Yale Alarm Notification Comparison: Push Alerts Vs Emails Vs SMS/Phone Calling
As some of you might be aware, Yale has discontinued SMS notifications for Yale IA range of burglar alarms as of January 2026. This leaves you with officially supported notification methods: in-app notifications and emails. I wanted to do a brief comparison between these alerting strategies but also SMS and phone calling notifications from Alarm Notifier.
Yale App Push Notifications & Email Alerts
These types of notifications are closely linked to the Yale Alarm mobile app and are officially supported. You will get these alerts on your mobile device and whenever there is an event with your burglar alarm.
Pros
- - Generally reliable - from my personal experience, in-app notifications and emails are rarely skipped and usually come through majority of the time
- - Free - Yale Alarm app and receiving email doesn’t cost you anything, so there is no one-off see or monthly subscription
Cons
- - Sometimes untrustworthy - rarely (a handful of times a year), Yale app would log me out and this way, the push notifications and emails would not come through, so trusting that the Yale app will always work is tricky
- - Depends on your Wi-Fi/mobile connection - sometimes, I would be in an area with poor Wi-Fi or mobile data coverage, so push notifications and emails would either be delayed or not come through until I am in a better location
- - Not possible to customise - Yale sends you in-app notifications and emails for every event and it is not possible to allow alerts only for high priority events (e.g. only when the alarm and siren are triggered), so you easily develop a fatigue towards a constant flow of app notifications and Yale emails
SMS/Phone Calling Notifications
As Yale no longer supports text alerting for Yale Sync Smart Home Alarm kits, I have developed an alternative service that allows you and/or your friends/family members receive text notifications or phone call alerting.
Pros
- - Intrusive - getting a phone call or a text notification about your Yale burglar alarm is more difficult to miss and comes to you in real time
- - Customisable - you can easily customise for which event you get a notification for so only the most important ones get through to you
- - Addressable - you can nominate who gets called or SMS texted to when a selected event occurs - it could be you or a family friend, or a family member
Cons
- - Monthly cost - the phone calling and SMS messaging has a monthly fee associated with it, similar to what Yale used to charge before they discontinued text alerting
- - Unofficial service - Alarm Notifier is built on top of Yale’s app and I am not associated with Yale in any capacity, so this would be a third party service