Virtual doorman or lobby robot: the costs

A staffed concierge earns a median of $18.73 an hour in the United States, so one desk covered around the clock costs about $164,000 a year in wages alone. A virtual doorman service is usually quoted per building, and published reports put it between $500 and $2,500 a month. An intercom system costs a few thousand dollars once plus a small yearly fee per apartment. A lobby robot with a person behind it, such as Starlife Bella, costs $10 to $20 an hour.

Prices checked in November 2026. They change often; check the linked pages.

What a building needs at the door

Most lobbies need four things: a greeting for residents and guests, a check of who each visitor is, a place for deliveries, and cover after hours when nobody is at the desk. A full-time doorman does all four, but every other option does only some of them, which is why many buildings combine two.

The options and their prices

A staffed doorman or concierge

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics data published by O*NET gives concierges a median wage of $18.73 an hour, or $38,950 a year, for 2025. That figure is the wage only, so payroll taxes, benefits and holiday cover come on top. A desk staffed 24 hours a day also needs 8,760 hours a year, which is more than four full-time jobs.

What you get for that money is a person who can sign for packages, hold keys and open the door, and no other option on this page does all of that.

An unarmed guard service

Guard companies bill $15 to $50 an hour depending on the source and the market (the section on guard cost further down has the details). Choose a guard when the building needs deterrence or patrol rounds, because a concierge is not trained for security tasks.

A virtual doorman or remote concierge service

Virtual Doorman in New York says its command center staff respond "24 hours a day, 365 days a year" and that it has served more than 1,000 buildings. Its services include visitor verification and delivery coordination. It does not publish prices and asks buyers to request a quote, but ButterflyMX reports that other sources have quoted the system at $500 to $2,500 a month.

Carson describes its live remote doorman as a 24/7 team that answers through the building's intercom in 10 seconds or less on average. It works with intercoms from makers such as ButterflyMX and 2N, and like Virtual Doorman it does not publish prices.

If the main job is to let the right people in at any hour, a virtual doorman is the better choice.

An intercom or visitor management system

With a video intercom, residents answer the door from their phones. ButterflyMX lists its video intercoms at $3,995 to $6,495 each and charges $30 to $42 per apartment per year for the software.

Office lobbies often use a visitor management system on a tablet or kiosk instead. Envoy's Premium plan is $362 per location per month, billed annually. ALICE Receptionist lists plans from $199 to $499 a month.

These systems cost the least. The drawback is that nobody greets the visitor, who has to know what to do at the screen.

A lobby robot with a person behind it

Starlife Bella is a humanoid service robot on a wheeled base, with a friendly face and a chest display. A trained robot pilot controls Bella live from a laptop, with AI assistance, so every conversation in the lobby is with a real person. Bella is not autonomous, and Starlife supplies the robot pilot.

Bella greets people, answers questions, gives directions, leads a visitor to the right place and tells the right staff member that someone has arrived. It speaks more than 30 languages with live translation both ways. You pay by the hour, $10 to $20, and because that price includes the robot pilot, the driving and the maintenance, there is nothing to buy. The pricing page has the details.

Starlife has not run Bella in an apartment or office lobby yet and is looking for a first pilot site. Its results so far come from other places, such as a 14-day mall pilot with 2,222 guest engagements.

Comparison table

How much does a security guard cost?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay of security guards at $18.29 an hour in May 2025. A guard company bills more than that because its rate also has to cover taxes, insurance, overhead and profit. Thumbtack's cost guide, updated in October 2026, lists a basic unarmed guard at $15 to $20 an hour and an advanced unarmed guard at $30 to $35. Belfry, which makes software for guard companies, says the average hourly rate is typically between $35 and $50.

For one post covered all day and all night, the chief executive of the robot company Asylon told Business Insider that the national average is about a quarter of a million dollars a year. That is one vendor's figure, so ask local guard companies for quotes.

What Starlife Bella cannot do in a lobby

Bella does not take, store or hand over packages, and it does not hold keys. It also cannot open a door by itself, although if the building's access system lets staff release the door, the staff member Bella calls can do that.

Bella has no security function either. It does not patrol, detect intruders, record evidence or deter crime. What it can do is sit at a door or desk, greet visitors, ask whom they have come to see, and call a person for help.

Which option fits which building

A small building with a locked front door and many deliveries usually needs an intercom first. If residents want a human answer at night, a virtual doorman service adds that for less than a night shift costs.

A building where residents expect package handling, keys and a familiar face needs a staffed doorman or concierge, because the other options do not handle objects.

A building with a real security concern needs a licensed guard service.

Bella fits a lobby that already has access control and package handling but has nobody to welcome people, answer questions in their language and walk them to the right door. The normal start is a 14-day pilot, in the United States and Germany.

If you want to see how Bella would greet people in your lobby, we can show you. Book a demo.