Questions
The short answer to most of them: your pets are the point, and most days nothing happens.
What it does
What is Heartbeat?
It is a backup plan for your animals. You tell it who to contact and what your pets need; it watches for ordinary signs that you are okay; and if those stop, it asks the people you chose to go and check on them.
That is the whole product. It does not summon anybody, it does not decide what has happened to you, and it has no opinion about your health. It gets a message to people who already agreed to help, at the point where nobody else would know to send one.
What counts as a heartbeat?
A tap in the app, or a notification answered. That is it — those are the two things that mean you rather than your phone.
If you leave location on, a phone that is being carried around also tells us something, and we use it to leave you alone on ordinary days. But it is context, not proof: a phone moving in a bag on a bus is evidence a phone is being carried. So when something looks off, we still ask you, and answering is one press.
What happens if I go quiet?
Nothing sudden. Your window runs, and before it closes Heartbeat checks quietly first and then asks you directly — a notification you can answer in one press. If that goes unanswered there is a grace period, and only then is the first person on your list emailed, in the order you set.
At every point before that, the cheapest way to stop everything is to answer.
What do my contacts actually receive?
An email with your name in the subject — “[you] has not checked in” — which opens by telling them what it is not:
- NOT an emergency. [You] has not responded for [how long].
- Are you able to check on them in the next hour? It is okay if you cannot — say so and we will ask the next person.
They can answer either way in one tap, and saying no is a real answer: it moves the question to the next person instead of leaving it hanging.
Does it ever tell people I might be dead?
No. Not in the first message, not in the last one, and not in the message that goes out if we eventually stop asking. Nobody is helped by that sentence, and the job in front of your contact is the same either way: someone needs to look in on the animals.
Your contacts
Do they have to agree first?
Yes, and it is not a formality — a contact who has not said yes is not on your list. They get one invitation, they see exactly what they are agreeing to, and they can take themselves off at any point without going through you. You can read the whole opt-in policy, or see the page a contact is actually sent.
How many contacts and pets can I have?
Up to three contacts in each group and nine pets, free or member. That will not change.
What if none of them answer?
It keeps trying for a while, spaced out, so it reads as somebody who kept trying rather than an alarm going off. But it does stop. After about a week with nothing heard from you, Heartbeat stands down — and it tells your contacts it is doing so, rather than simply going silent on them.
That is a deliberately uncomfortable feature. Asking the same neighbour the same unanswerable question a month later helps nobody, and a plan that never admits it has run out is not being honest with the people carrying it.
What it is not
Is this an emergency service?
No. Heartbeat does not contact emergency services, does not dispatch anybody, and is not a medical alert device. If you need those, get those — this is not a substitute and is not built to be one.
It answers a narrower question that nothing else does: if you are not home tonight, does anybody know there is a dog who is expecting you?
Do I have to check in every day?
No, and if it feels like a chore then it is built wrong. Most days you should do nothing at all. The app is not asking to be opened, and opening it to confirm it still works is exactly the habit it is designed not to create.
What it costs
Is the free version real?
Yes. If you go quiet, everyone on your list is emailed — every time, in the order you chose, with nothing held back or rationed. A pet’s safety should not depend on a subscription.
Then why is free email only?
Because before anyone can text or ring a number, somebody has to prove that number reaches the person it belongs to, and proving it costs real money. A free tier offering texts would be offering a channel it had never confirmed — a promise about a number nobody checked, discovered on the one night it mattered. So free gets the channel with no gatekeeper, and gets it without limits. What a membership adds is the channel, not the coverage.
What does a membership cost?
The price is shown in the app before you are charged, and billing, cancellation and refunds are handled by the App Store or Google Play. No card is asked for to use Heartbeat at all. If you cancel you move back to the free version, which is a real one.
Privacy and your phone
Does Heartbeat track where I am?
Location is optional, and what it is used for is deciding whether to disturb you — not building a history of where you have been. Turn it off and the product still works; it simply has to ask you more often, because it has less reason to assume you are fine.
What happens to my pets’ photos?
They are private. Photos are never served from a public address — there is no link that hands out the file to whoever holds it — and they reach a contact only through the care information you chose to share with them.
Will this destroy my battery?
It is built not to. The phone keeps its signs of life locally and sends them when it next wakes, rather than reporting continuously, and the whole design goal is a product you can forget is running.
Using it
How do I turn it off?
Whenever you like, from the app. Turning monitoring off emails your contacts to say so — they agreed to be part of a plan, and quietly cancelling it without telling them would leave them believing something that is no longer true.
What if I lose my phone, or it breaks?
If you added an email to your account, go to heartbeat.pet/lost. We email you a link that signs out every device, so nobody can use the lost phone, and pauses check-ins. Your contacts are told monitoring is off. When you have a phone again, sign in with your number and it comes back on.
No email on your account, or a new number? Write to support@heartbeat.pet and we will get you back in.
In the meantime the plan itself does not fall over: your contacts, your pets and your care information are on our side, not on the handset. What stops is the checking in — so if you are going to be without a phone for a while, turn monitoring off before you are, and your contacts are told rather than left waiting.
Does it work with a screen reader?
Fully — setup included, by yourself, start to finish. Some of the people this app exists for are blind owners of guide dogs, which is to say the animal the app protects is the reason they cannot see the screen. There is a page on exactly what we do and test.
How do I get it?
Heartbeat is not generally available yet. If you want it when it is, email support@heartbeat.pet and we will tell you — that is the whole list, and it is not used for anything else.
Something here not answered, or answered in a way that does not match what you saw? Get in touch or email support@heartbeat.pet. A question that had to be asked twice is a page that needs fixing.