Ring Alarm and cameras to require subscription for basic features

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – Coinciding with a shift in the leadership at Ring, new customers can expect to pay a subscription for features previously offered with their Ring Alarm devices.

The company issued an email to owners and provided a support center article recently that details the change and what features will be affected by the new decision. Specifically listed changes include arming and disarming digitally which has changed to require non-subscribers to use the Ring Keypad at home, alarm notifications from the Ring app and to email now can only be received from the base station, and restricting those without subscriptions to access of only 24 hours of event history from their alarm product among other lost features.

The company did offer some reassurances to existing customers without the Ring Protect subscription service writing, “If you owned an Alarm before this date, your current device will keep these in-app features. If you did not own an Alarm, these features will now require a subscription.” Customers took to social media to express their objections to the change with many citing for the free offerings being what drew them to the product over competitors in the first place.

“Imagine owning something, but still having to pay additional subscription fees for base features, thus really, still not actually owning it tbh,” Reddit user Spinethetic wrote.

In any case there will now be a firm distinction in service quality between subscribers and customers without Ring Protect. The service changes are scheduled to go into effect on March 29, 2023, However Ring assured customers that products purchased before that, even if they hadn’t been activated until on or after the date will keep legacy features.

You can find the full documentation here.