Choosing a resident app: a buyer’s guide for operators

This guide sets out what to check before you choose a resident app. It covers retirement villages, land lease communities and aged care homes in Australia and New Zealand.

It is written for the operations manager, GM or CEO who has to compare vendors and then take one to the executive team or board. Each section says what to look for and what to ask. The last section puts the demo questions in one list you can print.

Pluss Communities makes one of these apps. 148 communities across Australia and New Zealand use Pluss, including Bolton Clarke, Aveo and TriCare. Where we use Pluss as an example, we quote only what we already publish.

What this guide covers:

• What residents, families and staff need from it
• Your own brand or a shared app
• What residents will use
• Staff workload and who posts
• Connections to your other systems
• Data security and where data is held
• Several villages and head office
• Setup time and training
• Pricing models and what to ask
• Building the business case and getting it approved
• Questions to ask in a demo

What residents, families and staff need from it

Write down the four or five jobs the app has to do at your villages. Send that list to each vendor before the demo, and ask them to show those jobs first.

Residents

Residents use a village app to read news and alerts, book events and facilities, check the menu and log maintenance. Count how many taps each of those takes on a resident's own phone, with the text size turned up.

Find out which level of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) the vendor has tested the app against. Then get a demo login and give it to two or three residents for a week. Write down every question they ask you.

Some residents will not use a phone at all. Ask what the app gives staff for them. A list of who has not read a notice tells a village manager whose door to knock on.

Families

In aged care homes, plan for family members as users in their own right. Ask who approves a family member's access, and whether they see one resident or the whole home. Check whether you pay for each family login.

Ask whether staff can post an update about one resident that only that resident's family sees. Find out who checks it before it goes.

At Pluss there is no charge for staff or family users. Our aged care family app page shows what families see.

Staff

Staff need to choose who gets each post. A village manager should be able to send a water outage alert to one building only, and the week's events to every resident. Have the vendor do both in the demo, from a phone.

Then look at the staff side. A lifestyle coordinator needs bookings and attendee lists. A maintenance officer needs open requests, with the photo the resident took.

Buyers who have not moved in

New villages and land lease communities have a fourth group: buyers waiting for their home. GemLife has launched the app at its seven resorts still in development. It uses the app to keep in touch with buyers before their homes are built.

Ask whether buyers can join before they move in, and what they see. In Pluss, prospects join from their first enquiry.

Your own brand or a shared app

Residents can get village news through a private social media group, a vendor's shared app, or an app in your own name.

A social media group costs nothing to set up. Each resident needs an account with the social media company, and you do not control the ads shown beside your posts.

With a shared app, residents download the vendor's app and then find your village inside it. Ask what name residents type into the app store, and whose name sits under the icon on their phone.

With your own app, residents search for your village's name. Each Pluss operator gets the app in their own brand, with its own logo, colours and app name. TriCare's app is called TriCare Bubble.

Your own app needs more sign-off at your end. Someone has to approve the app name, icon, colours and app store text. In a large operator, that approval can take longer than the vendor's build.

Whichever model you choose, find out:

• Whose developer account holds the app store listing, and what happens to it if you leave.
• Whether each village gets its own app, or one app covers the group.
• Whether you can rename features in your own words, such as calling the events calendar "What's on".
• Whether you can switch off features you will not use, so residents see fewer buttons.

What residents will use

Ask every vendor for usage figures, and ask how each one was counted. Here are ours, with what each one covers.

Across 21 communities, a median of 79.6% of residents are active in the app every month. A median means about half of those 21 communities sit below that figure.

At Ozcare's Reflections on the Bay, where the average resident is 79, 95% used the app each week within 90 days of launch. That is one community.

Our June 2023 post on Botanica Lifestyle Resort reported 90% weekly resident engagement there. That is also one community, and the figure is from 2023.

When any vendor gives you a usage figure, find out:

• How many communities it covers, out of how many they serve.
• Whether it is a median, an average or their best site.
• What counts as active: opening the app, or reading, booking or posting.
• Whether it is weekly or monthly, and how long after launch it was measured.

Then ask to speak to the manager of a village whose residents are as old as yours.

Staff workload and who posts

Name the person at each village who will post, before you buy. Then list what the app should replace for them. Start with the printed newsletter, notices in the lift, the menu on the noticeboard and the phone round when an event moves.

If your village manager spends three days a month on a newsletter, ask the vendor where that content goes in the app. Have them time a post in the demo, from opening the app to the alert landing on a phone.

In Pluss, news posts carry photos, video and files. Staff can schedule them. Pluss shows who has read each post, so a manager can ring only the residents who missed a water outage notice.

If you run TV screens in common areas, ask whether posts from the app can show on them without anyone retyping them.

Ask whether a residents' club can post its own events, and whether staff approve each post first. Find out who gets told when a post is waiting for approval.

Last, ask who your staff call when something breaks. Get the response time written into the contract.

Connections to your other systems

List the systems the app would need to share data with. That might be your sales CRM, resident database, finance system or maintenance contractor's software.

For each one, find out:

• Whether the vendor has connected to that system for another customer, and whether you can speak to that customer.
• Whether data moves one way or both ways, and how often.
• What the connection costs to build, and what it costs each year after.
• Who fixes the connection when either system is updated.

Get the vendor's day rate for custom work in writing before you sign.

At Pluss, we quote separately for connections to your other systems. Pluss does not replace a sales CRM. A Book a tour request can go straight to your sales CRM or into the app's own bookings.

Data security and where data is held

A resident app holds names, unit numbers and phone numbers. In aged care it also holds family contacts. Get answers on these five points before your IT team signs off:

• Which security certification the vendor holds. Ask to see the certificate, check its version and check that its scope covers the product you are buying.
• Which country the data is hosted in, backups included.
• Who at the vendor can see resident data, and whether that access is logged.
• Which of your staff roles can see what. A lifestyle coordinator may not need residents' phone numbers.
• How you get all your data out if you leave, and in what format.

Your privacy officer decides what the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles require of you. In New Zealand, check against the Privacy Act 2020.

Pluss is ISO 27001:2022 certified. We host your data in Australia. New Zealand operators should check that hosting in Australia fits their own policy.

Several villages and head office

If you run several villages, check these in the demo:

• Whether head office can publish one post to every village at once.
• Whether you can compare how residents use the app at each village, side by side.
• Whether settings and permissions change once for the group, or village by village.
• What each role sees. A regional manager may need each village's totals without each resident's details.
• Whether each village can keep its own name inside the group's brand.

At Pluss, this is Pluss HQ, our add-on for operators with several villages. It shows how residents or prospects at each village use the app, side by side. Head office can also publish one post to every village at once.

The Pluss per property price does not include Pluss HQ. Ask every vendor whether head office tools cost extra, and put that cost in your comparison.

Setup time and training

Ask for the date your first village would go live, and the date your last would. If a new village or stage opens soon, give the vendor that date in your first meeting.

Find out what the setup fee covers. Then ask who trains residents, where, and whether the trainer comes back for residents who missed the first session.

You can start with one or two villages before the rest. If you do, pick two that differ, such as one new village and one with long-standing residents. You then see how each kind of village takes it up before the others follow.

At Pluss, setting up takes days. We train your staff and residents, and each village is live within weeks. A one-off fee covers setup, onboarding and training.

Pricing models and what to ask

Find out what each vendor counts to set the price: properties, residents, active users or sites. Then ask what you pay for staff, family members and buyers who have not moved in.

Before you compare, get these from each vendor in writing:

• What is charged once and what is charged every year.
• Which features or add-ons cost extra, including head office tools.
• What connections to your other systems cost to build and to run.
• How long the contract runs, and how much the price can rise at renewal.
• Which features are in beta, and what they will cost once the beta ends.
• What you pay to leave, including a full data export.

Then work out a cost per property per year for each vendor, across the whole contract, with setup included. That gives you one figure to compare across vendors who price in different ways.

Pluss is priced per property: each apartment, villa or unit in a village. There is no charge for staff or family users. The price includes every live feature except Pluss HQ. A one-off fee covers setup, onboarding and training.

Our AI assistant is in beta from November 2026 with a small group of customers. Ask us what it will cost once the beta ends. Our pricing page sets out how a quote is worked out.

Building the business case and getting it approved

Build the case from your own villages' numbers. If a vendor gives you a savings figure, ask for it in writing, with the number of villages it came from.

What to count before you buy

• Print spend on newsletters, notices, menus, handbooks and resident contact lists. Ask finance for last year's total.
• Staff hours. Ask each village manager to log one month of time spent on the newsletter, notices and calls about what is on.
• Maintenance. Note how requests arrive now, and how often residents call to ask about progress.
• Revenue you could collect through the app, such as paid events or room hire. Our post on revenue from a village app covers agreeing fees with your residents committee.

If you add home sales to the case, ask each vendor for the source of any figure. We don't have a figure for whether Pluss makes homes sell faster, so we won't claim one.

What to measure after launch

• Monthly active residents at each village, against the target in your case.
• How many residents read each alert.
• Print spend and staff hours a year on, against the counts above.
• Your resident survey or Net Promoter Score. Take a reading before launch, so you have a starting point.

Getting it approved

Write the problem in two or three sentences, using the numbers you counted. Then find an executive sponsor. That person argues for the project when the executive team decides where capital goes.

Show the case to the people it affects before it reaches the executive team. Include a village manager, someone from IT and the chair of a residents committee.

Put the vendor's answers on security, data hosting and connections in an appendix. In the plan itself, name the pilot villages, the go-live dates, who trains residents and what you will report at 90 days.

Questions to ask in a demo

Ask the vendor to run the demo on a phone, signed in first as a resident and then as a village manager. Then ask:

• How many communities does your usage figure cover, and is it a median?
• What counts as an active resident in that figure?
• Can you send an alert to one building from your phone, now?
• What does a family member see, and who approves their access?
• How long does a typical news post take a village manager?
• Which of our systems have you connected to before, and what did each connection cost?
• What is your day rate for custom work?
• Where is our data hosted, and can we see your security certificate?
• What does the setup fee include, and who trains our residents?
• When would our first and last villages go live?
• What will we pay per property per year, over the full contract?
• Which features shown today are in beta?
• How do customers have a say in what you build next?
• What happens to our data and our app store listing if we leave?
• Can we speak to an operator with a similar number of villages?

To put these questions to us, or for a price for your villages, book a demo.