Paper notice board vs. digital announcements

The stairwell notice is as old as the apartment building itself. Water shut-off, chimney sweep, new house rules – it all ends up on the board next to the letterboxes. But does it still work? A comparison.

The paper notice

In its favour:

• It is simple and needs no technology.
• Every resident can see it – at least in theory.
• Many house rules treat it as the standard way to share information.

Where it falls short:

• Someone has to be on site to put it up. With several properties, that means travel time.
• Notices get overlooked, covered up or torn down.
• Anyone who is away or rarely uses the stairwell misses out.
• There is no way to tell whether the information got through.
• Short-notice changes are hardly possible.

The digital notice board

A digital notice board brings the idea of the stairwell notice to phones and browsers. The property manager writes a notice and chooses the recipients: one building, several properties or specific tenants.

In its favour:

• No travel: notices go out to every affected building from your desk.
• Targeted: the water shut-off only affects the rear building? Then only those tenants get the message.
• Read receipts: you can see who has opened the notice.
• Archive: tenants can look up earlier notices at any time.
• Easy to update: if a date changes, the notice is corrected in seconds.

What to watch out for:

• Not every resident will be reachable digitally from the start. Plan a transition period.
• It must be genuinely simple for tenants – no complicated sign-up.
• Data protection: the software processes names and flat assignments. Make sure there is a data processing agreement.

Side by side

	Paper notice	Digital notice board
Effort per notice	High (on site)	Low (from your desk)
Reach	Only passers-by	All invited tenants
Targeted recipients	No	Yes
Read receipts	No	Yes
Changes	New notice needed	Instant
Works without technology	Yes	No

Our recommendation: combine, don’t replace

The paper notice doesn’t have to go overnight. During the transition, share important information both ways – and use the paper notice to point to the digital channel. Read receipts show how quickly adoption grows and whom you still need to approach in person.

With the Wohnsignal digital notice board we want to make exactly this transition easy. For background, read our post on digitising tenant communication.