Livly alternatives: 6 platforms compared (2026)

On September 15, 2026, Bilt announced it had acquired Livly's technology platform. If your apartment communities run on Livly, that is the day the resident app you rolled out became part of someone else's roadmap. Bilt says it has a transition plan for current Livly-powered communities, and it may be a good one. You still have to decide whether to ride it or use the moment to look around.

This is a comparison of six alternatives a Livly buyer in multifamily would actually consider, as of October 2026, on the three things that decide whether a resident engagement app earns its fee: what residents have to install, what onsite staff have to keep feeding, and the pricing shape as the vendor publishes it. Every fact here comes from the vendors' own sites or from news coverage. We make one of the six. It is the smallest, and it is the wrong answer for most of the people reading this.

What Livly is, and what changed

Livly describes itself as "the all-in-one resident app and property management platform for multifamily." The resident side is a custom-branded app for rent payments, package alerts, maintenance requests, events and a community feed. The staff side is the Livly Property Hub, a dashboard for rent, maintenance, move-in checklists and email. Add-ons include Livly Key for phone-as-key access, a guest kiosk, amenity booking and gift card rewards. Its integrations page names Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, ResMan and AppFolio, and it also offers to run without a PMS at all. Pricing comes in two plans, Core and Pro, both listed as "Contact for Pricing."

Livly was originally built by FLATS, a multifamily operator now part of Collective Residential. Bilt's September 15 release says it is acquiring Livly's technology platform and partnering with Collective Residential to run its communities' resident experience on Bilt, with a "comprehensive transition plan" for current Livly-powered communities and Livly's access, package and smart-home tools folded into Bilt's own. Terms were not disclosed. None of that is a reason to leave. It is a reason to know your options before the renewal conversation, because the product is going to change under you either way.

How to compare them

Resident engagement apps come in three shapes, and the shape matters more than the feature list. The resident engagement platform buyer's guide covers this in depth, so briefly:

• The standalone resident app. A branded app from a vendor that is not your PMS. Livly, Venn, Zego Mobile Doorman, Flamingo and ElevateOS are all this. Residents download it, staff feed it.
• The engagement layer on your PMS. The resident app your property management vendor already sells: RealPage LOFT, Entrata Homebody, Yardi RentCafe Resident. One fewer vendor, at the PMS vendor's pace.
• The lightweight channel. One job, no install. A printed QR sign residents scan to leave a private note.

The six alternatives

1. Venn

Venn's resident product is a branded app with an AI concierge at the center. In its own words, "Rent, maintenance, packages, and community all live in a single app under your name." The concierge takes requests over SMS, in the app or on the web, and community events appear in a "For you" list.

What a Livly buyer should notice is what Venn now sells around that app. The homepage leads with "Sovereign AI for Real Estate" and a "Company Brain" that Venn says is built on the operator's own data, with agents for budgeting, screening and onsite team performance. The resident app is one surface of a much larger platform. Venn raised a 52 million dollar Series B in November 2025 and was reported in September 2026 to have acquired Zuma, a developer of AI agents for multifamily operators. Customers named on its site include Bozzuto, Related and Kairoi Residential.

Residents install an app. Staff maintain content and events, with the concierge handling routine requests. Pricing is not published. Best fit: a large operator that wants the resident app as the front end of a portfolio-wide AI platform, and has the IT team to feed one.

2. Zego Mobile Doorman

Zego is a payments and utilities company first. Its footer still reads PayLease, LLC, doing business as Zego, and the site badges it as "A Global Payments Company." It bought Mobile Doorman in February 2021, and Zego's CEO credited the company with having "pioneered the concept of branded multifamily community apps."

The app today is "a customizable resident app" with payments that pair with Zego Pay, work orders with service ratings, scheduled resident messaging, a virtual bulletin board for events and items for sale, amenity reservations, package notifications and an events calendar. Named integrations include Blue Moon for lease renewals and three national package locker systems.

Residents install an app. Staff post to the bulletin board, run the messaging and manage reservations. Every pricing path on the site ends at "Request pricing" or "Request a Quote." Best fit: a portfolio already on Zego for rent payments or utility billing. The Zego and Livly head-to-head gets its own article.

3. Flamingo

Flamingo sells an "all-in-1" branded resident app and leans hardest of the six on events. Operators book events through a host network the site says numbers more than 3,000, "Just Like Ordering an Uber." Around the events sit amenity and parking booking, resident rewards, a digital bulletin board with an AI-managed social feed, hotel-style services like house cleaning, rent payment, maintenance requests and virtual keys. Its integrations section names categories rather than specific PMS vendors. The App Store lists the developer as Flamingo Group Inc.

Residents install an app. Staff maintain the event calendar, the feed and the amenity rules, with the hosting itself ordered through the marketplace. Pricing is not published, and the call to action is "Book a Demo." Best fit: a Class A community whose retention plan runs through programming, and whose onsite team would rather order events than plan them.

4. ElevateOS

ElevateOS, formerly Elevated Living, calls itself "The Resident Experience Operating System": one white-labeled resident app, one staff app and one web portal. The resident app covers access control, packages, smart home, payments, amenity booking, events through its Resivents brand, maintenance requests, announcements, and a services marketplace for housekeeping and dog walking that ElevateOS staffs and shares revenue from with the owner. It names the widest PMS list of the six: Yardi, Entrata, RealPage, ResMan, AppFolio, Rent Manager and MRI, plus 50+ hardware integrations.

It is also the only one of the six that publishes its pricing shape in writing. The pricing page says the platform "is priced per unit, scoped to the modules and integrations your property needs," and that it "doesn't publish a rate card." The headline, "Pricing can start at $0," is explained as revenue share from services, paid amenities, parking and event tickets offsetting the platform fee. That is a real structure, not a free tier, and your cost depends on how much your residents buy.

Residents install an app. Staff maintain events and announcements, with the services run by the vendor. Best fit: a community replacing access, packages, smart home and engagement in one purchase.

5. Your PMS vendor's own resident app

Before you shop for a replacement, open the resident app your property management system already sells. The question is whether the thing you pay a second vendor for is now inside the first one.

RealPage LOFT. ActiveBuilding was renamed LOFT in October 2024, and RealPage describes it as built to work within its own ecosystem. Residents pay rent, submit and track maintenance, and reserve amenities, parking and storage. A client-funded Loyalty+ rewards add-on carries a per unit per month cost. Base pricing is not published.

Entrata Homebody. Entrata's white-labeled app, in its words "a single, user-friendly app residents actually use and operators can manage from within Entrata." Residents pay rent, submit maintenance, message staff, renew the lease, and see community events and amenities. In March 2026 Entrata added Cobu's "24/7 moderated resident engagement" to Homebody. Pricing is not published.

Yardi RentCafe Resident. Rent payments, maintenance requests with photos, amenity booking, package tracking, in-app renewals and a Bulletin Board. The App Store listing says "options vary based on each community," which is the honest version of what every PMS layer does: your property gets the modules your operator turned on. App pricing is not published. MRI launched MRI Engage for Living in October 2025 with "fully integrated resident and leasing portals, embedded payments," and the release describes no feed or events module.

Residents install an app, but often the one they already use to pay rent, which is the whole argument. Staff maintain whatever community features the module has. Best fit: an operator whose engagement ambitions are announcements, amenity booking and a calendar.

6. Knoted

This is the one we make, and it is not an app. It is a printed, branded QR sign in each amenity space. A resident scans it and types a private note in about ten seconds, no app, no login, no account, with an optional email if they want a reply. The office gets an email the moment the note lands. The regional sees every note across their communities and gets a Monday summary. The note page points urgent and in-unit issues to the office phone and the work order system rather than collecting them.

What it does not do is most of this list. No resident app, no events, no payments, no access control, no package alerts, no amenity booking, no resident directory, no messaging between residents, and no integration with any PMS, CRM or work order system. It prices per community rather than per unit, and the number is on the Communities page.

Residents install nothing. Staff maintain nothing beyond answering the notes. Best fit: hearing what residents will not say with their name attached, in the gym at 6am or at the dog run, across a portfolio. Who should not pick it: anyone whose problem is rent collection, access control, packages or amenity booking. Anyone who needs a feed, a calendar or a directory. Any portfolio that needs resident data flowing into the PMS. If you are leaving Livly because residents stopped opening it, a sign fixes the install problem and nothing else. It is a complement to one of the five above, or a first step, and we would rather say that than sell it as a replacement.

Side by side

As published in October 2026. "Quoted" means a demo or quote request and no figure.

Which one, by situation

You are staying on Livly through the Bilt transition. Ask Bilt, in writing, what the resident app will be called, whether residents will need to reinstall, and what the pricing shape is after migration. It still has to survive the phone problem: anyone who never installed the old app is not going to install the new one either.

Your PMS is RealPage, Entrata or Yardi, and residents already pay rent in its app. Start with the PMS layer. One install, one vendor, one login. Add a standalone app only if the PMS module cannot do the one specific thing you need.

You are already on Zego, or buying access and packages in the same cycle. Mobile Doorman is the first call for the former and ElevateOS for the latter. Flamingo when the retention plan runs through programming. Venn when you are buying an operating layer, not an app.

Residents stopped opening the app and nobody onsite has time to feed it. That is not a vendor problem and a different app will not fix it. Fix the small things fast and make reporting them painless first, which is where our ranking of resident retention strategies starts. A sign in each amenity space does that job with nothing to install. If the building then starts asking for events and a feed, go shopping with your own usage numbers in hand. Before adding a survey platform on top, read what resident survey platforms cost, per unit and the resident feedback tools comparison.

Then go back to the first question. The app you had was bought by someone else on a Tuesday in September, and the residents who never installed it did not notice. Whatever you buy next, buy it for them too.

Common questions

Is Livly still available after the Bilt acquisition?

As of October 2026, Livly's site is still live with its Core and Pro plans marked "Contact for Pricing." Bilt's September 15, 2026 release says it acquired Livly's technology platform and has a transition plan for current Livly-powered communities. What the app is called after migration, and what it costs, is a question to put to Bilt in writing before you renew.

What is the best Livly alternative for a small apartment community?

Start with the resident app your PMS already includes, since residents likely log into it to pay rent anyway, and add a printed note channel in the amenity spaces for the things residents will not say with their name attached. A standalone branded app is a second front desk, and a small team rarely has the hours to feed it.

Do I need a resident app if my PMS already has one?

Usually not at first. RealPage LOFT, Entrata Homebody and Yardi RentCafe Resident all cover rent, maintenance, amenity booking and some form of community board or events. Write down the one thing you need that the PMS module does not do, then shop for a standalone app only if it is worth a second install and a second vendor. The buyer's guide has the six questions to ask before you sign.

How much do Livly alternatives cost per unit?

Almost none of them publish a number. Livly, Venn, Zego, Flamingo, RealPage, Entrata and Yardi all route to a demo or quote request. ElevateOS publishes its shape, per unit by module with no rate card. We price per community. For any quote, ask three vendors for the same module list and unit count, and compare exit terms alongside the figure.