What Happens During the Event of an Alarm?
Updated
SimpliSafe’s Professional Monitoring protects your home or building across many types of alarms. If an alarm is triggered from your system, you’ll be immediately notified through App Push Notifications and Alarm Text Messages. Depending on your monitoring plan and the type of alarm that is triggered, you’ll receive a phone call from our Monitoring Center to verify the alarm and go over your options. The exception to this are silent panic button or duress alarms, which will send a signal to our Monitoring Center to request emergency services right away. In this event, you will not receive a push notification, alarm text, or phone call from the Monitoring Center.
The types of alarms that can occur are divided into three categories:
Burglary (Entry, Motion, Glassbreak, Panic Button)
When a burglary sensor is triggered (Entry, Motion, Glassbreak, or a Panic Button), our Monitoring Center is informed immediately. The Monitoring Center will attempt to reach your Primary Contacts to inform you of the alarm and determine whether the police should be requested to the location of your system. They'll ask for your Safe Word and if you wish to cancel the request for dispatch (not send emergency services). Otherwise, the Monitoring Center will request the dispatch emergency services. If the Panic Button is configured to be silent (duress), you will not receive a text or phone call. Our Monitoring Center will request emergency services to be dispatched to your location without reaching out.
Please note, giving the wrong Safe Word will result in an immediate request for dispatch. You won't be told you got it wrong to protect anyone who may be under duress. Missing the phone calls to your Primary Contacts will also result in a request for dispatch of emergency services. Make sure to save our Monitoring Center’s number (855-693-4911) to your phone, and allow SimpliSafe to bypass any Do Not Disturb or silenced features using the steps here.
When using the Panic button, you'll receive a text from us confirming the alarm. The primary contact will also receive a phone call and can cancel the alarm via phone using the safe word. Panic Button alarms cannot be canceled via alarm texts.
If no Primary Contacts are reached, emergency services will be requested by our Monitoring Center, and the Monitoring Center will begin to contact any Secondary Contacts you have set up to notify them that the help is on the way.
If an Entry-, Motion-, or Glassbreak-triggered alarm is disarmed within 30–60 seconds of the initial alarm signal, our monitoring service will consider this a false alarm. That means you will not receive a phone call and emergency services will not be requested.
Life Safety (Smoke and CO)
When a Life Safety sensor is triggered (Smoke and CO), the Monitoring Center will only contact the first Primary Contact as time could be critical. The Safe Word is not required to cancel a request for dispatch of emergency services for a Smoke alarm, you just need to pick up the phone and tell them it is a false alarm. For a CO alarm, two things will happen at once. You will be called, and emergency services will be requested to your location. Due to the serious and potentially life-threatening nature of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, there is no way to cancel CO alarms.
If dispatch occurs for either Smoke or CO alarms, the Fire Department will be sent to the address of your system where the alarm was triggered.
Environmental (Water and Temperature)
When an Environmental sensor is triggered (Water and Temperature), the monitoring service will call both Primary Contacts to notify them. If we are unable to reach a Primary Contact, we will reach out to your Secondary Contacts. Environmental alarms do not result in a request for dispatch regardless of whether you answer the phone or not. This is just a notification call from the monitoring center.