What’s the Real Cost of Life Alert? | SafeWise (2024)

Life Alert is pricey, but is there a good reason for the higher cost? Life Alert certainly has some perks to justify the high price and set it apart from competitors, but it has its fair share of negatives as well.

As soon as you order your system, Life Alert pulls a system from stock, tests it, and sends it out to you via two-day air—at no extra cost.

On the day you receive your system, you’ll get a call from Life Alert to schedule your professional installation appointment. You may even get same-day installation.

No matter how many times you push the button, your monthly fee stays the same for as long as you own the system. There are no fees or penalties for false alarms.

If your equipment stops working or is faulty for any reason, Life Alert will send out a professional technician to replace it.

Pendants and buttons all have ten-year battery life, which means you never have to worry about charging them.

Life Alert has had decades of experience fine-tuning its products and its monitoring service.

You can’t get a Life Alert system without talking to a salesperson, so be prepared to listen to a lengthy sales pitch and feel some pressure to buy.

You won’t actually own the equipment, so you’ll have to return it when your contract is up.

Life Alert requires a minimum three-year contract, and you can only cancel it if the user dies or goes into a nursing home.

None of Life Alert’s devices offer fall detection, and company representatives say that it’s because the technology is not yet reliable enough to work properly.

If you try out Life Alert and you don’t like it, you’re still locked into a three-year contract.

While some systems allow family members to use a loved one’s GPS device to track their location, Life Alert’s GPS devices do not offer this feature.

When it comes to medical alert systems, Life Alert is definitely on the higher end of the spectrum. You can expect to pay $20–$30 a month for monitoring service with most other medical alert companies, with one-time activation fees between $0–$150. At $50–$90 a month and activation fees between $90–$200, Life Alert costs nearly twice as much as its competitors across the board, without many notable differences in equipment or service.