PointCentral: Features, Pricing, Integrations & AI Visibility

PointCentral is Alarm.com’s smart-property platform: a cellular hub in each unit, the locks and thermostats behind it, and a portal that provisions residents from the PMS. The research notes trace it from single-family rental into multifamily and build-to-rent, and it is the platform operators put next to SmartRent when the hub question comes up in our multifamily access control guide. The facts panel below is rendered from our vendor database with a source URL and verification date on each entry.

Who it fits and who it does not

PointCentral lists single-family rental and institutional multifamily. The buyer is an operator with scattered-site homes who cannot run a hub on the resident’s Wi-Fi and needs the lock to work before the internet is connected, and the same operator’s multifamily and build-to-rent communities where a per-unit hub is the plan anyway. The cellular hub is the reason, since it does not depend on hallway Wi-Fi or a resident’s router.

It does not list small multifamily, student housing, or commercial facilities. An owner of a quadplex looking for keyless turnover should read the small multifamily page first. An operator whose problem is the lobby intercom or the vehicle gate rather than the unit door is in a different part of the category.

Pricing

Pricing is not published. Ask for the per-unit hardware figure with the hub and the lock together, the per-unit monthly software figure, and the minimum. Ask whether the cellular service is a separate line. Ask whether thermostats and leak sensors are in the base price or add-ons, whether the contract is month-to-month or annual, and who owns the hub at the end of it.

Integrations

The confirmed PMS list is Yardi, RealPage, ResMan, AppFolio, and Entrata, per PointCentral’s own release announcing integration with the major multifamily systems. AppFolio is the entry to notice, since it is on this list and absent from SmartRent’s. Rent Manager, Buildium, Propertyware, and MRI are not on it. The AppFolio integrations page shows which other vendors in the category share that connection.

Ask what syncs, in which direction, and whether it is real time or scheduled. For single-family, ask specifically how a vacant home’s access code is created for a showing and killed afterward, and how that ties to the listing in the PMS.

Limitations and questions to ask

The hub is the first question. The research notes record Z-Wave versus cellular as the real argument in this category, with Wi-Fi failing at scale in garden-style layouts. Cellular is PointCentral’s answer. Ask what the hub does when the signal is weak in a concrete building or a basement unit, what the monthly cellular cost is at your door count, and what still works during an outage.

Ask about batteries, the top operational complaint in the category, and the expected life on the locks it ships. The research notes record Yale locks used inside both SmartRent and PointCentral stacks, so ask which lock models are on the quote and whether you can source them elsewhere.

Ask how a resident without a smartphone gets in. Washington’s ESSB 5937 requires a non-app key on request from January 2027, and New York has already seen litigation after a landlord blocked a key cylinder. Ask who owns setup and support, PointCentral, Alarm.com, or a dealer, and what the response time is when a lock lags.

Alternatives

The comparison to run is how SmartRent compares with PointCentral, a Z-Wave hub against a cellular hub with the same provisioning promise. SmartRent lists student housing, which PointCentral does not. For a single-family operator who wants to keep existing locks, RemoteLock is lock-agnostic and lists both single-family rental and small multifamily. The SmartRent alternatives page places PointCentral among the full category.

AI visibility

The 2026-09 export of the AI Shortlist Index records zero runs for multifamily access control, so PointCentral’s row has no mention rate, position score, or consistency figure yet. The live summary above and PointCentral’s row in the Index fill in with the first full edition. What shapes that result is on our page on AI visibility for proptech companies.