Livly Alternatives for Property Managers

Livly is the resident app multifamily operators tend to hear about first, and it is a wide product: rent, packages, amenity booking and a community feed in one app, with a resident operations platform behind it. Most people searching for alternatives are unsure they need all of it. Some want a feed and an event calendar that sit beside the app residents already use. Some want a different branded app at renewal. Some are condo or HOA boards who were pointed at Livly and found it is built for apartments. One of the prompts we track puts the goal plainly: something residents will actually open. This page covers the other vendors in our community engagement apps category, sorted by which of those problems they solve, and the questions that separate them in a demo.

Why buyers look past Livly

Start with what Livly does well. It has one of the broadest confirmed PMS lists in this category: Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, ResMan and AppFolio, each from its own integrations page. It is the only vendor here with a confirmed AppFolio connection, and it runs its own portal for operators who would rather not connect a PMS at all. The community side is real. Its homepage describes a private Community Feed where residents and staff share photos, Polls and Trivia, and full-service resident events run with Circuit Living and other event providers.

The objections fall into four groups.

The first is scope. Livly is an all-in-one resident app and operations platform. An operator with a resident portal it likes, or a payments vendor with its own app, may only want the engagement layer, and is really asking whether Livly duplicates the portal inside the property management system.

The second is price. Livly does not publish pricing. Flamingo does, and an operator who wants a published number to compare against ends up there. Livly’s homepage claims $30,000 in annual savings per property. Ask which tasks that figure covers and whether the property that produced it replaced systems or added one.

The third is proof of adoption. Livly claims 1,000 or more properties. That is a customer count, not the share of residents who open the app each month, and adoption rate is the first number buyers ask for. Every vendor in the category answers with totals, so this is a question for all of them.

The fourth is fit. Livly’s segments in our database are institutional and small multifamily. A condo board or a master-planned community needs voting, forums and announcements to owners, which is a different product.

What we could not verify: the research came from vendor pages, vendor-written roundups and one trade article. We found no manager thread about leaving Livly, so these objections come from what buyers ask of the whole category, not from Livly customers. We also found no vendor page, Livly’s included, that describes moderation tools for the neighbor feed.

The alternatives, by what you are replacing

If you want a community layer beside your current app

Cobu is a resident community platform with events, a feed, interest groups, a marketplace and perks. It calls itself PMS-agnostic, lists Entrata and Yardi, and claims 200,000 or more apartment homes across 40 states and Canada. It also turns resident activity into content for AI search visibility; read the data terms. Pricing is not published; Cobu says three to four incremental signed leases cover the annual cost.

Flamingo is a branded engagement app with a social feed, event RSVPs, resident-to-resident messaging, surveys, rewards, amenity reservations and a concierge marketplace, connected to Yardi, RealPage, Entrata and Rent Manager. It is the one multifamily vendor here with published tiers, from a free event marketplace up to Simplify & Automate from $1,500, though the page does not say what unit that price is billed on. The term is 12 months, then month-to-month.

Henri is a resident engagement portal from Scottsdale with a news feed, events and classes with RSVP, a marketplace, group chat, and maintenance and amenity reservations. Our record names no PMS integration and no pricing, so ask for both.

If you want a different branded app

ElevateOS is the closest like-for-like swap. It sells a branded app with a feed and marketplace, event and amenity booking, digital signage and concierge services, aimed at Class A multifamily and mixed-use, and lists MRI, Yardi, Entrata, RealPage and ResMan.

Venn pairs a branded resident app with a team hub and AI leasing and renewal insights. Bozzuto runs it white-labeled as myBozzuto across 120,000 or more units. Its connectors page lists Yardi, RealPage, Entrata and Rent Manager.

VTS Activate Multifamily, formerly Rise Buildings, gives owners, staff and residents one app for access, work orders, rent, packages, amenity reservations, visitors and events. Its pricing is a custom quote and our record lists no PMS integration; its row in the Index shows where it was named.

Zego is a resident app sold with payments and a credit-reporting incentive, marketed as a benefits package, with the longest PMS list in the category: Yardi, MRI, Rent Manager, ResMan, Entrata and RealPage. It makes sense when you would buy Zego’s payments anyway.

If the community is a condo, HOA or master-planned community

BuildingLink is the incumbent for condos, co-ops and HOAs, with amenity reservations, packages, announcements, maintenance requests and front-desk tools, across 7,000 or more communities. TownSq is an HOA app with a news feed, events, pet registration, documents, violations and payments. Condo Control adds discussion forums, surveys and e-voting, and publishes three plans by unit count without figures. HOA Start is the one with full published pricing, from $39 a month billed annually, plus $500 one-time for a native app on the lower tiers. Alosant is a white-label app for master-planned communities, with events, resident-led programming and OneCredential mobile access. If this is your situation, the HOA management software guide covers the accounting systems these apps sit on top of.

How to shortlist

Decide first whether you are replacing Livly or adding beside it; the two lists barely overlap. Then filter by PMS. On AppFolio, no other vendor in the table lists a confirmed connection, and the AppFolio integrations page shows what does connect. On Yardi or Entrata, most of the multifamily vendors qualify.

Then take these questions into every demo:

1. What share of eligible residents opened the app last month at a community like ours that has been live for a year? Totals and downloads do not answer it.
2. Put your app next to our PMS resident portal. What does it do that the portal does not, and does a move-out in the PMS close the app account without anyone touching it?
3. Who can remove a post in the neighbor feed, can posts be held for review, and what does the office see of resident-to-resident messages?
4. Who plans and staffs the events on the calendar? If it is a paid service, what does it cost?
5. What do you earn from our residents through a marketplace, concierge or perks, and who takes the complaint when a service goes wrong?

The resident experience and amenities guide covers the branded-app question in more depth, and the full vendor list puts all thirteen side by side.

What the Index shows

The live table on this page suggests ChatGPT treats Livly as the default answer in this category, and that the alternatives it offers in Livly’s place come mostly from the multifamily side of the list rather than the HOA tools. Livly’s Index row lists the prompts it was named on and the sources behind each answer.

If you sell one of these apps and want to know why an engine does or does not name you, read how we approach AI visibility for proptech vendors. If you are buying, the next page depends on the answer to the first shortlist question. Adding a layer: start with the Cobu profile. Replacing the app: read the Livly profile next to ElevateOS’s, then the category guide for pricing and integration detail.

Head-to-head comparisons in this category: Livly and Flamingo.