Amcrest Cloud Reviews

I was using this service and had the auto payments tied to a debit card. I had to get the card replaced because I thought it had been lost. Amcrest sent two emails telling me they would stop service and delete my cameras as well as any recordings if I didn't update my payment method. The problem is that their termination email ended up in my junk email folder. Funny how their emails with the invoice attached made it through but not the threat to delete everything. I consider that bad customer service. I only found out they discontinued service when I witnessed what I think was a theft from a neighbor's car. I went to access the recording and "Poof", nothing there! .. at all, not even my cameras. If there was a serious crime, wouldn't deleting recordings constitute obstruction of justice and destroying evidence? Sounds like a serious liability issue to me.
The price is a little steep as well, at $20 per month for two cameras, I could buy an NVR and have it pay for itself in a year.

Update - It's one thing to stop service due to non payment, it's another thing to delete customer settings (like cameras). That action is unnecessary and punitive. Camera setups take up a trivial amount of data storage. Yes, it costs money to provide services, how much does it cost to lose customers?

Without a doubt the most frustrating software or apps that I use. The biggest time waster. All I did today was discontinue the monthly cloud service. Now they give you four hours for free. So why would my ending the monthly service remove my camera entirely from the cloud???? So now I have to start all over again. Amcrest seems to have a love for telling you the password you entered is incorrect yet you know its correct and somehow after entering it three times in a row it takes it. I also get the message the firmware must be updated, so I go to the website. Guess what. My camera is not listed for firmware updates. Now I cant log into the cloud and so far password reset isnt helping since I didnt receive a response email. Funny because my email is getting motion detection emails!!! Cant wait to get rid if this one day.

Not only did this camera have trouble connecting to the cloud in the first place, but it just stopped sending alerts and recording to the cloud one day. I went in to configurations and got the motion alert to start working again, but it still won’t record events and there’s no help from the website or customer service available. The website to access the camera and configuration is also subpar, lacking decent design, which is annoying in itself when you consider this is a company you’re trusting to be able to provide cloud services. I’ve wasted more time reconfiguring this camera than the peace of mind it’s supposed to provide.

Last night I gave a bad, 1-star review. I could not connect my camera with the cloud app via wireless (only with Ethernet). I worked for over 2 hours and got more frustrated. I gave up on trying. Today, I received an email from Alen from Tech Support. He had me restart the camera and, whatever he did on his end, he was able to get my camera and the cloud app to talk with each other. I still feel AmcrestCloud and the “help” part of the website needs to be revisited. My advice for future customers… if you have trouble connecting dint bayonet calling on the weekend. Instead, leave comments in an app review and ask Alen to help you out!

Not sure what happened . App has worked completely fine for months until tonight. Internet disconnected temporarily and then when it came back I go to log into the Amcrest cloud app and now it says invalid log in credentials but if I login through Amcrest cloud . Com on my computer it lives stream my camera perfectly fine. I have already removed and re added / re-configured the camera and still no luck on the phone app. I am using a iPhone 12 Pro Max . Have plenty of storage and plenty of wifi signal and I have also made sure I am using the correct account information , nothing has worked and I still am experiencing this issue to this moment .

WARNING: Do not use Amcrest cameras for any mission critical security applications! My overall experience is they are highly unreliable. The video streams will freeze with no error or indication. A church that I installed these for discovered this and now has to waste thousands of more dollars replacing them after they realized they were staring at still images. Good thing nobody with a gun came to shoot up their church because they would have been taken like sheep led to the slaughter.

AmcrestCloud is no better. I got one for my driveway and am about to return it. Half the time I go to load the feed in AmcrestCloud and it just loads a black screen. If the video loads it only runs for a few seconds and then freezes with no errors or warnings. I don’t know why they don’t give the option to view the sub stream through AmcrestCloud as that would make more sense. I’m not interested in having my catalytic converters stolen only to tell the police the camera didn’t work.

I think it’s time for this company to take a step back and completely reevaluate their position. These are not security cameras, they are toys.

My camera was recording just fine to the SD card and now it wont record at all. My push notifications from the Amcrest Pro notifies me that there was in fact motion detected but now wont playback the recording at all. Okay so I go to the Amcrest Cloud and its an app you have to pay for, great! The pricing plans are not direct or clear. Not sure what options you are buying! Why in thee hell would I pay for a 7 day plan or a 90 day plan. I want to protect my investments for the long haul. I am beyond livid because it worked perfectly fine before. AmcrestCloud is trash DONT DO IT!!!🙅🏼‍♀️🙅🏼‍♀️🙅🏼‍♀️

After trying different Amcrest WiFi cameras over the last 5 years, spending $5,000+ on equipment, wasting way too many hrs with the Amcrest help team and troubleshooting issues that now amount into days, I think it’s time recycle all this frustration, patch the 8 holes I will have from removing my camera installs and break up with you Amcrest!
You have continuously let me down with issues such as memory not saving settings, poor video signal quality and my favorite when the power goes out...or just random.. why not they are only security cameras- “cannot find host” and the cameras never reconnect. I have to delete and research for devices and add password per each and save. Honestly, I’m very tolerable but this company and equipment is something you would expect to see being used in the 1990s! Do not waste your money or your time! Stay far away from this company for many years and if they survive, there may be a slight possibility that it’s because the equipment has been re-engineered and improved significantly.

I have 2 of the Amcrest pro HD cameras set up. One of the cameras would not record motion. It was the first camera I set up. It worked great until I installed the second camera. The first camera quit recording. I ensured the channels were different, reset the camera, ensured the programs they recommend were set up correctly on my computer as well as my phone. Reset camera, reset router. Nothing. Only second camera would record. Not a space problem, i delete everything off of the cloud every day. I called customer support, the individual’s tone was as if i had never used an electronic device before. I explained the problem, what I had done to troubleshoot the problem. The individual says, “You need to reset the camera.” I explained, “I just told you that was the last thing i did.” He proceeded to tell me tp reset the router, install the program on my computer, all of the things I told him I accomplished. He then stated, the camera was bad. I disconnected the second camera and everything works great. Not a bad camera, worthless customer service!

Some of the time AmcrestCloud works, which is nice. During a recent windstorm I was able to use the camera feed to watch my trees waving violently in the wind, while hiding safely in a windowless basement room, which I couldn’t have done without the cameras.

That’s the only good part I can recall. Night vision works fairly well, unless you’re actually trying to see some detail. Live view works well also if nothing is happening outside and you are lucky, again unless you want to see detail. Motion detection is very impressive: it captures snowflakes, raindrops, hail, insects, very well, in fact it will detect basically anything moving except for people, animals, or vehicles — the whole reason I paid for this system.

Today, for instance, someone knocked on my front door while I was using the restroom. I checked the camera app. Nothing. Just a blank screen, and it stayed that way until they left. I have video of a motorcycle driving into my driveway and video of a motorcycle leaving, and blank in between. I assume that’s the motion detection AI helpfully blocking out anything I might want to see.

In short, I think it’s reasonable to assume that all positive reviews are people who work for Amcrest. No one who depends on this product could be happy with it, I’m sure of that. But it’s not the worst possible outcome — the cameras haven’t caught fire and burned my house down, for example — so I’m choosing to focus on the positive.

The cloud recording feature is spotty at best which defeats the whole purpose. At times it won’t record at all and I have to restart the camera and pull the card out and reinsert. At other times you can watch live view but the recordings won’t play which really makes the camera useless. Lastly with only two hours of recording if something happens the night before you will not be able to review it in morning also making the camera useless
I’m probably going to get rid of this and buy a real system with a Dedicated recorder

Coming from a nice setup and App with Presence (iPhone to iPhone system which we still use and much prefer over the Amcrest), we “upgraded” to Amcrest and has been nothing but a let down.
We hate the main Amcrest View Pro app with a passion. Just so ugly, buggy, motion recording very glitchy/no video thumbnails or events list, and needs a whole complete overhaul BAD.

Luckily, this Amcrest Cloud app is much better and has a easier to navigate interface. We will be using this from now on and deleting the awful Amcrest View Pro app.

Just don’t understand all the crap with Amcrest we have to go through still.
-It a 2K camera but AmcrestCloud limits you to 1080P, so why did I pay for the 2K/3mp camera?
-Buggy live video feed and looses connection often. Also is never full quality (again, app limits it to lower resolution).
-Why did I buy a extra SD card with the camera when I am now forced to use the Cloud service/app making the local SD card recording useless (does not show up in AmcrestCloud )?

Overall, just so so so many issue keeping this from being a nice camera setup. And it seems while their “camera” actually is nice, all of their apps are total garbage. They need to hire a new development team and start from the ground up BAD!

I just setup my camera last week. The initial setup was a tiny bit clunky in my opinion, but ultimately it worked and that’s what matters. My biggest complaint is that while it’s great that you can set a “home” location it would be so much more useful if you could set up more than one saved location to pan the camera to. Panning the camera is a fairly slow process and it’s easy to overshoot your target. I’d like to see multiple saved locations in a future version so I could quickly jump back and forth between object I want to view. Other than that, it seems pretty good so far.

I recently purchased this product not long ago. I’m a bit surprised, UI definitely needs to be modernized/updated, but it’s giving me “why fix it something that’s already working”. Latency is almost an issue for me, given the fact from my Router’s latency between my switch and camera 5-11ms. Other wise this product does work, I mean it’s just that, it needs more functionality. Features that can be done in the background. Other wise I’m pretty satisfied with everything. Not the top of the line, but it’s decent.

The camera itself, an HD WiFi bullet camera with IR night vision, is excellent. But the wifi setup was a pain (didn't work, so I had to unmount and use the Ethernet configuration inside before remounting outside). Now I'm unable to use AmcrestCloud to see specific points in time. And somehow it detected a box blown off my back porch onto the driveway (where the camera is pointed) but missed my friends pickup truck which is now parked there. Plus AmcrestCloud logs me out every time I try to change my timezone.

The home screen on my iPhone SE is nothing but a bunch of blank rectangles, which I assume are supposed to represent activity on each of my cameras. Interestingly, the home screen on my iPhone 6s has motion markers for the times motion was detected on each of my cameras. Something in AmcrestCloud is broken for iPhones with smaller screen sizes.

Update

On smaller screen iPhones, like the SE, you need to pinch to zoom and the blank rectangles will morph into boxes that give camera name and motion graphs.

Overall this is a good app. I had a few issues having it connect to the camera but that has been worked out. This last update left me unable to zoom in on the video picture. I was able to zoom before the update, wondering if they know this and hoping they fix it soon.

I have their cameras there POE adapters and their network video recorder and all this equipment works seamlessly together remotely or on site I just love their stuff. And as for having to reboot any of the equipment that I may need, I found I could get one of those cheap Christmas light timers and put it on whatever you want, set it for 15 minutes or a half hour to shut off and then it turns back on. That’s what reboots my equipment and works great. I’m in a wheelchair and some equipment is in my shop so it’s easier to use one of those. Other stuff I control via Alexa.

Software needs a lot of work, I’ve tried every trick in the book to schedule motion detection and it does not record, I’ve called tech support, they can't seem to be able to fix the problem, if I do turn on motion detection, it does record but it’s always recording, not according to my schedule. And only the last 4 hours, that’s all you get for free...so unless your paying for iCloud service and you look 24 hours later, you’ve lost any recording after the last 4 hours. You can only record to the SD card manually. I was hoping to record to the SD card using motion detection. Anyway, AmcrestCloud is not user friendly, needs a complete overhaul. The only reason for two stars is because it does have a good clear picture, but they need to fire their software person and start over.

I've had this camera for over a year now and I mostly use it to check on the house when I'm deployed for 6 months at a time. I've only had to ask a friend with access to my house to reset my router once. Not the cameras fault but I would suggest a daily power on/off cycle for a router and modem. AmcrestCloud itself is simple and works for everything I need. Live feed has little lag and reviewing past footage is easy and quick.
Only negative is that it can't go back past 48 hours via AmcrestCloud but on the web it can.