Visitor Management Software Alternatives: How They Compare

Envoy’s paid plan costs $362 a month once you outgrow its free tier. FacilityOS, the platform formerly known as iLobby, starts at $225 a month and requires you to run its own managed iPad hardware, no exceptions. If your front desk doesn’t need enterprise-level complexity or a fleet of vendor-owned tablets, you may be paying for a lot you’ll never touch.

That’s the real question behind “visitor management software alternatives.” Not which tool has the longest feature list. Which one matches what your front desk actually needs, on hardware you’re actually willing to buy or already own. The category isn’t standing still either: the global visitor management software market was worth an estimated $2.35 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $9.90 billion by 2035, according to Precedence Research, so more vendors and more pricing models are entering the field every year, not fewer. This guide breaks down how to compare alternatives properly, what current pricing and hardware requirements look like across the market, and where a lighter or heavier tool makes more sense than the market leader.

If you’re specifically running a small business, our dedicated guide to the best visitor management systems for small businesses narrows this down further: real free-plan conditions, the cheapest options that still cover the basics, and buying mistakes small teams make that this broader comparison doesn’t go into.

What is visitor management software?

Visitor management software checks guests in, alerts their host, and keeps a digital log of who was on-site and when. It replaces the paper logbook at reception.

It matters because a paper log doesn’t hold up during an audit, a safety incident, or a simple “who was here on Tuesday” question. A digital system does, automatically, without anyone digging through a clipboard.

Most tools in this category cover the same basics: check-in, host notification, and a visitor log. What separates them is depth. Badge printing, ID scanning, watchlist screening, and whether visitor management is the whole product or one module inside a bigger workplace platform.

Why comparing alternatives usually goes wrong

Most buyers shortlist tools by price alone, then get surprised later. A few specific mistakes show up again and again.

Comparing sticker price, not the feature set behind it. Two plans priced close together aren’t the same product just because the numbers are close. One might skip badge printing or analytics entirely.

Ignoring per-location pricing. Most of these tools charge per site, not per company. A five-location business pays five times the listed number, not the number on the homepage.

Treating “visitor management” as the whole job. Archie and Vizitor also handle desks, rooms, or attendance. Buy a check-in-only tool today, and you may be buying a second tool for room booking next year.

Skipping the support and setup question. iLobby (FacilityOS) and Eptura Visitor (formerly Proxyclick) both involve a sales call and a longer rollout. That’s fine for a 500-person manufacturing site. It’s a poor fit for a 20-person office that wants to be live this afternoon.

Assuming every “compliant” claim means the same thing. GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2 references show up across nearly every vendor’s marketing page. Ask what’s actually certified versus what’s simply “supported,” and get it in writing before you sign.

How to actually evaluate visitor management software alternatives

Skip the star ratings for a minute and score each option against the questions that actually predict whether you’ll be happy with it in a year.

Does the pricing model match how you’re structured? Per-location pricing punishes a chain with ten small sites and rewards a single large campus, or the reverse, depending on the vendor. Work out your real monthly cost at your actual location count before you compare headline numbers.

Can you use hardware you already own? This is the question most buyers skip, and it’s the one that determines your real total cost. Some platforms run on any tablet or phone; others, like FacilityOS, require their own managed devices that you can’t substitute, which adds a hardware line item most comparison articles never mention.

How fast can you actually go live? A self-serve tool with no sales call can be running at your front desk within the hour. A quote-based enterprise platform typically means a discovery call, a proposal, and a provisioning period before the first badge prints.

Does it stop at check-in, or does it cover what comes next? If your visitor also needs a desk, a meeting room, or a delivery logged, a check-in-only tool leaves that work to a second system. Decide up front whether that’s acceptable.

What happens at your busiest hour, not your average one? Ask each vendor what their system does with 50 simultaneous check-ins during a conference or an all-hands, not what it does on a quiet Tuesday. Watchlist screening and ID scanning both add processing time per visitor that compounds at volume.

How does it actually hold up day to day, not just on the features page? G2’s own aggregated buyer research names reliability and ease of use as the two factors real buyers weigh most when comparing this category, ahead of any single feature. A tool with a longer feature list that’s fiddly to use every morning loses to a simpler one your front desk never has to think about.

The alternatives: pricing, pros, and cons at a glance

Here’s where each tool stands, checked against each vendor’s own pricing page as of this writing.

Vizitor

• What it is: Visitor management bundled with queue handling, desk booking, meeting rooms, and deliveries in one system
• Pricing: Starter from $36/location/month (capped check-ins); Premium $72/location/month (double the check-in cap and directory size)
• Hardware: Any Android or iOS tablet you already own, no managed hardware to buy
• Proof: Runs across 175 Hard Rock Cafe locations in 74 countries, 100% of check-ins automated
• Pros: No mandatory hardware purchase · Bundles 4+ modules instead of selling them separately · Lowest starting price of any full-platform option here · Self-serve setup, no sales call
• Cons: Enterprise watchlist workflows go less deep than a dedicated high-security platform like FacilityOS

Envoy

• What it is: Visitor management plus workplace tools, integration-heavy
• Pricing: Free (100 entries/month), then Premium $362/location/month, Enterprise by quote
• Hardware: Own tablet or Envoy-supplied hardware
• Standout: Deep integration list, Slack, SSO, guest Wi-Fi, directory sync
• Pros: Genuinely usable free tier · Among the deepest workplace-tool integrations in this category
• Cons: $362/location/month Premium tier is the highest non-quote-based price here · Free tier’s 100-entry cap is total, not per location, so it disappears fast at a busy desk
• Full comparison: Vizitor vs Envoy

Eptura Visitor (formerly Proxyclick)

• What it is: Enterprise visitor management, folded into Eptura’s workplace platform
• Pricing: Two tiers, Advanced and Power, both quote-only, no public dollar figures
• Hardware: Varies by deployment
• Standout: Power tier adds access-control integration and API access on top of Advanced’s check-in and custom badges
• Pros: Deep access-control integration for organizations already standardized on the wider Eptura suite
• Cons: No public pricing anywhere, can’t budget without a sales call · Setup runs on Eptura’s enterprise timeline
• Full comparison: Vizitor vs Proxyclick

FacilityOS (formerly iLobby)

• What it is: Enterprise facility and visitor management for high-security or regulated sites
• Pricing: Corporate $225/site/month, Enhanced $299/site/month, Enterprise by quote
• Hardware: Managed iPad only, mandatory, no bring-your-own-device option
• Standout: Watchlist screening, ID scanning, multi-channel emergency alerts (Enterprise tier)
• Pros: Strongest watchlist and emergency-alert feature set on this list
• Cons: Mandatory managed hardware, no substitute allowed · Among the highest starting prices here before adding a single extra feature
• Full comparison: Vizitor vs iLobby

Sign In App (formerly SwipedOn)

• What it is: Visitor and employee sign-in, based in New Zealand/UK
• Pricing: Core £415/year, Enhanced £835/year, Pro £1,255/year, all per site (roughly $525-$1,591/year, or $44-$133/month at current exchange rates)
• Hardware: Own tablet
• Standout: SSO and SCIM in the Pro tier; a custom Executive tier for larger rollouts
• Pros: Straightforward, affordable core tier · Runs on hardware you already own
• Cons: GBP-native pricing means US buyers budget against a moving exchange rate · SSO/SCIM require the top Pro tier
• Full comparison: Vizitor vs SwipedOn

Greetly

• What it is: Visitor-first, check-in-only tool, no desk or room modules
• Pricing: Essential $99/month, Pro $159/month, both billed yearly
• Standout: Pro adds badge printing, government ID verification, and a digital mailroom
• Pros: Badge printing, ID verification, and a digital mailroom included even at the entry tier
• Cons: Check-in only, a team that later needs desk or room booking is buying a second tool
• Full comparison: Vizitor vs Greetly

Archie

• What it is: Visitor management plus desk and room booking
• Pricing: Visitor management from $109/location/month, Pro $185/location/month (SSO, SCIM, emergency evacuation); desk-booking module priced separately and higher
• Standout: A single workplace platform if you want more than just a front-desk screen
• Pros: Bundles visitor management with desk and room booking for teams that want one workplace platform
• Cons: Desk-booking priced and billed separately, easy to underestimate real total cost from the headline number alone
• Full comparison: Vizitor vs Archie

Comparison table: alternatives at a glance

Prices are per vendor, checked directly against each vendor’s own pricing page as of this writing, billed annually unless noted. Confirm the latest figure before you buy. Plans, and pricing pages, change more often than any comparison article can track.

One nuance worth flagging: “per location” and “per site” mean the same thing across every vendor here, but the volume cap attached to it varies a lot. Vizitor’s Starter tier includes 300 check-ins a month per location. Envoy’s free tier caps at 100 entries a month total, not per location, which is easy to miss if you’re only comparing the word “free” across vendors. If your lobby runs busy, check the volume cap before you check the price.

What switching actually costs beyond the subscription

The monthly number on a pricing page is rarely the whole bill. The gap shows up in two places:

Hardware

• Run on tablets you already own: Vizitor, Envoy’s base plan, Greetly, Sign In App, Archie
• Mandatory managed hardware, no substitute allowed: FacilityOS only. The vendor provisions and controls the iPad, which is a fair trade-off for a regulated site that wants one less variable to secure, but a real cost and dependency, not a footnote

Rollout time

• Same-day, self-serve, no sales call: Vizitor
• Quote-based, with a discovery call, proposal, and provisioning step before the first visitor checks in: FacilityOS, Eptura Visitor
• Neither is wrong on its own. A 500-person manufacturing site with watchlist screening genuinely needs the longer, controlled rollout. A 20-person office doesn’t, and paying for it anyway is the single most common overspend in this category

When a different approach makes more sense

Not every business needs a switch, and not every alternative fits every business.

• A single small office with a handful of daily visitors may not need to switch at all. A simpler, cheaper tool, or a trial run on your current one, covers everything without the extras.
• Heavily regulated industries (aerospace, defense, large-scale manufacturing) are the exception where FacilityOS or Eptura Visitor’s compliance depth and managed hardware justify the higher price and longer setup. Run the math at your own location count first: five locations on Vizitor’s Starter tier costs roughly $2,160/year; the same five locations on FacilityOS Corporate runs closer to $13,500/year, before counting that the hardware is mandatory. That gap buys real things: provisioned kiosk hardware, watchlist screening, multi-site emergency alerting.
• If desk or room scheduling is the real problem, and visitor check-in is secondary, look at a platform like Vizitor or Archie that bundles both. Two tools that don’t talk to each other creates its own overhead.
• If you’re already happy with your current VMS and it’s just the invoice that’s climbing, call your vendor before you switch. Pricing on annual renewals is often negotiable.

Why businesses land on Vizitor after comparing these alternatives

Weighed against the six tools above, three differences show up consistently:

• No hardware lock-in. FacilityOS requires its own managed iPad hardware with no substitute. Vizitor, and most of the other alternatives here, runs on any Android or iOS tablet you already own, so switching doesn’t mean a hardware order first.
• One platform instead of a stack. Greetly and Sign In App are check-in only. Vizitor bundles visitor management with queue handling, desk booking, meeting room scheduling, and delivery logging in one account, at $36/location/month, the lowest full-platform starting price on this list.
• Live the same day, not after a sales cycle. Eptura Visitor and FacilityOS both route through a quote and provisioning step before the first badge prints. Vizitor is self-serve, and Hard Rock Cafe’s deployment across 175 locations in 74 countries ran on the same setup process a single-location office uses, with 100% of check-ins automated once live.

None of that makes Vizitor the right fit for every case above. A regulated manufacturing site that genuinely needs FacilityOS’s managed hardware and watchlist depth should pay for it. But for most buyers here, offices, coworking spaces, and multi-location businesses that want one system instead of five, the combination of no hardware lock-in, bundled modules, and same-day setup is why Vizitor keeps coming up as the answer.

Where to go deeper

This page is a starting point, not the full comparison. For a detailed, feature-by-feature breakdown against Vizitor:

• Vizitor vs Envoy
• Vizitor vs Proxyclick
• Vizitor vs iLobby
• Vizitor vs SwipedOn
• Vizitor vs Greetly
• Vizitor vs Archie

If Envoy specifically is what you’re replacing, our full Envoy alternatives roundup goes deeper on that shortlist. Narrowing in on check-in-only tools instead of the full platform comparison here? Our top visitor check-in software picks covers that narrower angle. And if you also need to manage front-desk queues, not just visitor check-in, our queue management system works alongside visitor management in the same account.

Try it before you decide

The fastest way to compare any of these tools is to run your own front desk through it for a week. Start a free trial at vizitorapp.com and see how check-in, host alerts, and branding hold up against your actual visitor traffic.