Recently, the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management released some data showing what many of their counties spend for emergency alert services. The results are pretty interesting.
We omitted a few counties as representative (because the alert services they use are not as feature-rich) and came up with an average of $0.79 per household across Iowa. That contrasts with a national average – based on our data – of $.60 per household.
But we might be comparing apples and oranges.
Our $.60/household number is at the county level only, and our database has more municipalities than counties, so it may be that in some parts of the country – the northeast, for example – emergency alert responsibilities are split between county and municipal agencies. So we’ll need to dig into the numbers more deeply.
We also looked at the cost/household for each vendor reported. The data show the most expensive vendor (Global Connect) at 2-3 times as much as the others and the least expensive vendors (Hyper-Reach and Inspiron) at about 35% less than the average. But a caution here. The sample sizes for those two vendors is small in this data. We know that Hyper-Reach is generally about 25%-30% less than CodeRED and Everbridge, while our data for Inspiron nationwide show an average of about $0.52 per household.
Iowa Emergency Alert Spending by Vendor
| Vendor | Cost/HH/Year |
Hyper-Reach |
$ 0.52 |
Inspiron/WENS |
$ 0.52 |
Everbridge |
$ 0.78 |
CodeRed |
$ 0.83 |
Global Connect |
$ 1.73 |
