There's a specification called ONVIF that most of them more-or-less implement that allows applications to discover cameras features like how to get the video stream and PTZ.
I use a Foscam 8921, which is a pan-tilt 720p camera and a Crenova something which is a 720 fixed dome. The Crenova is flaky, dropping frames but that may be because of the cable.
The foscam was ~$70 and the crenova was ~$40.
The 8921 is technically a indoor-only camera but it's lived in my chicken coop for over a year without an issue. It's away from rain but not hot and cold temperatures and dust. So it would probably work on a sheltered porch.
As far as software goes you can use an android app called "Onvifer" that discovers onvif cameras and let you view and control them. Or you can use zoneminder if you have lots of free time ;). I wasn't too happy with what I could find so I put together some hacks with ffmpeg, a setup that is slowly evolving into a custom video surveillance system.
I keep my cameras on a separate network without internet access. They all run linux and have open telnet ports. I treat them as hostile outsiders and only allow access from one machine that sucks video out of them but it's up to how paranoid you want to be.
Anyway in conclusion there are definitely low-cost options that don't involve the cloud.
EDIT: Also amazon sucks. You have no idea what you're getting when order from them with these types of products. Be prepared to return things.
http://deercam.tumblr.com/about/
The cam lasted about a year out there until it quit working after an electrical storm. It lived through a lot of rain, wind, and Alabama humidity.
The D-Link cameras, at least the ones I use, all have a cloud service available, but they work just fine if you put them on a separate network that isn't able to access the internet. They all present what they see as an MJPEG stream that motion can consume, plus they have a built in web server to do the configuration.
To overcome the software problems we use Sighthound to do the image recognition + storage. It's a local install on a PC/Mac no cloud needed.
One trick to note is that newer Foscam's send some telemetry stuff to the cloud but that's easily blocked with an outbound firewall rule.
That said, the subscription prices are rather insane.
The smartphone software that came with the camera will frequently lock up, so it's nearly impossible to tell whether our baby is actually sleeping quietly or the image has just frozen. Ditto for the browser-based cloud garbage. I've resorted to just accessing the feed directly (via http://192.168.1.xx/video.cgi, which is a streaming jpeg) but that tends to lock up as well.
EDIT: I should mention I even bought the mydlink Camera Video Recorder (DNR-202L) and what a heap of shit. Clogged up my LAN somehow, despite the fact that dropcams have 1080p and don't have any effect. Cameras often lost connection to the DNR-202, and the quality that it could support had to be severely downgraded. D-links solutions are atrocious. Please, save yourself the money and time. The dlink stuff is cheap for a reason -- and well, not all of it is even cheap. I bought the wide angle rotating cam and it ran me $200. And it was just as terrible as the little dinky $50 dlink cameras. Ugh.