| Camera Database | 65,530 models, 110 manufacturers, datasheet-anchored specs | Extensive tested camera database |
| Learning Curve | Intuitive - start in minutes | Moderate - content-heavy platform |
IPVM's reputation was built on research — reviews, lab tests, market intelligence — and the Design Calculator sits beside it at its own price. If what you need is the plan and not the publication, you are buying a drawing surface either way: ours is EUR 50 a year, theirs is $199 per person.
Open a browser, put cameras on a satellite view or an imported floor plan, and check whether our coverage maths agrees with your own datasheets. No card, and no seven-day clock running while you make up your mind.
Multi-page PDF with the floor plan, camera schedule, cable schedule, equipment list, elevation views and cost estimate — the document the customer signs. The test of a design tool is what the work looks like after it leaves the tool.
Tablet on the walk-round, phone in the van, laptop back at the office — same project, same BOM, nothing exported in between. It earns its keep on the visit where the customer moves a camera while you are standing under it.
Everything below is in the product today, on the free tier, and none of it needs an install. Open it in a browser and check it against the IPVM Design Calculator on a job you already know.
No install and no workstation. Walk the site from any camera point of view, with DORI silhouettes standing at the Detect, Observe, Recognize and Identify distances so the customer sees what the camera sees. Sun and shadow study for the time of day that matters, and one-click 3D PDF export for the people who will never open a design tool.
Every cone is computed from the sensor, resolution and focal length at the mounting height (1 to 20 m) and tilt you set, then clipped by buildings, fences and real ground elevation on satellite imagery. On a flat indoor floor a 2D tool agrees with us. On a sloped yard or a sunken loading dock it does not, and that gap is exactly where the blind spots are.
Racking, containers, concrete blocks, scaffolding, solar panels, trees, and the machinery a live construction site actually parks in the shot: excavators, cranes, concrete mixers, bulldozers, vans and pickups. Each one carries real dimensions and a vertical range, and the field of view clips against it with the shadow drawn on the plan.
Stack ground floor, mezzanine, plant room and roof as separate levels. Draw walls, close rooms and read the floor area back in square metres. Cabling routes between levels, the topology graph carries across them, and each floor exports as its own DXF sheet and PDF page.
Predictive coverage for access points using ITU-R P.2040 wall transmission and a P.1238 margin, drawn as a heatmap over the same plan the cameras sit on. Point-to-point links are checked for line of sight against the buildings and terrain, so the wireless leg of the design fails on screen rather than on site.
51 specified cable types with PoE budget from loop resistance, DC voltage drop, fibre loss budget with splice and connector allowances, coax attenuation per format, speaker line loading and conduit fill. Route length is measured on the drawn route and carries straight into the bill of materials, the cable schedule and the customer offer.
The plan is validated while you draw it: DORI shortfall, blind spots, perimeter gaps, PoE budget and class escalation, cable length and category headroom, conduit bundling, fibre loss, thermal lens and pairing, EMC and environmental class, lightning protection zones, ONVIF profile mixing, NDAA compliance, bandwidth headroom and switch port capacity.
CAD-grade DXF (AutoCAD R2018 / AC1021) on named layers with BLOCK, INSERT, SPLINE, ELLIPSE, HATCH and DIMENSION preserved, inside an ISO 5457 sheet frame with an ISO 7200 title block. Multi-page PDF with bill of materials, cable schedule, equipment list, elevation views, coverage analysis, acceptance test protocol, maintenance schedule and the GDPR Article 35 DPIA worksheet.
For the drawing, yes. For the research, no — and we would not claim otherwise. IPVM's reviews, lab testing and vulnerability disclosures are a separate product on a separate bill, we read them ourselves, and nothing we ship replaces them. What we replace is the Design Calculator: camera placement, DORI coverage, BOM and the client PDF.
Different data, for a different job. IPVM publishes lab reviews you read before you buy a camera. We carry the numbers you design with: 65,530 models with datasheet-anchored optics, bitrate, low-light, IP and IK ratings, ONVIF profiles, NDAA status and environmental class, wired straight into the DORI engine so the coverage on your plan moves when the lens does. That is the part a review cannot do for you, and it is why the two sit side by side on a lot of desks.
Yes — 1 project and 6 cameras, permanently, no card and no expiry. That is enough to take a small site to a rendered PDF and check the DORI figures against your own datasheets before you believe anything on this page. Paid plans start at EUR 4.17 a month.
Cost, reach and what comes out of it. EUR 50 a year against $199 per person, EU hosting for tenders that ask where the data sits, 33 interface languages for crews that do not work in English, and a free tier you can prove on a live job. Then the engineering the Design Calculator does not attempt: a full 3D site with a per-camera walkthrough, coverage solved against real terrain and obstacles, the cabling engine, 67 automatic design checks and a CAD-grade DXF the customer's architect can open.
Put your next real site through it before you decide anything. No install, no card, and the plan you draw is yours to export.
Also explore: CCTV Design Tool · Camera Placement Tool · CCTV Layout Software · CCTVplanner vs JVSG · Hikvision vs Dahua · Dome vs Bullet · Free IPVM alternative · Browser-based JVSG alternative · Top CCTV design tools
