Personally I've always leaned towards the ELK as well due to the DIY friendly nature of it. Heck, Spanky regularly posts on this site answering questions. I don't think you'll find that with HAI even on the Worthington site.
I don't think that is really true. I am a DIY with an HAI Omni Pro II and I have never had problems with either Worthington or HAI directly. You can call up HAI and talk to an engineer in a matter of minutes. A while back I had a problem with NextAlarm not correctly decoding the Contact ID of my HAI system, and it turned out a NextAlarm software upgrade broke things. I got NextAlarm and HAI both to talk on the phone together to get the problem resolved. Wothington is also always happy to help, and they sell anything to DIYers. Many wholesalers won't.
I'd say that Elk makes a great system, and you can't go wrong with that, especially at the lower-end. If you want, or eventually think you will want more high-end features like full-house music control with lots of connectivity to other systems, multiple video cameras, etc. an HAI system will allow it all to happen much easier. Also, after being a bit behind the curve, HAI has done a major update to their scripting language and tools, and this will be out in a month or two.
I think you will pay a bit more for HAI, but if you look at the range of products they have for their systems compared to ELK, its not even close. HAI has been doing this many years now, ELK just a few, and I'm sure ELK was a big part of getting HAI to get their products updated, which they have in a big way.
So before you buy the base system, look at the other add-on options that each have. When I first bought my panel, I just expected to have that, but one by one I added more and more features, and if I had had an ELK, I would have hit the end-of-the-road. With HAI, if you got the money, HAI has products to take it from you.
