Honest comparison · reviewed 2026-07-21
Duress vs SafeZone.
Two different answers to lone worker safety, compared feature by feature - including where SafeZone is genuinely the better choice. Compiled from public vendor materials; product names and trade marks belong to their owners.
Feature comparison
| Duress | SafeZone by CriticalArc | |
|---|---|---|
| Head office / primary regions | Australia · AU, NZ, UK | Australia-founded (Sydney) · APAC, EMEA, Americas |
| Hardware devices | Falcon (body-worn camera), Phoenix (Bluetooth button), Eagle (4G LTE device) | App-first; integrates existing WiFi, BLE and CCTV infrastructure |
| Smartphone safety app | Yes - Duress App | Yes - SafeZone app |
| Body-worn camera with live streaming | Yes - Falcon | Not advertised |
| 24/7 professional monitoring | Yes - accredited 24/7 monitoring centre, included as standard | Customer-operated command centre by default (your own security team responds) |
| Monitoring accreditation | ASIAL A1-graded (AU); ISO 27001:2022 certified | No monitoring-centre accreditation claimed (runs no centre itself) |
| Indoor positioning | Yes - BLE beacons (Eagle) | Advertises WiFi and BLE location awareness |
| Gas detection | No | Not advertised |
| Buy online without a sales call | Yes - configure and check out | Demo / quote-led enterprise sales |
Compiled from each vendor's public websites and documentation. "-" and "not advertised" mean the capability was not claimed in the vendor's public materials at review time; offerings change, so verify current capabilities directly. Spotted an error? Tell us and we'll fix it. Full four-vendor comparison here.
Which one is right for you?
When SafeZone is the right answer
The standout choice for large, multi-site organisations that run their own 24/7 security operations centre - universities, hospital networks, large corporate and government campuses. SafeZone's real strength is command-and-control: real-time visualisation of thousands of app users on one map, mass and targeted group notifications, geofenced regions, and live dispatch coordination that lets an in-house team cut response times. For an organisation with an established control room and security workforce that wants to unify lone-worker safety, emergency mass-comms and incident management in one operations platform, SafeZone is built for exactly that scale, and is deeply proven in higher education worldwide.
When Duress is the right answer
Choose Duress when you don't want to staff a control room to get a professional response. SafeZone is designed around your own security team monitoring and responding through the platform; Duress includes accredited 24/7 monitoring as standard (ASIAL A1 in AU, NSI Gold in UK, ISO 27001:2022, 7-second median pickup), which suits smaller or distributed teams without an always-on operations centre. Duress also adds wearables - a body-worn camera, a Bluetooth card, and a 4G device with purpose-built BLE indoor positioning - for frontline roles where the phone isn't practical.