Protect America is one of the few security companies to offer landline and broadband monitoring—important if you live in a rural area. Monitoring plans include basic equipment, but some plans are higher priced than competitors.
Protect America Review—The Best Alternative to Cellular Monitoring
Protect America is now Brinks Home Security.
Overview
Protect America offers some of the best alternatives to cellular monitoring—unique in an industry that is moving toward offering exclusively cellular coverage plans.
Why does this matter? Because you may live in an area that doesn’t have great cell coverage. And if that’s the case you’re going to need a security system with more options.
We appreciate Protect America’s dedication to providing security to customers in every part of the country. To help you decide if it’s the right option for your home, we’ll highlight what Protect America does best and where it falls short.
Protect America pros and cons
- Includes base equipment with monitoring plans
- Offers alternative monitoring types—practical in limited cell coverage areas
- Doesn’t charge up-front fees
- Works with third-party home automation equipment (Z-Wave and Alexa)
- Lacks transparent plans
- Offers fewer customer service hours than competitors
- Has worse customer service reputation than other security companies
Compare plans
Protect America’s package structure is a bit different than most other security companies. The cost of your plan will depend on which type of monitoring you choose and how many sensors you want. Different types of monitoring support different features.
Landline monitoring | Broadband monitoring | Cellular monitoring | |
---|---|---|---|
Monthly price range* | $19.99 to $42.99/mo. | $41.99 to $54.99/mo. | $41.99 to $54.99/mo. |
Mobile access | No | Yes | Yes |
Smoke and CO monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Indoor cameras | No | Yes | Yes |
Outdoor cameras | Yes | Yes | No |
Home automation integration | No | Yes | Yes |
Learn more |
The plans listed above are Protect America’s main offerings, but it offers more options that it doesn’t list on its site. We don’t have all the details about these plans, but you can contact Protect America to ask about alternate options.
Protect America price
Protect America’s landline monitoring plans start out cheap, which is great if you don’t have room in your budget to spend much on monitoring each month. However, landline monitoring is less secure and comes with fewer features, so we don’t usually recommend it unless you live in an area where cellular monitoring is unavailable.
Package prices
As mentioned earlier, Protect America’s prices depend on the type of monitoring you choose and the number of sensors in a package. Here’s a breakdown of what plans costs each month.
Landline | Broadband/Cellular | |
---|---|---|
Copper: 3 sensors | $19.99/mo. | $41.99/mo. |
Silver: 9 sensors | $37.99/mo. | $49.99/mo. |
Platinum: 14 sensors | $42.99/mo | $54.99/mo. |
Monitoring
Protect America’s plans aren’t unreasonably priced, but its cellular monitoring plans start out too high. The cheapest cellular monitoring plan starts at $41.99 per month. Companies like Vivint and Link Interactive offer that type of monitoring for about $10 less a month.
Up-front costs
While monitoring prices could be better, Protect America keeps initial setup costs low. The monitoring plan you choose will include a base set of equipment at no extra cost. And since you install your equipment yourself, you don’t have to pay installation fees like you would if you chose a Vivint or ADT plan. There’s also no activation fee, which some other companies charge even for DIY install systems.
Features
Your features will depend on which type of monitoring you pick, but Protect America offers features we look out for like home automation integration and mobile access.
Alternative monitoring options
Most of Protect America’s features are standard in the security industry, but Protect America goes above and beyond to provide multiple types of monitoring. Most companies offer only cellular coverage, but Protect America offers cellular, landline, and broadband monitoring.
Equipment
What's available
Protect America’s equipment selection is solid but not standout. You can get motion detectors, door and window sensors, security cameras, water leak detectors, and more. All the basics you’d expect.
Warranties
Protect America offers a lifetime equipment warranty—as good as it gets.
Aesthetics
Your Protect America equipment isn’t going earn compliments for its looks. Frankly, it’s a bit bland looking. But bland will blend in, and door sensors were never meant to be home décor, so we think the simple aesthetics are fine in most homes.
Customer service
Availability
Protect America’s customer service team is available over the phone or through online chat.
- Phone: Mon.–Fri. 8 a.m.–9 p.m. (CT); Sat.–Sum. 9 a.m.–7 p.m. (CT)
- Chat: Mon.–Fri. 7 a.m.–11 p.m. (CT); Sat.–Sun. 9 a.m.–7 p.m. (CT)
These hours are decent—you’ll be able to get help on the weekend or when you’re home from work. But we’ll point out that a lot of security companies have gone further to offer 24/7 customer support, so Protect America is a bit behind.
Contracts and cancellation policies
What customers are saying
Customer reviews about Protect America are mixed.* We noticed quite a few reviews where customers complain about difficulty installing their systems. However, there are also quite a few reviews detailing great experiences with individual customer support representatives.
Our experience
While some customers have had frustrating experiences with Protect America, we should point out that we’ve had fantastic experiences with its representatives.