{"id":773,"date":"2026-08-14T08:21:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T08:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/?p=773"},"modified":"2026-08-14T08:21:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T08:21:25","slug":"burk-arc-text-alerts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/burk-arc-text-alerts\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Text Alerts from Your Burk ARC System"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I don&#8217;t have to tell <em>you<\/em> this, but when your transmitter drops off the air, it&#8217;s kind of a big deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So if the best way your system has to notify you is an <em>email<\/em> alert \u2014 the same medium that we&#8217;ve spent 25 years now training ourselves to not treat urgently \u2014 that&#8217;s not great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Texts are better.<\/strong> We answer texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And hey, your Burk ARC system <em>looks<\/em> like it offers them! You can see in the docs that there&#8217;s an &#8220;SMS&#8221; option, next to email and telephone. So you go into the settings to switch it on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s nothing to switch on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because&#8230; welp, <strong>Burk doesn&#8217;t actually text<\/strong>. The guides direct you to use the email-to-text addresses provided by cell phone carriers. But over the past few years, the carriers have actually shut all those down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what are we going to do? Use the modern email to text solution to get you those SMS alerts. (And, um, if you still have a <a href=\"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/verizon-email-to-text\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"20\">vtext<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/att-email-to-text\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"22\">txt.att.net<\/a> address in there, we&#8217;re going to get those replaced because they haven&#8217;t been working for quite a while.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Burk ARC Text Alerts: Table of Contents<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"#modern-way\">The Modern Way to Set Up Text Alerts on Your Burk ARC System<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#why-not\">Why Not Just Use Burk&#8217;s Voice Dial-Out?<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#get-going\">Get Your Burk Text Alerts Going ASAP<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#deserves-text\">What Deserves a Text vs. an Email?<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"#next-steps\">Burk ARC Text Alerts: Next Steps to Get You Started<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"modern-way\">The Modern Way to Set Up Text Alerts on Your Burk ARC System<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Note: Everything below is written for the ARC Plus family. An ARC Solo does the same things in its own web UI, just in slightly different places.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step 1: Sign up to get email to SMS alerts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re going to use <a href=\"https:\/\/text.email\">text.email<\/a>, which is <strong>the modern version of what the cell phone carriers were doing with email-to-SMS<\/strong>. (Though text.email also has at least a dozen other features the old carriers didn&#8217;t.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sign up at the website. Then pick a subdomain that&#8217;s unique to your account, so you&#8217;ll have an address like <code>your-number@yoursubdomain.text.email<\/code>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Copy your address. We&#8217;ll need it for the next step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Also, if you need your alerts to text a team and not just one person, use text.email&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/distribution-lists\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"296\">distribution lists<\/a>. You can even set up <a href=\"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/scheduled-sms-routing\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"632\">scheduling<\/a> for when different team members receive texts.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step 2: Make sure your Burk is already sending alarm emails<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Over on the Burk side, go to AutoLoad Plus under <strong>Edit<\/strong> > <strong>Settings<\/strong> > <strong>Alarm Notifications<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To send an email at all, your Burk needs an SMTP server to send through. If it&#8217;s already emailing you alerts, you&#8217;ve got one and you&#8217;re set, so skip to Step 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If it isn&#8217;t emailing yet, you can either use your station or company&#8217;s SMTP info. Or, if that&#8217;s going to be a whole <em>thing<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/dont-know-your-companys-smtp-server\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"103\">text.email gives you an SMTP server<\/a> for a quick solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step 3: Make a &#8220;text alert&#8221; list and add your address<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In the <strong>Email Lists<\/strong> tab in Burk, create a new list, call it something like &#8220;Text alert,&#8221; and drop in your text.email address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We want a dedicated text list <strong>so you can route just the text-worthy alarms that way<\/strong>. (Routine alerts stay on an email-only list.) Burk gives you up to 32 lists, so there&#8217;s room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then hit <strong>Test Email<\/strong> (the envelope icon) and confirm you get the text alert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Step 4: Add the text list to your critical alarms<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In each channel&#8217;s config, use the <strong>Meter Notifications<\/strong> and <strong>Status Notifications<\/strong> tabs to attach your text list to the channels you want coming through as texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know best what those should be, but I do have some suggestions to get you started later in the article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"why-not\">Why Not Just Use Burk&#8217;s Voice Dial-Out?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In lieu of texting, Burk does have one native feature to get critical alerts to you in a more disruptive way than email: Calling you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Burk calls you and reads the alarm out loud, and a ringing phone is about as hard to ignore as an alert gets. On the ARC Solo it&#8217;s built in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So why might text be better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Beyond the matter of preference \u2014 who makes calls anymore, right? \u2014 there&#8217;s <strong>the persistence issue<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A call happens once. Miss it and it&#8217;s gone, or you have a voicemail. A text is the same if you see it in the moment, or 30 seconds later, or 5 minutes later when you&#8217;re out of the shower, or whenever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Plus, <strong>if you need to reach more than one person<\/strong>, the text.email distribution lists do that more cleanly than a single call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"get-going\">Get Your Burk Text Alerts Going ASAP<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Ready to get this all set up \u2014 probably within about 10, maybe 15, minutes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Email to text is the easiest way to get critical alerts from your Burk ARC system<\/strong> \u2014 alerts you won&#8217;t miss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the method I described above doesn&#8217;t require <strong>any new infrastructure<\/strong>, <strong>any new equipment<\/strong>, or <strong>any engineering intervention<\/strong>. It&#8217;s copy and paste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Head over to <a href=\"https:\/\/text.email\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/text.email\">text.email<\/a>, grab your address, and add it to a Burk Email List on the alarms worth a text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to <strong>test this out first<\/strong>, you can. Just drop <code>yournumber@text.email<\/code> into your Burk dashboard (you don&#8217;t have to sign up first or anything) and send the test alert. It will come to your phone so you can see how smooth this all works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"deserves-text\">What Deserves a Text vs. an Email? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>You know your situation better than I do, so take this as a starting point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Every alarm matters (otherwise they wouldn&#8217;t be alarms), but <strong>some are worth stopping the world for and some can wait<\/strong>. The former come to you via text, the latter stay in email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s my rough idea for dividing things up to get you going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>For text:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Silence \/ dead air<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Transmitter off or hard fault<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>High VSWR \/ reflected power<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Loss of connection to the site<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Tower light \/ beacon failure<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Could go either way:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Forward power sagging below threshold<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>AC power failure or generator start<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Door or entry at an unmanned site<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>High rack temperature<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>For email:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Routine status changes<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Readings you only check when you&#8217;re going through logs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"next-steps\">Burk ARC Text Alerts: Next Steps to Get You Started<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Alright. That&#8217;s <strong>how you can quickly get alerts texted to you from your Burk ARC system<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sign up at <a href=\"https:\/\/text.email\">text.email<\/a> and <strong>drop your address into your dashboard to get alerts about the most critical situations<\/strong>: silence, off-air, high VSWR, loss of comms, and anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a true set-it-and-forget-it situation. From then on, your urgent alerts will reliably and immediately hit your phone with no new hardware or even ongoing maintenance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The quickest way to set up text alerts for critical situations from your Burk ARC system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-email-to-sms","category-use-cases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/text.email\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}