The 2026 Pluss engagement benchmark
See where your communities sit
We measured how residents actually use their community app across 79 communities and 25 operators in Australia and New Zealand, over the 13 weeks to 17 October 2026. Every figure came from each community's own analytics.
79
communities measured, across 25 operators
12,112
residents using the app
1.2m
resident interactions in 13 weeks, about one a day each
64%
of residents engaged in the median community
What we found
What staff post, and what residents do
Residents have twelve self serve options in the app besides reading it. They can book an event, book a facility, answer a survey, post in a group, comment, react and log a request. The median community has seven of them turned on.
74%
of residents use the app regularly where most of the twelve are switched on.
42%
of residents use the app regularly where most of the twelve are switched off.
Busy staff do not explain the gap. Eleven communities had quiet staff and busy residents and reached 70.5% engaged. Eleven others posted more and gave residents little to do, and reached 55.6%. Posting more lifts the quietest group from 37.1% to 55.6%. Giving residents things to do lifts it to 70.5% instead.
Event booking shows the same thing. Sixty communities ran about the same number of events each week. The thirty where residents could book into a quarter of them reached 74.6% engaged. The thirty where residents could book into none reached 49.7%.
Figure 3
The twelve self serve options, ranked by the gap
Each row compares the communities where residents can do that thing against the communities where they cannot. The gap is in engaged residents per hundred.
| Residents can | Turned on | Turned off | Gap | Off in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book an event | 61.3% | 33.3% | 28.0 | 8 communities |
| React to a news post | 61.9% | 37.1% | 24.8 | 11 communities |
| Book a facility or service | 73.6% | 51.0% | 22.6 | 53 communities |
| Comment on news | 62.7% | 41.7% | 21.0 | 16 communities |
| Answer a survey | 70.8% | 52.4% | 18.4 | 53 communities |
| Submit a form | 68.8% | 51.0% | 17.8 | 46 communities |
| Comment on an event | 62.4% | 45.1% | 17.3 | 18 communities |
| Post in a group | 64.2% | 47.4% | 16.8 | 27 communities |
What to change first
The order to switch them on
Get everyone signed up
The median community has a quarter of its residents not registered. Nothing else on this list reaches them.
Make every event bookable
The typical community takes bookings on 7% of its events. Nineteen residents book into each event that does.
Open facility and service booking
Set up a calendar and time slots for each facility, then let residents book themselves. If you would rather approve each booking, there is a setting for that.
Run surveys in the app
Put the survey at the top of the Home tab while it is running, so residents see it when they open the app. Take it down when the survey closes.
Convert your paper forms
Residents complete and submit a fillable form in the app without a trip to the office.
Start groups with your activity leaders
Other residents follow the people who already run things.
Turn comments on
Do not let the worry about a resident saying the wrong thing keep comments off. Use the moderation settings if you need them.
Send two or three alerts a week
The median is 0.8. Running more events and posting more news are not on this list.
Figure 4
Where your communities would sit
Half the communities measured sit between 44% and 76% engaged, and every one of them runs the same app with every module included.
| Measure | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile | Top ten |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residents signed up to the app | 58% | 75% | 86% | 94% |
| Engaged residents | 44% | 64% | 76% | 86% |
| Very active residents | 26% | 48% | 66% | 75% |
| Self serve options on, of 12 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 9 |
| Share of events bookable | 0% | 7% | 25% | 35% |
| Alerts per week | 0.2 | 0.8 | 2.4 | 2.3 |
| News posts per week | 0.8 | 3.1 | 6.3 | 4.4 |
| Events in 13 weeks | 95 | 305 | 470 | 334 |
The top ten
What the ten most engaged communities do
The ten most engaged communities have 94% of their residents signed up, against 75% across the study. That sign up gap explains about three quarters of their lead.
They run no more events, 334 against 305, and they barely post more news. They make a third of their events bookable against 7%. They run three times as many live groups. Their staff message residents one to one six times as often as the communities that do it at all. They do all of it with fewer staff accounts per resident, 4.65 per hundred against 6.25.
Nine operators sit inside that ten, across both countries, at a median of 210 residents.
Your own numbers
Get your benchmark report
We score your communities on the same twelve self serve options and show where each one sits against the benchmark, on every measure in the table above. The full study comes with it, including the method behind every figure and the event theme study across 24,328 events.
Request your report
Prefer to email? Write to shaun@plusscommunities.com.