Being a computer geeky type, I have always been enthralled with technology. I suppose it makes sense then, that I recently started pondering security systems for my house. After spending “countless” hours reading forums, talking to friends, meeting security system installers, et cetera, I have made a decision on the best one: Alarm.com.
Ok, now you might be thinking: “Big surprise, Dustin, the web developer, chose a security company that has .com in the name”. I promise you though, it’s more than just the name!
Here’s my reasoning:
1) I don’t have a regular land line (POTS) and I don’t intend to get one just to support a security system (especially since it seems to be pretty easy to cut).
Alarm.com uses a wireless cellular (GSM) system — no wires to cut and reliable service 24 hours a day.
2) I don’t want my security system to depend exclusively on a home internet connection (and again… that’s easy to cut).
There are alternate companies who rely exclusively on home broadband internet based communications. Home internet connections are fine for email and web surfing, but I would never trust my home security to a cable or DSL modem.
3) I want a system that is built solidly and will protect my family and home from the blights of society.
Alarm.com currently uses a GE Concord panel, a highly regarded system in the security arena. It’s reliable, tough, and well-tested.
4) I need flexibility, expandability, and advanced features, while still being easy to use (since my wife is not a computer programmer).
The panel used by Alarm.com currently has 96 available wireless zones, 16 wired zones (plus 2 smoke detector zones), easy to use interfaces, and everything else you could possible need.
5) I prefer a price that doesn’t require a 2nd mortgage to keep running (the price should be mostly offset by a homeowners insurance discount).
Alarm.com is a relative bargain compared to other companies (especially making use of wireless signaling and internet reconfiguration).
6) I yearn for a system that appeals to my nerdy gadget-oriented side.
This is the part that really had me convinced! Imagine being able to log in to your alarm system from anywhere in the world and see what is going on currently and what has happened in the past.
What if you could program new security codes, arm and disarm the system, set up lighting schedules (based on events like doors opening) using standard X10 controllers?
What if you’d like to see if “someone” has gotten into the alcohol cabinet when they weren’t supposed to?
Alarm.com makes it all possible and much more, through their powerful and simple online interface. The portal makes programming your alarm system a snap and it’s very simple to set up notification contact lists (both phone and email) for everything from a door opening to true alarm events.
So, add all those requirements & features up and what do you get? Alarm.com tops my list. In fact, even if you take out many of my personal “requirements”, Alarm.com is still the best bang-for-the-buck of any security company I researched or talked to (and I talked to a lot of them).
I can also personally attest to the over-the-top customer service at Alarm.com. They respond to your emails, treat you like a real person, and don’t have a foreign accent (ie: they are easy to understand).
At this point, I’ve chosen the equipment and picked an installation date. I’ll update you as the house nears completion and the service goes live.
Leave a comment if you have any questions.
EDIT: Please read my new review everyone - it’s been a while since I wrote this.
August 30th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Check out http://ucontrol.com. This advanced home security service works over three communication channels - broadband, digital cellular and traditional phone lines. It also allows you to remotely control and access your existing alarm system via the web or your cell phone. The best part is their monitoring fees start at $19.95 per month. You can choose a month to month or contract plan.
September 8th, 2007 at 12:05 am
@ Thomas Gause
“Thomas” (nice handle), I don’t appreciate you spamming my blog. If you think you have a good service at uControl, then tell us in plain words — not spam! I’ve seen those exact words (from above) on several blogs and forums on the web. Somehow, I knew you’d find me too!
However, since you decided to get me thinking about uControl again, let me discuss a few of the problems I had with the service.
Let’s do a quick summary:
1) uControl offers no home automation features at this point. I’ve seen some random rumors of this feature “coming soon in the next few years”, but I haven’t seen anything yet. The home automation aspect is a must-have feature for me.
2) With uControl, you pay extra for “cellular backup” after phone and broadband. I know that using the cellular network is expensive for the alarm company to use… but I really prefer to rely on the cellular network as the primary signaling source, not the other way around. The cellular companies have a vested and legal responsibility to ensure their systems are secure, consistently on-line, and generally non-interruptible.
3) The pricing you mentioned above isn’t for the cellular system at all. In fact, the only way I can get $19.95 pricing is by signing a 3 year contract and specifically NOT having cellular backup. The cellular backup is mandatory for me. So, currently, if I choose uControl’s “Triple Connect” option for less than three years, I’m gonna pay $29.95/month minimum. I’d be willing to be there are extra fees and taxes on top of that (but I don’t know for sure).
4) Also, regardless of which pricing package I choose at uControl, I don’t see the point of having redundant broadband and (POTS) telephone connections. Without cellular backup, both of these are easily defeated by a simple snip.
5) This doesn’t even touch the fact that I don’t have a system installed yet. How do I use uControl without a system installed? Trying to convince a security system installer to put in full-fledged system in with no monitoring contract is akin to asking a mother to give up her child — I have experience with this, it’s not an easy proposition (the security installer part, not the mother - child thing, heh).
Anyways, there are plenty of other problems I had with uControl (and other security companies too), but there’s no need to go into any further detail. However, feel free to send me a uControl link for free and a free trial and I’ll do full-fledged review!
Until that happens, Alarm.com is the best solution in my humble opinion.
September 20th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
I appreciate your review and thoughts, Dustin. I’ve got Vonage right now and my contract with ADT has just ended. My system is working now but it’s taken some time (and frustration) to get to this point. I’m thinking of switching to a less expensive option then ADT which I believe is costing me about $30/month. Have you been running with Alarm.com long enough to give some more info at this point? I am also looking at uControl and NextAlarm. I read your thoughts on uControl; any sense on NextAlarm?
September 20th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
@ Don
I am about two weeks away from installation, so I’ll be sure to update with a new article once it’s all installed and running.
I can say this though: several of my friends are rolling with Alarm.com and so far have no complaints.
As for NextAlarm, you are relying on your home internet connection a little too much in my opinion. I really don’t like that option.
I mean, the way I look at it is this way: if there is one thing I shouldn’t “cheap” out on it’s my home security system — my family’s safety and my irreplaceable belongings (pictures, et cetera) are worth a little extra cost to ensure that they are as protected as they can be.
I just have a feeling the odds of a failure when depending on my cable/DSL modem are uncomfortably high.
- Dustin Weber
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Dustin,
You should have your alarm.com operational by now. What are your thoughts? Surely it must have some downsides?!
Thanks,
Jesse
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Jesse,
Almost, I’ll write the update within 2 - 4 weeks. It’s only fair that I give the system a bit of time to do the full review.
I promise I’ll write another article about alarm.com though.
- Dustin Weber
November 23rd, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Its been about 4 weeks - anything to report? My husband is pushing for alarm.com but I am just starting to do research - some factual feedback would be great - cheers!
November 27th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
@Jessica,
I’m very satisfied with alarm.com so far. No complaints. I will be writing another more detailed review soon… I’m just completely strapped for time at the moment.
However, in my humble opinion, alarm.com is still an excellent choice.
- Dustin Weber
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:54 am
You’ll notice the same template !!
I know it’s just been a few days since your last comment on this, but any chance of a ‘user-review’ on Alarm.com. Like you I am drawn towards Alarm.com, but need some reaffirmation!!
Thanks
December 5th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
@RJ,
As I mentioned with Jessica, I have absolutely no complaints about alarm.com’s services. I will be writing a more detailed review of their services soon, but in my opinion, they are tough to beat at any price point…. so feel free to take the jump.
- Dustin Weber
December 31st, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Dustin,
Have you looked at InGrid? They don’t meet your cellular requirement yet. (says coming soon on the web site for how long now?)
It looked like a nice new system from what I can tell.
Thanks
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I’ve been researching alarm monitoring services and just noticed your comments. Any chance of a full review on alarm.com? It’s been several weeks since your installation and it would really be nice to hear your thoughts. Thanx!
February 6th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I concur with Dustin. Alarm.com rocks! They don’t offer service directly to individuals anymore, so you have to go though a dealer. I did extensive research, and found one that offers a terrific overall value for the money: www.frontpointsecurity.com. They are brand new (since around November 2007) and haven’t advertised much at all yet. I am not affiliated with them in any way. I’m only a satisfied customer. I have only been with them for about three weeks, but they have provided outstanding customer service so far. Also, everything I’ve seen and experienced with them so far has been of the utmost professionalism. These guys are slick, and have invested a lot of time, energy, and obviously money in getting this off the ground. And, they are constantly improving. At first, $40/month seems high, but when you consider that includes the wireless and THE HIGHEST LEVEL of Alarm.com monitoring available, AND use alarm-pending with their monitoring company, I think you’ll be hard pressed to beat it. For those that may not know, alarm-pending means that when you walk though an entry and the disarm time-window begins (default 30 seconds), that EVEN IF someone destroys the control panel between 11-30 seconds (or end of entry delay period), it’s too late, because the CP has already sent the status of alarm-pending to Alarm.com. If alarm.com doesn’t recieve an explicit “successful disarm” status, then it will forward an alarm onto the monitoring company. So an intruder only has about 10 seconds to find the unit and disable it upon tripping any sensor. THIS is a REAL security system, not the typical junk ADT often deploys… that typically only STARTS dialing AFTER the disarm period has elapsed and it officially goes into an alarm state. Then, those alarms still have to spend another ~15 seconds or more dialing then transmitting their data… so the intruder has at least 40 seconds or so to find and disable the control panel. Plenty of time for a professional. And that’s if they don’t cut the phone line first. The control panel of Frontpoint systems have a 24 hour battery backup AND are wireless to the alarm.com service (which then notifies your dealer’s monitoring station if necessary).
If you consider that ADT, Brinks, P1, etc want to charge about $30 or more per month for junky telephone-only monitoring (and with no alarm.com functionality!!), I think you can see the value. These guys also configure the system and all the sensors for you and can take care of most ongoing concerns remotely (and even more remote functionality coming), it’s a great service. AND, they don’t try to make money on their hardware. Go look at their sensor prices, and I dare you to try to beat an overall package of sensors. I could only find one device that was considerably cheaper elsewhere… and many of their devices were considerably cheaper than I could find elsewhere(use froogle.com and pricegrabber, etc to compare). Others were priced about the same. So there is no reason to order anything elsewhere… they are good guys, they aren’t trying to gouge you on hardware.
Keep in mind, this is WIRELESS & Highest level of Alarm.com functionality & alarm-pending monitoring. If you really compare, I doubt you will find a better overall value. You might find something that about matches at best. Then it comes down to service, and professionalism, and here I’m confident FPS will win.
I am not being compensated in any way for this review. I am in no way affiliated with FPS, other than being a new customer. And, I was also not asked to leave a review. Am am only a really happy new customer. You owe it to yourself to at least check them out and give them a call if even mildly interested. Once you talk to them, I believe you will be convinced.
If you do decide to go with FPS, ask for their Simon XT control panel instead of the standard Simon III. It will cost a little more, but it is GE’s newest (of this type of) system, and FPS will be going to this as their standard system anyway in the not-too-distant future. That’s what I did, and I love the XT. It’s smaller, has more functionality, plus an LCD screen on the control panel. It’s missing X-10, but that’s coming in a couple months (easy to upgrade, and FPS will send you the new adapter when available), and it’s also missing availability of 2-way remote talking and/or LCD keypads, but that may be in the works too. You can get remote one way keypads that work well enough for now. Or just use keyfobs exclusively, if you want. Other than that, there’s no real reason to get the older Simon III anymore, in my estimation anyway.
I hope this was helpful to others.
Dustin, thanks for this forum and all the information you provided. It was very helpful to me in my decision-making process.
Best,
- Alan
February 21st, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Sorry for double-post. Please remove this comment and the one dated Feb. 6th. The Feb 21st repost contains slightly more up to date information.
Thanks,
Alan
February 26th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Dustin,
I know you said you would give a more detailed report later, but I have a few questions.
I live in a very poor cell phone reception area and calls made to my cell phone don’t always come in when I am home. Some times the lines for the internet are busy or not working and VOIP doesn’t work. It could be days before I even notice the phone isn’t working because I don’t use my phone very often. You get my point.
Do you have any problems, not with connectivity, but phone issues?
Have you had to deal with customer service at all with any issue?
I read the review below and it made we wonder if alarm.com was right for me. It sounded like you were a Ucontrol customer as well and was very unsatisfied. In your research did you found any other comparable alternatives.
Post from Vonage that was an alarm.com customer
Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 1:11 pm Post subject:
——————————————————————————–
Alarm.Com absolutely **** IMHO.
I tried out this service for aprox. six (6) months before saying this. I’ve had a multitude of problems.
For starters, my initial delivery didn’t include 1/2 of what I ordered, a bad battery and wireless modem amongst other items.
Service was good at first but progressively got worse. There were days where there was a service outage and absolutely nothing worked. I remembre this one day where we accidently set the alarm off at night, around 6pm or so. The central station never called us (surprise, yeah right) so we called them and let them know it was a false alarm.
I was woken up at 6am by 3 police officers pounding on my front door. They said our alarm went off at around 5:56 and got notified by the central station of such and that our phone line was “dead”.
Our phone line was _NOT_ “dead”, after a LOT of research the central stations computers “screwed” up and wasn’t dialing correctly.
The reason there was even a dispatch was because they didn’t log the phone call the night before and they didn’t get the alarm signal until 6am… 12 HOURS LATER.
This is just one time of such a screw up from them, there have been other times this has happened as well and I simply do NOT trust them.
We actually got fines from the police department for so many false alarms that I am going to be taking alarm.com to court to recover the fees.
I’ve also cancelled my account, and got confirmation of account cancellation yet they continue to bill my credit card.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:46 am
How secure it the wireless connectivity between your home system and alarm.com?
March 24th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Any update on the review for Alarm.com?
March 26th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Hi Dustin,
We are in March now and I was wondering how’s been your experience with Alarm.com so far. Could you pls provide us with your user review?
Thanks a lot
Jose
April 7th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Checking on a wireless alarm system for our residence. What offers are currently available? We want to switch over from Protection One.
April 12th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Dustin,
How are you liking Alarm.com so far? Also, is it a wireless system or wired?
How easy is it to add X10 devices to it?
If you have written a review somewhere, I’d love to read it. I was also looking at U-control, but the fact that it needed a security system was the drawback, as well as the fact that cellular monitoring etc. were extra.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Dustin,
Okay, its been 4 months since your last post. Any reason you started a blog and actually haven’t done what the blog was intended for ?
April 30th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Hi Dustin– I am currently researching security systems and I came across your blog. Alarm.com looks like the type of system I would be interested in. I like the fact that you do not have to use a land line to establish service. Can you suggest a forum or web site that you found useful in making your security decision? Also, how has the service been with alarm.com? Have you tested the response time when the alarm is activated? Thanks.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
It’s been about 6 months now. Any update on the alarm.com service? I have read some bad reviews and I’m trying to confirm if its real or not. Thanks!
June 10th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Any reviews of it now? Looking at some options.
June 18th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Hi Dustin, I see that uConnect charges extra for the “cellular backup”, does NextAlarm do the same? Or do they not even offer that? I couldnt find it on their site. THanks.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
[…] reviewing the multitude of comments on my original review of alarm.com and realizing I had totally forgotten to write the next review, I thought I’d […]
August 7th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Please read my new updated review: http://dustinweber.com/reviews/alarmcom-updated-review/
Sorry for the delay everyone, I’ve been swamped with work lately.
- Dustin Weber
August 19th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Overall, the Abbra system from Next Alarm works well with VOIP. However, the VideoView service they advertise does not work at all and their tech support is nearly non-existent. They refuse to even trouble-shoot the problem. Of course, they try to blame the customer, the browser settings, etc. But I am a Network Engineer and know what I am doing with the setup of the camera and opening the ports. I can view my Linksys camera over the Internet, but NextAlarm can’t provide any video through their service. If you want a basic alarm for your doors and motion detection, Next Alarm will do. But if you want the advanced services that they advertise then you will be disappointed. You will also be disappointed if you require any tech support. They have a couple of kids who will read the installation manual to you, that’s it. Nobody with any real knowledge of alarm systems or networks will assist you with your system. Its obviously a small company with big ambitions. But they have a long way to go before they can call themselves a professional security provider.