Zego vs Livly for Property Managers

Zego and Livly both put a branded app in front of apartment residents, and one of the buyer prompts we track asks the question the way an operator would: Zego Mobile Doorman vs Livly, which resident app should a 2,000-unit apartment operator choose? The person asking is usually a marketing or resident-services lead at a multifamily portfolio, choosing one app for every community rather than one building at a time. The two arrive at the category from different directions. Zego is a payments company whose Mobile Doorman app carries the resident experience, and its database record describes a resident app, payments and a credit-reporting incentive marketed as a resident benefits package. Livly sells the app itself, an all-in-one resident app and resident operations platform. That difference shapes the contract, the price and the questions to ask. This page sets the two side by side from our vendor database and the research behind the resident experience and amenities guide.

Where each fits

Livly’s record describes rent, packages, amenity booking and a community feed in one resident app, with a resident operations platform for staff, and claims more than 1,000 properties. Its homepage puts a number on the problem it sells against: running rent, packages, amenities and messaging in separate systems, which it says costs 15 to 20 percent of staff time per task, and it claims $30,000 in annual savings per property. Livly also lists Amenify, the cleaning, handyman and delivery service layer, as a partner inside its app. The database tags Livly institutional multifamily and small multifamily.

Zego’s Mobile Doorman page lists maintenance requests, payments, amenity reservations, messaging and announcements, packages, guest registration, an events calendar, surveys and renewal automation, and the research notes Blue Moon for renewals. Zego’s site claims more than 7,000 management companies. The database tags it institutional multifamily, HOA communities and student housing. The credit-reporting incentive is the line with no counterpart on Livly’s record, and it is why Zego also appears in the resident benefits platforms guide, where single-family and small multifamily managers buy a resident-paid bundle rather than a branded app.

The property management system narrows it further. Both list Yardi, RealPage, Entrata and ResMan. Zego adds MRI and Rent Manager. Livly adds AppFolio, plus its own portal for operators that prefer not to integrate with a PMS at all. So an operator on MRI or Rent Manager has a listed integration with Zego and not with Livly, an operator on AppFolio has one with Livly and not with Zego, and an operator running some communities without a PMS has a path with Livly. The MRI and AppFolio integration pages list every category that connects to each system, which helps if the resident app is one of several decisions in the same budget.

Segments add one more split. Zego’s HOA and student housing tags matter for an operator with a mixed estate. Livly’s small multifamily tag and its no-PMS portal point to smaller portfolios. A 2,000-unit operator on Yardi sits in the overlap, where the PMS no longer decides it and the business model does.

The business model is worth spelling out, because it changes who you call when something breaks. Livly’s record does not say who processes rent paid in its app, so the app vendor and the payments processor may be two companies, and a resident whose rent payment fails in the app is a question for whichever one handles the money. With Zego, the app and the payment run through one vendor, which means one support line and one contract, and also one renewal where both are on the table at once. Neither arrangement is wrong. A team that already likes its payments provider has less reason to move it to get an app. A team buying payments anyway may prefer to buy both from one place and negotiate them together.

Pricing models

Neither vendor publishes pricing in our database. Ask both for the per-unit and minimum figures, the contract term, and what the resident pays.

The shapes will differ. Livly sells the app as its own product, so expect a per-unit or per-property fee that stacks on top of the PMS and whatever payments contract you already carry. Zego sells the app alongside payments and a package marketed as a resident benefits package, so the app may arrive as a line inside a larger agreement, and some of the cost may land on the resident through the package. Ask Zego for the app’s price on its own line, and ask what changes if you use Mobile Doorman without Zego payments. Ask Livly whether rent in the app runs through its own processing or a partner’s, and what it charges for that.

Then compare on one basis: annual cost at today’s unit count and at the count you expect in two years, including any integration fee billed separately, set against the cost of turning on the resident portal your PMS already ships.

What to ask each in a demo

The research for this category came from vendor product and integration pages, because manager forums and trade press turned up nothing on resident apps. The pain points still translate into questions.

1. What does your app do that the resident portal inside our PMS does not? Ask both to go feature by feature, since a PMS portal such as RealPage’s LOFT already covers reservations, payments, service requests and a community feed.
2. How do you count adoption? Downloads, accounts created, monthly active residents and residents who paid rent in the app last month are four different numbers. Ask each for the last two at a community live for a year.
3. When a resident tracks a maintenance request, is that status read from the work order in our PMS or from a ticket that lives only in your app? Zego’s page promises residents are never left in the dark; ask how. Ask Livly the same.
4. Livly: what tasks and hourly rate sit behind the $30,000-per-property savings figure, and did that community replace systems or add one?
5. Zego: what does the resident pay under the resident benefits package, can we offer the app without it, and how does the credit-reporting incentive work for a resident who opts out?
6. If we leave, who owns the app store listing, the resident accounts and the push tokens, and what does the export look like?

What the Index shows

The live comparison above carries each vendor’s numbers from the current edition of the AI Shortlist Index for resident experience. Our reading is that ChatGPT treats Livly as the reference resident app in this category and names Zego less consistently, more often as one option in a longer list than as the answer. The rows for Livly and Zego show the prompts behind each answer and update each edition.

Which fits you

Livly fits an operator that wants a standalone resident app priced on its own, runs AppFolio or a mix that includes communities with no PMS, and wants packages, amenities and the community feed handled in one staff platform with a services layer like Amenify available inside it. Zego fits an operator that already buys or wants payments from the same vendor, runs MRI or Rent Manager, has HOA or student housing in the portfolio, or wants renewal automation and a credit-reporting incentive in the same contract as the app. On Yardi, RealPage, Entrata or ResMan, both have a listed integration, and the deciding question is whether you want the resident app bundled with payments or bought on its own.

If neither one suits your portfolio, the BuildingLink alternatives page sorts the rest of the category by who is buying, and the full vendor list puts every vendor’s facts on one screen. The Zego profile and Livly profile carry the dated sources, and the category guide covers how to test adoption and renewal claims.

If you sell a resident app and want to know why ChatGPT reaches for one vendor before another, AI visibility for proptech companies explains what the Index measures.