ButterflyMX Smart Video Intercom for Chicago Buildings

The intercom that lives on the resident’s phone

ButterflyMX is the company that made the smartphone the intercom. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City, it built a cloud video intercom aimed squarely at multifamily housing — apartments, condos, student housing, gated communities — and it grew fast, raising around $131 million in venture funding on its way to becoming one of the most-installed smart intercoms in the country. The pitch is simple enough that residents get it instantly: a visitor taps a name on the lobby panel, the resident’s phone rings with live video, and one swipe opens the door, whether they’re upstairs or across town.

How the ButterflyMX system works

There’s very little hardware to it, and that’s the point. The system is basically a weatherized lobby panel (the callbox) plus the ButterflyMX app and the cloud behind it — there’s no station wired into every unit. When someone presses a name, the call goes out over the internet to the resident’s phone as a video call; they see who’s there and swipe to release the door. Property managers run everything from a web dashboard: adding and removing residents as units turn over, issuing virtual keys and delivery PINs, and pulling a time-stamped video log of every door release. For an owner, that “no box in every apartment” model is genuinely lower-maintenance, which is why “butterflymx intercom” is one of the most-searched product names in the category.

ButterflyMX installation

Installing one is mostly about the panel location, power, and — critically — a solid network connection at the entrance. We mount and wire the callbox, get it a reliable data path (wired is best; we’ll sort the network if the lobby doesn’t have one), and provision the building in the dashboard so the board or manager can run it from day one. We install ButterflyMX on condo and apartment entrances across Chicago and the North Shore — Winnetka, Wilmette, and the surrounding suburbs included.

When ButterflyMX isn’t working

Because it’s a cloud intercom, most “my ButterflyMX is down” problems trace back to one of three things: the building’s internet, the panel’s power, or an account/app issue. A quick honest answer to the question people search most — does ButterflyMX work without internet? — is no, not really: the panel needs a live connection to place video calls to residents, so if the building’s internet drops, the intercom can’t ring phones. That’s exactly why we care so much about the network drop behind the panel. If a restart is called for, ButterflyMX can be power-cycled at the panel, but a system that keeps dropping usually has a connectivity or wiring cause worth diagnosing rather than rebooting around. For billing, resident-app, or warranty questions you’ll go through ButterflyMX support directly; for anything to do with the install, the wiring, the power, or the network the panel lives on, that’s us — and if you inherited a flaky one, we’ll figure out what’s actually wrong.

ButterflyMX vs. other intercoms

ButterflyMX isn’t the only good answer, and we’re honest about when a hardware-based panel fits better. If your building is deciding, start with our comparison of ButterflyMX vs 2N for condo intercoms, our guide to choosing a video intercom for a Chicago condo, and the real numbers in what a video intercom costs for a condo building. When you’re ready, see the ButterflyMX intercom we install, explore our video intercom work, or reach out.