How to Choose a Home Automation Company: What to Look For

You are not choosing a product. You are choosing who picks up the phone in year seven. So this page is an interview: ten questions to ask a home automation company before you sign, what a straight answer to each sounds like, and the answers that should end the meeting. Ask them of us too — we are a Control4 Platinum Dealer in Overland Park, and our answers are at the bottom.

Take two or three meetings. Ask the same ten questions in each and write the answers down while you are still in the driveway. The differences show up in the specifics, and they fade within a day.

Bring one page of your own to each meeting: the rooms that matter, the two or three things you want the house to do, and anything already installed that you would rather keep. A company that adjusts its recommendation to that page is designing. A company that arrives with the same recommendation regardless is selling.

The ten questions

Four of those deserve a note, because the wrong answer is easy to miss in the moment.

“Who writes the programming?”

Hardware is bought; behavior is written, by a person. If the design is sold by one company and the logic is written by a contractor you never meet, the change you want in year three has to travel through both. Ask whether that person is on staff, and whether they are the one who comes back.

“Can I see a handover package?”

This is the question that sorts companies fastest, because it cannot be answered with an adjective. A company that documents routinely can show you a package from a finished project with the client details removed, and can do it the same week. A company that has to build one to show you has told you what happens to your house.

“Who answers on a Sunday night?”

You are buying a relationship that outlives the install by a decade. Call the office once in the middle of a workday before you sign and see who answers and how long it takes. Then ask what happens when the person who built your house leaves the company, and listen for whether they have thought about it before.

Ask for both halves of that answer, because a company that offers only one of them has a problem it has not told you about. A ticketing system with nobody behind it is a company hiding from its customers, and you will recognize it by the reply that arrives in four days and asks you to describe the issue again. But a person and a number with nothing written down is the more common failure and the more expensive one: the fix that lives in one technician's memory leaves when he does, and in year six you are paying somebody to rediscover your own house. What you want is a named person who answers, working from a record you can also see — the scope you approved, the changes you signed, the equipment with its serial numbers, the history of every visit. Then the two of you are looking at the same page, and the conversation starts at the problem instead of at the beginning. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and how a project runs, week by week shows what it looks like at every phase.

“What would you talk us out of?”

The best answers to this one are unprompted and slightly against the company's own interest: a room that does not need a screen, a zone nobody will use, a tier of equipment the house cannot show off. A bidder with nothing to subtract is selling a catalog. The proposal you want is usually the shorter one.

Red flags

• A number before a walk. A price quoted over the phone or by email, before anyone has seen the house, is a number that will move once the work starts.
• Pressure to sign today. Discounts that expire at the end of the meeting are a sales technique, not a scope of work.
• The network as one line at the bottom. Everything sits on it. A bid that does not specify drops, access points and where they go has priced a hope.
• “You will not need any wire.” Sometimes true in a finished house, never true as a blanket claim. Panels, displays, cameras and access points that never move belong on cable.
• One brand for every problem. Authorization is good; a company that has only ever installed one line will fit your house to it rather than the other way around.
• No documentation in the scope. If as-built drawings, labeling and a copy of the project file are not written into the proposal, assume they will not exist.
• A vague warranty. “We stand behind our work” is not a term. Labor and equipment coverage should be stated separately, with a length on each.
• No local presence. Service is a drive. A company without a real address near the work will be slower to reach you, whatever it says about response times.
• Reluctance to name references. Any established integrator has finished houses and can arrange for you to stand in one.
• Talking only about products. If an hour goes by with no questions about how your household actually lives, the design will be a catalog with your address on it.

One thing that is not a red flag: a company that tells you it cannot serve you well. We would rather say that on the phone than find it out in month two, and so would any integrator worth hiring.

Our answers, so you can hold us to them

IntegrateIT was founded in 2021 by Daniel and Moran Alon, and is based in Overland Park. Daniel designs every system the company installs and walks every project, and brings twenty years in IT and AV integration to the design table. The crew is ours, not subcontracted.

We are a Control4 Platinum Dealer, a Crestron Elite Partner, a Lutron Certified Dealer, a CEDIA member and HTA Certified.

Every project starts with a no-cost site walk and ends in a written proposal with one fixed price covering equipment, labor and timeline. Documentation stays at the house. Support runs on a five-year workmanship warranty, the manufacturer warranties on the products, and our support for as long as you own the system. Daniel answers the phone during business hours.

If you want the other half of this decision — the properties of the system itself rather than the company behind it — read What makes a smart home system the best? And if you want to know what you are agreeing to before you sign, the installation process lays out the order it runs in.

And if you want the shorter version of the same thing — the credentials with their limits spelled out, the four practices you can check before signing, and the projects we will tell you to give to somebody else — that is on why IntegrateIT, and who we are not right for.

— Daniel Alon, founder, IntegrateIT. Overland Park, KS. December 2025.