Choosing the Best Property Management Software

Comparing Yardi Breeze, Yardi Voyager, Rentvine, and AppFolio: The Ultimate Guide for Property Managers

Are you searching ‘What’s the best property management software?’ Or maybe the property management software you've invested in doesn't quite hit the right notes?

That's where we come in, presenting you with an in-depth feature comparison of four renowned players in the field. Let's squash the Yardi vs. AppFolio vs. Rentvine debate once and for all. We also have some real-life comments from users to help you get a better perspective. The verdict will be all yours!

Let us give you an overview of which is the best property management software for YOU: Yardi Voyager, Yardi Breeze, Rentvine or AppFolio.

Yardi Voyager: A beast and unbeatable software. Perfect for a company with a larger portfolio (300+ units).

AppFolio: Perfect for company with mid-sized portfolio (50-200 units). Great customer support team.

Rentvine: Perfect for companies with a small to mid-sized portfolio (50-200 unites). It is a new name in the industry and has created quite some buzz as a newcomer.

Breeze: It is like Voyager’s little sibling. Good for companies with 50-200 units to manage.

However, software with limited capacity can not handle intense workloads, and users have often complained about the backend issues and the lack of integration options that AppFolio, Rentvine, Breeze offer. The best property management software should integrate seamlessly with all your tools so you have an all-in-one medium.

Yardi Voyager and LetHub's seamless integration brings you an ecosystem where data is flowing seamlessly, tasks sync effortlessly, and your operations become a symphony of precision.  

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Finding the Best Property Management Software

As a property manager dealing with multiple issues can become overwhelming when the software you have subscribed to doesn’t make your tasks easier. We have included lesser-known facts about the three as well and compiled our extensive research with the following parameters:

1. Accounting  
2. Maintenance Tracking  
3. Calendar and Scheduling  
4. Communications and Guest Card Management  
5. User Experience and Interface
6. Pricing

Accounting

Rentvine:

Pros:

• You can receive Electronic Payments through their secure resident portal via ACH, eCheck, Credit and Debit Card
• It has complete audit logs that show every transaction that’s been made such as, whoever made or altered transaction, and can also check full ledger entries for both cash accrual-based account
• It allows GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) accounting with full audit trail access to every single transaction
• It has a feature called manager’s ledger which can separate manager money from client money, take care of management fees, and company funds, and is also able to reverse transactions and fix ledgers if a payment is reversed  

Cons:

• It does not support a lot of flexibility in terms of reporting needs.
• Users have previously come forward with complaints about updating invoices on the system.

Yardi Voyager:

Yardi Voyager is MAJORLY known for its comprehensive accounting capabilities.  

Pros:  

The integrated accounting features comes inclusive of:

• General ledger
• Accounts payable
• Accounts receivable
• Budgeting
• CAM reconciliations
• Company’s financial reporting
• Fixed Assets reports (Asset Analytics, Item Type Received, Make Ready, Work Order and Purchase Requisition)
• It allows property managers to handle financial transactions, track properties’ income and expenses, manage multiple sets of books and account trees, automate recurring journal entries, sustain segmented and inter-company accounting. Hence, you are empowered to create detailed financial reports.  
• Yardi Users rave about the quality of the software's payment processing, purchase order management, budget management through data tracking of their expenses  
• Voyager is known for filing 1099s easily during tax season. E-filing options are also available.  

Cons:

• The major issue users face is that the software can be technically challenging to use for new beginners.
• Support is needed for the initial setup of the system.

Yardi Breeze:

Pros:

It can provide an intuitive way to manage property finances effectively, especially for single-family houses. You can manage the following accounting tasks:

• Creating accounts payable and receivables
• Manage triple net (NNN), gross leases or combinations
• Custom expense pools and send it to the rightful tenants by allocating it to them  
• Flexible common area maintenance (CAM) schedules  
• Customizable caps and percentage allocations for expense pools  
• Post estimated charges for monthly, quarterly, or annual reconciliation  
• Recovery reconciliations Common Area Maintenance (CAM) charges. These include utilities, services, repairs, maintenance, property taxes, insurance, and other additional expenses that are to be covered by the tenants
• RentCafe integration allows tenants to make payments online  
• The feature helps you to customize financial statements, track job costs, including budgets, supplier contracts, payments, and retention.
• Get financial period management, batch processing, and a general ledger with cash and accrual accounting  

Cons:

• It does not offer the extensive depth of features found in Yardi Voyager with in-depth real-time financial reporting.  
• It doesn't work well for companies with mixed portfolios, which contain both residential and commercial

AppFolio:

Pros:

• AppFolio's integrated accounting include various financial management tasks and features such as:
  1. Rent collection
  2. Accounts payable
  3. Accounts receivable
  4. Budgeting
  5. Financial reporting.

• You can ensure accurate financial records are being made using multi-entity accounting management
• Increases oversight of your business with audit logs. It deals with automatic record-keeping, making it easier to investigate mistakes and help identify suspicious activity.

Cons:

• The biggest complaint from users includes issues with the interface being outdated.
• Lesser flexibility as compared to Yardi Voyager when it comes to accounting features.
• The billing and financial reporting aspect of the software, especially for maintenance issues, is often something users raise their concerns over

Maintenance Tracking:  

Rentvine:  

Pros:

• Rentvine has its own vendor portal that keeps track of your payment history, and upload important documents such as insurance and licenses, manage your work orders
• Owners, tenants and vendors can check the status of their maintenance work
• You can create multiple customizable inspections

Cons:

• They are fairly newer in the industry which is why some users have reported to have had bugs in their work orders and workflows

Yardi Voyager:  

Pros:

• Yardi Advanced Maintenance, a robust platform, has the capacity to:
  1. Manage and create work orders
  2. Track maintenance requests
  3. Schedule repairs
  4. Schedule and track asset maintenance
  5. Collect Rent
  6. Monitor the status of maintenance tasks.  

• The solution supports all types of real estate market segments, including, but not limited to, multifamily, affordable, senior, military, condominium, HOA, retail, office, and industrial properties.
• You can schedule routine, emergency, and preventative maintenance tasks.  
• What stands out the most is the location tracking feature allowing you to match technicians with tasks.  
• It provides communication between you and the maintenance staff, owners, and even tenants.
• The integration with VENDORCafé allows you to manage work order bids and vendor proposals from your tablet  
• It allows automatic tracking of inventory consumption inclusive of a complete history of all fixed assets and work orders with a graphical display of key performance indicators

Cons:

• The reports take a while to load on Voyager especially if the data contains heavy information  

Yardi Breeze:  

Pros:

• Yardi Breeze provides only basic functionality maintenance tracking tools, such as a limited number of work orders at a time

Cons:

• Maintenance reports can have errors and duplicate entries if the user is not careful about all the property info being entered correctly.  
• People with larger portfolios, especially managing commercial housing, cannot have all the functionality they need such as using mass communication options with tenants.

AppFolio:  

Pros:

• AppFolio's maintenance tracking features enable property managers to:
  1. Create, assign, and track maintenance requests and work orders
  2. Coordinate repairs  
  3. Communicate with maintenance staff
  4. Online Maintenance Requests  
  5. Common Area Maintenance  
  6. Mobile Violations & Tracking    
  7. In-House Maintenance  

• It can also keep tenants informed about the progress of maintenance tasks through the tenant portal  
• You can keep track of all the work necessary to a unit that will be vacant using the Unit Turn Board.  
• Current residents can submit maintenance requests using the Online Portal.

Cons:

• Communicating with tenants is difficult due to glitches as users have reported that their tenants get frustrated as sometimes, they can’t reply to certain emails sent to them by AppFolio and get an error trying to do so.  
• Using AppFolio for maintenance billing and tracking lacks finer tuning options making it less customizable.

Calendar Tools

Yardi Voyager:

Pros:

• RentCafe and Yardi Voyager’s integration offers both self-guided and guided tour options to be booked on your website.
• Voyager syncs for both Outlook and Google calendar.
• Yardi Voyager’s newest integration with LetHub also allows ease of schedule showings and activities with a drag and drop interface.
• Prospects can control the timing and choose available appointments that work for them. Allows for you to set your own buffer time in between shows, organize tasks, appointments.

Cons:  

• Some users perceive it as complex, with its numerous options, settings, and integrations
• Smaller portfolios might find some of the features excessive for their needs.

Yardi Breeze:

Pros:  

• Yardi Breeze offers a calendar to log activities to help you track important dates, appointments, and tasks  
• On the dashboard calendar, you can check alerts on leases that will expire that month. It also allows you to run reports months in advance to check on leases that are coming due.
• The calendar helps with creating the activity logs along with notes of owners, your tenants and maintenance logs
• You can also set reminders of the maintenance tasks pending on it

Cons:  

• It is not as robust as Voyager, nor has the capacity to automatically sync your personal calendar.
• It does not help in managing and booking showings and tours

AppFolio:

Pros:

• It can help plan and manage tasks, appointments, and events through its integration with Google Calendar.
• Create a shared office calendar of property showings through the Google calendar settings. You could post this calendar to your website or simply use it as a tool for everyone in your office.
• Allows everyone on the staff to see each other’s schedules, making it so much easier to schedule tenant or owner meetings as you can see your entire team's availability.  
• Property managers can use the calendar to track lease-related activities, maintenance tasks, and other property management responsibilities.

Cons:

• Lacks certain advanced functionalities, such as automated reminders, advanced reporting, or customizable event types
• Users previously have found that the calendar and scheduling functionalities in AppFolio lack customization options.
• The procedure for scheduling and booking tours is long. The guest cards are sent an invite for each availability that is first created manually in the system. Afterward, that is emailed/messaged to the guest's cards

Rentvine:

Pros:  

• The integration of Tenant Turner and Rentvine allows you to check your Google or Microsoft Office 365 calendar for scheduling conflicts prior to scheduling showings.

• With the Scheduler and Rentvine integration you can set up automated reminders and emails to be sent linked from your calendar

Cons:  

• It does not have its own calendar feature with no ease of access
• The showings do not directly show up into your Google or Outlook calendar as it is not synced  

Guest Card Management and Communications:

Yardi Voyager:

Pros:

• The feature allows you to schedule follow-up actions, reminders, and notifications.
• Yardi Voyager's Guest Card Management tools are integrated with other property management functionalities. This means that guest data seamlessly flows into your broader property management processes.
• It uses real-time tracking using guest card creation and communication to match prospects with vacant units quickly.
• You can even send tenant notifications and communicate with vendors and owners, Yardi’s correspondence management module allows you to easily merge information from your system such as reports, lease data, graphs into automated letters, emails, or even PDFs.  

Cons:

• Some users have reported it to be a bit technical to set up and use help from Voyager’s support team at first. But later, are able to automate all their leasing workflow from initial contact to guest card management with ease.

Yardi Breeze:

Pros:

• Yardi Breeze provides communication tools that allow property managers to send notifications, announcements, and updates to tenants and owners through the platform
• Supports basic tenants and owner communication needs, making it perfect for companies that manage smaller portfolios

Cons:

• Lacks custom-built communications with prospects
• Users tend to face issues with the messaging sent to leads
• Is not able to support a larger number of units for automated communication support

AppFolio:

Pros:

• AppFolio's communication tools include:
  1. Email notifications
  2. Announcements
  3. Customizable templates

• Ability to group message tenants of one property in one go for important announcements.
• There is no need for integrations or add-ons to contact residents in AppFolio

Cons:

• Cannot customize owner reports being sent on guest cards and leasing performance

Rentvine:

Pros:

• Rentvine’s communication tools include:
  1. Email organizer
  2. Message Center
  3. Customizable templates for FAQs/inquiries

Cons:

• So far, they do not have reports generation option on guest cards  
• Their internal communications with tenants and owners is good but lacks the guest card communications channels and automation

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Navigating User Experience and Interface:  

For an experience, we would like to give you a little insight into what it is like using each of them:

Yardi Voyager:

Picture this – you log into Yardi Voyager, and you're greeted by an interface that feels like a virtual command center for your properties. The dashboard presents a clear overview of essential information at a glance. It's like having a window into your entire property portfolio. With its organized menu navigation, finding the tools you need is right there. Need to access tenant information? It's just a click away. Want to dive into financial reports? You got it! Yardi Voyager's interface is designed for efficiency, allowing you to navigate with confidence and execute tasks seamlessly.  

Yardi Voyager also has an encyclopedia of videos and tutorials available online, just in case anyone faces software issues.

Yardi Breeze:

When it comes to Yardi Breeze, simplicity takes the center stage. Its user interface is for those who prefer a straightforward approach. The navigation is clean, uncluttered, and designed to get you to where you need to be quickly. Yardi Breeze's interface embraces the "less is more" philosophy, making it a welcoming choice for smaller companies with lesser doors. It is also cost effective for property managers.  

AppFolio:

Step into the world of AppFolio, and you'll be greeted by an interface that balances functionality. The dashboard serves as your command center, presenting a holistic view of your property operations. The user experience is good as tasks flow from one to the next. The intuitive design comes with aesthetic dashboards as well. The experience is different for users as beginners will need some guidance on how to navigate.

Rentvine:

Navigating Rentvine's user interface is like taking a stroll through a well-organized boutique for small property portfolios. It welcomes users with a clean and intuitive design, perfect for property managers who value simplicity. Finding essential tools and information has never been this easy, thanks to its uncluttered layout that prioritizes efficiency. With Rentvine, you won't feel overwhelmed by unnecessary features; instead, you'll have quick access to the tasks that matter most for smaller property portfolios. It's a user-friendly interface that aligns perfectly with the needs of those managing compact yet valuable properties.

Pricing:

Remember, the right software isn't just about the price tag - It's about the value it brings to your business’s success.  

AppFolio:

Appfolio charges $1.25 per unit per month for residential housing. Which means if you have 500 units that you are managing:

1.25 x 500 = $625

You will be paying AppFolio $625 per month.

Whereas they charge $1.5 per unit per month for commercial housing. Thus, having 500 commercial units means:

1.5 x 500 = $750

You will be paying AppFolio $750 per month.

Pros:

• Offers a transparent pricing structure that scales with the number of units you manage
• Customizable pricing, only pay for the features you need  

Cons:

• AppFolio can be relatively higher for companies managing a smaller portfolio  
• Pricing increases a lot more as you add units or features such as Credit, eviction, criminal check costing about $20.00 per screening, AI Leasing Assistant which is for $2.50 per unit per month, and the marketing website costs about $99.00 per month with a $2,000 setup fee.

Yardi Breeze:

Yardi Breeze charges $1 per unit per month for residential housing. This means if you have 500 units that you are managing, you will be paying $500 per month.

Whereas they charge $2 per unit per month for commercial housing. Thus, having 500 commercial units means:

2 x 500 = $1000

You will be paying Yardi Breeze $1000 per month.

Pros:

• An affordable option, best for property managers with smaller portfolios.
• Transparent pricing structure, you pay only for what you need.  

Cons:

• Is affordable but not the best choice for larger companies as there is a limited number of units you can have on the software
• No custom pricing

Yardi Voyager:

The Yardi Voyager pricing is customized according to your needs. You can request a custom quotation for residential or commercial housing. Pricing is inclusive of advanced accounting, reporting, and integrations.

Pros:

• Budget-friendly for medium-sized property management businesses.  
• Best for basic functionalities such as tracking tenants and rent payments.

Cons:

• It is on the pricier end for smaller property management businesses.

Rentvine:

Renvtine charges $2.50 per unit per month. This means if you have 500 units that you are managing, you will be paying $1250 per month.

Pros:

• A good fit for property managers with smaller portfolios.
• Transparent pricing structure, you pay only for what you need.  
• They have Implementation fee based on units

Cons:

• Rentvine is on the pricier side in terms of a software which is fairly a new player on the field
• They have some additional fees for screening and transactions

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So, there you have it – a comprehensive comparison to guide you in choosing the best property management software for you.

Equipped with insights into each solution's strengths, you can now stride confidently toward more efficient and hassle-free property management.  

Remember, the best property management software isn't just a tool; it's your trusted partner in creating property management magic. Embrace it and watch your properties thrive.