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ZoneMinder vs iSpy
March 07, 2025 | Author: Michael Stromann
13★
Full-featured, open source, state-of-the-art video surveillance software system. Monitor your office using off the shelf hardware with any camera, you can design a system as large or as small as you need. Supports motion detection and event-triggered recording.
11★
Open Source Video Surveillance Software. iSpy is the worlds leading open source surveillance software for Windows PCs
ZoneMinder and iSpy are both gloriously ambitious attempts to let you watch absolutely everything all the time, whether it's your front porch, your goldfish or that suspicious-looking pigeon that’s been hanging around too much. They support all sorts of cameras, detect movement when things move (which is frankly what you'd expect) and let you check in remotely to confirm that, yes, your cat is still asleep in exactly the same spot. They’re open-source, meaning a great many people have poked at them over the years and if you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you can integrate them with other things and make them do entirely unexpected and probably baffling things.
ZoneMinder has been around since 2002, which in software years makes it something like a grizzled wizard in a tower muttering about packets. Originating from the UK, it prefers Linux, expects you to tinker with it and is best suited for those who like their security systems with a side of deep, existential configuration. It has a built-in web interface that looks like it remembers the good old days of the internet and if you are the sort of person who enjoys tweaking, scripting and configuring things until they purr, ZoneMinder will reward you with a system that does precisely what you tell it to—whether that was what you actually wanted or not.
iSpy, on the other hand, emerged in 2007 from the land of the free (and the Windows-only). It prefers things to be easy, at least on the surface and is happy to hold the hands of home users and small businesses who just want to know whether their Amazon package has finally arrived. It does clever things with AI, cloud storage and object recognition, especially if you throw money at it and it likes to make you feel like a high-tech spy without requiring you to understand what an API is. If ZoneMinder is the ancient wizard, iSpy is the charming, slightly overenthusiastic intern who insists you really should be backing everything up to Google Drive.
See also: Top 10 Video Surveillance Systems
ZoneMinder has been around since 2002, which in software years makes it something like a grizzled wizard in a tower muttering about packets. Originating from the UK, it prefers Linux, expects you to tinker with it and is best suited for those who like their security systems with a side of deep, existential configuration. It has a built-in web interface that looks like it remembers the good old days of the internet and if you are the sort of person who enjoys tweaking, scripting and configuring things until they purr, ZoneMinder will reward you with a system that does precisely what you tell it to—whether that was what you actually wanted or not.
iSpy, on the other hand, emerged in 2007 from the land of the free (and the Windows-only). It prefers things to be easy, at least on the surface and is happy to hold the hands of home users and small businesses who just want to know whether their Amazon package has finally arrived. It does clever things with AI, cloud storage and object recognition, especially if you throw money at it and it likes to make you feel like a high-tech spy without requiring you to understand what an API is. If ZoneMinder is the ancient wizard, iSpy is the charming, slightly overenthusiastic intern who insists you really should be backing everything up to Google Drive.
See also: Top 10 Video Surveillance Systems
