If your MLS gives you Aligned Showings, use Aligned Showings

Aligned Showings is unusual in this category, and it is worth understanding why. It is not a vendor product. It is owned by MLS Aligned, LLC, a company jointly held by six MLSs: ARMLS in Arizona, Metro MLS in Wisconsin, MLSListings in Silicon Valley, RMLS in Oregon, UtahRealEstate.com, and BeachesMLS in southeast Florida. It also serves New Mexico MLS. It was built on technology the group acquired from Agent Inbox in 2021, it signs in with your Flexmls credentials, and it reports over 150,000 subscribers and around 42,000 daily active users.

It replaced ShowingTime at ARMLS in 2023, which tells you it is a serious product rather than a checkbox. And because the MLSs own it, there is no portal behind it, no marketplace attached, and nothing to do with your showing data except show it to you and your seller. On the ownership question — the argument we make hardest against ShowingTime — Aligned Showings has a genuinely good answer.

	Aligned Showings	Showing Bell
Who owns it	Six MLSs, jointly	Independent, no marketplace
How you get it	Only if your MLS is a member	Buy it directly, from $9.99 a month
Cost to you	Free with your MLS dues	$9.99 to $89 a month
Available in Idaho	No	Yes, Idaho only
Sign-in	Your MLS credentials	Your own account
Needs a record in your MLS	Yes	No
Short-term rental calendar sync	Not publicly documented	Airbnb and VRBO iCal
Who sets the rules	Your MLS	You, per listing

Comparisons reflect each product’s publicly described model as of August 2026. Products change. Check the vendor directly before deciding, and treat any competitor page, including this one, as an interested party.

When you should not read any further

If your MLS is one of the seven that offers Aligned Showings, and your listings are standard residential homes with a lockbox on the door, stop here and use it. It is included in what you already pay, it is integrated with the system you already sign into, and the buyer’s agents in your market already know it. We are not going to pretend a $9.99 subscription beats something you have already bought.

The part that is actually different

The distinction is not ownership or quality. It is that Aligned Showings is not something you can buy.

If your MLS is not a member of the cooperative, there is no price you can pay and no plan you can sign up for. The decision was made above you, by an organization you belong to but do not control, and the same is true of the rules, the defaults, and what happens next. That is not a criticism of the product. It is the nature of anything distributed through an MLS, and it is the single reason a direct-purchase tool exists at all.

Showing Bell is the opposite arrangement. You buy it, you configure it per listing, and nobody above you can change the terms or take it away.

Listings that do not fit the model

Aligned Showings signs in with MLS credentials and works from MLS listing data, which means it assumes a listing exists in the MLS. That covers most of what most agents do. It is the exceptions where a separate tool earns its keep: a parcel of bare ground with a gate and no address, an office exclusive that is deliberately not in the MLS yet, new construction before the listing is entered, or a property in a market where you are not an MLS member at all.

Showing Bell has no MLS dependency and no lockbox requirement, so all of those schedule exactly the way a three-bedroom does. We are not claiming Aligned Showings handles them badly. We are saying we could not find it documented either way, and if those listings are a real part of your business you should ask them directly rather than take our word for it.

Short-term rentals

If a listing is still renting nightly on Airbnb or VRBO, its availability changes without anyone telling the showing platform. Showing Bell reads the property’s iCal feed, blocks booked nights automatically, and opens the checkout evening once the cleaning window has passed. As far as we can tell from public documentation, no showing platform in this category does that, Aligned Showings included. In a resort market that is the difference between a tool that works and one you fight.

What Aligned Showings does that we do not

Being straight about this matters more than winning. It is free to members, which we will never be. It signs in with credentials you already have, so there is no separate account to set up. It pulls listing data automatically rather than making you type it. It has 150,000 subscribers, so the buyer’s agent on the other end already knows the workflow. And it is owned by MLSs rather than by anyone with a second business, which is a better ownership story than most of this category can tell.

Showing Bell is a paid subscription, in one state, that you have to enter listings into yourself, and the agent receiving your link is probably meeting it for the first time.

Other comparisons