In the hope it might be useful to others a brief recap of my transition.
I changed to VoIP at home, which meant I had to investigate the impact on my alarm. Testing showed it would not work reliably. I use an Uplink 2500 as well as POTS, and still wanted a secondary path, so I asked Next Alarm if they could monitor over IP.
Next Alarm will monitor only if you buy their ABN adapter. The Elk M1G with the M1XEP has built in IP communications, and I was not keen on adding yet another device, so I looked at alternatives.
Geoarm and Alarm Relay appeared to be ready alternatives, Geoarm refused to do the elk, Alarm Relay said "no problem".
Alarm Relay's monthly cost ended up being almost the same as Next Alarm, Alarm Relay was $20.95 and Next Alarm was $22.45, both are for basic fire+burg monitoring and Uplink fee, both with yearly payment. A significant difference is Alarm Relay will not refund unused months if you change, Next Alarm will (not sure in first year, but they refunded me when I cancelled).
Up front fees are $50 for the two communicators, plus $25 for "Boldnet" which is a web based setup (there is no recurring fee), and $1 for email alerts (I think this is per year so the $20.95 is perhaps a tiny bit higher).
I ordered the service Thursday evening about 8:30pm eastern with a human. They gave me a 2pm appointment the next day for conversion.
I put in a ticket for cancellation of Next Alarm just afterwards. I was pleased to find they did so and confirmed about 11am on Friday (next morning, basically about 1 business hour later). They promised a refund in the email without my pushing. Very polite and efficient.
Alarm Relay did a test against the uplink to make sure it was released, and called me about 2 hours before to warn it was not. I called Next Alarm, got a human immediately, described the problem -- while I was on the phone he checked, and released it. No hassle at all, very quick. I confirmed to Alarm Relay by email, got a call a few minutes later confirming we were good to go.
Alarm relay called right on schedule. The tech started in the mode of telling me each keystroke, quickly adjusted to accommodate the fact I wasn't brain dead, and it took probably 5 real time minutes to make the changes. I wasted another 10 minutes with questions on precise reporting and how they respond, which he answered patiently (though I could tell he wasn't used to getting quizzed). He seemed to know what he was doing.
At his behest we then did a test of the burglary portion, reset that, then did a test of the backup communicator (the uplink) and the fire at the same time (I was pleased to see he insisted on separate fire zone test). As each test went he red off the zones being violated and restored. We then restored the IP and he confirmed he saw it again. Total elapsed time was about 25 minutes, at least half of which was me asking questions.
Only slight hiccup is he thought I would get my web credentials the same day, I didn't, contacted them Monday and they said "end of next business day", and they did indeed come.
Differences:
- Alarm Relay doesn't do open/close (disarm/arm) by default, there's an extra fee (haven't inquired yet how much), Next Alarm logged them on the web automatically
- Alarm Relay has a LOT more information online, both contact and account information and also detail communicator logs. Next Alarm for example you couldn't tell on a periodic test which communicator was involved, you can on Alarm Relay (and see that both are working, separately). Even though there's a lot more info, it's not obvious it matters, I had no complaints about Next Alarm's info for 2 years.
- Alarm Relay will monitor for lack of communication (as opposed to an explicit trouble report communicated), Next Alarm will not (or at least would not with POTS/Uplink). I have tried with Alarm Relay to see that they can see the loss; I haven't tested to see if they do indeed call yet.
- Alarm Relay says they will contact me with trouble reports; Next Alarm just lets you notify yourself with email. I haven't tried to see how quick Alarm Relay does so yet.
I'm used to having vendors let me down, but in this case I must say both responded impressively. Next Alarm quickly confirmed lack of M1EXP support, gave me no grief about leaving, and proactively offered the refund. Alarm Relay got me hooked up with pretty incredible speed (up and monitored in less than 24 hours from subscription).
I'll test further with them and if I find anything interesting will update this later.
I changed to VoIP at home, which meant I had to investigate the impact on my alarm. Testing showed it would not work reliably. I use an Uplink 2500 as well as POTS, and still wanted a secondary path, so I asked Next Alarm if they could monitor over IP.
Next Alarm will monitor only if you buy their ABN adapter. The Elk M1G with the M1XEP has built in IP communications, and I was not keen on adding yet another device, so I looked at alternatives.
Geoarm and Alarm Relay appeared to be ready alternatives, Geoarm refused to do the elk, Alarm Relay said "no problem".
Alarm Relay's monthly cost ended up being almost the same as Next Alarm, Alarm Relay was $20.95 and Next Alarm was $22.45, both are for basic fire+burg monitoring and Uplink fee, both with yearly payment. A significant difference is Alarm Relay will not refund unused months if you change, Next Alarm will (not sure in first year, but they refunded me when I cancelled).
Up front fees are $50 for the two communicators, plus $25 for "Boldnet" which is a web based setup (there is no recurring fee), and $1 for email alerts (I think this is per year so the $20.95 is perhaps a tiny bit higher).
I ordered the service Thursday evening about 8:30pm eastern with a human. They gave me a 2pm appointment the next day for conversion.
I put in a ticket for cancellation of Next Alarm just afterwards. I was pleased to find they did so and confirmed about 11am on Friday (next morning, basically about 1 business hour later). They promised a refund in the email without my pushing. Very polite and efficient.
Alarm Relay did a test against the uplink to make sure it was released, and called me about 2 hours before to warn it was not. I called Next Alarm, got a human immediately, described the problem -- while I was on the phone he checked, and released it. No hassle at all, very quick. I confirmed to Alarm Relay by email, got a call a few minutes later confirming we were good to go.
Alarm relay called right on schedule. The tech started in the mode of telling me each keystroke, quickly adjusted to accommodate the fact I wasn't brain dead, and it took probably 5 real time minutes to make the changes. I wasted another 10 minutes with questions on precise reporting and how they respond, which he answered patiently (though I could tell he wasn't used to getting quizzed). He seemed to know what he was doing.
At his behest we then did a test of the burglary portion, reset that, then did a test of the backup communicator (the uplink) and the fire at the same time (I was pleased to see he insisted on separate fire zone test). As each test went he red off the zones being violated and restored. We then restored the IP and he confirmed he saw it again. Total elapsed time was about 25 minutes, at least half of which was me asking questions.
Only slight hiccup is he thought I would get my web credentials the same day, I didn't, contacted them Monday and they said "end of next business day", and they did indeed come.
Differences:
- Alarm Relay doesn't do open/close (disarm/arm) by default, there's an extra fee (haven't inquired yet how much), Next Alarm logged them on the web automatically
- Alarm Relay has a LOT more information online, both contact and account information and also detail communicator logs. Next Alarm for example you couldn't tell on a periodic test which communicator was involved, you can on Alarm Relay (and see that both are working, separately). Even though there's a lot more info, it's not obvious it matters, I had no complaints about Next Alarm's info for 2 years.
- Alarm Relay will monitor for lack of communication (as opposed to an explicit trouble report communicated), Next Alarm will not (or at least would not with POTS/Uplink). I have tried with Alarm Relay to see that they can see the loss; I haven't tested to see if they do indeed call yet.
- Alarm Relay says they will contact me with trouble reports; Next Alarm just lets you notify yourself with email. I haven't tried to see how quick Alarm Relay does so yet.
I'm used to having vendors let me down, but in this case I must say both responded impressively. Next Alarm quickly confirmed lack of M1EXP support, gave me no grief about leaving, and proactively offered the refund. Alarm Relay got me hooked up with pretty incredible speed (up and monitored in less than 24 hours from subscription).
I'll test further with them and if I find anything interesting will update this later.