UltraLift Hydraulic & Deck Mount Hot Tub Spa Cover Lift

I have been struggling with hot tub cover lifts for years and just recently purchased one from Amazon in the $250 dollar range. The first red flag was it had a lot of plastic parts...only to find the design did no even allow it to be successfully assembled. Very frustrating and needless to say it was returned.This Ultralift Hydraulic came packaged very well. All its parts are made of powder coated steel. Identification of parts and initial understanding of instructions are slightly rough to navigate but there is a video that helps and the written instructions are laid out well with numbers to identify the parts involved. I'm confident this will be the best cover lifter I've ever owned and am thrilled to have installed without too much pain.

Hydraulic lift is great. Directions include pictures, and video options. Note some pictures and parts of the video are hard to see since all pipes are black against a dark background but still got it put together without having to start over. Love that it was able to be secured to the deck vs the actual hot tub. Life will be much easier now vs lifting the previous water logged hot tub cover.

Seller-5 stars. Delivered before expected, no damage, great price.UltraLift Hydraulic-4 stars overall. As noted by most other reviews, the instruction and installation video need improvement. It wouldn't take much for the instructions to be 5 stars, like the finished lifter is. I think if UltraLift just paid a typical semi-handy spa owner a few bucks (or gave them a free/discounted lifter) in exchange for taking notes on what questions they had when installing, or what instructions/steps were confusing, they could fix both the instructions and video quickly. The printed instructions and video contradicted each other at least once (timing of installation of the ball studs), and they failed to indicate which side of the pivot arm to install the ball studs on, causing the first of two re-dos for me. The 2nd re-do was installing the center pole (step 5); this really should be done before installing the pivot arms, or you will never be able to get the two cover hooks into the cover (they are supposedly put into the seam of the cover in step 2, but you can’t get the center pole into both corner support arms without removing them, best I can tell).However, I knew going into it that the instructions would be lacking and there would be some frustration; there wasn't any more than I expected, and overall, installation wasn't that bad (just so easily could have nearly frustration free).Once installed, the lifter worked exactly as I expected. Easy to open fully with one arm on one side of the spa. It worked great with my brand new Hot Tub Works (now owned by Leslie's Pool) cover.Overall, I'm very happy with the purchase.

Works great!

Installed today. Initial impression is that it works well and opens easily.Instructions are truly terrible. Vague instructions, sporadically labeled parts, poor quality pictures make it tough to assemble. For the price it would seem good instructions would be a minimum expectation.

The lifter works great. We have our hot tub sunk into our deck with about 14” above the deck. I didn’t want to drill holes in the tub shell so I was looking for one I could mount to the deck. My only concern was if there would be enough adjustment to fit my tub. It’s not too big at 86” square but wasn’t too sure about the 14” height. Once I installed it I found there is plenty of adjustment available for the height, width and the set back for when the cover is up. My only complaint is the instructions. They could definitely be better. As others have said, there are steps out of order such as installing the cover clips. The instructions have you adding them near the last steps when they should be done before attaching the cross bar. So you end up having to unscrew everything to put them on. Some are not clear on the details such as the foam grips. The pictures seem to show them in one spot on the lift arm but they are actually in another. Nothing major, just irritating. Aside from the instructions, the lifter works great and saves my back. Would recommend.

our manual spa lift broke so I wanted something easier. All the reviews said it was a dream come true. I was able to life our manual one but now I can't even lift the first part much less the whole thing. Now my husband or teenager has to open it for me. Would have returned it but it took my husband so long to attach it , I saw the gloom in his eyes at having to detach it. Just awful from beginning to end.

I have a Michael Phelps swim spa with 2 very large and heavy covers. One of our 2 cover lifters had started to bend under the weight of the covers. I needed 2 poles, the poles that attached to the hydraulic strut. This worked fine for my needs as it had those two poles. There were already 2 welded hydraulic strut mounts that I could not use, but fortunately my old bars had a moveable mount that I was able to use. I did not take off the attached mount and it was not in the way. Unless you know what your looking for, you’ll never notice it being there. I did not use any other piece except the poles I needed. Worked like a charm. There may be other struts in the box, but I did not use them. These covers are extremely heavy, and I’m sure the ones that are in it are undersized.The color matched my original lifter color also. It’s kind of a crackle black finish, not a smooth finish.