Community Admin
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741 Messages
Alarm Texts: A Great New Feature Coming to SimpliSafe Monitoring Accounts
Alarm Texts is a new feature that is now rolling out gradually to Standard and Interactive subscribers, starting with those with the current gen system. When enabled on your account, and when your alarm goes off, you’ll get a text message. You then can respond via text to either cancel the alarm, or request immediate help.
It’s part of our ongoing goal of getting you the assistance that you need, even faster. You can learn more about Alarm Texts and how to use them in our Help Center article here. But here are some answers to questions asked by our users and Community.
What happens during an alarm event? Will I still get a phone call?
It’s useful to think of Alarm Texts as an expansion of a feature that you might already be familiar with: Smart Alerts via SMS. So when an alarm event is triggered, you’ll get a text message letting you know right away.
The key difference is that for intruder alarms (triggered by Entry, Motion, or Glassbreak) you will have 2 minutes (starting from when the alarm event was triggered) to either cancel the alarm or request dispatch immediately.
If you respond to the Alarm Text within the 2-minute period with a cancel request, the professional monitoring agent will skip the phone call sequence, and the process ends there.
If you respond asking for help, the professional monitoring agent will skip the call to your Primary Contacts, and they will contact your local police right away (potentially getting you assistance faster).
At the same time, the Monitoring call sequence will still be initiated. As soon as your alarm sounds, the grace period (in case of false alarms) will begin, and then you’ll get a call from a professional monitoring agent. If you do not answer, or if you do answer and ask for help, the operator will request dispatch from your local authorities.
When am I getting Alarm Texts on my account?
Alarm Texts is rolling out over the next several months across all SimpliSafe subscription accounts. We’ll send you an email the day before, as well as a welcome text message on the day when the feature goes live for you.
Will SimpliSafe Original systems also receive Alarm Texts?
The Original SimpliSafe and the Gen 3 SimpliSafe function on different platforms, which require separate configuration. Because a majority of our customers are on Gen 3 systems, we’re rolling out Alarm Texts for those systems first.
But don’t worry! Alarm Texts is definitely coming to Original systems, and we’re working hard to enable it on yours.
I have SimpliSafe systems installed on multiple properties. When will I get Alarm Texts?
Accounts with multiple (3+) locations also work a little differently, and that also requires special configuration for Alarm Texts. We’ll be working to bring Alarm Texts to you as quickly as possible as well.
Can I opt out of Alarm Texts?
Alarm Texts is enabled on all accounts by default, because we really want to enable as many of our customers as possible to get the fastest emergency alarm response possible. But if you would prefer to disable, you can do so from the SimpliSafe app:
- Navigate to the three-bar ☰ Menu on the top left
- Select Alerts & Notifications
- Select SMS Alerts
- Select your intended recipient (one of your Primary phone numbers)
- Set Alarm Triggered to [off]
Please note: We don’t recommend replying “STOP” to our text messages to opt out, as this will opt you out of all SimpliSafe text messages in the future.
captain11
Captain
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6.2K Messages
2 years ago
Thanks Davey for the announcement and details. Good to know that the text feature is an add on, and that the grace period of the existing phone process remains at 30 seconds.
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worthing
742 Messages
2 years ago
How would we know when this is rolled out to us? I'm asking because in the last week or two I've noticed that often, but not always, the text alerts for entry sensors going off is SUPER slow. In some instances it's 10+ minutes.
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hay201
1 Message
2 years ago
I'm on a first-generation simplisafe system, and after an alarm several days ago (which I cancelled, no problem) - I'm still getting texts about that alarm. Like every couple of hours. It's very annoying. How can I stop this without disabling the feature entirely?
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rclark
1 Message
2 years ago
Does this apply to smoke detectors, water sensors, etc. as well? Or just door/window alarms??
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n9tdc
1 Message
2 years ago
This is a good addition. I would like to see a text when someone rings the doorbell. sometimes my push notifications are slow and texts are much faster.
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sh2402
264 Messages
2 years ago
This feature could be beneficial to an intruder. Lets say your siting in your living room and someone kicks in your door. As they barge through the door you reach for your cellphone, the intruder grabs it and throws it across the room. becomes useless to use to ask for immediate help and yes the alarm still goes through but time is wasted. The other scenario, kicks in the door you have time to unlock your cellphone intruder/intruders grab it from you one of them sees the text message describing the cancel/help option and that its available for 2 min and they follow the text instructions and cancel the need for help and alarm is terminated. What are the odds it could happen don't know the problem is it could. But I do know that if you are confronted by an intruder/intruders that just kicked in your front door they aren't going to let you play on your phone their going to make sure to take it from you.
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