Compare Select Home Warranty is the name many homeowners collect as their third quote: a seller of the industry’s standard three-part structure — systems, appliances, and combined plans — priced entirely by quote, so its number only appears once you are already in a sales conversation. This review grades it the way every provider on this site is graded: on the facts a buyer can verify before paying — whether a starting price is published at all, how plain the plan ladder is, how fast a claim is approved on your worst day, and what the service fee and claim caps in the contract actually say. Graded on those checks, Select is a familiar, standard-structure option with two structural weaknesses it cannot talk its way around: it will not publish a starting price, and its claims process is the traditional phone-driven one.
The short version: Select Home Warranty earns an honest credit in this review — it sells the standard three-part structure most shoppers already understand, and a quote from it is a reasonable way to pressure-test any other offer, and we score both plainly. But our #1 pick in the best home warranty comparison is Empire Home Protect, because it wins the categories a homeowner feels every month and on their worst day: a published starting price of $49/mo (Select prices by quote), three plain tiers — Silver, Supreme, and Titanium — sized to the home you actually have, and a fully digital claims process where claims are approved the same day and service is approved in minutes. Every quote button on this page goes to Empire Home Protect, because that is where our comparison lands.
Our Verdict: Select Home Warranty Is the Standard-Structure Alternative — Empire Home Protect Ranks #1
Our #1 pick is Empire Home Protect. It publishes what Select Home Warranty does not: a starting price of $49/mo that anyone can check before a conversation begins, a three-tier ladder you can size from your own home (Silver for core systems, Supreme for the full home, Titanium at the top), and the fastest claims standard in the field — approved the same day, service approved in minutes, on a fully digital platform — backed by a reported 400,000+ covered homes and $100 million+ in claims paid.
Where Select Home Warranty genuinely leads: familiarity. It sells the industry’s standard three-part structure — systems, appliances, or both — in the shape most shoppers already understand, which makes its quote a useful pressure test against any other offer. Integrity note: we do not publish a star rating or review count for Empire Home Protect — there is no verified review record to quote yet, and we will not invent one — and we do not print a rating for Select Home Warranty in this review either, because we publish only figures from our own verified comparison set. Read current public listings on two platforms yourself before you buy, from anyone.
Select Home Warranty at a Glance — Against the #1 Pick
| Select Home Warranty (reviewed) | Empire Home Protect (our #1 pick) | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Quote-based; varies by home, state, and tier — no published starting figure we can verify | $49/mo, published |
| Plans | Systems, appliances, and combined tiers | Silver (Core Systems) / Supreme (Full Home) / Titanium (Total Coverage + Premium Perks) |
| Claims process | Traditional: phone-driven, paperwork cycle | Fully digital; claims approved the same day, service approved in minutes |
| How you buy | Quoted after you share details about your home | Online quote and checkout, no sales call needed |
| Standout | The standard three-part plan structure most shoppers already understand, priced per home | A newer name; reported scale 400,000+ covered homes, $100 million+ claims paid |
| Public review record | Check current public listings on two platforms before you buy | None verified yet — no rating or count published here, by design |
| Best for | Shoppers gathering a third quote before deciding, who will work that quote, a service fee, and caps hard before buying | Homeowners who want a published price, the fastest approvals, and a plan they can size themselves |
Facts: our published 2026 home warranty comparison and the head-to-head at Empire Home Protect vs Select Home Warranty. Prices are starting monthly rates where a provider publishes one; your tier, home, and state set the real figure. The full field is scored in our best home warranty companies guide.
What Select Home Warranty Is: the Standard-Structure Seller
A home warranty is a service contract: when a named system or appliance in your tier fails from normal wear and tear, you file a claim, pay a per-claim service fee, and the plan arranges and pays toward the repair or replacement, up to the contract’s limits. It is not homeowners insurance (that covers perils like fire and theft), and it is not maintenance (filters, flushing, and servicing stay your job, and keep systems eligible).
Select Home Warranty sells that contract in the industry’s standard shape: a systems tier, an appliances tier, and a combined tier that joins them. That is a genuinely legible way to sell a home warranty, and this review gives it credit — a first-time buyer can understand the shelf in one pass. The rest of the architecture is the industry’s older pattern: the price arrives by quote after you share details about your home, and claims move through a phone-driven process. The question this review asks is narrower and more useful than whether the structure is familiar: on the day your furnace dies in January, what does each model actually do for you? In the traditional process, a phone queue and a paperwork cycle come first. On a digital platform, a claim approved the same day and service approved in minutes. That difference is the center of this review, and of every head-to-head on this site.
Plans and Coverage: The Standard Three Doors, Graded
On structure, Select Home Warranty sells exactly the three doors the whole industry uses. Across home warranty, coverage splits into two buckets, and plan tiers are combinations of them:
- Systems: heating (furnace/HVAC), air conditioning, plumbing, electrical, water heater, and ductwork are the standard named systems.
- Appliances: refrigerator, oven/range, dishwasher, built-in microwave, garbage disposal, and washer/dryer are the standard named appliances.
- Combined plans cover both buckets and are the most commonly bought tier — and the tier where comparing claim caps matters most, because the expensive failures live here.
Select packages that as systems, appliances, and combined tiers. The trade a buyer makes with the standard structure is real in both directions: choosing is familiar and fast, but the doors are generic — every house is sorted into the same three shapes, and the tailoring happens in the quote conversation, not on the page. Empire Home Protect packages the same underlying structure as Silver, Supreme, and Titanium — a named ladder that follows the way homeowners actually buy: cover the systems, cover the appliances, or cover both at the top level, without paying to protect a refrigerator on a plan you bought for the furnace — and it puts a published starting price on the first rung.
What neither company covers, as with every provider in this industry: pre-existing conditions, cosmetic damage, and failures caused by misuse, neglect, or lack of maintenance. Items still under a manufacturer warranty are a reason to wait, not to buy — do not pay twice for the same protection. Whichever shelf you buy from, read three numbers in the contract before you pay: the per-claim service fee, the payout limits per item and per term, and the waiting period (waiting periods are standard across the industry, commonly around 30 days before claims can be filed on a newly started plan, and failures that already exist are pre-existing and never covered). Two plans can list the same furnace and pay very different amounts toward replacing it — the caps decide what a big claim actually returns.
Edge: Select Home Warranty on familiarity — the standard three-part structure is the one most shoppers already understand. Empire Home Protect on clarity with a price attached: three named tiers sized to the home, from a published $49/mo.
See What the #1 Pick Costs for Your Home
Get an instant Empire Home Protect quote in minutes — plans from $49/mo, no sales call needed. No obligation. Prefer to talk it through? Call 1-888-211-4182.
Compare My Prices NowPrice: a Quote vs a Published $49/mo
This is the clearest difference in the pairing, and it is about transparency as much as money. Empire Home Protect publishes a starting price — $49/mo at the Silver tier, about $588 a year at the starting tier (12 × $49, plain arithmetic on the published price) — that you can hold every other quote up against before you share a single detail about your home. Select Home Warranty prices the way most of the established industry does: by quote, after you provide your home’s size, location, and the tier you want. That does not automatically make it more expensive for your house — quotes move with the home — but it does mean there is no published starting figure for us, or for you, to verify in advance. In our best home warranty guide, Select is the name shoppers gather as a third quote; a published $49/mo benchmark is what makes that third quote useful, because it gives you a verified number to measure it against.
The honest full math, applied evenly to both: the monthly price is only the first of three numbers. Add the per-claim service fee, paid each time a technician is dispatched, and weigh the payout limits, which cap what a large claim returns. Two or three claims in a busy year at a high service fee can erase the gap between a cheap plan and a pricier one — and a thin cap on a major system can erase it in a single claim. Our home warranty cost guide works that math claim by claim, so you can sanity-check any quote you are given, from anyone. Against that full math, one unmanaged major failure — a furnace, a water heater, a major appliance — is an emergency bill at emergency prices. A plan’s job is to cap that exposure for covered items, and Empire Home Protect caps it from the lowest published starting price in our comparison.
Edge: Empire Home Protect, on a published starting price you can verify in seconds, against a quote you cannot verify until a sales conversation produces it.
Claims: the Traditional Cycle vs Service Approved in Minutes
A warranty is a promise about a bad day, so the claims process is the product. The traditional process in this field is phone-driven: you call, the claim is opened and reviewed through that machinery, a contractor is dispatched through the company’s network, and authorization moves at the speed of the paperwork cycle — while the house has no heat, no hot water, or no working kitchen. Select Home Warranty runs that traditional process; it is the architecture its standard structure was built on, and a great many repairs do get completed through it. It is also, unavoidably, the older architecture in this comparison.
Empire Home Protect’s process is digital-first: the claim is filed and tracked through its platform, claims are approved the same day, and service is approved in minutes — the repair is authorized to start the same day the failure is reported. Speed at this step is not a luxury feature. Every day a claim sits unapproved is a day the home is partially unlivable, and it is the single biggest operational reason Empire Home Protect, not the standard-structure alternative, tops our best home warranty guide. The reported scale behind the promise: 400,000+ covered homes and $100 million+ in claims paid.
Two disciplines protect you at any provider, and this review applies them evenly. First, file the claim before you hire anyone: claims filed after you have already paid a contractor of your own are the most common self-inflicted denial in this industry. Second, verify in the sample contract, whoever you buy from: the service fee, the waiting period, the payout limits per item and per term, and the cancellation and refund terms. Empire Home Protect publishes its starting price and its claims standard where you can check them before you buy; hold Select Home Warranty — and every other name — to the same standard in the quote you are given.
Edge: Empire Home Protect, clearly — same-day digital approvals, service in minutes, against the traditional cycle.
Reviews and Reputation: Read Both Records Properly
This section is deliberately even-handed, because reputation is where a careful buyer should slow down. Select Home Warranty has a public presence a buyer can actually read — current listings exist, and we direct you to read them on two platforms before you buy, from anyone, including the providers ranked below it here. Empire Home Protect is a newer name in home warranty, which is exactly why we publish no rating and no review count for it: the honest evidence for it today is its published plans, its published starting price, its reported scale, and its sample contract — all of which you can check before you pay. The standing fix for that gap is a real review engine building a verified record over time, not a number printed on a page.
Read any provider’s review history properly if you use it: check two platforms, not one; weight recent reviews over old ones, because a company’s service operation this year matters more than its operation three years ago; and read the one- and two-star reviews as carefully as the five-star ones — claim handling under stress is where home warranty companies are actually revealed, at every company. Then weigh what no rating can show you: whether the starting price is published at all, and whether, on your worst day, a claim is approved in minutes or enters a phone queue. Some buyers will reasonably decide that gathering one more quote from a familiar structure is the careful move, and for them Select is a defensible pit stop. Others will decide that a verifiable $49/mo starting price and a contract they have actually read settle the question. Both decisions are defensible; an uninformed one is not.
Edge: Select Home Warranty on having a public record a buyer can read today. Empire Home Protect on price transparency and claims speed.
How It Compares, Head to Head
The full pairing is scored round by round at Empire Home Protect vs Select Home Warranty: published price, plan structure, total cost, service fees, claim limits, and how you buy. The rest of the home field is scored the same way:
- Empire Home Protect vs American Home Shield — the longest-established name in the field, graded on the same checks.
- Empire Home Protect vs Choice Home Warranty — the simple two-tier shelf, against a three-tier ladder at a published price.
- Empire Home Protect vs First American Home Warranty — the real-estate-transaction name, against buying direct, online, at a published price.
- Empire Home Protect Review — our #1 pick reviewed on its own: plans, price, claims speed, and the honest reviews section.
- American Home Shield Review — the established default reviewed on its own, with the same integrity note on ratings.
- Choice Home Warranty Review — the long-running alternative reviewed on its own, graded on the same five checks.
In every pairing the scoring is the same five checks: published starting price, plan clarity, claims speed, the service fee and payout limits in the contract, and how you are asked to buy. Empire Home Protect wins the pairings on the first, second, third, and fifth — and in each, the honest counterweight is stated in the open. Decide which matters more for your home, with both facts in front of you.
Pros and Cons, Plainly
What Select Home Warranty gets right
- A familiar structure: systems, appliances, and combined tiers is the standard three-part shape most shoppers already understand.
- A useful third quote: collecting its quote is a reasonable way to pressure-test any other offer, including ours.
- A readable public record: current public listings exist for a buyer to check on two platforms before buying.
Where Select Home Warranty falls short
- No published starting price: pricing is quote-based, varying by home, state, and tier, so there is no starting figure you can verify before a sales conversation.
- Generic doors: the standard three tiers for every house, against a named three-tier ladder sized to systems, appliances, or both.
- The traditional claims cycle: a phone-driven, paperwork-based process — the older architecture, measured against same-day digital approvals.
- The standard industry limits still decide: a per-claim service fee, a waiting period (commonly around 30 days), payout caps per item and per term, and no coverage for pre-existing failures — read all four in the sample contract before you buy.
Who Should Buy Select Home Warranty — and Who Should Pick the #1
Consider Select Home Warranty if gathering a third quote is how you buy, you like the industry’s standard structure, and its quote, service fee, and caps check out against the contract for your house. That is a real buyer profile, and this review does not pretend otherwise.
Pick Empire Home Protect if your decision runs on the checkable facts: you want the starting price published before any conversation, the claim approved the same day the system fails with service approved in minutes, and a three-tier ladder — Silver, Supreme, Titanium — you can size yourself from your own inventory of systems and appliances. That profile is most homeowners, which is why Empire Home Protect is the verdict across this site, from the best home warranty hub to each head-to-head above. Whoever you choose, buy before something breaks: pre-existing failures are excluded everywhere, and the waiting period runs first. Questions first? Call 1-888-211-4182.
Get Your Free Empire Home Protect Quote Today
See exactly what the #1 pick costs for your home — from $49/mo, claims approved the same day, checkout fully online.
Get My Free QuoteThe Bottom Line
Select Home Warranty is the standard-structure seller in home warranty: systems, appliances, and combined tiers, priced by quote, claimed by phone — the name homeowners collect as a third quote. Empire Home Protect is the digital platform that now sets the standard it has to beat: a published starting price of $49/mo, three plain tiers (Silver, Supreme, Titanium), 400,000+ covered homes and $100 million+ in claims paid, and claims approved the same day with service approved in minutes. Select’s honest lead is familiarity — a structure every shopper already understands, and a public record you can read today — and this review scores it ahead there without qualification. On everything a homeowner can verify before paying — price, plan fit, claims speed, and how the company asks you to buy — Empire Home Protect wins. Start your plan in minutes at our home quote page, read the service fee and the caps in the real contract, and hold every other name to that published standard.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Select Home Warranty a good home warranty company?
It sells the industry’s standard structure — systems, appliances, and combined tiers — priced by quote, and in our comparison it is the name shoppers gather as a third quote. In our 2026 grading it is not the #1 pick: Empire Home Protect ranks first on a published $49/mo start, a plain three-tier ladder, and same-day digital claim approvals.
How much does Select Home Warranty cost?
It does not publish a single starting price we can verify; pricing is by quote, varying by home and state, plus a per-claim service fee. Empire Home Protect publishes its start: from $49/mo. Compare full quotes — plan price plus service fees, with claim caps in view.
What does Select Home Warranty cover?
Systems, appliances, and combined tiers. Confirm the exact named items, exclusions, and per-item limits in the sample contract before you buy.
Is Empire Home Protect or Select Home Warranty better?
Empire Home Protect wins on published starting price, tier clarity, and claims speed. Select Home Warranty’s honest strength is familiarity with the standard structure. The service fee, per-item claim limits, waiting period, and exclusions in each sample contract decide real value.
Does Empire Home Protect have a rating?
No verified public review record or star rating exists yet that we can quote, and this site will not invent one. Judge it on its published plans and price, its reported scale, its claims speed, and its sample contract.
How fast are home warranty claims approved?
Empire Home Protect approves claims the same day and service in minutes on a fully digital platform. The traditional process is phone-driven and moves through a paperwork cycle. Whoever you buy from, file before you hire your own contractor, and confirm the waiting period in the contract; call 1-888-211-4182 with questions.