Security
Smart locks for a house you're not in
The problem with keys to a Mallorcan villa is not the lock. It is that six people have a key, you are not sure which six, and the housekeeper who left in 2023 was never asked for hers back. A retrofit smart cylinder costs €200 to €600 per door and turns that into something you can actually manage from Palma or from Hamburg.
Who has keys to your house?
Count honestly. The property manager. The pool company. The gardener. The cleaner, and the cleaner's colleague who covers in August. Your sister-in-law from the summer before last. A neighbour, for emergencies. Possibly the builder who did the terrace.
None of that is unusual and none of it is anyone's fault — it is simply what happens to a house that is used for ten weeks a year and maintained for fifty-two. But it means the security of the property rests on a set of physical objects that were copied at a kiosk and cannot be recalled.
Rekeying a villa costs several hundred euros and is done perhaps once, after something goes wrong. The point of an electronic cylinder is that revoking access becomes a ten-second decision instead of a locksmith visit.
What actually fits a Spanish door
This matters more than the brand. Most doors in Mallorca use a euro-profile cylinder, which is the good news: a retrofit smart cylinder drops into the existing hole, keeps the existing handle and existing door, and takes about twenty minutes. No joinery, no visible change from the street, nothing that upsets a heritage-protected façade.
Where it gets awkward:
- Multipoint locks — common on newer villa entrance doors. The cylinder still turns, but the door needs lifting on the handle to throw all the points, so a motorised cylinder alone does not fully secure it. Workable, but be clear about what "locked" means.
- Very thick doors and old ironwork — a two-hundred-year-old finca door may not take a standard cylinder length. Measurable in advance; expensive to discover on the day.
- Gates — usually a separate problem and often the more useful one to solve first, since most visitors never reach the front door without passing the gate.
What it costs
| Item | Typical hardware cost |
|---|---|
| Retrofit smart cylinder, per door | €200 – €600 |
| Keypad or reader, per entrance | €100 – €300 |
| Gate intercom with video | €600 – €2,200 |
| Gate motor control interface | €150 – €500 |
For a typical villa — entrance door, pool house, gate and intercom — the whole access layer lands somewhere between €1,500 and €4,000 installed.
The Apple Home argument, in one sentence. You can give your property manager the gate, the entrance door and the lighting, while the cameras stay completely invisible to them — and take it all back the same afternoon without changing a code or telling anyone.
Codes, phones and the people who will actually use it
A lock that only opens from an iPhone is a lock that fails the first time a Spanish-speaking cleaner arrives without the app, without your Apple ID and without patience. Every serious installation needs at least two ways in:
- A keypad code for people who work at the house. Personal to each of them, so that a code stopping working tells you exactly whose it was.
- Phone or watch for the family, because it is genuinely the nicest way to arrive with luggage in both hands.
- A physical key, kept. Retrofit cylinders retain the mechanical key on the outside. Do not throw it away and do not pretend you will never need it.
For a house that is let, time-limited codes are the feature that pays for the system. The code works from Saturday afternoon to the following Saturday morning and then stops, with no handover, no lockbox screwed to the wall by the door, and no key posted back to you from Munich.
What I would not do
I would not put the only lock on the house behind a manufacturer's cloud account. If the company goes under, changes its subscription terms or simply has a bad afternoon, your front door should not be affected. Locks that operate locally over Thread or Matter, with the cloud as a convenience rather than a dependency, are the only ones I specify — the same reasoning as keeping camera footage on site.
And I would not fit a smart lock to a house with no network worth the name. The lock will be at the far end of the building from everything else, behind the thickest wall in it. Fix the network first.
See also managed support for how access gets handled when you are not on the island.
Start with a survey
Half a day at the house, €450 fixed. A written report on what you have, what's wrong with it and what putting it right would cost — yours to keep whether or not you use me.
Book a survey →Questions
Straight answers.
Can a smart lock be fitted to a Spanish euro-cylinder door?
Usually in about twenty minutes. A retrofit smart cylinder replaces the existing one, keeps the door, handle and external appearance unchanged, and retains a mechanical key. Multipoint entrance doors and very old finca doors need checking first, but the standard case is straightforward.
How do I give a cleaner or property manager access without a key?
Give each person their own keypad code, or share the door in Apple Home. Access can be revoked instantly and individually, so when someone stops working at the house you remove their code rather than rekeying the property.
Can I give holiday guests a temporary code?
Yes, and it is the feature that justifies the system for a let property. A code can be valid from arrival to departure and then expire automatically, which removes key handover, lockboxes and the risk of copies staying in circulation.
What happens if the internet or the lock's battery fails?
A properly specified lock works locally, so it keeps operating with the internet down. Batteries give months of use and warn well in advance, and the mechanical key is retained on the outside as a final fallback — which is why I never advise discarding it.