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SCADA alarm notification software cost for Canadian utilities

SCADA alarm notification software cost runs from a few hundred to several thousand US dollars up front, plus yearly fees, phone lines or per-user charges. Before you sign a quote, price what you actually need: tonight's alarm on the standby phone. Below are US list prices as of October 2026, each with its source.

Text me my SCADA alarmsBook a demo

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

  • No per-user fees with Welco
  • No hardware or setup fee
  • Every outside price sourced and dated

Works by email with

  • Ignition
  • WIN-911
  • GE iFIX

Setup guide for

  • VTScada
Setting up alerts with a dialer or callout module takes 3 steps. With Welco it takes 2.

With a dialer or callout module

  1. Buy a callout license or module up front
  2. Add a modem, phone line or cellular plan at every station
  3. Renew the term, or pay for each person every month

With Welco

  1. Add your Welco address to the alarm email
  2. Pay monthly message credits for the alarms that text
Animation: a a dialer or callout module setup and a Welco setup are built side by side.
  • Callout software and add-on modules are mostly sold as up-front licenses or multi-year terms.
  • Hardware dialers add a device plus a phone line or cellular plan at each site.
  • On-call apps charge for every user, every month.
  • SCADA alarm texts from Welco skip per-user fees, hardware and setup fees.

What you are really paying for

Every alarm callout setup pays for the same few things in some mix. Knowing which ones apply to you makes quotes easier to compare.

A typical callout setup

  • A license or module that reads alarms from your SCADA and sends them on.
  • A way to reach phones: a modem, a phone line, a cellular plan or an SMS account you top up.
  • People: some tools charge for each person who gets alerts.
  • Upkeep: renewals, support plans and integrator hours whenever something changes.

Alarm texts through Welco

  • The alarm email your SCADA already sends does the reading.
  • Alerts-only numbers reach the phones, with nothing installed at the site.
  • No per-user fees, so the whole crew can be on the list.
  • Monthly message credits for the alarms that text.

Listed prices for common SCADA alarm callout options

US list prices from each vendor or reseller site in October 2026. All prices are in US dollars (USD). Customers in Canada pay in US dollars too. A Canadian distributor's quote may differ, so check the source before you budget.

Third-party US list prices as of October 2026. Welco plans, in US dollars, are on the pricing page.

WIN-911 subscription

What you pay for
Alarm notification software, 3-year term
Listed price
From about US$3,300 for a 3-year term, per a reseller listing on motionworld.com

Ignition Alarm Notification module

What you pay for
Alarm pipelines and email notification
Listed price
US$2,245, as listed on inductiveautomation.com

Ignition SMS, Twilio or Voice module

What you pay for
One texting or calling channel each
Listed price
US$945 each. The Twilio module also needs your own Twilio account.

Ignition Alarm Management Suite

What you pay for
Bundle of alarm notification modules
Listed price
US$3,200, as listed on inductiveautomation.com

Sensaphone monitoring hardware

What you pay for
A device that calls, texts or emails on alarm
Listed price
About US$815 (Ethernet) to US$1,735 or more (cellular), plus US$24.95 a month for the cellular cloud plan

PageGate paging software

What you pay for
Paging and notification licenses
Listed price
US$200 to US$9,995, as listed on notepage.net

PagerDuty Professional

What you pay for
On-call app, billed per user
Listed price
US$21 per user per month, billed yearly, as listed on pagerduty.com

Welco

What you pay for
Alarm emails turned into texts
Listed price
No per-user fees, no hardware, no setup fee. See Welco pricing.

Sources: WIN-911 subscription listing (Motion World) (read Oct 5, 2026); Inductive Automation price list (read Oct 5, 2026); Sensaphone cloud plan (Home Controls) (read Oct 5, 2026); NotePage PageGate (read Oct 5, 2026); PagerDuty pricing (read Oct 5, 2026)

Price your alarm texts without a license or a modem

Sign up free and send a test alarm before you spend anything.

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

Text me my SCADA alarmsBook a demo

Costs that don't show up on the quote

The license is the easy number. These are the costs that catch people later.

  • Phone lines and cellular plans

    A dialer needs a working line or a data plan at every site, every month, including the station 45 minutes down a gravel road. If the line is cut or the plan lapses, alarms stop without a sound.

  • Your own SMS account and its paperwork

    Ignition's Twilio module sends through your own Twilio account, which you fund and keep registered. An Ignition alarm email setup skips that account. For US toll-free numbers, verification has needed a business registration number since February 17, 2026, per Twilio's changelog.

  • Manual top-ups at small sites

    Small sites feel this most. In an October 2025 Ignition forum thread, a site sending 400 to 500 alarm texts a month asked for monthly billing over manual top-ups.

  • Carrier email-to-text was free, and it's disappearing

    Plenty of SCADA servers emailed alarms to a txt.bell.ca address at no cost. Bell ended Text via Email on December 31, 2025, per Bell's end-of-life FAQ. Rogers and Fido users reported their gateway quit around June 2023. A US water district case study shows the switch.

Why trimming changes what a text costs

Welco bills in message credits, and length decides how many an alarm uses. A long alarm email sent as is can use several credits. Trimmed to the part an operator needs, the same alarm uses one.

Alert email from scada@region.example.ca, subject “ALARM ACTIVE: BOOSTER 3 DISCHARGE PRESSURE LOW”. Welco trims it to one text of 87 characters: “Welco: [Booster 3] Discharge pressure LOW, 262 kPa at 7:41 PM. Reply STOP to opt out.”

Text received: Welco: [Booster 3] Discharge pressure LOW, 262 kPa at 7:41 PM. Reply STOP to opt out.

Characters386871 credit

Animation: the alert email "ALARM ACTIVE: BOOSTER 3 DISCHARGE PRESSURE LOW" is trimmed into one text: "Welco: [Booster 3] Discharge pressure LOW, 262 kPa at 7:41 PM. Reply STOP to opt out."

One-text alerts set the trim once for every alarm from that system.

Estimate your own alarm texting cost in 4 steps

All you need is a pencil and last month's alarm log.

  1. Count the alarms that need a person

    From your alarm history, count how many alarms a month should reach a phone. Leave out warnings and returns to normal.

  2. Count the people and the sites

    Per-user tools multiply by people. Dialers multiply by sites. Write down both numbers.

  3. List what you already own

    If your SCADA already sends email, you may not need a new module or any hardware. The SCADA alarm text setup guide shows how to check.

  4. Price each option over three years

    Add up licenses, renewals, lines, plans and per-user fees over 3 years, in US dollars. Then compare with Welco's plans.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free way to send SCADA alarms as texts?

There used to be: emailing the carrier's gateway address. Bell shut its gateway at the end of 2025, and Rogers users reported theirs stopping in 2023. Telus addresses were still reported working in 2025, but a gateway can drop messages without warning, which is a poor fit for alarms. See carrier email-to-text shutdowns.

Why don't you list Welco's price on this page?

Plans can change, so we keep one up-to-date source. The pricing page shows the current plans in US dollars. What stays the same is how they're built: no per-user fees, no hardware, no setup fee, and you pay for the credits your alarms use.

Does a power blip that trips 50 points use 50 credits?

Not usually. Flood control limits how many texts each phone gets in a burst. A hydro flicker sends a few texts, and the rest stay in your SCADA alarm summary. A rule that drops return-to-normal emails also stops the all-clear from doubling the count.

Do long alarm emails cost more to text?

Yes, with any texting service. A text holds about 160 plain characters, and longer messages are split into parts that each count. Emoji and some symbols lower that limit. A trim rule that keeps the site, the point, the value and the time usually holds an alarm to one text.

Do I have to pay for each operator who gets alarms?

Not with Welco. Adding a fifth operator or the chief operator to an alarm costs nothing beyond the credits their alerts use. Per-user apps such as PagerDuty bill each person monthly, which adds up when a small rural crew shares standby.

Is there a free trial, and is a card needed?

Yes. The free trial runs 7 days and includes 15 message credits, enough to test real alarms. A card is required to verify your business, but nothing is charged for 7 days. You get an email reminder before billing, and the card is charged only after you approve a plan.

What happens if an ice storm uses up the month's credits?

Welco emails the account admin as the month's credits pass 80%, 90%, 95%, and 100% used. There are no overage charges, so at 100% alarm texts pause. Utilities that see ice storms and spring floods keep a credit pack on hand, since it kicks in automatically and never expires. You can also move to a bigger plan yourself at any time.

Is there any hardware or SCADA change to budget for?

No hardware. The only SCADA change is one more recipient on the alarm email, which your SCADA tech or integrator can add. Welco never connects to the control network, so there is no firewall project to fund.

See what your alarm texts would cost

Check the plans in US dollars, then send a test alarm on a free account.

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