I've been trying to find the solution to managing real estate with online software for quite a while now. I've tried a lot of products, and haven't found quite the right fit. But I figured I could share some experiences that might help others. And I also figured I could create a thread where other people could share their experiences.

First off, there are a surprising number of real estate software platforms out there. 

There are a lot of platforms in part because there are a lot of types of customers. Here are a few potential types:

* House hackers trying to figure out how to do accounting (I fall into this category, as I live in one unit of a 2-unit property)

* Real estate agents who need accounting software, or transaction management software, or marketing software (I also fall into this category)

* Landlords who self-manage and want something to help them with marketing, tenant management, accepting rents, etc., and also need bookkeeping/accounting software. (I also fall into this group)

* Landlords who have a property manager where most of the accounting and all of the tenant management is done by the PM, but they still need some general accounting software to reconcile things like capital projects, mortgage payments, etc. (yes, this also describes me)

* Investors who want to analyze prospective deals, quickly calculate mortgage payments and other expenses, etc. (I think almost everyone on the forums here falls into this group, including me)

* Property managers who need to manage many units for many landlords. I'm not in this group and don't want to be, and I won't be doing a deep dive into this kind of software.

* and then of course all the software that is geared at more specialized real estate professionals, most of which I won't be looking at here. 

I fall into 5 of the categories I described above, which is probably a bit more than most people. But it's not unusual at all for someone to fit in 2-3 of these. Lots of people invest and house hack, or have a related side business like being an agent, or have a mix of self-managed properties and properties that are professionally managed. And finding just the right software bundle to help in your unique circumstances can be challenging.

With so many types of customers, there are a lot of software vendors out there trying to help them (or make a buck off of them). It can be hard to lump them all together, but here are some of the general buckets I have seen, and companies that fit into them. This list is by no means exhaustive, and you're welcome to add companies I missed or add your experiences in the comments. Following this list, I'll give my reviews of a few of the platforms I've tried (as separate comments added over the coming days).

* General accounting platforms: This includes Quickbooks/Quickbooks Online (the 800 pound gorilla), and competitors like Wave, Zoho Books, etc. These are generalized accounting packages that while powerful, are also confusing and rarely offer specific tools that are helpful to real estate investors. 

* Landlord/real estate specific accounting platforms: This includes companies like REI Hub, Rentastic, and RentalHero

* Platforms for landlords who self-manage: This is a little hard to pin down, but I would say it includes all the myriad platforms that offer help marketing a property, signing basic leases, communicating with tenants, accepting rent via ACH, basic document storgage, etc. I'm including things like RentRedi (tied to Bigger Pockets), the old Cozy.co (now part of apartments.com), TurboTenant, Innago, Lease Protector, Zillow Rental Manager, etc., in this group. Several of these are now partnering with REI Hub to offer accounting as an add-on service.

* Tools for investors who want to evaluate deals: Here you have probably the most crowded sector of the market. Literally dozens of companies are vying for your business here, everything from the Bigger Pockets deal analyzer to Roofstock spreadsheets to mortgagecalculator.org's surprisingly robust tools to DealCheck to ... well, there are just too many to list. I won't do a deep dive here, but I included it because some of the other tools I'm looking at like Rentastic offer a deal calculator as part of their bundle. Personally, I am fine keeping my deal analyzer separate from the management of the properties I already own, but I suppose there is some value to one-stop-shopping.

* Platforms that try to be all things to all people: This category is mostly Stessa and Baselane, both of which offer landlord accounting, self-management tools, as well as high interest cash management accounts. I would also put Avail.co and Rentec Direct in here since they do everything except for the high interest cash management account management.

* Tools for Real Estate agents that overlap in some of the landlord areas: I include here things like RealtyZam (parent company of RentalHero), Dotloop (an agent-only form-filling and signing tool that offers industry-specific services to help with basic tenant management like lease signing and secure document management), and Homes.com. 

* General form fillers and document signing/management platforms with a real estate vertical market. This includes the frighteningly long list of platforms that want you to give them a monthly fee to help you fill, sign, and manage PDFs. Docusign, Adobe, Zoho, Jotform, HelloSign, PandaDoc, and (so, so many) others. 

* Tools for professional property managers: This includes Appfolio, Propertyware, Buildium, and quite a few others. As I am not a professional property manager and don't want to be one, I won't spend much time on these. But I have been on the client side of these 3 and can make some general comments.

What a mess. 

With so many types of customers, and with customers routinely falling into more than one group, and so many companies marketing themselves to real estate investors and landlords, it's hard to find just the right mix of software.

Here's where I stand now:

$970/year to Quickbooks Online, a platform I detest, to do a mediocre job managing my books. 

$400/year to Dotloop, a platform that hasn't seen a significant UI improvement in years, to help manage my real estate agent transactions

Logins with 7 accounts across 4 banks (2 of which are also lenders), 2 additional lenders, 2 major credit card issuers, and a property management company using appfolio, and no centralized place to manage them all. 

Tenants paying rent by Venmo every month, which creates additional work to keep track of it all. 

More money than I care to say out loud to a CPA who takes the piles and piles of reports and documents I generate from all this, plus my W2 and my wife's W2, and turns it into something that the IRS will accept. I'm sure he'd be happier if I could consolidate this quite a bit, and it might save me some money if I can save him some time. 

In my attempt to simplify things, I have tried a lot of tools: Quickbooks Online, REI Hub, Stessa, Baselane, Wave, Docusign, Jotform, Dotloop, Homes.com, Cozy.co (now apartments.com), plus client-side experiences with property managers using Appfolio, Buildium, and Propertyware. I'm sure I've forgotten a few.

What I found out:

From the perspective of a real estate agent who needs to track expenses, a small-time landlord with 2 self-managed units, a house hacker, a landlord with 4 units under professional management, and an investor who analyzes deals, plus a guy who occasionally is lucky enough to have a little cash to put aside and wants the best return possible while it sits in the bank, is there one tool that will rule them all? Read on below as I review (as separate comments to this thread over the next several days) the tools I've tried and give my honest opinion on what worked, what didn't, and why. And feel free to chime in with your own experiences and tools or categories of tools I might have missed.