Virtual Doorbell Set mine up
An illustration of a garden gate at dusk, with a Virtual Doorbell plate on the wall beside it.

A doorbell that is just a QR code.

Print it, engrave it, 3D print it, and put it by your gate. A visitor scans it, taps once, and your phone rings wherever you are. The plate itself needs no power and no wiring.

Set mine up Sign in

Use it on

Free to start: R0, with 5 video calls a week. Paid plans from R10 a month. You need a free Telegram account to sign up.

At a door that will not scan?

Type the nine characters printed under the square. It opens exactly what scanning would, whether the square is on a door plate or a contact card.

Nine characters. Never O, I, L, U, zero or one.

K7M 3QP X8R An example. This square is a drawing and does not scan. Yours arrives as a sheet to print, with its own square and its own nine characters under it.

An illustration of a gate at dusk.

One ring, from the gate to your hand.

Try it A pretend door at 12 Main Road, Sampletown. Nothing here is sent anywhere.

An illustration of a small white plate with a black-and-white square pattern, screwed to a garden wall beside a steel gate.
An illustration of a plate by a gate. Visitors scan the square with the phone they already have; the square here is a drawing and does not scan.

Someone lives here

Front Door

Your camera and microphone are never sent anywhere unless someone answers.

18:42

Nothing yet. You are doing something else.

Someone at your gate has scanned the plate. Ring the bell on their phone.

The ring reaches you on Telegram, in the web app or as an Android notification, and the call runs in your browser.

Six switches in your dashboard.

A QR code is a photograph. Anyone walking past can snap it, so we do not pretend otherwise. We build for it, and every one of these is a switch in your dashboard.

  • Video, or voice only

    Your visitor chooses how to ring; you choose what this door allows. A contact QR can also take a typed message.

  • Quiet hours you set

    Nobody wakes your house at 3am, whoever has the code. In quiet hours a ring is logged and makes no sound.

  • Your whole household

    Add up to ten housemates. Their phones ring too, and whoever is closest answers. They cannot change your door.

  • A cap on rings an hour

    Yours to set. Your plan never limits rings; this does, so a copied code cannot flood you.

  • A new code whenever you want

    One tap, then put the new code up. The old one dies only when you say the new one is up, so your doorbell is never out of service.

  • A daily alert budget

    Separate from the hourly cap. Past it, rings are still logged for you but stop lighting up your phone.

What we hold

Calls are never recorded and never saved.

A visitor’s camera and microphone are never sent anywhere unless you answer.

What we do keep, and for how long

Your name, your email, and the Telegram chat we alert. If you switch on alerts in the Android app, that installation's identifier and push-notification token, and a short-lived record (under a minute) linking each alert to a ring. When you ask for a sign-in code, a counter of the attempt, kept against a scrambled marker of your email and address for about a day. A list of when your doorbell rang, kept for 30 days. If you take a paid plan, a record of what you paid, never your card, which goes to Paystack and never reaches us. Messages sent to you through a contact QR, kept for 60 days unless you delete them sooner, and if you put a logo on a contact form, that logo, shown to anyone who scans the code. And a daily tally of how many people visited this website, which is a number and nothing else.

If you switch on take a photo, one still picture of whoever is at your door is taken the moment they press the bell, and kept for 7 days. If you switch on leave a message, a visitor who gets no answer can type a note or record a short voice note, kept for 30 days. Both are off unless you turn them on, and both delete themselves automatically.

You can delete your account and everything in it from your dashboard, at any time. The full version.

Before you rely on it

Someone with a flat battery, no airtime, or no signal cannot ring at all.

Your visitor needs a phone with a working camera and mobile data. A wired doorbell does not have that problem. Put a phone number on the plate as a backup. Virtual Doorbell tells you someone is at the door; it does not watch it.

Video calls have a weekly limit: five a week on the free plan, more on a paid one, and it resets every Monday. The doorbell itself never stops. Past the limit a ring still comes through, as sound without a picture. See the plans.

The Android app's first screen on a phone: the heading 'Your door, closer.', a card that says 'Sign in to start' with an 'Open my doorbell' button, and rows for checking the alert connection, notification settings, a test chime and privacy and help.

The Android app

Rings that sound like a doorbell.

Download the Android app and each ring arrives on your phone as a door chime. It opens your doorbell already signed in, and it has a test-chime button, so you know the sound will be heard before your next visitor is.

It needs Android 8 or newer. Visitors still just scan your square.

Get the Android app

No Android? Telegram and the web app do the same job.