At SONA we’re continually on our soapbox about installing technology into luxury homes to the highest possible standards. We’re locally, nationally and internationally renowned and awarded for our exceptional standards, which we think should be the standard, not the exception.

Despite, this – and as a result of historic poor workmanship and support from other integration and home automation companies – many consumers, and other industry professionals such as architects, interior designers and consultants believe that all home technology companies are the same.  It is a common belief that all  products provide the same level of performance and experience, and that the critical factor when choosing a home technology professional to work with should therefore be the price.

After all, if all companies are created equally – surely it makes perfect sense to go with the cheapest and take the saving.
Doesn’t it…?

The first image below shows an actual system installation one of our engineers discovered…

The second image shows the same style of rack, with more equipment and more cabling, but installed by SONA to our exacting and award-winning standards.
Still think all companies are created equally..?

We’re honest enough to admit that more than once, potential clients have told us we’re more expensive than other companies they have spoken with.

Interestingly, these comments are more often than not alongside another comment of ‘your proposal was the most comprehensive, open, detailed and clearest’… I guess it depends on what’s important to someone at the end of the day.

Some of these clients go on to become long term clients of ours, some don’t – but our answer to these comments is always the same:

We Give Great Value

We don’t consider ourselves expensive at all.  At the same time, we don’t try to be the cheapest.  Our aim is to provide the best value for our clients, and 100% satisfaction rate.

The bottom line is we specify and use high performance equipment that we know befits the luxury homes that we work in.  Equipment that we know (though experience) provides the performance, reliability and experience that our clients expect and deserve.  We also know, through decades of installation experience in the luxury residential and super-yacht markets how long it takes to design, manage, engineer and configure these systems to the very highest standards so that they are as reliable, and as intuitive as they can be.

We look at it from another perspective – if another company is much cheaper than us it ultimately come down to two factors:

They have chosen to use lower specification hardware or equipment
or…
They have allowed less time to design, engineer, configure and support that system.

There’s Usually a Reason it’s Cheaper

We realise that there are many instances where cheaper does not mean, less quality.  And in fact, where expensive does not always mean better!  We also realise that sometimes ticking a box is ok, whereas we’d rather exceed expectations.  That’s simply the way we choose to work, not to say that ticking a box isn’t satisfactory for others.

It’s difficult for consumers when it comes to a highly technical niche market where they themselves may not understand the difference between proposals.  You can read more about how we make our proposals as transparent as possible so you are in full control.

For this reason we wanted to highlight here the quality of onsite installations we’ve found when we’ve been asked to takeover existing home technology systems.  You can read more about our Home Technology Rescue experience here.

Behind the Scenes

We can all get fancy shots of nice houses to put on our websites, OR use stock imagery, but SONA believe that the engineering element is one of the true representations of any home technology company and their approach to their clients.

We’re proud to show off our wires!

The images below are real life systems as installed in properties across the UK, by so called ‘home technology professionals’ who were the first at the time to say ‘we’re cheaper than those other guys’.
At SONA – our price is not what gives us pride in our work, or in fact wins us work.

We’re proud to say that these systems would all have been cheaper than the SONA equivalent…  However – and we’ve done the maths for you – in some cases our pricing would have been less than 10% more…

For an extra 10% would you rather have peace of mind, or have to deal with this whenever you have a tech glitch….?

To put what we’re talking about into perspective, we also wanted to include some images from our own engineering teams onsite installations.  The images below are all from real SONA projects, taken by our engineers onsite and show the exceptional standard that all our systems are installed to.
These weren’t done for photography reasons – ALL of our systems look like this.  Go in and open the door to any of our racks, and this is what you will see consistently on every project.

Would you expect to pay a bit more for this than the other examples above?

Clients who initially believe that all home technology companies offer the same level of service and installation are left in the terrible position of paying for two systems – one that doesn’t work, and then one that does.

We are happy to admit that we use quality equipment, reliable hardware and spend the appropriate hours designing and installing our projects.  It may cost more, but we won’t rush a job and we’d rather do things right the first time, provide good value, and keep our solid reputation in tact.

Call us geeks, but ‘Geeks are people who love something so much that all the details matter.’ Marissa Mayer.

What do you think?  Is price the most important thing when looking at integrated home technology?