Looking for a gate opener for use at the house. I went with liftmaster at the office, but that gate gets considerably more use than one at the house will. Does anyone have experience with mighty mule openers or any other residential level openers? The gate is 16ft long and I'd say weighs 350 lbs at the most.



I'm looking at the LA400PKGU from liftmaster, but that will be double the price of the other. Is this a truly get what you pay for situation, or is there a way to save some of that money?

MightyMule gate openers are notoriously unreliable. Apollo is the way to go, but they seem to be on par with the Lift Master LA400PKGU.

https://www.usautomatic.com/
This is what I have and have been happy so far.
Priced similar to Apollo with a better warranty.

We have Apollo for our extremely heavy gate and have not had any problems in 9yrs, knock on wood

Apollo

Living in Austin County I drive around and notice all of the mighty mule openers just hanging with the gate wide open. You get what you pay for. I have an apollo gate opener and pleased so far.

When I asked the same question a year or so ago I had people say Mighty Mule suck & I had people say they have MM & are perfectly happy with them. As I remember most of the people against MM were for Apollo. If it is double the price I would spring for the Apollo or Liftmaster. Triple the price I might try my luck on the MM. My neighbor has a MM & it sometimes opens on its own.

Neighbors recently had a large pipe and stone entry constructed. The Apollo opener has had several issues, and I just spoke with the repair guy/installer, who was replacing the main arm. He no longer recommends Apollo, and has gone to the Patriot unit sold by USAutomatic.

That said, my 10 y/o Mighty Mule keeps on working, but I was glad I'm mechanically and electrically a tinker-azz, because there were several issues the first 3-5 yrs. It's been working great (for the most part) since then.

Very true, more MM openers are hanging loose on gates than any other brands. Probably the volume of units, some lousy installations, and somewhat inferior units.

We have an Elite operator that's been going now for 14 years


We also have Cell Gate to open remotely etc via smartphone app and to avoid the landline charges (only to incur a new fee from Cell Gate lol) that thing is clunky and pricey - but the wife wanted it so...

I'll be purchasing a gate opener as well in the next couple weeks. Thanks for asking the question OP. I'll be closely following.

I previously had a Mighty Mule 500. It was a notorious pain in the ass.

We develop several gated communities a year and wil only spec Apollo for swing gates

Edit to say I have NFI why I have a clown nose thingy.

Apollo

We have had an Apollo opener for the last 13 years with no issues save and except having to replace the main board last December.

My MM has been pretty much 99% reliable Ober the 10 years I've had it. But I also can fox and address issue myself and it's on a deep cycle marine battry with solar panel. That said, it fit the purpose when I bought it and I would reccomend against it if I bought one today. I got my 500 bucks out of it though.