Vacancy listings, marketing, tenant screening—oh my! These are just a few features you can expect when using property management software for small business. If you’re ready to manage your rental properties more efficiently and improve accessibility and communication, it’s time to add this tool to your business. So, wondering what is the best property management software for you? I’ve narrowed down providers based on features, price, ease of use, and customer support so you can get started right away!
- Appfolio: Best for mobile-friendly management
- Avail: Best for independent landlords
- DoorLoop: Best for various property types
- Rentec Direct: Best for rental websites
- Rent Manager: Best for an all-in-one solution
- PayRent: Best for rent collection and tenant management
- TurboTenant: Best for advertising
The Close’s Top Picks for Property Management Software
| Type of Software | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Appfolio: Best for mobile-friendly management | ||||
| Avail: Best for independent landlords | ||||
| DoorLoop: Best for various property types | ||||
| Rentec Direct: Best for rental websites | ||||
| Rent Manager: Best for all-in-one solution | (with fee) | |||
| PayRent: Best for rent collection and tenant management | ||||
| TurboTenant: Best for advertising |
Benefits & Features of Property Management Software
Making your business run smoother can help you save time, manage money better, and keep tenant records in order. That’s why picking the right rental software for small business can really make a big difference. Let’s take a look at the perks of the features available with your chosen software.
- Listing management
- The ability to post available listings easily gets you greater listing exposure.
- Centralized property details allow you to make adjustments or updates to listings.
- Applicant screening
- A proper and neutral screening process keeps it fair for all.
- Helps with handling tenant applications and ensuring they meet the rental requirements.
- Lease management
- Create and file lease documents with ease.
- Simplifies communication and timelines to strengthen tenant/landlord relationships.
- Accounting
- Helps ensure the property has a healthy cash flow.
- Can easily collect rent payments.
- Marketing
- Capture and manage leads.
- Showcase services offered and stand out from the competition.
- Reports
- All property data is kept in one place.
- Provides insight into property trends.
Appfolio: Best for Mobile-friendly Management
Why I Chose Appfolio
From accounting to marketing and everything in between, AppFolio is a top choice because of its user-friendly interface and impressive features. The mobile app makes it super easy to access and manage your properties on the go. You can customize your free website, access tenant and owner portals, manage maintenance requests, and so much more. One standout feature is the AppFolio Stack™ Premium Integrations, which lets you link your favorite property management tools to AppFolio. This helps you increase efficiency and manage your business from one central system.
💡Room for Improvement: With all the capabilities of accepting online signatures nowadays, AppFolio could improve its services by providing online signature tools to make the process even easier for clients. It would also be beneficial to offer a free trial so people can test the services and see all that it offers firsthand.
Additional Features
- AI Leasing Assistant: Having AI assistance increases your ability to respond instantly to leasing inquiries, book showings, qualify leads, cross-sell units, and more.
- Leasing CRM: A CRM is one of the best ways to stay organized and on top of communication. This feature will boost your efficiency with a funnel for leasing agents and allow oversight for managers.
Avail: Best for Independent Landlords
Why I Chose Avail
If you’re a DIY landlord handling your properties or portfolio solo, this one’s for you! Avail is unique in that its free plan encompasses a ton of features that make it easy to find tenants, sign leases, check credit histories, and collect rent all in one place. However, if you need more features, you can upgrade to the paid version, which includes services like applicant screening, online rent payments, and maintenance tracking. Avail helps support and educate independent landlords through a wealth of educational resources on its site, making operating or scaling your businesses easy.
💡Room for Improvement: Avail has plans for a mobile app in the future; however, there is not one currently available. It would improve the user experience for landlords if they could access everything they need while they’re on-the-go.
Additional Features
- FastPay: With Avail FastPay, landlords can manage rental income with next-day expedited rent payment processing.
- Rent price analysis: This provides valuable information, including a rent estimate for your property, rent benchmarks for adjacent rentals, and county rent trends.
DoorLoop: Best for Various Property Types
Why I Chose DoorLoop
DoorLoop doesn’t just limit you to residential and commercial properties. It allows you to manage various types of properties, such as community associations, workforce housing, student housing, and mobile homes. It’s also a global platform, making handling any property, international location, and currency easy. You get all the great features of other property management software for small companies, such as listing your vacant units online, accepting rental applications, running tenant screening and background checks, and collecting rent.
💡Room for Improvement: Adding additional report features, like vacancy, maintenance, or tenant reports, would help landlords monitor their property’s performance and financial health in all capacities and adjust as needed.
Additional Features
- Integrations: DoorLoop integrates with thousands of software from accounting to calendar platforms, including Calendly, QuickBooks Online, Zapier, Pipedrive, Zoom, and DocuSign.
- Bank sync: This is powered by Plaid, allowing you to integrate your bank account, credit card, or debit card with DoorLoop to easily categorize and reconcile your transactions.
Rentec Direct: Best for Rental Websites
Why I Chose Rentec Direct
Rentec Direct offers a free, responsive, professional real estate website that fully integrates with your software to publish vacancies quickly. It also allows tenants to pay rent online and gives them and owners one-click access to their portals for easy communication and speed. Your property management website includes a custom web address, fully customizable pages, multiple mobile-compatible themes, and Google Analytics support. This offers a great way to promote your company and brand.
💡Room for Improvement: Rentec Direct would benefit by improving its customer support. Offering 24/7 and live chat support are just a couple examples of how users’ questions and issues could be answered and addressed promptly, improving their overall experience with the company.
Additional Features
- Work order: It enables users to assign vendors, attach photos, bids, and invoices, and contact owners to report maintenance issues.
- QuickBooks import: Rentec Direct is a property management software that integrates with QuickBooks and offers a QuickBooks compatible export of reports, so you can easily import your Rentec data, like general ledger and financial reports, into QuickBooks.
Rent Manager: Best for All-in-One Solution
Why I Chose Rent Manager
Rent Manager has everything you need to run your business all in one place. No matter what kind of properties you have, Rent Manager has got you covered. It offers comprehensive training, website building, complete accounting and reporting resources, intuitive marketing, and mobile tools, among many other features. While there is a monthly minimum, you can choose the package type that works best for your needs.
💡Room for Improvement: Rent Manager would improve by adding banking to its basic plan so that property managers at all package levels have access to all the features needed to manage their portfolios.
Additional Features
- ILS Advertising: Internet listing service (ILS) integrations push your unit and property information from your database onto various ILS platforms. All data changes in Rent Manager are automatically updated on each ILS site.
- Rent Manager Certification: Comprehensive training covering areas including bookkeeping, day-to-day tasks related to property management, scripting, and more. You can access award-winning training at your fingertips regardless of your portfolio size.
PayRent: Best for Rent Collection & Tenant Management
Why I Chose PayRent
When it comes to property management, keeping your finances organized and having high-quality tenants is necessary to generate income. Luckily, PayRent helps you do just that. Landlords input their tenants’ payment requirements and the system automates payment reminders, adds late fee penalties, and blocks partial payments. Tenants can also set up recurring payments to make sure they get money in on time. Plus, PayRent includes tenant screening features like credit reporting and applications to ensure whoever is living in your property is financially qualified to be there.
💡Room for Improvement: Integrations with third-party platforms like CRMs and rental listing platforms would help landlords capture leads for vacant properties.
Additional Features
- RentDefense: A feature available only on PayRent that protects landlords from lost or late rent. It includes scheduled payments, backup payment method, and bank balance verification.
- Lender partnerships: PayRent works with 75+ lenders to finance rehab, repairs, renovations, and portfolio expansion.
TurboTenant: Best for Advertising
Why I Chose TurboTenant
One of the most difficult parts of property management is filling vacancies in your property to maximize ROI. TurboTenant makes this a breeze by offering comprehensive marketing and advertising at the click of a button. Create a listing description with TurboTenant’s AI-powered tool, upload your property images, and then syndicate your listing to over 25 listing websites. That should do the trick in finding qualified tenants! Once you find tenants, TurboTenant’s all-in-one system helps manage them with screening, leases, maintenance, and more.
💡Room for Improvement: TurboTenant would benefit from offering integrations with third-party platforms CRMs so landlords can upload contacts and keep track of all tenant communication.
Additional Features
- Rent collection: Set automatic reminders, late rent fees, and reoccurring payments for tenants.
- Tenant screening: Get a full background check for tenants, including credit and eviction checks.
Property Management Software vs Property Management CRM
Property management software: Designed for the ongoing needs of current managers, like syndicating listings, managing maintenance, and collecting rent online.
Property management CRM: Focuses on managing leads and contacts, which helps property managers and investors find and maintain high-quality tenants.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is small business property management software?
Property management software is a collection of services that assists landlords, property managers, and real estate professionals in tracking leases, residents, and maintenance activities, collecting rent, and managing funds to decrease expenses and streamline operations.
Who should use property rental management software?
Property management software is used by and valuable to any investment property owner, from amateur real estate investors with small rental portfolios to major commercial property management organizations. These applications can also be helpful to a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) investor and a group of owners, property managers, facility managers, and leasing agencies.
Can you use Excel for property management?
Yes, you can use Excel for some of your property management needs, like rent rolls and keeping track of applicants. However, keep in mind that Excel is a spreadsheet program. It is not a comprehensive platform encompassing all aspects of your property management business.
What is the best CRM for property management?
Property management software platforms often include a built-in CRM. If your platform lacks this feature, check out our list of the best free CRMs to enhance your organizational processes.
Methodology: How I Chose the Best Property Management Software
Our expert researchers, agents, writers, and editors at The Close researched and reviewed dozens of property management solutions for small businesses. We considered dozens and chose the top seven based on pricing structure, features, and reviews.
Other factors we examined to evaluate the best property management software for small businesses include the following:
- Pricing (20%)
- We evaluated the cost of each software, the price of each subscription package, the value of the features provided, and whether it offers a free trial.
- Property Management Features (30%)
- Based on various property management features offered that help landlords and property managers list and market properties, screen tenants, generate leases and reports, and track financials.
- Tenant Communication Features (15%)
- Based on various tenant communication features offered that help landlords and property managers to engage and connect with their tenants.
- Ease of Use (10%)
- Based on how easy it is to navigate the provider interface and if it provides hassle-free transactions and communication between property owners and tenants.
- Help & Support (5%)
- We looked into the convenience and attainability of customer service for technical support, onboarding, and training.
- Customer Rating (10%)
- Based on customer feedback for each program, with particular attention given to reviews of the product and popularity of the provider, to certify the software meets user satisfaction.
- Expert Score (10%)
- Expertise in the field and firsthand experience with the providers allow us to evaluate the standout features, value for the money, and ease of use of property management software.
Your Take
So, what is the best property management software? It depends on what you need! No matter what you choose, the right property management software will streamline your processes, keep your files and reports organized, and build strong relationships with your tenants. Use our list to choose a provider that best meets your needs and gives your business a competitive edge. What is a property management software feature that you can’t live without? We’d love to hear it in the comments below!
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