How can we help?

1. Install NWatch from the App Store or Google Play.
2. Sign in with Google, passwordless email, or Microsoft when enabled, or with Apple on iPhone.
3. Enter your invite code and tap Join Group.
4. Review notification readiness. On an entitled iPhone build, Critical Alerts can bypass Focus or silent mode only when you grant that separate permission.

NWatch does not bill individual members; the group manager or organisation holds the licence. Any private contribution arrangement is separate from NWatch.

1. Go to the manager portal and sign in with Google or Microsoft.
2. Choose a plan and capacity. Continue only when the portal confirms verified live billing and shows the exact Stripe customer total.
3. If you are eligible for the 30-day trial, review the dated no-charge-today and automatic-renewal disclosure before entering your card. If that offer is absent, the selected plan is not a trial.
4. Name your group. Community groups also choose their area on a map.
5. Create an invite code and share it with your members.

Install the app on your own phone and sign in to the same NWatch account you used for the portal. Link another provider from account settings rather than creating a duplicate account.

So we can put local people in touch with you. If someone in your area contacts us genuinely wanting to join a group, we may pass the enquiry to you as the manager. It is then entirely your decision whether to contact them and onboard them, under your own pricing and onboarding rules.

We record only a coarse area — roughly a 5 km square — never an address or exact location, and we never share your details with the enquirer. Family groups are never listed or offered this way; they stay private.

Start with the portal's delivery check. It sends a clearly marked, ordinary notification and does not sound the emergency alarm or create an incident. It does not test encrypted incident delivery, decryption or every device state. If your group later chooses to run a live alarm drill, schedule it with every member, use the normal alert flow, and resolve the incident immediately afterwards.

Licences use 10-seat steps. One seat is one member. The first 10-seat pack is A$299/year or A$29.99/month. Packs 2–5 are A$199 each/year or A$19.99 each/month; packs 6–10 are A$149 each/year or A$14.99 each/month. NWatch bills the manager or organisation that holds the group licence, not individual members. Taxes are shown at checkout where applicable. See pricing for live-billing status and current rates.

In the portal, open your group and use Add seats. Seats are added in packs of 10. The portal uses your subscription's actual Stripe Price—including a grandfathered Price—and shows the exact prorated amount, whether it is a charge or credit, and how and when it will be collected before you confirm. Do not confirm a seat increase if that exact quote is not shown; contact support instead.

A single group can normally hold up to 100 seats (10 packs). Larger groups require a reviewed exception.

Open Manage billing in the portal to see the changes currently offered by Stripe, update your card, download invoices or cancel. If an interval change is not offered there, contact support. An existing subscription is not silently migrated to the new catalogue.

It is available only when the live manager portal says that the signed-in, verified self-serve billing identity is eligible. A card is required, but the confirmation must say no charge today and show the exact first-charge date, customer total and monthly or annual interval.

Unless you cancel online before that date, Stripe charges the displayed amount and the subscription renews automatically at the displayed interval until cancelled. If the dated no-charge-today summary is absent, do not assume a trial applies. Manual licences and separately agreed institutional pilots are not this self-serve trial.

Yes. Add seats to your existing licence in the portal — Circle, Street, Community and Large Community are capacity packages for the same bounded group. If you'd rather start a separate group instead, buy a second licence and create another group.

Note that community groups can opt into local area enquiries; private household groups stay private. Email [email protected] if you want an existing group's area listed after upgrading.

Yes — one licence covers one group. Buy a second licence in the portal and create another group. You can manage both from the same account.

Because of the potential alert audience. One hundred is the size we have tested the fan-out at, and each added member is another potential recipient whose registered device may be notified when someone raises an alert.

A neighbourhood of 400 is usually better as four groups of 100 — each street gets the alerts that concern it, and a Rose Street emergency doesn't wake Hill Street at 3am. Managers can run as many groups as they need from one portal account.

Some places genuinely are one community: a single apartment tower with one building manager, or a campus. If that's you, open your group in the portal, and where it tells you about the limit choose ask us about a larger group. Tell us how many seats and why it needs to be one group. We review the request; approval is not automatic and may be for fewer seats than requested.

Yes. One licence covers one group — one street, one building, one precinct — and an organisation can hold as many as it needs. Members and invite codes never cross between groups, which is the point: a Rose Street alert should not wake Hill Street.

For more than a handful of groups we set up an enterprise account: you tell us how many groups and how many seats each, we invoice you or work to your purchase order, and your nominated contact runs the whole thing from the ordinary manager portal. There is no separate system to learn and no card required.

Your contact sees a banner showing how many groups the plan covers and how many are left to set up, and creates each one themselves. If that person leaves, we move the account to a colleague and the groups appear on their next sign-in.

To get started, email [email protected] with roughly how many groups and members you expect. We will review the group structure, seat allowance, billing path and onboarding requirements with you.

Stripe Checkout must identify the seller and show the card-statement descriptor before payment. Confirm both there rather than relying on an example descriptor in this guide.

Payments are processed by Stripe, and the receipt identifies the seller for that payment. We do not receive or store your full card number.

If a charge looks unfamiliar, please email [email protected] before disputing it with your bank so we can investigate. A reversed or disputed payment can affect the related licence and may eventually prevent the group from raising alerts.

Email [email protected] and tell us what happened. Any refund, replacement or other remedy depends on the circumstances and the mandatory consumer rights that apply where you live, including the Australian Consumer Law, New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act and applicable US or Canadian law. Those rights are not excluded by this page.

If you want to stop a subscription, cancel in the portal. Your group normally keeps working until the end of the period already paid for, and future renewal charges stop. We review refund requests against the applicable law, the service delivered, the agreement and the relevant payment record; no universal full-refund outcome is promised.

If a refund is approved, it is normally sent through the original payment method. The timing of funds appearing depends on Stripe, the card issuer and local banking processes, so we do not promise a fixed settlement period.

If a renewal fails, the portal shows the recorded licence state. Stripe may retry according to the live billing configuration; update your card under Manage billing.

Your group keeps working for 14 days after a licence lapses. This is an emergency system, so we do not switch the alert button off the moment a card expires. A notice appears in the manager portal, and Stripe may email you about the failed payment where your contact details and delivery are available. After 14 days, members cannot raise alerts until the licence is renewed.

Check the portal if you are unsure. NWatch itself does not send billing email yet — billing email may come from Stripe where contact details and delivery are available — so the portal notice is the authoritative view of your licence.

If you cancel, your group keeps working until the end of the period you have paid for. Your group, members and settings are kept either way, so renewing restores everything.

There are several possible causes. Check, in order:

• iPhone: allow ordinary notifications. If Critical Alerts appears for an entitled build, enable it to permit critical presentation through Focus or silent mode.
• Android: allow notifications, confirm the alarm channel is not muted, review full-screen/DND access when offered, and check battery restrictions. Denying special access should still leave ordinary high-priority notification behaviour.
• Confirm the member appears as active in the manager portal — paused members don't receive alerts.

Run a portal delivery check after changing any of these. It checks ordinary push acceptance; it does not sound the emergency alarm.

It can, but it is not guaranteed. On iPhone this requires an Apple-entitled signed build plus Critical Alerts permission. On Android it depends on the alarm channel, notification and special-access settings, device policy and Google Play policy. Connectivity, push-provider acceptance and operating-system decisions still apply.

In the portal, open the incident and choose Resolve & notify. That stores the resolution and asks push services to notify eligible group devices; it is not proof that every phone displayed the stand-down. Resolving silently closes the incident without a push attempt, which can be useful for tests and duplicates.

• Pause temporarily stops a member sending or receiving alerts. Their seat stays reserved — useful if a child has been testing the button.
• Remove takes them out of the group and frees their seat for someone else.

Have them sign in on the new device with the same linked Google, Microsoft or Apple account and the group will reappear. If they've changed account entirely, remove the old member in the portal to free the seat and issue a fresh invite code.

Alert contents and any location shared with an alert are encrypted on the sender's phone into separate recipient envelopes. NWatch also creates a protected service-recovery envelope so an authorised administrator with permission for that group can recover or re-wrap an incident; plaintext decryption is restricted and audited. We also hold the account, membership, delivery-diagnostic and billing records needed to run the service.

See the privacy policy for detail.

In the app, open Settings → Delete account. If you no longer have the app, use our web account-deletion page to send a verified request. Managers must hand over or archive groups they solely manage and understand that in-app deletion immediately cancels active self-serve subscriptions and ends those entitlements. Contact support first if you need a transfer, enterprise closure or refund reviewed.