The compatibility spine. If you read one page on this wiki, read this one.

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Most UniFi mistakes aren’t exotic. They’re one of seven rules, misunderstood once, at the point of order — and discovered later, when fixing it costs money.

Here are the seven.

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Rule 1 — Every camera, access point and door reader needs a PoE port

Not a power cord. Not a wall socket. A PoE port on a switch.

PoE (Power over Ethernet) means one network cable carries the data and the electricity. That’s the whole reason a camera can live under your eave with no electrician involved: one cable, back to a switch.

So the arithmetic is simple, and it’s the first arithmetic you should do:

Add spares because the port you don’t have is the one that costs a truck roll. A back-gate camera two years from now needs a port that exists today, or the switch gets replaced.

The exception: the G6 Instant. It ships with a USB power adapter and plugs into a wall socket. It’s the one wireless camera in the range and it’s genuinely useful for a spot you couldn’t cable. Note the trap: the PoE-to-USB-C adapter is not included — if you want to PoE it after all, that’s a separate part.

A second exception, verified: the G4 Doorbell Pro runs on an AC doorbell transformer or USB-C, not PoE. The Doorbell Lite is PoE. Two doorbells, two different power stories — worth knowing before the wire is pulled.

Everything else on the list: PoE port. No exceptions, no adapters, no workarounds worth having.

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Rule 2 — Video has to record somewhere

Cameras don’t store anything meaningful themselves. The footage has to land on a drive, in a box, in your building. There are exactly two ways to get that box:

Either your gateway has drive bays and records natively — one box does everything. Or it doesn’t, and you add a separate recorder called a UNVR — two boxes.

Both work. Only one of them is a decision you can make after the fact without spending twice.

Which gateways actually record

Gateway	Drive bays	Records video natively?	If not, what then?
UDM-Pro	1 × 3.5″ — verified	Yes	—
UDM-Pro-Max	2 × 3.5″ — verified	Yes	—
UDM-Beast	2 × 3.5″ — verified	Yes	—
UDM-SE	1 × 3.5″	Yes	—
UCG-Max / UCG-Fiber	No 3.5″ bay — NVMe SSD up to 2 TB	Yes, but small	UNVR if you want real retention
UDR / UDR7	No 3.5″ bay	Limited internal recording only	UNVR
UX / UX7 / UCG-Ultra	None	No — not published as Protect-capable	UNVR required
EFG / EF-Core	None	Not published as Protect-capable	UNVR required

The three verified facts we’ll be held to: UDM-Pro has one 3.5″ bay, UDM-Pro-Max has two, UDM-Beast has two. All three record natively.

The corollary: a gateway without a drive bay needs a separate UNVR. There’s no firmware update coming that changes this.

Full detail: Choosing a Gateway.

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Rule 3 — The recorder does NOT power the cameras

This is the most common misunderstanding in UniFi, and it’s the one that leaves a job half-finished on install day.

People reasonably assume that the box the cameras record to is also the box the cameras plug into. It isn’t.

• The UNVR has no PoE output. It powers nothing.
• UDM-Pro, UDM-Pro-Max and UDM-Beast have no PoE at all. They record cameras. They power nothing.
• The one exception in the rack lineup is the UDM-SE, which has a real 180W PoE budget of its own.

So:

One more that catches people: the USW-Flex-Mini is PoE-powered, not PoE-sourcing. It runs off a PoE port. It doesn’t hand PoE out to anything.

If a quote has cameras on it and no PoE switch, something is wrong with the quote.

See Switches and PoE.

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Rule 4 — Drives are not included

The recorder arrives as an empty box. Every time. UDM-Pro, UDM-Pro-Max, UDM-Beast, UNVR — all of them, empty bays.

Drives are a separate line item, always, and they are not optional.

And not just any drive. Surveillance recording is a workload most drives aren’t built for: writing continuously, every hour, for years, with no idle time. What you want is:

• Surveillance-rated — built for 24/7 write-heavy duty.
• CMR, not SMR. This is the one that matters. SMR drives overlap their data tracks to fit more in, which makes them cheap and makes rewrites slow. Under continuous surveillance writes they choke. CMR doesn’t.
• Not a desktop drive. A desktop drive in an NVR is a drive that dies early and takes your footage with it.

Drive prices aren’t in our verified price data — they’re not Ubiquiti products. We price them at source and say so on the quote.

How many days a given drive actually holds: Storage and Retention.

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Rule 5 — Core UniFi has no subscription

Network, Protect and Access (the network, the cameras, the doors) carry no subscription. There isn’t one to buy, isn’t one to forget to renew, isn’t one that goes up next year.

Your video records to a hard drive in your own building. You watch it from your phone, from anywhere, at no charge. Remote viewing is included. Local recording is included. No per-camera fee, no per-door fee, no retention fee. That’s the model, and it’s the main thing that separates UniFi from the cloud-subscription camera platforms.

Three optional extras exist, and none of them is required:

• UI Care. Ubiquiti’s extended coverage. One-time, per device, not recurring. Verified examples: UNVR $85, UNAS-Pro $140, U7-Pro $43, G6 Turret $55, USW-Pro-48-PoE $285, UDM-Pro-Max $170 (CAD).
• CyberSecure. A network-security add-on (powered by Proofpoint), offered on some gateways including the UDM-Pro-Max. This one is a paid annual subscription, around $139 per unit per year. It’s optional, it’s nothing to do with recording or door access, and every price on this wiki excludes it.
• Official UniFi Hosting. A paid monthly subscription that runs your UniFi Network controller on Ubiquiti’s infrastructure instead of on a box in your building, managed from the Site Manager at unifi.ui.com. It exists, it works, and we can build it. You don’t need it if your gateway already has the controller inside it, which is how most of our jobs are built. It’s a real answer for many sites at once, or for anyone who wants no controller on the premises. It does not move your video: Protect still records to a drive. Current pricing on request.

We spell those three out because “there is no subscription” is true of core UniFi, and we’re not going to state it more broadly than it holds.

Whether it’s worth it is a per-device judgement, not a blanket yes: Add-Ons and Accessories.

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Rule 6 — You don’t have to replace a network that works

If you have a Cisco, Meraki, Aruba or other third-party network that’s doing its job, UniFi cameras and door access can run alongside it. You are not obliged to rip out a working network to get UniFi Protect.

The way it works: a standalone UNVR does the recording, independent of any UniFi gateway. Cameras talk to the UNVR. The UNVR sits on the existing network. UniFi Access works the same way with its own hub.

And now the honest caveats, because this arrangement has two real risks and both belong to someone else:

1. The other network’s owner has to let the cameras reach the recorder. If cameras sit on one VLAN and the UNVR on another, somebody has to configure inter-VLAN routing and open the right firewall rules. That somebody is the client’s IT team or their incumbent vendor — not us. We can specify exactly what’s needed. We can’t configure their layer 3, and we won’t pretend otherwise. If that cooperation isn’t forthcoming, the project stalls, and it stalls for reasons no equipment can fix.

2. PoE headroom on someone else’s switch is unverifiable until it’s confirmed. We can’t log into it. We can’t read its power budget. We can’t see what else is already drawing from it. “It has spare ports” is not the same as “it has spare watts.”

How AVNFi handles that second one: we bring our own PoE switch. It’s a line item, it’s a known quantity, and it converts an unknowable risk into a number on a page. If the existing switch genuinely has confirmed headroom — confirmed by the people who own it, in writing — great, we’ll use it. Until then, assume a switch.

What doesn’t work, in either direction: UniFi Protect records UniFi cameras. Your existing brand-X cameras will not appear in the Protect app, and there’s no adapter. That’s not a UniFi limitation you can engineer around; it’s the boundary of the system.

Worked example: Existing Network, Add Cameras.

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Rule 7 — Getting out of a door is never optional

If a door on your job gets an electric strike, this rule applies.

A fail-secure strike stays locked when the power fails. That’s the point of it — a power cut shouldn’t unlock your building. It’s also the risk, and the risk is on the way out.

So egress is mechanical. Not electronic, not networked, not clever. A push bar or a push pad that opens the door with:

• no power,
• no network,
• no controller,
• no electronics anywhere in the path.

This is AVNFi’s standard design practice on every fail-secure strike we install. It is not an upsell and it is not optional on our jobs.

Two questions worth asking on any door job — these are scope, not code advice:

• Is an existing deadbolt being replaced, or left in place? A deadbolt surviving alongside a fail-secure strike is a second thing standing between a person and the outside.
• Is keyed override confirmed? Mechanical egress covers getting out. Getting in during a total power and network failure is a separate question with a separate answer.

One practical note that lands on the design rather than the code: door hubs are the biggest PoE loads on most jobs. UA-Hub-Door draws up to 50W and needs PoE++; UA-Hub-Gate up to 60W, also PoE++. That’s more than any camera, and it rules out the entire USW-Ultra switch family, which tops out at PoE+ (30W) per port. Two controlled doors can be 110W and roughly eight ports before a single camera is hung.

See Door Access.

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The decision tree, in words

Start at the top. Answer honestly — especially the first one.

1. Will there ever be cameras here? Ever? Including three years from now?

• No, genuinely never — a rental, a small office that will only ever have Wi-Fi. Then a small desktop gateway (UCG-Ultra, UX7) is excellent and you should buy one. You are choosing “no cameras without a rethink,” and that’s a fine choice made on purpose.
• Yes, or maybe — go to 2.

2. Do you already own a working gateway?

• No — buy a gateway with a drive bay. UDM-Pro for most homes and small offices; UDM-Pro-Max if the camera list is already growing. You are buying it for the bay, not for the speed. Go to 3.
• Yes, and it has a drive bay — you’re set. Go to 3.
• Yes, and it doesn’t — keep it, add a UNVR when the cameras arrive. Two boxes instead of one, more expensive than having bought a UDM-Pro up front, but not a dead end and you keep what you paid for. Go to 3.
• Yes, and it’s someone else’s network entirely — standalone UNVR, and re-read Rule 6 before anyone orders anything.

3. How many cameras, at 4K?

Read the 4K number on the gateway, not the HD number. Every G6 camera is 4K. UDM-Pro: 8. UDM-Pro-Max: 15. UDM-Beast: 40. UDR/UDR7: one. If your count exceeds the box, the box changes — or a UNVR joins it.

4. Count your PoE ports.

Cameras + APs + readers + doorbells + chimes. Then spares. Then check the watts, not just the ports — a switch can have free ports and no budget left. Door hubs need PoE++, which most small switches don’t do at all.

5. Buy the drives.

Surveillance-rated. CMR. Separate line item. Not optional.

6. If there’s a door with a strike on it —

mechanical egress, and confirm code and AHJ for that specific door before anyone installs anything.

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Related

• Start Here — what UniFi is, in five minutes
• Choosing a Gateway — the decision that decides the others
• Switches and PoE — ports, watts, and the difference
• Storage and Retention — how many days a drive really holds
• Legacy and Upgrades — before you replace anything that works
• When UniFi Is the Wrong Answer — because sometimes it is
• Glossary — PoE, VLAN, NVR, fail-secure, all of it

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Seven rules covers the arithmetic. It doesn’t cover your ceiling heights, your cable routes, or where your internet actually enters the building — and those decide as much as anything here. AVNFi will walk it with you.