Walk through any villa complex, apartment garage or small office and ask how the gate opens. The answer is usually a four-digit code, and it is usually the same code it was three years ago. Everyone who has ever lived, worked, cleaned or delivered there still has it. Nobody knows who is using it today.
That is not a people problem. It is what shared secrets do. A code cannot be given to one person; once it exists, it belongs to everyone who has heard it. This article is about the alternative, and why it is now cheap enough to be the default.
What a shared code cannot do
A single code has four structural gaps, and no amount of discipline closes them:
- It cannot be revoked for one person. When a tenant moves out or a contractor finishes, the only way to remove their access is to change the code for everyone, then redistribute it. Most buildings never do.
- It cannot tell you who entered. An entry log that says "the code was used at 02:14" is not an audit trail. It is a timestamp.
- It cannot expire. A cleaner who needs the door on Tuesday mornings gets the door on Saturday nights too.
- It spreads. Codes are written on notes, sent in group chats and read over shoulders. Every copy is a copy you cannot see.
Insurance assessors, property managers and anyone who has had to explain a break-in know these gaps. The question has always been cost: individual credentials used to mean a proprietary lock system, per-door licences and an installer on retainer.
Per-person access, on the lock you already have
The change EMMTRY makes is to separate the credential from the lock hardware. Your electric strike, maglock, gate motor or garage opener stays exactly where it is. A small relay controller, either a Shelly device you can buy from any reseller or the EMMTRY 5G controller, is wired to its control circuit. That controller only ever receives one instruction: open now. Everything about who may send that instruction lives in the platform.
So every person gets their own key:
- Members sign in to the app without a password, using a one-time code sent to their email. Their key is tied to them, not to a number they could pass on.
- Guests do not need an app at all. They receive a secure link, and access expires by itself when the schedule you set runs out.
- Roles decide what each key can do. An owner can do everything, an admin can manage people and devices, a member can use the entrances they were granted, a guest can only use what they were invited to.
When someone leaves, you revoke their key. Nobody else notices, because nobody else's key changed.
The audit trail that comes with it
Because every open is tied to a person, the activity log becomes useful. It shows who opened which entrance and when, whether a request was granted or denied, when a device went offline and came back, and which admin changed what. Property managers use it for disputes ("the garage was open all night" becomes "the garage was opened by this account at this time"). Landlords use it to confirm a move-out. Nobody has to trust a code.
The log is permission-controlled as well. A member sees their own history; an admin sees the entrances they manage; a guest sees nothing. Access logs are personal data, and the platform treats them that way. See Where your access data lives for how they are stored and deleted.
Multi-tenant is the point, not a feature
Consumer smart locks solve a different problem: one household, one door. They are excellent at it. But an apartment building is not a household. It has a street gate, a garage, a bicycle room, a shared laundry and forty front doors, and the people who may use each of those change every month.
EMMTRY is built around that shape:
- Locations and zones group entrances the way the building is actually laid out.
- Access groups bundle entrances and people, so "all tenants may use the street gate and the garage" is one rule, not forty grants.
- Tenant units let each household manage its own guests for the shared gates, without you having to be involved, while you keep the log and the final say.
- Visitor schedules give the cleaner Tuesday mornings and nothing else.
Making the switch
The practical sequence most properties follow:
- Wire a controller to the entrance that hurts most, usually the street gate or the garage. Installation is typically under thirty minutes and needs no change to the lock itself. The technical specifications list the supported hardware.
- Invite the people who should have access by email or phone. They get their own key immediately.
- Run both in parallel for a week or two. The old code keeps working while people install the app or use their links.
- Retire the code. From that point, every open has a name on it.
Nothing about this requires replacing locks, pulling new cable to a control panel or committing to a subscription per door. The hardware is bought once; the platform has no recurring fee.
If you are deciding between this and a smart-lock swap, the FAQ covers the comparison with HomeKit, Nuki and Yale in more detail. And if your building has an entrance we have not described here, ask us; odd gates are our favourite kind.