We’ve redesigned this important aspect of the Alarm.com experience, making it faster and easier to control your home through our web interface. With better navigation, better customization and an app-like experience, it makes smart home security even more intuitive.

Here’s a quick overview of what you’ll find. If you’re already an Alarm.com user, you’ll discover a guided tour waiting for you when you log into the new site.

One complete view of your home

Just like the Alarm.com app, the Alarm.com web dashboard now provides a central homepage with a top-level view of everything that’s happening around the house, all at once.

You’ll see all recent activity, your Image Sensor snaps, your one-touch Scenes commands and your security system’s arming status, as well as your favorite smart devices and new tabs with fast access to everything else that matters.

An app-like experience on any device

In look and feel, the new web dashboard reflects our award-winning mobile app. The similarity doesn’t stop there.

Like the Alarm.com app, it’s responsive, which means that it self-adjusts to whatever device you choose to control your home with. Desktop, laptop, tablet or even mobile: it’s up to you.

Faster, more customized control

Our new dashboard uses a “card” design that makes it faster to control things. Many cards on the homepage have commands included, enabling you to see and adjust a device’s status at a single glance, without clicking into a different page or tab.

The card design also enables you to customize your dashboard. You can drag, drop and arrange your favorite elements to give yourself faster access to the devices you use most.

Easier video viewing

Checking in on your home and family with video is a favorite way to use our web dashboard. To make it easier to see what’s going on, we made video more prominent, and added the ability to view multiple camera feeds at once.

Whether you’re checking in on the kids, or checking the security of multiple properties, you’ll find it easier to get a complete picture of what’s happening.

Re-organized tabs

The new top-level tabs on the left of the homepage are the result of extensive testing to reorganize years of innovative new feature launches into an easily accessible system.

Underneath the Home tab, you’ll find Video for your cameras, clips, streaming and video settings, and Automation for your smart home rules and schedules – giving you access to all of your rules in a single area. You’ll also see Activity for your system’s event history, as well as Users, and Settings for your configuration options.

Have you logged in yet? 

To start exploring the new dashboard, log into your Alarm.com account here.

To an intruder, a home with smart home security is a house of horrors. Pretty quickly, burglars learn to pick up on the visual cues—and to retreat back into the shadows when they find them.

Fright No. 1: Signs that suggest turning back 

Remember those corny cartoons where the characters wander into a dark, overgrown yard with large signs: “Haunted House!” “Beware!” “No way out!” “I’d turn back if I were you!”?

Your Alarm.com service provider’s yard sign or window decal can have the same effect on an intruder. It lets them know that your home is professionally protected, with a dedicated connection to a professional monitoring station in case of trouble.

Talk about a bad omen for a break-in. It’s no wonder that most burglars will turn back upon learning that you have a security system.

Fright No. 2: That feeling of being watched

Another essential feature of every cartoon haunted house is an old portrait painting, whose eyes seem to follow the intruders as they explore.

A smart security camera can be just as effective at keeping tabs on unwanted guests. Installed on your porch, an Alarm.com-powered camera can record high-quality video footage as soon as anyone approaches your house.

You can easily download the footage to send to police or even share via Facebook – that’s enough to give any a crook the creeps.

Read more: Four smart outdoor security features

Fright No. 3: You rang? 

Burglary isn’t the smartest pastime, but most burglars have the brains to ring the doorbell to check if a house is empty. After all, if you answer, they can always make up an excuse and get out of there.

With a video doorbell powered by Alarm.com, you can answer from anywhere. You can get a notification on your smartphone when your doorbell rings: when you open the notification, you can see who’s there and address them directly. You might lack the towering build of Frankenstein’s monster—in fact, you might not even be home—but how would your visitor know?

PS: for a true haunted house story, click here. 

Ready to give intruders the chills? 

Professionally monitored and supported, Alarm.com is the smarter way to secure your home.

Certain homeowners, for example, boast about preventing burglaries with nothing more than a large Beware of the Doberman sign. Others park a pair of muddy size 14 boots outside the front door as a crime deterrent. Some will tell you to entrust your security to a fake security cameras—an empty camera body designed to mimic a video monitoring solution.

When a burglar spots your dummy camera—complete with blinking, battery-powered red light if you spring for the high-end $20 model—they’ll quickly beat a retreat… or so the story goes.

Does it work?

It’s a home security urban legend with a grain of truth. A novice burglar might just be fooled, although experienced crooks can quickly spot a fake.

When this cheap trick fails, though, what’s left to protect your home? After all, there’s a whole lot that a fake camera can’t do.

1: Fake cameras can’t show you important activity

Take this everyday scenario: While you’re at work, someone walks up to your front porch. Here’s how it might go with a real camera, and with a fake one.

Real camera: With a true security camera, powered by Alarm.com, you’ll be notified. The visitor’s motion triggers your camera to record a clip, and Alarm.com sends you a smartphone alert. On opening the alert, you can pull up a live feed from your camera on your Alarm.com app and see what’s happening.

Now, you can take action. You can call your spouse if they’re home and let them know. You can zoom in on the video feed for a better look at the visitor’s face. If your camera is a doorbell camera, you can address them directly through the camera’s speaker and ask them: hey, what’s up? If it’s someone you’re expecting, you can unlock your door for them.

Fake camera: With a fake camera, none of the above applies.

2: Fake cameras can’t help you catch a crook

Let’s say that your suspicious visitor really is up to no good. In fact, they’re a package thief, and they make off with a parcel you just had delivered to your porch.

Real camera: We’re sorry about your missing package. Your Alarm.com-powered camera supplies a silver lining for you and your neighbors: a clear video clip of the thief in action. It’s easy to download to your phone and email it to your local police department or newspaper. You can even post it directly to Facebook to share with your neighborhood groups.

Your video clip can quickly become a crime-fighting asset that gives police the breakthrough they need to recognize and catch the thief.

PS: your Alarm.com service provider has a great solution to package theft.

Fake camera: You’ll still realize your package went missing—after a couple of days, at least.

3: Fake cameras aren’t connected to a security system

Let’s look at the worst-case scenario. Your suspicious visitor is a daytime burglar intent on forcing your front door open, camera or no.

Real camera: This burglar quickly discovers that your camera is connected to your smart security system. As well as recording them, your Alarm.com technology is simultaneously sounding a loud alarm, sending alarm notifications to you and your family, and delivering an emergency signal to a security professional at a 24-hour monitoring station.

Fake camera: You’re going to have a terrible surprise when you get home.  

4: Fake cameras can’t show you anything at all

Not everything that happens on your porch is an attempted burglary. On any given day, you’re far more likely to have a package delivered, to have a neighbor visit, or to have your kids arrive home from school. Being able to see what’s going on makes everything easier and reduces everyday worries.

This is how millions of Alarm.com-powered cameras are used every day, and it’s what many users love most about their smart security systems. With a fake camera, you don’t get any of this.

Ready to keep it real? 

They’re also one of the most essential components of a smart security system. The more contact sensors you have, the smarter and more versatile your system will be.

The average smart home security installation by an Alarm.com service provider, for example, includes ten door, window and motion sensors to detect and alert you to activity around the home. (That’s a far cry from some off-the-shelf products, which come with far fewer).

Read more: What is a Contact Sensor

Will you use all ten? Well—contact sensors aren’t just for catching burglars. Thanks to Alarm.com’s customizable alerts and notifications, they can let you know about all types of important activity, from security breaches to toddler shenanigans. They can also trigger other smart devices into action as part of your home automation setup.

In fact, it’s easy to list ten different places to use them.

Doors

1: Front door. With so much activity happening around your front door, a contact sensor is essential for early awareness of activity that could mean danger.

In a break-in through the front door, this sensor is the one that alerts the security system, triggering the countdown to an alarm or potential Crash and Smash signal.

It has plenty of everyday uses too. It can trigger an alert if your toddler learns how to open the door, or your school-age kid doesn’t close it, or if your teen is opening it after hours. It can trigger a video camera to record and send you a clip, or trigger your smart thermostat to set back and save energy, preventing you from heating the neighborhood.

Paired with a doorbell camera and a smart lock, it’ll make your front door the smartest on the block.

Find out more about smart front doors here.

2: Back door. Like to stay in bed a little later on the weekend? Chances are your children would rather be active. Sometimes, this means exploring the yard. A contact sensor on the back door, connected to Alarm.com and its Insights Engine, can let you know when something is amiss.

3: Door to the garage. With cars, tools and forbidden equipment, your garage is a magnet to your curious kids. A contact sensor on this internal door gives you immediate awareness if they’re exploring it. You can set this notification to “weekdays only” so you won’t get alerts when you open the door yourself on weekends.

4: Nursery door. if your toddler’s room is upstairs, you’ll sleep better knowing that if they go wandering in the night, you’ll be alerted as soon as they reach the landing. As well as creating an alert, you can have this sensor trigger your landing light with an Alarm.com automation rule.

5: Man Cave Door. Unlike Stew McVicar’s Alarm.com-powered Cubs fan cave, your chill-out space probably doesn’t need a contact sensor on every cabinet. It’s still worth protecting your gameday snacks, though.

Windows

6: Downstairs windows. Did you know that one third of all burglaries are enabled by an unsecured window or door?

With a contact sensor on each downstairs window, you can verify that they’re all secure before leaving home or going to bed, with a glance at your Alarm.com app. You can also get a reminder if you leave home with a window open.

7: Children’s windows. Your kids know better than to open their bedroom windows without permission. Does that mean that they won’t? A contact sensor on every bedroom window, ready to trigger an immediate notification, is a smart safety essential for when kids’ curiosity gets the better of them.

Related: How I created a safer home with Alarm.com

Storage and appliances

8: Videogames cabinet. You trust your kids to do their homework when you’re not there… right?

Just in case, it’s easy to add a contact sensor to the cabinet where the games console lives. You can set up an alert that lets you know when it’s been open for too long.

9: Medicine cabinet or pillbox. Last time you were prescribed antibiotics, did you remember to take them every day without fail?

It’s easy to forget and miss a day. With a contact sensor on your medicine cabinet, though, you can set up a “no-show” reminder that alerts you if you fail to open the cabinet by a certain time every day.

If you have an elderly loved one living with you, a contact sensor added to their pillbox is a non-intrusive way to ensure they’re taking their medications, without having to ask. Find out more about our Wellness solutions here.

10: Freezer door. You like stocking your freezer with good food. Your family like opening it to get ice cream. Somewhere down the line, you’re going to experience a meltdown when they leave the freezer open.

Keep your cool (and your food) by adding a contact sensor to the door, then creating an alert that notifies you if the sensor is open for more than two minutes.

Where else could you use a contact sensor?

Our list isn’t exhaustive. From screen doors to cigar humidors, Alarm.com-powered contact sensors can be applied virtually anywhere where you need to know about activity.

Now, you can keep your home more secure and comfortable by talking to Google Home, our newest voice-control integration.

Our new Alarm.com Action for Google Home enables you to control your Alarm.com-powered home with intuitive voice commands for your smart security system, lights, thermostat, locks and garage doors.

Okay, Alarm.com user: here’s what you can do.

Arm your security system

Kids in bed for the night? Finally sitting down for a movie? There’s no need to get up again—or even reach for your phone—to arm your security system for the night.

“Okay Google: ask Alarm.com to arm the security system.”

Control access to your home

Our Action makes it easy to secure your home’s perimeter, with voice control for smart locks and garage doors.

Okay Google: ask Alarm.com to close the garage.

Okay Google: ask Alarm.com to lock the front door.

Check the status of devices

Sometimes, you just need to know the status of things around your home. We’ve made it easy to ask:

Okay Google: ask Alarm.com: is the security system armed?

Okay Google: ask Alarm.com: what’s the thermostat temperature? 

Control whole groups of devices

For your home’s smart lights, which you likely have in several locations, you can interact with them by calling out a single device, group, or general device type. For example:

Okay Google: ask Alarm.com to switch on the living room lamp.

Okay Google: ask Alarm.com to switch on the office lights.

And, at bedtime: Okay Google: ask Alarm.com to turn off the lights.

The same goes for your smart locks, with the ability to lock the house down with a single command: Okay Google: ask Alarm.com to lock the doors.

Instructions for getting started 

Already got Google Home and Alarm.com and raring to go? Here’s how to get started.

First, enable the Alarm.com action by telling your Google Home: “Okay Google, talk to Alarm.com.”

Next, open the Google Home app. Enter your Alarm.com account login and password to sync your account. You’ll have the option to create your PIN as part of the setup process.

Our Insights Engine, Geo-Services and Crash and Smash protection are all examples of proactive safeguards that work on their own, using Alarm.com’s cloud intelligence and real-time data from devices around your home.

One proactive safeguard, however, has a human element: professional security monitoring, which is provided by every Alarm.com service provider.

What does it do?

In an alarm event at your home—a break-in, or fire—an Alarm.com-powered security system sends an emergency signal, via dedicated cellular connection, to a 24-7 monitoring station. There, a trained security professional assesses the situation and quickly alerts your local law enforcement or fire department to the emergency.

How important is professional monitoring? 

Do you need a service like this ? After all, there are plenty of connected cameras and motion-detecting smart devices out there, all capable of alerting you to activity at home with a quick smartphone message.

Well, consider this:

Alerts are easy to miss. What if you’re not available when a break-in happens? What if you’re at the gym, or swimming, or at the movies with your phone on “do not disturb”. Maybe you’re on an airplane, or even just asleep.

It’s inconvenient. Checking every alert, sorting harmless activity from the suspicious, and investigating each one – 24/7 – won’t be easy.  So you might find a great price on the camera, but when you have to provide your own security, you’ll end up investing plenty of time.

This isn’t your job. If there’s an emergency at home, your job is to focus on one thing: keeping you and your loved ones out of harm’s way.

Like: hailing a cab. Or shopping, or music listening, or watching TV – all reinvented.

Home security is no different. Just ask one of the millions of homeowners who trust Alarm.com. Since reinventing home security back in 2000, we’ve been innovating non-stop to deliver better security, enhanced convenience and energy savings, and smarter home automation ever since.

Here’s what makes Alarm.com the industry leader and the smarter choice.

Smarter safeguards

Home security used to be an alarm that sounded in response to a break-in. Alarm.com made it proactive.  Our technology discerns what’s happening and takes action on your behalf to keep you safe and aware of what’s happening.

Our security technology reminds you if you forget to lock up or arm the system. It automatically detects and lets you know if there’s unusual activity around your home. It shuts down your HVAC if it detects smoke in your house. And it still sounds the alarm during a break-in—while also alerting a 24-7 monitoring station, so a security professional can dispatch the police.

Built smarter

Your security system is only as strong as its emergency connection. That’s why every Alarm.com-powered system uses a dedicated cellular connection.

It doesn’t piggyback on your home’s broadband connection, it can’t be defeated with a pair of wire cutters and it works if there’s a power outage.  Even if an intruder attacks your security panel, our patented Crash and Smash protection ensures that your system’s emergency signal gets through to a 24-7 monitoring station.

Smarter to use

Home security used to be inconvenient. Then, we created the Alarm.com app, enabling you to arm or disarm your security system with a single tap on your phone.

Now you can arm it by talking to Alexa.  You can arm it automatically when you lock your smart lock at a certain time of day. You can arm it as part of a Scene. The experience of connecting with your Alarm.com powered smart home is intuitive and versatile.

A smarter ecosystem

With Alarm.com, you can control and connect a huge range of smart devices.

We integrate best-of-breed device partners like Yale, Kwikset, Schlage, Lutron and Liftmaster, with new partners added continually. You get just as much choice in how you control your home: our app works on iOS and Android, and you can control your system with Apple Watch and TV, Amazon Echo and Fire TV, andeven with Google Home.

Smarter for longer

Nowadays, everyone claims to be reinventing home security. We’ve already been there—after all, we reinvented it in 2000 with the first interactive security system.

17 years on, we’re still at the leading edge, trusted by 5 million homes and businesses and counting.

Your growing tween is happy because he’s earned another piece of independence. You get a celebratory fist pump as an expensive after-school care cost evaporates.

You have worries, though. Will they be safe? What if they lose their keys? Can they be trusted not to let all of their friends in?

Smart home security is here to help. With advanced access control and a discreet connection to events at home, an Alarm.com-powered security system is just what you need for peace of mind through this parenting milestone. Here’s how it helps:

1: No more keys to lose

Kids today are no different than 10, 15 or 20 years ago — they still have an amazing capacity to forget or misplace their house keys. When you get that call at work, it’ll cut your day short.

With smart home security, your tween doesn’t even need a key. All she has to do is enter her personalized four-digit user code into the smart lock. You can even automate the security system to disarm when she unlocks the door, so she doesn’t set off the alarm.

2: No wondering if they made it home

For peace of mind, it’s essential that you know when your child arrives home. However, checking in by phone every day can be a drag.

Alarm.com can solve this challenge with a customized smartphone alert, triggered by your tween’s user code.

When they arrive home and unlock the door, you’ll know. When you become more comfortable, you can even switch to a no-show alert, which notifies you only if they’re late.

3: You can still be the gatekeeper

When the kids are home without parents, it’s common to worry about what they’ll do if the doorbell rings — and whether they’ll follow your safety instructions.

With a video doorbell powered by Alarm.com, you can still be your house’s gatekeeper. When a visitor rings, you can be first to answer through the doorbell’s speaker, and see exactly who’s there on a live video feed to your smartphone. Your kids don’t have to worry about it.

4: It helps your tween ease into other privileges 

Do you remember your parents barking “NO FRIENDS!” as a parting command before leaving you home alone?
Now you’re a parent, you get it: allowing unvetted visitors can leave too much to chance. Playing video games is one thing; raiding the man cave fridge for sodas is another.

When the time comes for your older tween to have the privilege of hosting friends alone, smart home security lets you keep a discreet eye on things. With contact sensors available for forbidden rooms, and easy video monitoring inside and outside, it’s easy to give your trust a boost by quickly checking into your Alarm.com app.

5: It’s reassuring for you both

Finally, to put things into our kids’ perspective—do you remember how being home alone used to feel? It was absolutely liberating—and yet, also a little strange and unsettling.

Knowing that you’re still connected to home can go a long way in making your kids feel safer and more secure there. While new-found freedom is great, freedom with a slice of reassurance is even better—both for your kids, and for you.

Interested in smart home security?

If your last experience of a security system was an outdated, wired system, you’ll be surprised at what a modern system can do.