I just installed a 2gig unit in my own personal home per the wife's request of an alarm system. It is compatible with alarm.com, but alarm.com does not offer monitoring. Personally, I just want to monitor through my smartphone and don't care about true monitoring. I'm on the fence of whether or not to pursue adding security to my service portfolio. There is potential recurring revenue, but maybe some liability as well on the monitoring side?

Who/how are you guys using for monitoring & how do you interface that monitoring with alarm.com?

Thoughts? Advice needed.

If you want all of the smart phone interactive functionality from the 2gig system, you will need the alarm.com basic service as a minimum. If you are not an alarm.com dealer yourself, you'll need to get signed up from a dealer. I believe that alarm.com has a list of the central stations that they will forward alarm signals too for police and fire monitoring. Talk to alarm.com support, they can probably help you out.

Ken, first find out what licensing you'll need in order to install/maintain alarm systems. You're venturing in to Life and Safety territory when you start to offer alarm systems.
Second, call your insurance company to find out what coverage you'll need and how much it's going to cost you.
Then call couple of monitoring companies and talk to them about becoming a dealer.
Yes, there is RMR from it.
I use Amcest and like them.

Thanks for the advice guys. I just became an alarm.com dealer, but honestly I just jumped in and didn't think it all through about the central station monitoring. Any of you offer alarms without the central station monitoring?

We offer alarm systems and allow the customers to choose whether they want monitoring from a central station, if they just want their system to call their phone, or not do anything and just sound the siren.

We inform them of the pros and cons of the solutions and allow them to make the choice. Yes this may be a life and death situation but we are not here to force anything onto our customers. If they choose not to go with monitoring than that is their choice and we did our do diligence by informing them.

IMO if you plan on staying in the alarm business for a long time, monitoring is how you will make your money. Your competitors are probably putting in systems for free and depending on RMR to make money. It will be hard to compete with them if you try to sell an alarm system to be locally armed only at an outright price. Think of all the service calls you may have with a security system that has no RMR attached. We use alarm.com along with C.O.P.S monitoring.

The alarm business takes on a whole new approach to responsibility. On call 24 hours a day when things go wrong, batteries dying, alarms ringing at 2:00am.

Do your research and see if it is worth it for you or not.

Anyone else make the transition to security from doing just A/V. I am currently considering it. I've touched base with Alarm.com and checking on opening a monitoring account.

I just like the idea of the RMR but maybe it's not worth the hassle...

If you have any thoughts on getting into the alarm business it is probably now or never...the proliferation of Telco involvement in the business along with DIY "security" and control solutions mean the residential RMR value is near or or at its peak. The first thing you will need after licensing is a good contract. There are several great resources out there but one of the best in the industry is Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum.

[Link: kirschenbaumesq.com]

Ken's daily newsletter is great stuff.

+1

Julie,

Outstanding article on the ADC IPO. Just crazy how many moving parts there are in the alarm industry today. The old alliances are gone, it is every man for themselves. Really hard for dealers to figure out the right play.

I think his daily emails are an exact example of what not to do. The frequency is downright irritating and the layout is awful. A monthly newsletter is more then sufficient. I can't imagine if we drove potential clients this nuts with constant emails. After a week I couldn't take it and unsubscribed.