What's the cheapest way to handle the building buzzer for Airbnb guests?

Free: get a Google Voice number, give it to your building to program for your unit, and record a greeting or be ready to press the key when a guest dials. It works, but someone has to be reachable for every arrival and it does not auto-expire between guests. If most guests can simply call you on arrival and you do not mind answering, you may not need to pay for anything.

Does Airbnb's smart lock integration also handle the building buzzer?

No. Airbnb's lock integrations (and smart-lock ecosystems like August, Yale, or Schlage) cover the door the lock is physically on, almost always your unit door. The lobby buzzer is a separate telephone-entry system, not a lock, so it needs its own answer. Plan for two doors, not one.

My building uses ButterflyMX. Do I still need anything else?

If your building already runs ButterflyMX or a similar managed intercom, ask the property manager what guest-access options it offers; some support visitor PINs or virtual keys you can issue per stay. That may be all you need for the building door. You would still handle the unit door with your own lock or lockbox.

Blog / Airbnb Self Check-In When Your Building Has a Buzzer

Airbnb Self Check-In When Your Building Has a Buzzer

By Ty · 2026-04-13

Self check-in is simple until your building has a buzzer between the street and your unit. The front-door panel calls your phone every time a guest arrives, which means you are back to being on-call for every check-in, including the 1 AM red-eye. Miss the call and your guest is stranded on the sidewalk texting you, with the perfectly good keypad code waiting uselessly upstairs.

The thing to hold onto: this is two doors, not one, and they do not share a solution. Your unit door is a lock. The building entrance is a buzzer. No lock product can open the lobby panel, and no buzzer trick opens your apartment. Write your check-in instructions as two clearly labeled steps, building entrance first, then unit door.

How to fix it

Door one, the unit, is largely solved. Here are the two common ways to handle it.

Option	Pros	Cons
Keypad smart lock	Code per booking that expires at checkout, many auto-generate codes via Airbnb	Costs more, may need landlord approval
Mechanical lockbox	Cheap, no Wi-Fi, fine at low volume	Fixed code unless you reset it by hand

Door two, the building buzzer, is the part most setups forget. Here is how the options compare.

Option	Pros	Cons
Your cell number on the building panel	Free and instant	You answer every arrival, a missed call locks a guest out, no cutoff after checkout
Google Voice forwarded to you	Free, keeps your number private, recorded greeting	Someone still answers each time, nothing auto-expires per stay
Building smart intercom (Latch, ButterflyMX)	May cover the building door with visitor PINs or virtual keys	Only if your building runs one and enables it
Concierge or front desk	Cleanest when it exists, just leave the guest’s name and dates	Only in staffed buildings
Lowkey	Live during the stay, dead after checkout, no call to catch, push notification on arrival	Quick one-time setup with your building

Where Lowkey helps

When you want the building door to behave like the rest of self check-in, live during the stay and dead after checkout with no call to catch, Lowkey is the answer. It is software that forwards your building’s buzzer call to your phone and can auto-buzz guests into the building for you, so the front-door panel stops being your problem. You give your building manager a virtual phone number to program for your unit, set time-limited access that opens at check-in and closes at checkout, and hand the guest a 4-digit passcode for the panel so they can come up to the unit door. You get a push notification when they arrive, and you never answer a call or revoke anything between guests. Run several listings and Lowkey handles multiple units from one place, with full activity history for each. There is nothing to install and nothing to rewire, it works with any buzzer that dials out to a phone number, which covers most apartment and condo systems, and it comes with a 14-day free trial.