Understanding Professional Monitoring and Self-Monitoring

Make an informed decision whether to self-monitor your Alarm system or enroll to professional monitoring¹. The type of monitoring you choose is extremely important. It needs to fit your lifestyle and keep you and your loved ones safe.

Alarm Professional Monitoring requires a compatible Ring Protect subscription.

Professional monitoring¹

Professional monitoring is a service that monitors Ring Alarm for alarm signals, and can notify emergency contacts and request emergency dispatch the authorities. The Ring monitoring center is a team of trained agents in a secure location who monitor all Ring Alarms 24/7.

Security monitoring is keeping surveillance on a home alarm. If alarm sensors are triggered to indicate a burglary, smoke or carbon monoxide in the home or other types of threats, then the residents and their circle of trusted friends need to be alerted² quickly, and emergency services should be sent to the home quickly.

How does this work?

The Ring Alarm or Alarm Pro Base Station monitors the sensors in your home and sends a signal to the Ring monitoring center when a threat is detected. It also sends an alert to your phone,² as well as the phones of all Shared Users. When the monitoring center receives a signal, they make a phone call to see if there is a genuine threat. If there's an emergency, they can dispatch emergency services to your home.

Self-monitoring

Self-monitoring is when you monitor the Ring Alarm yourself. You can self-monitor with a Ring Protect subscription or without a subscription. If you choose to self-monitor your Ring Alarm, your Ring Alarm siren will go off, but you’ll need to call for emergency responders yourself.

Important Information about professional monitoring¹

If you decide to enroll in professional monitoring, there are a few important details you should know.

Permits

In some areas, local laws require homeowners to get a permit or registration for all home alarms with professional monitoring.¹ You can call your local police department, town hall, or municipal offices to find out about laws in your neighborhood.

A valid address

It’s very important that you use a valid address and cross-street in your Ring app. During the Alarm setup process, you will be asked to enter your address and a cross street. It is vital that this address is accurate. Only verified addresses can be enrolled in professional monitoring.¹ Changing the address in your Ring app is easy if you have made a mistake or move. 

Important: Ring is dedicated to all aspects of your security - including information security. Ring never divulges the personal details (including addresses) of our neighbors.

Emergency contacts

You will need to provide the names and phone numbers of at least two people (you can be one of them) who can answer calls from the monitoring center in an emergency, get to the home if requested by emergency services, and handle emergencies at the location of the Ring Alarm.

Some areas require three contacts. In an emergency, the monitoring center will call the primary contact, and if no one answers the phone, they will call the next contacts.

Verbal password

A verbal password is a word or number that the monitoring center will use to verify the identities of your emergency contacts to make sure they're speaking to someone you trust. Choose a word or number (no symbols or spaces) that you’ll remember, and share it with all of your emergency contacts and anyone who lives in your home.

If the monitoring center calls, you’ll need to give them the verbal password to confirm who you are. Make sure your other emergency contacts know your verbal password. You can set up and change your verbal password anytime using the app, but the app does not store the verbal password for security reasons.

Practice mode

Discover features, tweak settings, and arm and disarm your Ring Alarm without the worry of false alarms or accidental dispatches when in practice mode.

When you enroll in professional monitoring with a compatible Ring subscription, you can turn on practice mode anytime (US/CA only).

In practice mode, learn how to use your Alarm system by experience an alarming event and go through an automated call from the Ring Monitoring center.

Exit practice mode by changing your practice mode settings from the Monitoring Settings screen and enter practice mode to refresh your skills at any time.

Changing your monitoring type

You can exit practice mode at any time, by changing your monitoring status. To change your monitoring status:

1. Open the Ring app to the main dashboard.

2. Tap the

   menu

   (≡)

   .
3. Tap

   Settings

   .
4. Tap

   Monitoring

   .
5. Tap

   Monitoring Type

   .
6. Choose the new type of monitoring you want.
   • If you enable professional monitoring, you will be prompted to choose a primary and secondary contact and a verbal password.
   • If you are in practice mode, you will need to exit practice mode and confirm that you want to exit.
   • If you are enrolled in professional monitoring¹ and want to change to self-monitoring, tap

     Self Monitoring

     and confirm that you want to end professional monitoring.
   • If you are enrolled in self-monitoring and want to change to professional monitoring, tap

     Professional Monitoring

     ¹ and confirm that you want to enable professional monitoring.