Ring Reinvents Its Security Subscriptions With 'Ring Home' and 24/7 Recording

Amazon-owned Ring, which offers a range of home cameras and a very DIY-friendly security system, is saying goodbye to its Ring Protect plans. In their place, the home security company is welcoming fall with a completely new set of subscription plans called Ring Home.

Ring Home will come in basic ($5), standard ($10) and premium ($20) plans and include the same upgrades that Ring Protect plans had, including Rich Notifications, cloud storage and other features, all at the same prices of the old Protect plans. But Home is adding several additional perks to make the subscriptions -- which saw a price increase at the beginning of 2024 -- more interesting:

24/7 recording: Available only in the premium plan, this feature allows Ring wired cameras to continuously record without needing to be triggered. We've seen 24/7 recording in a couple of battery cameras, but it's usually reserved for wired models like these, so your Ring Battery Stick-Up Cam probably won't be eligible.

Video preview alerts: Included in all plans, these alerts simply add a brief video thumbnail to the app alerts you get on your phone. When an alert pops up, you can get a quick view of the action, to help you decide if the situation requires your direct attention.

Extended and continuous live views: Live views in Protect lasted for only 10 minutes, but Ring Home wants to make things more video chat–friendly with a baseline of 30 minutes. People with higher tiers can watch and chat for even longer.

Doorbell calls: Available with the standard and premium plans for people with Ring Doorbells, this feature lets users set their doorbell to automatically call their phone when the doorbell is rung. It's an alternative to push notifications, and it lets you start talking to a visitor faster while also tapping into the live view.

Finally, Ring Home is making some interesting monitoring changes, allowing customers to choose a lower-tiered Home plan and then add Virtual Security Guard or Alarm Professional Monitoring to the plan for a separate fee, to save a bit more overall. We haven't seen professional monitoring services as an add-on option before (usually they're paywalled behind the highest tiers) but we definitely like the idea.

If you've got a Ring Protect plan right now and you're wondering how all these changes will affect you, Ring should contact you with transition options. The first users will be able to experience the Ring Home changes this October, but it's going to take some time for the rollout to complete.

We also noted earlier this year how Ring has improved its policy on sharing videos with police to be more in line with privacy policies from Google Nest and other brands. To learn more, take a look at our guide on how police can seize home security videos, and stop by our guide to home security subscriptions.