Smart locks & keyless entry

Smart lock buyer’s guide from a locksmith who installs them

We install smart locks every week, and we take out a fair number that were bought online and never quite worked. The difference is rarely the brand. It is whether the lock suits the door and the way the house actually lives.

By Timmy Creighton, founder and licensed locksmith · Major Key Locksmith · October 2026

Ways in: keypad, fingerprint, app, key

• Keypad. The workhorse. Everyone in the house can use it, codes can be given and deleted, and it does not depend on a phone.
• Fingerprint. Fastest for the people who live there, and nothing to remember. Good for children old enough to come home alone.
• App. Useful for letting someone in remotely and seeing who came and went. Not something you want to depend on to get in your own door.
• A physical key. We would not install a smart lock on a main door without one. It is the backup for the day the electronics are not having a good day.

Bluetooth or Wi-Fi

A Bluetooth lock talks to your phone when you are standing near it. It is simple and easy on batteries, but you cannot do anything from the office. A Wi-Fi lock, or a Bluetooth lock paired with a hub, can be checked and opened from anywhere, at the cost of more battery use and one more thing that needs your network to be up. If you want to let a dog walker in while you are at work, you need remote access. If you only want to stop carrying keys, you do not.

The five features we look for

1. Auto-lock. The door locks itself behind you after a set time. This one feature prevents more problems than the rest combined.
2. Door-open sensing. The lock knows whether the door is actually shut, so it does not throw a bolt into thin air and it can tell you the door was left open.
3. Low-battery warnings that reach your phone. A red light on the door is easy to ignore. A notification is not.
4. Emergency power. A USB port or battery contacts on the outside, so a dead battery is an inconvenience and not a lockout.
5. Individual codes. One per person, so you can delete one without changing everyone’s.

What we install

Our MK line was put together around that list. The MK-1 on a front door gives you fingerprint, keypad, app and a real key as backup, auto-locks behind you, tells you when the door is left open, and has a USB-C port underneath so a power bank opens it if the batteries die. Installed on its own visit it is $750, or $500 when we add it to a rekey. If you already bought a lock, we install that too.

Questions people ask

Are smart locks less secure than regular locks?

Not inherently. The bolt and the door do the physical work either way. A good smart lock adds auto-lock and an activity log, which most regular locks cannot match. The weak points are the same as any lock: the strike, the frame, and shared codes nobody ever deletes.

Do smart locks still have a key?

Most good ones do, and we would not install one on a main door without a key backup.

Will a smart lock work if my Wi-Fi goes down?

The keypad and fingerprint keep working because they live in the lock. You lose remote access until the network is back.

Can you install a smart lock I bought online?

Yes. Installing a customer-supplied electronic lock is $400 on its own visit, with the door prep included.

Keep reading

Any price mentioned here is the one published on our pricing page as of October 2026. The final price is always confirmed with you before any work begins. More answers from the blog →