The classic personal alarm has looked the same for decades: a small button worn round the neck or on the wrist, a base unit next to the phone, a monthly bill. For a lot of people, that’s a solid setup. But it’s worth asking more often these days: do you still need the device at all, or is the phone in your pocket already doing the important part?
What a personal alarm does well - and where it stops
A personal alarm connects you to a call centre at the push of a button. That’s genuinely useful, but it has three well-known limits.
- It mostly works at home. The base unit only has so much range. In the garden, out shopping, or on the move, you’re often not covered.
- You have to be able to press the button. Just like an SOS button, this only works if you’re conscious and able to act. In a collapse, a stroke, or heatstroke, that’s exactly the moment it fails you.
- It costs money every month. Device rental plus a monthly fee adds up over the years, and there’s often a fixed-term contract on top.
For people with severe mobility issues, dementia, or no smartphone, a personal alarm is still often the right choice. But for many people living alone who already carry a phone, an app covers the essentials for less money and more flexibility.
What a good emergency app actually needs to do
Not every “emergency app” is built the same. To genuinely replace a personal alarm day to day, it needs to do more than just place a call.
- A passive safety net. This is the one thing a button can’t do: raise the alarm automatically when you stop checking in. You confirm you’re okay at set times, and if you don’t, your contacts get notified.
- Cloud-based monitoring. The alert has to fire even if your phone is dead, switched off, or has no signal. If the monitoring only runs on the device itself, it fails at the exact moment it matters most.
- Multiple emergency contacts and an alert chain. If the first contact doesn’t respond, the alert automatically moves to the next one.
- Location in an emergency, without constant tracking the rest of the time.
- Real privacy. A service watching over your wellbeing shouldn’t be running ads or selling your data.
Where Alma fits in
Alma turns your phone into exactly that kind of safety net, with no extra hardware needed. The core feature is Safety Net: a personal check-in schedule with up to three windows a day and up to five emergency contacts. If you don’t check in, Alma automatically notifies your contacts, can share your last known location, and escalates through the chain if the first contact doesn’t respond. Because the monitoring runs in the cloud, the alert still works even if your phone is switched off.
No device, no installation, no base station. Alma doesn’t show ads, doesn’t sell data, is GDPR-compliant, and runs its servers in Germany. Safety Net comes with a free 14-day trial, so you can try it properly before committing to anything.
And if you’re the one looking out for someone else - a parent living alone, a neighbour - you can sign up for free as an emergency contact and get notified automatically the moment a check-in is missed.
When switching makes sense - and when it doesn’t
An emergency app is the right call if you already use a smartphone, get around on your own, and mainly want to cover the scenario where you can’t check in yourself anymore. It’s cheaper, it works away from home too, and it takes minutes to set up.
A classic personal alarm still makes sense if you don’t use a smartphone, if dementia is more advanced, or if you specifically want a direct line to a staffed call centre. The two aren’t mutually exclusive - plenty of people use the app as a light, mobile addition to what they already have.
One important thing to close on: an app doesn’t replace emergency services in a real crisis. If life is at risk, always call 112 first. Alma isn’t a medical device - it does the one thing technology can genuinely help with here: making sure someone finds out in time that help is needed, even when you can’t call for it yourself.
Living alone and looking for a quiet safety net without extra hardware? Download Alma for iOS or Android and start the free 14-day trial of Safety Net - set a check-in window, add an emergency contact, done.