What matters to a carrier is who receives the alert. If you pay a company to monitor the system and they dispatch the fire department or police, that earns a discount — and the carrier will ask the alarm company for a certificate before applying it. If the alert only goes to your phone, that is self-monitored: Ring, Nest, SimpliSafe app alerts and plain smoke detectors all count as self-monitored. They are worth having, but they do not earn the discount, and claiming monitoring you do not have usually surfaces later as a change to your premium.
