I'd like to have a home alarm system primarily for the smoke/CO monitoring (so if there's a fire while we're away, the fire department will get called before the house burns down). Looking for insights on what companies others have used and whether you've been satisfied....

To (try to) make a long story short, my dilemma is that the previous residents had a fancy system installed by a company called American Alarm. We looked into renewing the contract, but the salesperson was incredibly obnoxious and the monitoring fees are really expensive relative to Ring. We told our contractor (we're doing some renovations) that we didn't want to renew with them - but he disregarded this and had them come out and do an (outrageously, in my view) expensive repair to a portion of the system that got disconnected during the renovations. He's now arguing forcefully against changing to a new system, claiming that Ring is a total joke, etc, etc. But perhaps it's just because he screwed up on having our old system repaired, and doesn't want us arguing that we won't pay for it since we told him we didn't want it...

Ring has much cheaper monitoring and some nice features, but the costs of changing hardware add up and of course they could always increase their monitoring prices - which are pretty cheap now relative to their competitors. The alarm hardware itself is not too pricey, with frequent promotions, but what starts to get really expensive in switching systems is that all of our smoke and CO detectors are hooked into the current alarm system and won't work if it's disconnected. By the time you count the alarms in the unfinished basement and attic, there's a lot of them, and smart alarms (which have safety features I really like) are expensive... Our thermostats are also hardwired into the alarm system, and I'm not 100% sure what will happen to them if the alarm system is disconnected. I'm not a handy person and DH is even less handy, and I worry about the time costs and potential to screw something up with installing new alarm sensors, wired smoke detectors, etc. The fact that I'm nearly 8 months pregnant is making it feel more overwhelming.

On the other hand, I know once I sign a multi-year monitoring contract with American Alarm, if something goes wrong with the existing system you are essentially hostage and they can charge a lot for repairs or new equipment. It kind of feels like dealing with Comcast...

Bottom line: switch to a system with much cheaper monitoring costs (for now at least), and eat the expense and hassle of installing a bunch of new equipment in the short-run, or just suck it up and pay for the monitoring costs with the system that we already have all the functioning hardware for...