Before purchasing a garage door opener, one should determine the drive system. There are three kinds of drive system; belt driven, chain driven and direct drive.

Every garage door opener should be equipped with automatic lights, a manual emergency release cord and a non-contact invisible beam system that can sense the approach of a person and make the door to reverse back to the open position.

It is very useful to have a garage door opener operated by a remote control for people who have multiple garages. Recent door openers use random codes for security. To prevent theft, a new code is generated each time you open the door by your remote control. They are also designed to be quiet, weather resistant, safe, and fast.

Sometimes garage door openers fail and in this case it is better and less expensive to have it repaired instead of having a new one.