Comparisons· 8 min read

Joan Alternatives in 2026: A Fair Comparison for Smaller Teams

Joan helped invent the e-paper meeting room display. It's also priced for buyers very different from a 20-person office. Here's a fair, sourced look at where Joan still leads, what Robin, Envoy, Archie and Lobby bring to the table, and which one fits your team.

Joan was one of the first companies to put a real-time meeting room schedule on a piece of e-paper next to the door. That whole category mostly exists because of them. So why are people searching for Joan alternatives?

Usually three reasons: the pricing model adds up faster than expected once you count both users and devices; the all-in-one platform charges you for things you don't use (desks, parking, visitors); or the team simply wants something they can switch on themselves without booking a sales call.

This post is a fair, sourced look at how Joan compares to four credible alternatives — Robin, Envoy, Archie, and us, Lobby. Every price and feature is pulled from the vendors' own sites in April 2026. We're one of those vendors, so we'll be upfront when a competitor is the better fit.

What Joan does well

Three things, really.

Hardware. Joan ships three e-paper displays today — the Joan 6 RE, the Joan 6 Pro, and the larger Joan 13 Pro — plus an ePaper visitor badge. After a decade of iteration, the industrial design is genuinely good.

Breadth. A single Joan subscription covers meeting room booking, desk booking, parking and asset booking, visitor management, and digital signage. If you want one workplace platform with one bill, that's a real advantage.

Calendar coverage. Joan works with both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, including Outlook bookings.

Joan pricing at a glance

From Joan's own pricing page (April 2026):

  • Plans start at €49 / month base subscription.
  • Additional users: €0.99 per user / month. "Users" are people with a Joan account in the app; people booking via Google Calendar or Outlook aren't counted.
  • Additional device licenses: €9.99 per device / month. Each connected screen or tablet — room displays, signage, check-in tablets — needs a license.
  • Hardware is a separate, one-off cost through Joan's shop.

So the all-in number is: base plan + per-user + per-device license + hardware. For a 20-person office with four room displays, that's the base plan, four device licenses (around €40 / month), and the hardware spend up front. That's the budget to model against.

Common reasons teams shop around

  • "We only need room displays." If you don't run a coworking space and your visitors are already greeted at a reception desk, paying for desks + visitors + signage in the same subscription can feel like overkill.
  • The dual fee structure adds up. Per-user and per-device fees both grow as you scale. Reviews on G2 and Capterra often single out the device cost.
  • Battery cycle. G2 reviewers have reported Joan device battery life around 40–50 days — fine, but it does mean someone is pulling displays off the wall to charge them every six weeks or so.
  • "Get a quote." Some teams just want a public price they can read at 11pm without a sales call.

Joan alternatives worth knowing

Robin

Robin is positioned as an enterprise workplace operations platform: resource booking (desks, rooms, lockers, parking), space management, meeting management, workplace analytics, visitor management, and an employee-experience module with surveys and feedback. That last layer is genuinely Robin's strongest differentiation against Joan.

Robin uses quote-based pricing — you fill out a form. Their own pricing page is also clear about who they're built for: organisations with more than 150 hybrid employees using an office.

Best fit: 150+ employee organisations that want analytics and employee sentiment alongside the booking layer.

Envoy

Envoy is best known for visitor management — that's where they started, and the security and compliance posture shows it. Today the platform also includes reservation booking (desks, rooms, parking), digital signage, mass notifications, and mailroom management.

Pricing on the Visitors line is per-location: Standard at $131 per location / month and Premium at $395 per location / month, both billed annually. There's a free Basic plan capped at 100 entries / month. Enterprise is custom.

Best fit: Regulated industries — pharma, defence, healthcare — where visitor security is the primary problem.

Archie

Archie is one of the few workplace platforms that publishes its full price list. It's a complete platform — desks, rooms, visitors, coworking — built around resource-based pricing.

  • Starter: $2.80 per desk / month + $8 per room / month, with a $159 / month minimum.
  • Pro: $3.50 per desk / month + $12 per room / month, with a $249 / month minimum. Adds multi-location, Microsoft Teams + Outlook booking, Slack, SSO, SCIM.
  • Enterprise: custom.

Archie doesn't make proprietary hardware — meeting room displays run on standard iOS or Android tablets you supply.

Best fit: Mid-sized teams that want the full workplace platform, transparent pricing, and don't need branded e-paper hardware.

Lobby

That's us. Lobby is the smallest tool on this list, on purpose. We do one thing — meeting room displays — for teams on Google Workspace today (Microsoft 365 is coming soon). The "one thing" runs on three surfaces:

  • Physical e-ink display beside each meeting room door, on TRMNL open-source hardware. You buy the display once and own it outright; firmware lives on GitHub. Battery up to 12 months on a single charge.
  • Virtual display in any browser tab — same view, on a tablet, TV, or any screen you already own. No shipping, no mount.
  • Room overview display — every meeting room at a glance on a single screen. Pick which rooms in the dashboard. Good for a lobby or kitchen TV.
  • Free for up to 3 active displays, forever — physical or virtual.
  • $30 / month for unlimited displays, billed yearly at $360 / year.
  • Setup in about 10 minutes — sign in with Google Workspace, point a screen at the URL (or mount the e-ink display). No sales call.

Best fit: A team on Google Workspace that wants a clear display outside every meeting room and is not in the market for a workplace platform.

Where Lobby is the wrong choice: if you need Microsoft 365 / Outlook today (it's coming, but not shipped yet), if you also need desk booking or visitor management in the same tool, or if you want hot-desking and floor plans — pick Joan or Archie.

How to choose

Three questions narrow it down quickly.

1. Do I want a workplace platform, or a room display? If the honest answer is "we just need rooms to stop being chaos in the corridor," a focused tool will be cheaper and faster. If the answer is "we need rooms, desks, visitors, and analytics in one place," look at Joan, Archie, or Robin.

2. Are we on Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or both? Lobby is Google Workspace today — Microsoft 365 is in the works but not shipped yet. Joan, Robin, Envoy, and Archie all support both today.

3. Do we need a public price, or are we ok with "contact sales"? Joan, Envoy, Archie, and Lobby publish their prices. Robin doesn't.

TL;DR

  • Joan — best-known e-paper hardware, full platform; pay base + per-user + per-device + hardware.
  • Robin — enterprise (150+ employees), strong analytics and employee experience; quote-based.
  • Envoy — visitor management heritage, per-location pricing; strong in regulated industries.
  • Archie — full platform, transparent resource-based pricing, BYO tablets for room displays.
  • Lobby — meeting room displays only, on three surfaces (physical e-ink, virtual, or multi-room overview); Google Workspace today, Microsoft 365 coming soon; free for up to 3 displays, $30 / month for unlimited.

If you're on Google Workspace and you only need to know which room is free, try Lobby free — it's the smallest commitment on this list.

Sources

Prices and product details verified April 2026. Tier-based or quote-based pricing can change — confirm directly with each vendor.

Try Lobby — free forever up to 3 displays

Room booking that just works.

Get started →