Best online rental payment options

[Marco Samame]

Hello, 

I am looking for input from those who have used online rental payment applications for their tenants to pay their rent.  I am looking into Innago, Avail, apartments.com, a few others.  Ideally I am looking for an app that allows the tenant to pay thru direct deposit at no charge and for the payment data to be collected for credit scoring purposes.  I know apartments.com used to offer that feature of reporting to credit agencies for free but it's no longer available as a feature.  Any advice or lessons learned from your experiences is greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Marco

[Josh Young]

Quote from @Marco Samame:

Hello, 

I am looking for input from those who have used online rental payment applications for their tenants to pay their rent.  I am looking into Innago, Avail, apartments.com, a few others.  Ideally I am looking for an app that allows the tenant to pay thru direct deposit at no charge and for the payment data to be collected for credit scoring purposes.  I know apartments.com used to offer that feature of reporting to credit agencies for free but it's no longer available as a feature.  Any advice or lessons learned from your experiences is greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Marco

I use Zillow rental manager and it works great to list properties (cost $10 per week to list a property for rent), screen tenants (free for landlords, applicants pay $30 per person for credit report and background check) and collect rent (free for landlord and tenant unless they use a credit card then the tenant pays a fee), but it doesn’t report to credit agencies. I’ve actually been looking into reporting to credit agencies just because it seems like a win win for me and the tenants, it encourages them to pay so they don’t hurt their credit and helps their credit when they do pay. I really like using Zillow rental manager so I’ve been thinking about using https://frontlobby.com/  it looks like it’s free to do. Has anyone else used this website?

[Troy P.]

I use TurboTenant and it's been great.

[Mary Smith]

@Marco Samame I've been using Innago for years and it has greatly helped us manage our properties. Since Innago is a free software, they do charge your tenants a fee every time they make a rent payment online to you. It's $2 for a bank transfer and 2.75% for credit/debit transaction. You could also choose to take on these fees instead of having your tenants pay them. They also have a tenant credit reporting feature that's offered totally free for your tenants. 

[Miller McSwain]

There are lots of property management softwares. I'm a single-family investor, and I recently looked through the most popular softwares and selected one. The products I investigated were:

1. Tenant Cloud

2. Apartments.com

3. Innago

4. Avail

5. RentRedi

I was looking for a software that met the following criteria:

1. Online payments from tenants

2. Automatic late fees

3. Maintenance request portal

4. Free for the landlord

5. Online applications

6. Tenant screening (background checks, etc)

7. Lease signing

8. Ability to post vacancies in the software

I found that Innago was the only one to meet all these requirements. It does charge a $2 fee for each rent payment, but that is charged to the tenant by default. I haven't had any complaints from tenants about this charge.

The other softwares were pretty good, but here are the deal breakers for each.

Tenant Cloud: Tenants cannot setup autopay unless we have the paid version

Apartments.com: You cannot upload your own lease, you can only make modifications to their lease

Avail: You cannot upload your own lease, you can only make modifications to their lease

RentRedi: No free version AT THE TIME

***I investigated these softwares 8-12 months ago, so some things could have changed. For example, RentRedi is free now if you are a BP Pro member that could potentially make it a contender with Innago for my use. I did try it out recently, and the only thing holding me back is their lease signing feature. It doesn't prefill any of the lease for you. With Innago, for example, I uploaded my lease and indicated where my name, the tenant's name, checkboxes, etc need to be automatically filled. RentRedi doesn't prefill anything, which is a timesuck and a killer for me :(

[Andrew Bang]

I use two, both are good, if either were perfect I'd drop the other...

innago

Hemlane

[Karl B.]

When I list a property for rent I use Facebook, Apartments.com and Zillow. 

For online rental payments I use Apartments.com as it's free for both me and the tenant and they have good customer service when I call them. 

The only downside is it takes roughly 5 days from the tenant withdrawal until it hits my bank account. Aside from that I like it, considering it's free. 

Some tenants prefer to pay with cash, money order or personal check and I allow that as well. 

[Jason Sousa]

I recently signed up for rentredi and ohh man what a nightmare that software has been for me. 

[Alfath Ahmed]

I recommend apartments.com because it is free but a lot of other investors I work with use Buildium as well. Let me know if you have any other questions.

[Lee Prokopy]

Does anyone else use Zillow Rental Manager? I want to use a mobile app because I do my accounting (and save) on my computer. For example, someone from 2020 on Reddit posted that Zillow background check is completely unreliable... I would like to know if the app has any good use for people on the road a lot. 

[Michelle Chevalier]

Quote from @Andrew Bang:

I use two, both are good, if either were perfect I'd drop the other...

innago

Hemlane

I know this is an old post but I'm curious what features are lacking in one platform that the other makes up for. I'm leaning toward Hemlane for the maintenance coordination but want to be sure that I'm not overlooking an important feature that it is lacking. Thanks!