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WelcoYour alerts, by text.

Alarm notification software comparison for Canadian teams

This alarm notification software comparison helps you find the tool that puts tonight's alarm on the on-call cellphone. It also shows a cost your council or board can sign off on. It lines up SCADA notifiers, on-call apps, monitoring hardware and carrier gateways with their listed prices, in US dollars. Welco sits at the simple end, turning the alarm emails you already get into texts.

Text me my alarmsBook a demo

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing

  • Listed prices, with sources
  • No per-user fees with Welco
  • Keep your current tool while you test

Works by email with

  • WIN-911

Compared with

  • PagerDuty
  • Sensaphone
  • OnPage

An alert email from scada@plant.example.ca arrives. The Welco rule “Tank alarms after 6 PM go to the night operator” trims it, and Night operator's phone gets one text: “Welco: [North Tank] High tank level alarm at 4:07 AM, unacknowledged. Reply STOP to opt out.”

Night operator's phone received: Welco: [North Tank] High tank level alarm at 4:07 AM, unacknowledged. Reply STOP to opt out.

Animation: an alert email, "Alarm: North Tank high level", arrives at Welco and becomes one text to the night operator's phone: "Welco: [North Tank] High tank level alarm at 4:07 AM, unacknowledged. Reply STOP to opt out."

What this comparison saves you

You have a system that raises alarms and a person who must see them. These are the answers most buyers came here for.

  • The true cost in one place

    Seat fees, licenses, modules and boxes on site, side by side with their sources. Useful for the person who signs off on the spend.

  • An honest pick for your team

    Each tool wins somewhere. We say where the other tool is the better choice, not just where Welco is.

  • No rip and replace

    Welco is one more email address in the system you run today. Test it beside your current tool before you drop anything.

  • A plan before texts stop

    Bell's email-to-text gateway is gone and Opsgenie has an end date. Each date below links to the notice it comes from.

Which tool fits which team

Start with what your alarms must do. Each line links to the full matchup, including when the other tool wins.

The main alternatives in one table

Prices are as listed on each vendor or reseller site in October 2026, and list prices change, so check the source before you buy. All prices are in US dollars (USD). Customers in Canada pay in US dollars too.

Listed prices, October 2026. Secondary facts are attributed to their source.

WIN-911 (SmartSights)

What it is built for
Industrial alarm callouts by voice, text, email, Microsoft Teams and a mobile app
Price as listed
Subscription from about US$3,300 for a 3-year term, per a reseller listing
What you set up
Licensed software with direct connectors to AVEVA, GE Vernova, Inductive Automation and Rockwell

Ignition alarm modules (Inductive Automation)

What it is built for
Alarm messages sent from inside Ignition
Price as listed
Alarm Notification US$2,245; SMS and Voice modules US$945 each, per IA's price list
What you set up
Modules added to your Ignition Gateway

Sensaphone

What it is built for
Monitoring hardware that calls, texts or emails when a sensor trips
Price as listed
About US$815 (Ethernet) to US$1,735+ (cellular), plus US$24.95 a month for the cellular cloud plan, per a reseller listing
What you set up
A device at each site

PagerDuty

What it is built for
Incident management for DevOps and SRE teams
Price as listed
Free for 5 users with 100 SMS or phone notifications a month; Professional US$21 per user a month, billed yearly
What you set up
An account per user plus a service per tool

OnPage

What it is built for
Critical alerts that keep going until they are read
Price as listed
US$13.99 per user a month, billed yearly
What you set up
A paid seat for each user

SIGNL4

What it is built for
Mobile alerting for operations, IT and SCADA, with 200+ integrations
Price as listed
Priced per user; current price not captured
What you set up
An app for each person who gets alerts

Opsgenie (Atlassian)

What it is built for
On-call alerting
Price as listed
No new sales since June 4, 2025; shuts down April 5, 2027, per partner reports
What you set up
Nothing new: teams are moving off Opsgenie

Carrier email-to-text

What it is built for
Free number@carrier addresses
Price as listed
Free, but Bell retired it on December 31, 2025 and Rogers reportedly stopped in 2023. Telus is still reported working
What you set up
One address per phone, until it stops delivering

Welco

What it is built for
Alert emails turned into texts for on-call staff
Price as listed
No per-user fees, no hardware, no setup fee. See Welco plans and pricing
What you set up
One email address in the system you already have

Sources: SmartSights: WIN-911 notifications (read Oct 5, 2026); Motion: WIN-911 subscription listing (read Oct 5, 2026); Inductive Automation price list (read Oct 5, 2026); HomeControls: Sensaphone plan listing (read Oct 5, 2026); PagerDuty pricing (read Oct 5, 2026); OnPage pricing (read Oct 5, 2026); SIGNL4 integrations (read Oct 5, 2026); Hyperping: Opsgenie end of life (read Oct 5, 2026); AT&T support KM1061254 (read Oct 5, 2026); Verizon: vtext and vzwpix shutdown (read Oct 5, 2026); Bell: Text via Email end-of-life FAQ (read Oct 6, 2026)

How Welco handles alarm texts in 3 steps

There is nothing to install. The setup is the same for a lift station in Manitoba, a server room in Toronto or a walk-in freezer.

  1. Sign up and verify your business

    We check every business, including its Canadian business number, before it can send. That keeps the alert numbers clean, and they are never shared with marketing senders.

  2. Invite the staff who answer alarms

    Each one opens a join link, enters their own cellphone number and gets one text asking them to confirm. Nothing else is sent to that phone until they reply YES.

  3. Point the alarm email at your Welco address

    Paste your Welco address where your system sends alarm emails today. From then on, each alarm arrives as a short text that starts with Welco:.

See your own alarms as texts

Verify your business, invite one teammate and point one alarm email at Welco.

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing

Text me my alarmsBook a demo

Welco next to each alternative

Each page argues one matchup in full: the costs, the setup, and when the other tool is the better pick.

Example alerts from three kinds of systems

Long alarm emails are cut down to the part a person acts on. These are masked examples of the kind of alarms teams send through Welco.

  • Process historian: Welco: [Plant 1] Conservation vent failure, check system at 10:22 PM. Reply STOP to opt out.
  • Network monitor: Welco: [core-sw-2] Device not responding, probably down at 1:46 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.
  • Building system: Welco: [AHU-4] Return air temp offnormal, unacked at 5:31 AM. Reply STOP to opt out.

A phone showing these alert texts: Process historian, "Welco: [Plant 1] Conservation vent failure, check system at 10:22 PM. Reply STOP to opt out."; Network monitor, "Welco: [core-sw-2] Device not responding, probably down at 1:46 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."; Building system, "Welco: [AHU-4] Return air temp offnormal, unacked at 5:31 AM. Reply STOP to opt out."

Why so many teams are shopping for alarm texts now

The free path is closing in Canada and the US, and the paid options pull in two directions. Our guide to carrier email-to-text shutdowns covers each network.

How alarm texts used to work

  • A free carrier address like 4165550123@txt.bell.ca on every phone. Bell retired that gateway on December 31, 2025, and Rogers and Fido users reported theirs stopped around June 2023.
  • South of the border, AT&T ended email-to-text on June 17, 2025, and Verizon expects its shutdown to be complete by March 31, 2027.
  • A voice dialer or modem at the plant that nobody wants to repair again.
  • An on-call app priced for every admin, a license, or a box at each site, just to get a text.

Alarm texts with Welco

  • The system you run keeps sending its alarm email. Welco turns it into a text.
  • Verified, alerts-only numbers that are never shared with marketing senders.
  • No seat to buy when a fifth person joins the alarm list, as Canadian banks and credit unions often need.
  • The same setup for door, generator and freezer temperature alarms.

Features worth comparing

When you line tools up, these are the parts that decide whether alarms reach a person or get ignored.

Frequently asked questions

What should a Canadian team compare when choosing alarm notification software?

Start with what your alarms need to do, then compare total cost in one currency. Most list prices here are in US dollars, so count per-user fees, licenses, modules and hardware the same way. Check how alarms get into the tool, whether it can route by time, and what happens during an alarm flood. Last, check what you lose if the vendor changes plans, as Opsgenie users are finding out now.

Is Welco an on-call management tool like PagerDuty?

No. Welco is an alert texting service. It turns alert emails into texts and sends them to the right phone by rule and time of day. It has no escalation chains, rotation schedules, phone calls or acknowledgments. If you need those, an on-call tool is the better fit, as Welco and PagerDuty side by side shows.

Can I keep my current alarm tool and add Welco for texts?

Yes, as long as your current tool can send an email. Many SCADA notifiers such as WIN-911, monitors and building systems can. Add your Welco address as one more email contact, test it, and run both side by side. You can retire the old text path once you trust the new one.

Which of these tools charge for every user?

PagerDuty and OnPage list a price per user on their pricing pages, and SIGNL4 is also sold per user. That cost grows each time another person joins the alarm list. Welco charges nothing per user and needs no hardware or setup fee. The OnPage alternative and SIGNL4 alternative pages do the math.

Can I try Welco before I commit to a plan?

Yes. Every account starts with a 7-day free trial that includes 15 message credits. A card is needed to verify the business, but it isn't charged during the trial, and you get an email before any billing. Plans are priced in US dollars for Canadian customers too, never bill overage, and can be moved up or down by you at any time.

Does Welco phone people when an alarm comes in?

No. Welco sends text messages only. Some crews must get a voice call, for example at a remote station with only a landline. For them, pick a tool with a voice option, such as WIN-911 or Ignition's Voice module. Many teams use texts for most alarms and keep calls for a short list.

Do my staff need an app to get Welco alarm texts?

No. The alarm lands in the phone's own messages app, like any other text. Each person joins with their own mobile number and replies YES once before alarms reach them. App-based tools such as SIGNL4 need their app on every phone first.

Compared enough? Try it with one real alarm

Point one alarm email at Welco and see the text on your own phone.

Text me my alarmsBook a demo

7-day free trial, 15 message creditsCard required for verificationNo charge for 7 daysEmail reminder before billing