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The Ultimate Guide to Your Professional Monitoring Service

Posted November 20th, 2015 by SimpliSafe

How do you know that your house is safe when you’re not there? Well, if you have monitoring service, it’s easy. With professional monitoring, you never have to worry about your home, because if anything were to happen, you’ll know. And if you’re home during an emergency, know that help is on the way. You are not alone.

If you’ve never had an alarm system, or if you’ve only had a local alarm, you may have a lot of questions about monitoring service. Well, question no more. Everything you need to know about monitoring is here!

What is Professional Monitoring?:

Our professional monitoring service is a ‘round the clock protection, every single day of the year. Once you’ve subscribed to the service, it doesn’t matter whether you’re home or away, whenever your system is armed, the monitoring service is ready. If your alarm is tripped the monitoring service will receive the signal. If they’re unable to receive your safe word when they contact you, which would indicate that it was a false alarm, they will immediately dispatch your local police.

Similarly, with our smoke detectors, the monitoring service will dispatch your local police in case of a fire in your home.

Our team of professionals is well trained to handle emergency situations and get you help as quickly as possible. If you’re home or away, your house is always protected. You’ll be alerted, as will your local authorities.

How Does Monitoring Work?:

When the alarm is tripped, the monitoring center receives the signal alerting them. Then, a monitoring professional will call you on your primary numbers. You can select up to two primary numbers when you activate the monitoring service, and you can change these online at any time. These phone numbers can be whatever numbers you’d like them to be, whoever you think should be contacted first. This could be your home number, your cell phone number and your work number, your cell phone and your spouse’s number, any combination!

The monitoring center will call you on these numbers looking for your safe word. The safe word is a word or phrase that you select when you set up your monitoring service. Your safe word certifies that you are who you say you are, and is used in this situation to stop police dispatch. If you do not answer, or you do not provide the safe word, the monitoring center will immediately dispatch your local police to your address. If you or anyone pretending to be you, provides the incorrect safe word, the monitoring service will not indicate this, but act as though you provided the correct one, to ensure your safety, and then will dispatch the authorities. Once they dispatch the police, they will call your secondary numbers.

You can have up to five secondary numbers on an account. These numbers are alerted after the police are dispatched, to alert friends, family members, or neighbors, to your alarm event. You can put anyone you’d like on this list, including yourself. It works very well if you have a nearby key holder or someone who can be at the property while you’re not.

What Else Does Professional Monitoring Offer?:

With SimpliSafe’s monitoring, you’ll be alerted no matter what happens. If your water heater bursts, the monitoring center will alert you when your water sensor is tripped. If it’s freezing in your home, the monitoring center will let you know! No need to worry about police dispatch, the monitoring service will simply alert you via phone so you can take care of these matters before disaster strikes.

The monitoring service will also dispatch the local fire department to your home in the case of a smoke or CO alarm. This way, whatever the emergency, you’ll know what’s happening, and help is on the way.

How to Get Monitoring: 

Unlike many other alarm companies, monitoring is easy with SimpliSafe. We have two monitoring plans, depending on what features you need. We have no contracts, so it’s easy to start and stop your monitoring service at any time. You control it, and can decide when it works for you and when it doesn’t. You can sign up for monitoring service through your customer account online or by giving us a call.

Basic Monitoring:

Our Standard Monitoring plan is $14.99 a month. It includes the two primary phone calls, the police or fire dispatch, and the calls to your secondary contacts. It also includes a cellular connection to the monitoring center, so you don’t need a landline!

Interactive Monitoring:

Interactive Monitoring includes everything our basic monitoring does, as well as a whole slew of features. With Interactive Monitoring, you can also control your system remotely, from anywhere with an internet access, including your smartphone through app. You can remotely change your settings from your customer account. You can also receive Smart Alerts: text messages and emails with all your alarm activity. This plan also lets you set sensors to secret alert, which will give you a notification when someone trips that sensor without sounding the alarm. This is perfect for places that you don’t want people snooping or areas you’d like to keep your kids out of! Our Interactive Monitoring plan is $24.99 a month.

Monitoring lets you have peace of mind whether you’re home or away, knowing that your home is always protected.