Disclosure first: I own the TruLight dealership serving San Antonio. I make money if you buy my system and not if you buy the other one, so treat this as a biased document. To keep it useful, I have not characterized JellyFish Lighting in my own words. Everything below about JellyFish comes from pages JellyFish publishes about itself, cited at the end. For the shorter format, the TruLight vs JellyFish comparison page has the same material without the commentary.

Nothing below says JellyFish is a bad product. This is a way to compare two systems that both look good in a night photo.

Start with the documents, not the demo

Every company here can show you a good demo, shot at dusk on a clean facade. None of them can show you year four.

Ask both bidders for paper: the written warranty, the written scope of work, and the run design for your specific roofline. If a company cannot hand those over before you sign, that itself is information.

On the warranty, JellyFish publishes a five-year parts warranty and a one-year labor warranty on its security lighting page, and describes the same five-year parts and one-year labor structure in its own comparison article. Those were the published terms when I accessed those pages, and published terms change. Get the current written terms from the local JellyFish dealer, attached to your contract rather than screenshotted from a website. TruLight's current terms are published at /warranty, and read that page with the same skepticism.

Why the labor line is the one to underline

Parts and labor are not comparable costs on an exterior lighting system. Even when a replacement node is covered, access and labor may still be billable, and getting a technician back onto a steep tile roof over a two-story entry is the expensive half of that visit. If your front elevation is tall, or the roof is tile, or the planes meet at awkward angles, the difference between a labor-covered service call and a billable one is real money, and it repeats.

The practical move: ask both companies what an out-of-warranty service visit costs at your specific roof height, including any lift or fall protection. Compare that service rate alongside the written parts and labor terms, since the two together are what you will actually pay.

Control, integrations, and what happens on a bad day

JellyFish states on its security lighting page that its system offers remote access and integrates with Alexa, Google and Control4, and its comparison article describes zoning and remote operation. That same article says JellyFish products have UL certification, without identifying which components carry the listing, so ask for listing documentation covering the exact components in your quote. All of that is JellyFish describing its own capabilities, which is reason enough to verify locally rather than assume.

Integrations are a real convenience, particularly if you already run a Control4 house. The question worth asking both bidders is not whether the integrations exist but how the system behaves when they are unavailable. Ask each company, in writing:

How the lights are controlled if the home network is offline
Whether any part of the control requires a paid subscription now or could later
Who supports the app, the manufacturer or the local dealer
What happens to your saved scenes and zones if the controller is replaced
Whether the system and its coverage transfer if you sell the house, and what the process is

I do not know how JellyFish answers all of those and will not guess on their behalf. Ask their dealer. Ask mine the same questions, and ask both who installs and who services, and whether either is subcontracted.

The side by side worth filling in

Decision point	JellyFish, per its own pages	TruLight, per our own pages	Get this in writing
Parts term	Five years	Current terms at /warranty	What qualifies as a part and who covers shipping
Labor term	One year	Current terms at /warranty	Service call, trip and lift charges after that term
Zoning	Zoning described in the JellyFish comparison article	Zones configured at install for your elevations	How many zones your quote includes and whether more cost extra
Smart home	Alexa, Google and Control4 integrations, remote access	App control through the installed controller	Included versus add-on, and any subscription
Components	UL certification stated by JellyFish, without the specific listed components identified	48V low voltage system	Listing documentation covering the exact components quoted, and the transformer location
Diodes per node	Not stated on the pages cited here	Six LEDs per RGBW node: three RGB, three dedicated warm white	How warm white is produced, verified in person after dark
Published light rating	Not stated on the pages cited here	100,000-hour light rating	What the rating covers versus what the warranty covers
Track	Confirm with the local dealer	Professionally installed color-matched aluminum track	Material, finish, and how it looks against your trim in daylight

Where I have written that something is not stated on the pages cited, I mean exactly that: not that the feature is absent, but that my source does not state it. Ask the dealer.

Daylight is the test worth running

The lights are on for a few hours a night. The channel is visible every day. That matters more on the materials this market is built with, because limestone, light stucco, and clay or concrete tile are all unforgiving about a mismatched line running under the eave. On an older home with detailed trim, a bulky channel reads as an addition rather than as part of the house.

Before signing either contract, drive to a completed installation from each company, in daylight, and look at the roofline from the street and then from thirty feet away. Look at the corners, the terminations, and any spot where the channel crosses a change in roof plane. That is where sloppy work shows. TruLight uses color-matched aluminum track for this reason, and I would still go look in person rather than take my word for it.

Complex rooflines change the zone conversation

Homes with several gables, wings, or detached structures may benefit from separate zones rather than one setting across the whole facade. If your house has a main gable, a side wing, a porte cochere, or a detached garage, decide up front which of those you want controlled on their own.

Ask each bidder to mark the proposed zones on a drawing of your house, and ask what it costs to change them later.

Run design, and a claim you should not accept

Somewhere in this process a rep will use voltage as a proxy for quality, usually by claiming a higher voltage automatically means fewer power injection points. That is not a rule you can rely on. The number of injection points a run needs is a function of wire gauge, the load on that run, the distance covered, the controller, and the manufacturer's published limits for that specific product. Those are design decisions, and one number on a spec sheet will not predict them.

Ask for the design itself. From both companies, request a roofline drawing showing planned run breaks, the location of each power supply and injection point, the wire gauge and load per run, and where the transformer and controller mount and how they are shielded from sun and weather. An aerial quote may still need an on-site design check. Require the final run lengths, wire plan, and equipment locations in writing before installation.

Sun and heat are a hardware question

South Texas UV and summer heat are hard on anything mounted outdoors, and the parts taking that exposure are the mounting hardware, the channel finish, and any exposed low-voltage wire on west and south elevations, not the diodes. Ask both bidders what the channel is made of, how it is finished, how the wire is routed, and what fasteners go into your fascia, then ask to see work that has been through several summers here. Details on how we approach the install side are on the permanent lighting page.

Work it that way and you will make a defensible decision regardless of which company wins. I sell one of these systems, but a homeowner who worked through those questions and chose the other bid still bought better than one who chose mine off a photo.

Sources

JellyFish Lighting, security lighting solutions page, describing a five-year parts warranty, a one-year labor warranty, remote access, and Alexa, Google and Control4 integrations. Accessed August 10, 2026. jellyfishlighting.com/solutions/security-lighting
JellyFish Lighting, "Everyone vs JellyFish" comparison article, describing its own zoning, remote operation, UL certification without identifying the specific listed components, and the same five-year parts and one-year labor terms. Accessed August 10, 2026. jellyfishlighting.com/blog/everyone-vs-jellyfish
TruLight warranty terms, current version: /warranty

Request an estimate you can hold up next to the other bid

If you want a quote that includes the run design, the zone map, the written warranty terms and a plain answer about post-warranty service pricing, request an estimate. Bring the competing bid. Comparing them side by side is faster than talking about it in the abstract.

TruLight vs JellyFish Lighting: A San Antonio Buyer's Checklist