With a home security system comes a vital question: Do you want to self monitor or spend more money to hire a professional monitoring service? A monitoring center can quickly contact the police or fire department if you can’t get to your phone right away, saving precious minutes. Some can also use two-way audio and alarms to scare away trespassers.
The problem is these services come at a cost, and it’s traditionally a high one. Long-term brands like ADT and Frontpoint charge over $50 per month for monitoring like this. It doesn’t matter how many times Netflix increases its fees, that security subscription still looks painful to the average homeowner.
But hold on: You don’t need to spend around $50 to get professional monitoring, no matter how much the big systems sell their plans for. For the right set of cameras or DIY home security system, you can pay much, much less without getting stuck in any contract. We’ve tested other home security services where you can get monitoring for below $30 or even below $20, accessing important emergency services for about what you pay for Netflix. Let’s look at your options.
The 3 tiers of professional home monitoring services
To make things simple, let’s divide professional home monitoring into three different options, from least to most expensive.
24/7 Emergency assist: This is an option that links your app or a device like a smart speaker directly to local 24/7 emergency responders. However, you have to manually call them yourself. That means you’ll get an alert about a possible break-in or other problem, and it will display emergency contact options so you don’t have to worry about the details. In some cases, you’re connected with an agent who can contact the right authorities for you depending on what you need. These tend to be the most affordable plans.
Professional monitoring from a monitoring center: These are traditional monitoring plans that send a monitoring service alert when alarms sound or sensors are tripped. A security employee at the monitoring center takes a look through your cameras if necessary, and decides to call the authorities or not. These plans often require the purchase of a whole home security system or at least a home hub and a sensor or two.
24/7 live guard monitoring: These are rarer services that promise live guards, which means that guards get notifications of movement (as opposed to only alarms) or similar signs, and spend time monitoring a threat through live camera views. These services are typically reserved for expensive subscriptions like Deep Sentinel security cameras, which cost $100 per month for monitoring.
The 4 best budget plans for professional home monitoring
Looking for purchase options? Let’s examine our favorite cheap home security monitoring plans so you can see what’s available for lower prices.
Ring Protect Pro — $20 per month
Ring Protect plans offer video storage as well as a higher professional home monitoring meme.
Ring’s Protect Pro tier is only $20 per month and adds 24/7 Alarm Professional Monitoring. The Pro plan also adds other features more common in full whole-home security, including cellular backup and expanded local storage options (which require a Ring Alarm hub and microSD card). You can also use Eero Secure software to help set up Wi-Fi and internet protections.
We often recommend Ring’s plans for anyone who wants to use cloud video storage on Ring cams, since even the base version of a Protect plan adds cloud storage, person and package recognition (another especially handy feature) and event history, among other choices. Note that you can use a Ring Protect plan for just a single Ring camera, but the professional monitoring feature is intended for a whole Ring Alarm system and may not work without at least a hub and a sensor.
Alexa Emergency Assist — $8 per month
Arlo’s family monitoring plan is a particularly cost-effective option for larger households.
Arlo offers two tiers of professional services. The first is an $18 plan that offers 24/7 emergency response, along with features like cloud video recording, audio detection of alarms, and object detection. But for complete professional monitoring, you can upgrade to the $25 Safe & Secure Pro, which adds both monitoring and a suite of “Safe App” features.
Safe App adds capabilities like family alerts and family safety monitoring, one-tap contact for police or other emergency responders, the ability to record both audio and video in an emergency event and even crash detection while you’re in the car (assuming you let the app keep watch on your phone’s vitals). That’s quite a complete home security package for $25, ideal for those with families who don’t mind paying a little more while still saving a lot. Keep in mind you will need a full Arlo home system for monitoring features to work.
