Subscription FAQ
Why a monthly fee
instead of a free 911 dial.
The eight questions that come up before someone subscribes, answered plainly. The contact — not you — decides to call 911. A siren plays the moment the trigger word fires. Audio and video are captured from a single camera into one MP4 that stays local on your device.
One tier at $9/month — every device you sign in from.
The eight recurring objections
If you've been weighing the cost, start here.
01Why pay when I can just call 911 directly?
911 stays free, and the phone dialer still opens with 911 ready — RoarAlert never places the call for you. What $9/month pays for is everything that happens in the seconds before a call is worth making: the loud siren, the live audio + video stream, the continuous GPS feed, and the live transcript — each one aimed at getting one real human (your emergency contact) paying attention while you decide what to do. The cheapest part of an incident is the dial; the part you cannot buy for free is the readiness.
02What does the contact actually receive?
The moment the trigger word fires, RoarAlert email-fans-out to every contact on your list. Each contact receives a single live feed link with four signals running at the same time: a continuous audio + video stream from the single on-device camera, a running GPS trace, and a live transcript of everything spoken into the armed session. There is no separate app to install — the feed opens in their inbox, and they decide from there whether to call 911.
03Is GPS recorded and who can see it?
GPS is captured only while a session is armed, and only as a live trace visible inside the contact's live feed — it stops the moment you disarm. RoarAlert does not store a historical GPS log, does not sell or share location data, and does not send location to any server. Whatever your contact sees in the moment, they see in their inbox; nothing is pinned to a map after the session ends.
04Will recordings be stored safely and for how long?
Audio and video are captured from a single camera into one MP4 file that stays local on your device. Nothing is auto-uploaded, nothing is auto-shared, and nothing is auto-deleted. The 1-year on-device archive is yours to review at
/sessions/[id]/review and yours to hand to law enforcement on your own terms — you decide what to share, when, and with whom.05Why a monthly fee and not a one-time purchase?
The $9/month keeps the live-feed infrastructure (the inbox delivery, the continuous stream, the GPS relay, the transcript pipeline) running the moment you need it — and that infrastructure has its own ongoing cost. A one-time purchase could not keep the relay live without either a separate subscription anyway or a server you run yourself. Monthly also means a real human at the other end: someone answering the email, someone keeping the relay healthy, someone you can reach. The plan is small on purpose — it pays for the readiness, not a feature list.
06How private is my GPS data?
GPS is captured only while a session is armed, and it is encrypted in transit and scoped solely to the live feed your emergency contact sees in the moment. RoarAlert does not sell, share, or trade your location data with any third party, advertiser, or data broker — and we do not ship location to any server of our own beyond the brief relay window of an armed session. No one outside your named contacts can ever see, map, or replay where you have been; the moment you disarm, the live trace stops and no historical map is ever pinned to your account.
07What triggers 911 vs. a trusted-contact notification?
The two paths are deliberately separate. A 911 dial is always user-initiated — you have to press the 911 button yourself; RoarAlert never auto-dials and never routes your call through our infrastructure. The trusted-contact fan-out, by contrast, is what the trigger word starts: the moment the trigger word fires, RoarAlert sends a single live-feed email to every contact on your list. Those contacts decide from there whether the moment calls for 911 — you stay in control of the dial, and they stay in control of escalating beyond the feed.
08What happens to my data after I cancel?
Recordings live in a 1-year on-device archive only — nothing is auto-uploaded to the cloud while you are subscribed, and nothing is auto-uploaded at cancellation either. There is no separate cloud copy for us to retain, so canceling simply removes the subscription state from your account; the MP4s already on your device remain exactly where they were until you choose to delete them. After 1 year, the on-device entries age out on their own; nothing is shared, exported, or backed up to our servers at any point in the cycle.
Ready when you are
Try the armed-session view first, or jump straight into the Pro plan.
You don't have to decide in this tab — arm a session without signing up and see the contact-decides flow in your own time. If you already know it's for you, subscribe takes about 90 seconds.