Alternatives to Cozy for Rent Collection
Cambridge, MA · Member since 2015 · 651 posts · 736 votes
Alternatives to Cozy for Rent Collection
Most Popular Reply
Timely thread. In March and April, we tested 5 solutions, each with 3 different tenants. The goal was to get feedback from actual tenants in different situations to see what people liked. Keep in mind we already have full accounting and payments and everything else in place -- this is really more about the tenant experience than what I prefer as the landlord or manager. Here's the results:
Apartments.com: Free. One tenant had a hard time signing up and linking to the property. Payments took a long time to arrive (6 biz days, IIRC). Also had a problem where their address validation didn't allow us to enter a recently built building, with no work around. Functionality is complete. I don't trust the company and expect they will squeeze for revenue once they have market share.
Buildium: Subscription. Considered, but they really want to displace the accounting system, which was a no-go for us.
Zibo: Free. So much potential. Tenants found this super easy to use. Engaged with their designers and product people to provide feedback. They have a good chance to grow to be the best pure-play rent payment solution out there -- their product and UI is spot on. Biggest issue we had is that they don't have a way to add one-time charges right now. Designers showed me UI mockups with the feature in it. Keep an eye on this.
TenantCloud: Subscription. I really wanted this to work, but the UI is a mess. It feels like a product that had features added for years with no real roadmap to make it cohesive. Payments don't feel core to the product. Can push data into Quickbooks in realtime (only one amongst the ones we tested that does this). 2 of 3 tenants couldn't successfully link to their property. It gave me headaches trying to get this working.
Rentler: Free. Favorite amongst tenants. Particularly good feedback on UI and tenant signup process and also because they report rent payments to credit bureaus, increasing tenant credit scores - that's a win for tenants AND us. Also, payments arrive faster (2 or 3 days - ICR). Supports different properties depositing into different bank accounts. Lacks one-time charge/credit, but can support it by modifying the next rent payment (provided feedback - they assure feature is coming).
Other solutions we didn't evaluate but are on our list are: PayRent.com, TurboTenant, and RentecDirect.
For May, we have moved about 50% of our tenant base to Rentler, as that's the clear preference of those who participated in the testing. Assuming it goes well, we'll continue moving people over, although we'll maintain some tenants on an alternative platform as a way to provide redundancy for the business.
I am 100% a fan of simple solutions, so a Buildium or AppFolio based system could certainly make sense. However, we are relentlessly focused on the quality of the tenant experience, and willing to incur additional work in order to deliver an optimized experience. There's a certain brand and feel we're going for, and using best-in-class tools is our way to get there. Note we're talking about dozens of units here -- it may be very different if the scale were larger and we were not owner-managers.
It's a constantly evolving space - always keeping an eye out for the best tools.
63 Replies
- Rental Property Investor · East Wenatchee, WA · Member since 2014 · 10k+ posts · 16k+ votes5y
Originally posted by @Justin R.:
Timely thread. In March and April, we tested 5 solutions, each with 3 different tenants. The goal was to get feedback from actual tenants in different situations to see what people liked. Keep in mind we already have full accounting and payments and everything else in place -- this is really more about the tenant experience than what I prefer as the landlord or manager. Here's the results:
Apartments.com: Free. One tenant had a hard time signing up and linking to the property. Payments took a long time to arrive (6 biz days, IIRC). Also had a problem where their address validation didn't allow us to enter a recently built building, with no work around. Functionality is complete. I don't trust the company and expect they will squeeze for revenue once they have market share.
Buildium: Subscription. Considered, but they really want to displace the accounting system, which was a no-go for us.
Zibo: Free. So much potential. Tenants found this super easy to use. Engaged with their designers and product people to provide feedback. They have a good chance to grow to be the best pure-play rent payment solution out there -- their product and UI is spot on. Biggest issue we had is that they don't have a way to add one-time charges right now. Designers showed me UI mockups with the feature in it. Keep an eye on this.
TenantCloud: Subscription. I really wanted this to work, but the UI is a mess. It feels like a product that had features added for years with no real roadmap to make it cohesive. Payments don't feel core to the product. Can push data into Quickbooks in realtime (only one amongst the ones we tested that does this). 2 of 3 tenants couldn't successfully link to their property. It gave me headaches trying to get this working.
Rentler: Free. Favorite amongst tenants. Particularly good feedback on UI and tenant signup process and also because they report rent payments to credit bureaus, increasing tenant credit scores - that's a win for tenants AND us. Also, payments arrive faster (2 or 3 days - ICR). Supports different properties depositing into different bank accounts. Lacks one-time charge/credit, but can support it by modifying the next rent payment (provided feedback - they assure feature is coming).
Other solutions we didn't evaluate but are on our list are: PayRent.com, TurboTenant, and RentecDirect.
For May, we have moved about 50% of our tenant base to Rentler, as that's the clear preference of those who participated in the testing. Assuming it goes well, we'll continue moving people over, although we'll maintain some tenants on an alternative platform as a way to provide redundancy for the business.
I am 100% a fan of simple solutions, so a Buildium or AppFolio based system could certainly make sense. However, we are relentlessly focused on the quality of the tenant experience, and willing to incur additional work in order to deliver an optimized experience. There's a certain brand and feel we're going for, and using best-in-class tools is our way to get there. Note we're talking about dozens of units here -- it may be very different if the scale were larger and we were not owner-managers.
It's a constantly evolving space - always keeping an eye out for the best tools.
Awesome feedback, Justin. Thank you for doing this.
Did you use existing renters in your Rentler study or just brand new ones? I'm looking for a solution also and remember cozy being clunky when the lease began in the past. Thanks!
Originally posted by @Steve Vaughan:
Originally posted by @Justin R.:
Timely thread. In March and April, we tested 5 solutions, each with 3 different tenants. The goal was to get feedback from actual tenants in different situations to see what people liked. Keep in mind we already have full accounting and payments and everything else in place -- this is really more about the tenant experience than what I prefer as the landlord or manager. Here's the results:
Apartments.com: Free. One tenant had a hard time signing up and linking to the property. Payments took a long time to arrive (6 biz days, IIRC). Also had a problem where their address validation didn't allow us to enter a recently built building, with no work around. Functionality is complete. I don't trust the company and expect they will squeeze for revenue once they have market share.
Buildium: Subscription. Considered, but they really want to displace the accounting system, which was a no-go for us.
Zibo: Free. So much potential. Tenants found this super easy to use. Engaged with their designers and product people to provide feedback. They have a good chance to grow to be the best pure-play rent payment solution out there -- their product and UI is spot on. Biggest issue we had is that they don't have a way to add one-time charges right now. Designers showed me UI mockups with the feature in it. Keep an eye on this.
TenantCloud: Subscription. I really wanted this to work, but the UI is a mess. It feels like a product that had features added for years with no real roadmap to make it cohesive. Payments don't feel core to the product. Can push data into Quickbooks in realtime (only one amongst the ones we tested that does this). 2 of 3 tenants couldn't successfully link to their property. It gave me headaches trying to get this working.
Rentler: Free. Favorite amongst tenants. Particularly good feedback on UI and tenant signup process and also because they report rent payments to credit bureaus, increasing tenant credit scores - that's a win for tenants AND us. Also, payments arrive faster (2 or 3 days - ICR). Supports different properties depositing into different bank accounts. Lacks one-time charge/credit, but can support it by modifying the next rent payment (provided feedback - they assure feature is coming).
Other solutions we didn't evaluate but are on our list are: PayRent.com, TurboTenant, and RentecDirect.
For May, we have moved about 50% of our tenant base to Rentler, as that's the clear preference of those who participated in the testing. Assuming it goes well, we'll continue moving people over, although we'll maintain some tenants on an alternative platform as a way to provide redundancy for the business.
I am 100% a fan of simple solutions, so a Buildium or AppFolio based system could certainly make sense. However, we are relentlessly focused on the quality of the tenant experience, and willing to incur additional work in order to deliver an optimized experience. There's a certain brand and feel we're going for, and using best-in-class tools is our way to get there. Note we're talking about dozens of units here -- it may be very different if the scale were larger and we were not owner-managers.
It's a constantly evolving space - always keeping an eye out for the best tools.
Awesome feedback, Justin. Thank you for doing this.
Did you use existing renters in your Rentler study or just brand new ones? I'm looking for a solution also and remember cozy being clunky when the lease began in the past. Thanks!
We initially used 1 new renter and 2 existing. In the second month, I added an additional new renter. No problems with any of then.
Some of the options, when moving over existing renters, had really odd experiences. Like, they want to know when the lease starts, but if you enter the actual lease begin date, they schedule payments for past months that were already paid. And if you enter the wrong lease date, the tenant communication is messed up. Rentler handles this by letting you tell it when rent should start being charged ... so the the lease start date doesn't try to do anything automatically with payments.
It's all that little stuff that makes life hard for us and makes the tenants hate the software ... and the only way I can figure to avoid it is to just test and test and test. I would personally be more than happy to pay, say, $2 per month per unit if the software just did exactly what you'd expect it to and avoiding trying to be fancy and do things for us.
Thing is, all these platforms are evolving ... so my comments will probably be inaccurate 3 months from now in important ways.
- Rental Property Investor · East Wenatchee, WA · Member since 2014 · 10k+ posts · 16k+ votes5y
Thanks, that's exactly what I experienced before. Trying to force feed it past rents for existing tenants so the software doesn't try to double bill them.
I have a couple new tenants coming in. I will try Rentler and give my feedback as well.
- Cambridge, MA · Member since 2015 · 651 posts · 736 votes5y
@Justin R. Very helpful!
I'm assuming that Rentler can handle extended stay leases that are as short as 2 1/2 months? We are generally doing leases by the semester or summer but there are times we have a visiting professor who is in town for a shorter period of time.
- Real Estate Agent · Columbus, OH · Member since 2016 · 593 posts · 664 votes5y
@Jay Ingersoll I like trunk tenant for marketing too. Does a great job for me here in Columbus
- 5yRemington LymanBusiness MemberReal Estate Agent · Columbus, OH · Member since 2017 · 6k+ posts · 7k+ votes
Originally posted by @Austin Steed:
@Jay Ingersoll I like trunk tenant for marketing too. Does a great job for me here in Columbus
How many are you up to here in Columbus, Ohio?
- Real Estate Agent · Columbus, OH · Member since 2016 · 593 posts · 664 votes5y
@Remington Lyman 23 just like MJ
- 5yRemington LymanBusiness MemberReal Estate Agent · Columbus, OH · Member since 2017 · 6k+ posts · 7k+ votes
Originally posted by @Austin Steed:
@Remington Lyman 23 just like MJ
- Real Estate Agent · Columbus, OH · Member since 2016 · 593 posts · 664 votes5y
@Remington Lyman you’re an odd fella
- Investor · Denver Metro · Member since 2020 · 21 posts · 13 votes5y
@Carolyn Fuller
I’ve been using Zillow, I like it but it does take 5 days for money to hit your account. Does not include management functions of any sort other than a lame application, make your own for them to fill out and plan on coming up with the rest as far as communications.
Having said that..
It’s a high profile service that gets results. No shortage of tenant leads, just do your own due diligence.
If I was doing due diligence on an area I might be doing attending a showing or two on similar properties to though in which I was investing off of Zillow due to the abundance, maybe keep that in mind when your putting your time aside for showings.
- 5yPeter TverdovBusiness MemberDeveloper · New Brunswick, NJ · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes
I have my biggest client (I do property management) who insists on getting paid directly so we used Cozy. Apartments.com has made this transfer difficult and frankly I am going to push hard to get the client on Appfolio along with all my other clients.
- Rental Property Investor · Sioux Falls, SD · Member since 2015 · 9k+ posts · 18k+ votes5y
Originally posted by @Joni Chin:
@Joe Splitrock
I use cozy but it hasn’t transitioned over to apartments.com for me yet. Did you get some kind of notice or did they transition to apartments.com with little warning ? Not looking forward to dealing with it.
March 28th they told me it was transitioning on April 7th, so I got about one week notice. My guess is they are doing a group every month.
- Rental Property Investor · Kennesaw, GA · Member since 2019 · 11 posts · 4 votes5y
@Carolyn Fuller I heard Cozy was great but unfortunately when I started renting out my homes it was not available anymore so have only been using apartments.com and it has been working great for me. Maybe since I never used Cozy I don't know what I'm missing. I love the fact that they will place a sign on the front yard with the apartments.com logo. To me this gives it a better look and makes it feel more legitimate than having a generic rent sign.
Zillow is great to find tenants and well worth the $10 a week to list. I was able to get so many inquiries in the first 3 days. I also get a good amount of inquiries from apartments.com. I prefer the tenant screening on apartments.com so I just tell everyone to do it there. I tried Zillow application/screening but find it is not as comprehensive as apartments.com.
I loved the leasing agreement on apartments.com. it's a wizard format where it asks you questions and then generates the agreement and sends it to all parties. Everyone e signs it and your done. On Zillow you have to upload it. I also find their payments feature very helpful.
Please let me know if I'm missing something that would make another service better.
- Rental Property Investor · Sioux Falls, SD · Member since 2015 · 9k+ posts · 18k+ votes5y
Originally posted by @Justin R.:
Timely thread. In March and April, we tested 5 solutions, each with 3 different tenants. The goal was to get feedback from actual tenants in different situations to see what people liked. Keep in mind we already have full accounting and payments and everything else in place -- this is really more about the tenant experience than what I prefer as the landlord or manager. Here's the results:
Apartments.com: Free. One tenant had a hard time signing up and linking to the property. Payments took a long time to arrive (6 biz days, IIRC). Also had a problem where their address validation didn't allow us to enter a recently built building, with no work around. Functionality is complete. I don't trust the company and expect they will squeeze for revenue once they have market share.
Buildium: Subscription. Considered, but they really want to displace the accounting system, which was a no-go for us.
Zibo: Free. So much potential. Tenants found this super easy to use. Engaged with their designers and product people to provide feedback. They have a good chance to grow to be the best pure-play rent payment solution out there -- their product and UI is spot on. Biggest issue we had is that they don't have a way to add one-time charges right now. Designers showed me UI mockups with the feature in it. Keep an eye on this.
TenantCloud: Subscription. I really wanted this to work, but the UI is a mess. It feels like a product that had features added for years with no real roadmap to make it cohesive. Payments don't feel core to the product. Can push data into Quickbooks in realtime (only one amongst the ones we tested that does this). 2 of 3 tenants couldn't successfully link to their property. It gave me headaches trying to get this working.
Rentler: Free. Favorite amongst tenants. Particularly good feedback on UI and tenant signup process and also because they report rent payments to credit bureaus, increasing tenant credit scores - that's a win for tenants AND us. Also, payments arrive faster (2 or 3 days - ICR). Supports different properties depositing into different bank accounts. Lacks one-time charge/credit, but can support it by modifying the next rent payment (provided feedback - they assure feature is coming).
Other solutions we didn't evaluate but are on our list are: PayRent.com, TurboTenant, and RentecDirect.
For May, we have moved about 50% of our tenant base to Rentler, as that's the clear preference of those who participated in the testing. Assuming it goes well, we'll continue moving people over, although we'll maintain some tenants on an alternative platform as a way to provide redundancy for the business.
I am 100% a fan of simple solutions, so a Buildium or AppFolio based system could certainly make sense. However, we are relentlessly focused on the quality of the tenant experience, and willing to incur additional work in order to deliver an optimized experience. There's a certain brand and feel we're going for, and using best-in-class tools is our way to get there. Note we're talking about dozens of units here -- it may be very different if the scale were larger and we were not owner-managers.
It's a constantly evolving space - always keeping an eye out for the best tools.
Thank you for the feedback on your experience. Did you look at a feature comparison in addition to tenant feedback? You said on Rentler that tenants liked reporting to credit bureau, but that is also a feature on Apartments.com. You mentioned Rentler can't add charges or credits, but on Apartments.com you can. One nice feature on Apartments.com is you can have it automatically add late fees and rent late reminders. You said Rentler supports depositing in different accounts, so does Apartments.com. You can setup different accounts for different properties and even add additional accounts for security deposits.
You mentioned not trusting Apartments.com. They are owned by CoStar, who is one of the largest REI companies out there. I have heard that Cozy was processing more rent payments than any other company, so they probably have the most scale today. That could be good or bad. ACH fees are completely volume driven. When you have mega scale, ACH costs near nothing. When you are small, it is expensive. The free rent payment companies make money on selling extra services like credit screening. They charge $40 for credit and background check, but it costs them $5-8. Rent payment is just the hook to tie you into their ecosystem of add-on services. Every company has to make money, so it is not a matter of if they will, but how or when they will. It is also worth noting Zibo is a startup, so they are likely pre-revenue and in customer acquisition mode. Nothing wrong with that, but my rent payments are too important to hand over to a startup.
Did you consider Zillow at all? I know Zillow is the "hated giant" of the industry, but they also have the highest level of brand awareness. If you ask a tenant to setup with Zillow, odds are good they know and maybe even trust the brand already. I get most of my best leads from Zillow, so I have thought of moving application, screening and rent payment over to them. It becomes a one-stop shop, so less places to manage my properties.
The longer I am in this business, the less I worry about "free" and the more I am concerned with reliability and time savings. It is worth spending money to eliminate headaches and ensure a better experience.
- Rental Property Investor · Sioux Falls, SD · Member since 2015 · 9k+ posts · 18k+ votes5y
Originally posted by @Ruben Munive:
@Carolyn Fuller I heard Cozy was great but unfortunately when I started renting out my homes it was not available anymore so have only been using apartments.com and it has been working great for me. Maybe since I never used Cozy I don't know what I'm missing. I love the fact that they will place a sign on the front yard with the apartments.com logo. To me this gives it a better look and makes it feel more legitimate than having a generic rent sign.
Zillow is great to find tenants and well worth the $10 a week to list. I was able to get so many inquiries in the first 3 days. I also get a good amount of inquiries from apartments.com. I prefer the tenant screening on apartments.com so I just tell everyone to do it there. I tried Zillow application/screening but find it is not as comprehensive as apartments.com.
I loved the leasing agreement on apartments.com. it's a wizard format where it asks you questions and then generates the agreement and sends it to all parties. Everyone e signs it and your done. On Zillow you have to upload it. I also find their payments feature very helpful.
Please let me know if I'm missing something that would make another service better.
I agree with your feedback. Just one comment on lease signing. Apartments.com only allows digital lease signing on their own lease, with no option to upload your own. Zillow offers free leases or gives you the option to upload your own. Zillow wins on this one because they give the user a choice.
Originally posted by @Joe Splitrock:
Originally posted by @Justin R.:
Timely thread. In March and April, we tested 5 solutions, each with 3 different tenants. The goal was to get feedback from actual tenants in different situations to see what people liked. Keep in mind we already have full accounting and payments and everything else in place -- this is really more about the tenant experience than what I prefer as the landlord or manager. Here's the results:
Apartments.com: Free. One tenant had a hard time signing up and linking to the property. Payments took a long time to arrive (6 biz days, IIRC). Also had a problem where their address validation didn't allow us to enter a recently built building, with no work around. Functionality is complete. I don't trust the company and expect they will squeeze for revenue once they have market share.
Buildium: Subscription. Considered, but they really want to displace the accounting system, which was a no-go for us.
Zibo: Free. So much potential. Tenants found this super easy to use. Engaged with their designers and product people to provide feedback. They have a good chance to grow to be the best pure-play rent payment solution out there -- their product and UI is spot on. Biggest issue we had is that they don't have a way to add one-time charges right now. Designers showed me UI mockups with the feature in it. Keep an eye on this.
TenantCloud: Subscription. I really wanted this to work, but the UI is a mess. It feels like a product that had features added for years with no real roadmap to make it cohesive. Payments don't feel core to the product. Can push data into Quickbooks in realtime (only one amongst the ones we tested that does this). 2 of 3 tenants couldn't successfully link to their property. It gave me headaches trying to get this working.
Rentler: Free. Favorite amongst tenants. Particularly good feedback on UI and tenant signup process and also because they report rent payments to credit bureaus, increasing tenant credit scores - that's a win for tenants AND us. Also, payments arrive faster (2 or 3 days - ICR). Supports different properties depositing into different bank accounts. Lacks one-time charge/credit, but can support it by modifying the next rent payment (provided feedback - they assure feature is coming).
Other solutions we didn't evaluate but are on our list are: PayRent.com, TurboTenant, and RentecDirect.
For May, we have moved about 50% of our tenant base to Rentler, as that's the clear preference of those who participated in the testing. Assuming it goes well, we'll continue moving people over, although we'll maintain some tenants on an alternative platform as a way to provide redundancy for the business.
I am 100% a fan of simple solutions, so a Buildium or AppFolio based system could certainly make sense. However, we are relentlessly focused on the quality of the tenant experience, and willing to incur additional work in order to deliver an optimized experience. There's a certain brand and feel we're going for, and using best-in-class tools is our way to get there. Note we're talking about dozens of units here -- it may be very different if the scale were larger and we were not owner-managers.
It's a constantly evolving space - always keeping an eye out for the best tools.
Thank you for the feedback on your experience. Did you look at a feature comparison in addition to tenant feedback? You said on Rentler that tenants liked reporting to credit bureau, but that is also a feature on Apartments.com. You mentioned Rentler can't add charges or credits, but on Apartments.com you can. One nice feature on Apartments.com is you can have it automatically add late fees and rent late reminders. You said Rentler supports depositing in different accounts, so does Apartments.com. You can setup different accounts for different properties and even add additional accounts for security deposits.
You mentioned not trusting Apartments.com. They are owned by CoStar, who is one of the largest REI companies out there. I have heard that Cozy was processing more rent payments than any other company, so they probably have the most scale today. That could be good or bad. ACH fees are completely volume driven. When you have mega scale, ACH costs near nothing. When you are small, it is expensive. The free rent payment companies make money on selling extra services like credit screening. They charge $40 for credit and background check, but it costs them $5-8. Rent payment is just the hook to tie you into their ecosystem of add-on services. Every company has to make money, so it is not a matter of if they will, but how or when they will. It is also worth noting Zibo is a startup, so they are likely pre-revenue and in customer acquisition mode. Nothing wrong with that, but my rent payments are too important to hand over to a startup.
Did you consider Zillow at all? I know Zillow is the "hated giant" of the industry, but they also have the highest level of brand awareness. If you ask a tenant to setup with Zillow, odds are good they know and maybe even trust the brand already. I get most of my best leads from Zillow, so I have thought of moving application, screening and rent payment over to them. It becomes a one-stop shop, so less places to manage my properties.
The longer I am in this business, the less I worry about "free" and the more I am concerned with reliability and time savings. It is worth spending money to eliminate headaches and ensure a better experience.
Yeah, that is absolutely true -- "Free" is basically never worth the cost of lacking reliability or causing headaches.
We also get all our best leads from Zillow - you're right it has the brand recognition and is, in my market at least, THE way to list. I've listed everywhere and essentially all my volume and valuable leads are coming from Zillow. Don't even both listing elsewhere for most properties now. They've got that two-sided market wrapped up. The fact that they pay-walled off and, I assume, now prevent syndication (I could be wrong on this - please correct if so) means my listings have to go there. Which means accepting Zillow applications and screening as at least one option has to go there. We have an independent system as well (RentApplication.net / RentecDirect) that sees about 50% of our activity. I'm fine paying the $10/wk because I'm getting the value and know that it's stable long term.
But Zillow has their own problems - they don't allow multiple users to collaborate on property listings or showings. Their application options are pretty basic and non-customizable. Their UI isn't very modern. Roommates can't pay rent separately. For whatever reason, my applicants and residents with limited English skills seem to have lots of problems navigating it.
So, the question is how to handle doc management and communication (leasing and move-in), and then payments. I don't see any logical reason why the "Find a Place" and "Live in a Place" user experiences need to be linked. Once a tenant is moved in, I don't even WANT them to be using sites that show them new places they could live. So, why would I want to encourage them to go back to Zillow or Apartments.com websites every month? Better to focus them on a great payment and communication experience elsewhere.
I'd note that most of the sites I tested use Plaid for payments ... so the underlying ACH infrastructure is often the same.
I haven't seen the credit bureau reporting feature on Apartments.com and can't find it advertised anywhere. You sure it's a feature there? Regardless of whether it's a feature they have, the tenants I tested with didn't realize it.
Rentler.com definitely isn't perfect. It's trying to be a place to find an apartment (bad for me). It's Properties/Units/Payments data model is bonkers weird for the owner/manager and needs to be fixed. The maintenance feature isn't good enough. There's no tenant-centric mobile app. But, those are all things that only impact me -- the tenant experience is really good. And, it was the best at getting all the standard features and basic details right.
We'll probably run a cohort test on PayRent.com to see what our tenants think. It'll run about $50/m, but given that it's sole purpose is payments, I have high expectations that they've focused on getting that right instead of focusing on being a ecosystem that does everything marginally well.
Glad you took the time to write up your thoughts - I love to hear what everyone else is doing so I can steal from their experience! :-)
- Member since 2020 · 9 posts · 0 votes5y
@Carolyn Fuller
Hi Carolyn,
I use Venmo to collect rent and I receive a notice when my tenant pays. Free and easy for both parties, hope this helps.
- Real Estate Broker · Huntsville, AL · Member since 2019 · 1k+ posts · 872 votes5y
I've currently ben using Innago for Property Management. Fairly straightforward. Message me if interested.
- Rental Property Investor · Sioux Falls, SD · Member since 2015 · 9k+ posts · 18k+ votes5y
Originally posted by @Justin R.:
Originally posted by @Joe Splitrock:
Originally posted by @Justin R.:
Timely thread. In March and April, we tested 5 solutions, each with 3 different tenants. The goal was to get feedback from actual tenants in different situations to see what people liked. Keep in mind we already have full accounting and payments and everything else in place -- this is really more about the tenant experience than what I prefer as the landlord or manager. Here's the results:
Apartments.com: Free. One tenant had a hard time signing up and linking to the property. Payments took a long time to arrive (6 biz days, IIRC). Also had a problem where their address validation didn't allow us to enter a recently built building, with no work around. Functionality is complete. I don't trust the company and expect they will squeeze for revenue once they have market share.
Buildium: Subscription. Considered, but they really want to displace the accounting system, which was a no-go for us.
Zibo: Free. So much potential. Tenants found this super easy to use. Engaged with their designers and product people to provide feedback. They have a good chance to grow to be the best pure-play rent payment solution out there -- their product and UI is spot on. Biggest issue we had is that they don't have a way to add one-time charges right now. Designers showed me UI mockups with the feature in it. Keep an eye on this.
TenantCloud: Subscription. I really wanted this to work, but the UI is a mess. It feels like a product that had features added for years with no real roadmap to make it cohesive. Payments don't feel core to the product. Can push data into Quickbooks in realtime (only one amongst the ones we tested that does this). 2 of 3 tenants couldn't successfully link to their property. It gave me headaches trying to get this working.
Rentler: Free. Favorite amongst tenants. Particularly good feedback on UI and tenant signup process and also because they report rent payments to credit bureaus, increasing tenant credit scores - that's a win for tenants AND us. Also, payments arrive faster (2 or 3 days - ICR). Supports different properties depositing into different bank accounts. Lacks one-time charge/credit, but can support it by modifying the next rent payment (provided feedback - they assure feature is coming).
Other solutions we didn't evaluate but are on our list are: PayRent.com, TurboTenant, and RentecDirect.
For May, we have moved about 50% of our tenant base to Rentler, as that's the clear preference of those who participated in the testing. Assuming it goes well, we'll continue moving people over, although we'll maintain some tenants on an alternative platform as a way to provide redundancy for the business.
I am 100% a fan of simple solutions, so a Buildium or AppFolio based system could certainly make sense. However, we are relentlessly focused on the quality of the tenant experience, and willing to incur additional work in order to deliver an optimized experience. There's a certain brand and feel we're going for, and using best-in-class tools is our way to get there. Note we're talking about dozens of units here -- it may be very different if the scale were larger and we were not owner-managers.
It's a constantly evolving space - always keeping an eye out for the best tools.
Thank you for the feedback on your experience. Did you look at a feature comparison in addition to tenant feedback? You said on Rentler that tenants liked reporting to credit bureau, but that is also a feature on Apartments.com. You mentioned Rentler can't add charges or credits, but on Apartments.com you can. One nice feature on Apartments.com is you can have it automatically add late fees and rent late reminders. You said Rentler supports depositing in different accounts, so does Apartments.com. You can setup different accounts for different properties and even add additional accounts for security deposits.
You mentioned not trusting Apartments.com. They are owned by CoStar, who is one of the largest REI companies out there. I have heard that Cozy was processing more rent payments than any other company, so they probably have the most scale today. That could be good or bad. ACH fees are completely volume driven. When you have mega scale, ACH costs near nothing. When you are small, it is expensive. The free rent payment companies make money on selling extra services like credit screening. They charge $40 for credit and background check, but it costs them $5-8. Rent payment is just the hook to tie you into their ecosystem of add-on services. Every company has to make money, so it is not a matter of if they will, but how or when they will. It is also worth noting Zibo is a startup, so they are likely pre-revenue and in customer acquisition mode. Nothing wrong with that, but my rent payments are too important to hand over to a startup.
Did you consider Zillow at all? I know Zillow is the "hated giant" of the industry, but they also have the highest level of brand awareness. If you ask a tenant to setup with Zillow, odds are good they know and maybe even trust the brand already. I get most of my best leads from Zillow, so I have thought of moving application, screening and rent payment over to them. It becomes a one-stop shop, so less places to manage my properties.
The longer I am in this business, the less I worry about "free" and the more I am concerned with reliability and time savings. It is worth spending money to eliminate headaches and ensure a better experience.
Yeah, that is absolutely true -- "Free" is basically never worth the cost of lacking reliability or causing headaches.
We also get all our best leads from Zillow - you're right it has the brand recognition and is, in my market at least, THE way to list. I've listed everywhere and essentially all my volume and valuable leads are coming from Zillow. Don't even both listing elsewhere for most properties now. They've got that two-sided market wrapped up. The fact that they pay-walled off and, I assume, now prevent syndication (I could be wrong on this - please correct if so) means my listings have to go there. Which means accepting Zillow applications and screening as at least one option has to go there. We have an independent system as well (RentApplication.net / RentecDirect) that sees about 50% of our activity. I'm fine paying the $10/wk because I'm getting the value and know that it's stable long term.
But Zillow has their own problems - they don't allow multiple users to collaborate on property listings or showings. Their application options are pretty basic and non-customizable. Their UI isn't very modern. Roommates can't pay rent separately. For whatever reason, my applicants and residents with limited English skills seem to have lots of problems navigating it.
So, the question is how to handle doc management and communication (leasing and move-in), and then payments. I don't see any logical reason why the "Find a Place" and "Live in a Place" user experiences need to be linked. Once a tenant is moved in, I don't even WANT them to be using sites that show them new places they could live. So, why would I want to encourage them to go back to Zillow or Apartments.com websites every month? Better to focus them on a great payment and communication experience elsewhere.
I'd note that most of the sites I tested use Plaid for payments ... so the underlying ACH infrastructure is often the same.
I haven't seen the credit bureau reporting feature on Apartments.com and can't find it advertised anywhere. You sure it's a feature there? Regardless of whether it's a feature they have, the tenants I tested with didn't realize it.
Rentler.com definitely isn't perfect. It's trying to be a place to find an apartment (bad for me). It's Properties/Units/Payments data model is bonkers weird for the owner/manager and needs to be fixed. The maintenance feature isn't good enough. There's no tenant-centric mobile app. But, those are all things that only impact me -- the tenant experience is really good. And, it was the best at getting all the standard features and basic details right.
We'll probably run a cohort test on PayRent.com to see what our tenants think. It'll run about $50/m, but given that it's sole purpose is payments, I have high expectations that they've focused on getting that right instead of focusing on being a ecosystem that does everything marginally well.
Glad you took the time to write up your thoughts - I love to hear what everyone else is doing so I can steal from their experience! :-)
I was told that Apartments.com would let you opt in to credit reporting like Cozy, but maybe that fell off through the transition. Great point about Zillow or Apartments.com pushing a new place to live. I have a separate account with Zillow as a renter profile. I set it up under a different e-mail so I could test and see what the user side looks like. During the pandemic I got emails from Zillow telling me my landlord couldn't evict me if I didn't pay rent. I was irate that they would encourage tenants to not pay rent after charging landlords to list properties on their site in the first place. This can be the trouble with any of these third party companies. They think the end user is their customer, not you as the landlord. I am not sure any third party vendor is safe, unless you are buying the license.
Curious, how can you tell who is using Plaid?
Originally posted by @Joe Splitrock:
Originally posted by @Justin R.:
Originally posted by @Joe Splitrock:
Originally posted by @Justin R.:
Timely thread. In March and April, we tested 5 solutions, each with 3 different tenants. The goal was to get feedback from actual tenants in different situations to see what people liked. Keep in mind we already have full accounting and payments and everything else in place -- this is really more about the tenant experience than what I prefer as the landlord or manager. Here's the results:
Apartments.com: Free. One tenant had a hard time signing up and linking to the property. Payments took a long time to arrive (6 biz days, IIRC). Also had a problem where their address validation didn't allow us to enter a recently built building, with no work around. Functionality is complete. I don't trust the company and expect they will squeeze for revenue once they have market share.
Buildium: Subscription. Considered, but they really want to displace the accounting system, which was a no-go for us.
Zibo: Free. So much potential. Tenants found this super easy to use. Engaged with their designers and product people to provide feedback. They have a good chance to grow to be the best pure-play rent payment solution out there -- their product and UI is spot on. Biggest issue we had is that they don't have a way to add one-time charges right now. Designers showed me UI mockups with the feature in it. Keep an eye on this.
TenantCloud: Subscription. I really wanted this to work, but the UI is a mess. It feels like a product that had features added for years with no real roadmap to make it cohesive. Payments don't feel core to the product. Can push data into Quickbooks in realtime (only one amongst the ones we tested that does this). 2 of 3 tenants couldn't successfully link to their property. It gave me headaches trying to get this working.
Rentler: Free. Favorite amongst tenants. Particularly good feedback on UI and tenant signup process and also because they report rent payments to credit bureaus, increasing tenant credit scores - that's a win for tenants AND us. Also, payments arrive faster (2 or 3 days - ICR). Supports different properties depositing into different bank accounts. Lacks one-time charge/credit, but can support it by modifying the next rent payment (provided feedback - they assure feature is coming).
Other solutions we didn't evaluate but are on our list are: PayRent.com, TurboTenant, and RentecDirect.
For May, we have moved about 50% of our tenant base to Rentler, as that's the clear preference of those who participated in the testing. Assuming it goes well, we'll continue moving people over, although we'll maintain some tenants on an alternative platform as a way to provide redundancy for the business.
I am 100% a fan of simple solutions, so a Buildium or AppFolio based system could certainly make sense. However, we are relentlessly focused on the quality of the tenant experience, and willing to incur additional work in order to deliver an optimized experience. There's a certain brand and feel we're going for, and using best-in-class tools is our way to get there. Note we're talking about dozens of units here -- it may be very different if the scale were larger and we were not owner-managers.
It's a constantly evolving space - always keeping an eye out for the best tools.
Thank you for the feedback on your experience. Did you look at a feature comparison in addition to tenant feedback? You said on Rentler that tenants liked reporting to credit bureau, but that is also a feature on Apartments.com. You mentioned Rentler can't add charges or credits, but on Apartments.com you can. One nice feature on Apartments.com is you can have it automatically add late fees and rent late reminders. You said Rentler supports depositing in different accounts, so does Apartments.com. You can setup different accounts for different properties and even add additional accounts for security deposits.
You mentioned not trusting Apartments.com. They are owned by CoStar, who is one of the largest REI companies out there. I have heard that Cozy was processing more rent payments than any other company, so they probably have the most scale today. That could be good or bad. ACH fees are completely volume driven. When you have mega scale, ACH costs near nothing. When you are small, it is expensive. The free rent payment companies make money on selling extra services like credit screening. They charge $40 for credit and background check, but it costs them $5-8. Rent payment is just the hook to tie you into their ecosystem of add-on services. Every company has to make money, so it is not a matter of if they will, but how or when they will. It is also worth noting Zibo is a startup, so they are likely pre-revenue and in customer acquisition mode. Nothing wrong with that, but my rent payments are too important to hand over to a startup.
Did you consider Zillow at all? I know Zillow is the "hated giant" of the industry, but they also have the highest level of brand awareness. If you ask a tenant to setup with Zillow, odds are good they know and maybe even trust the brand already. I get most of my best leads from Zillow, so I have thought of moving application, screening and rent payment over to them. It becomes a one-stop shop, so less places to manage my properties.
The longer I am in this business, the less I worry about "free" and the more I am concerned with reliability and time savings. It is worth spending money to eliminate headaches and ensure a better experience.
Yeah, that is absolutely true -- "Free" is basically never worth the cost of lacking reliability or causing headaches.
We also get all our best leads from Zillow - you're right it has the brand recognition and is, in my market at least, THE way to list. I've listed everywhere and essentially all my volume and valuable leads are coming from Zillow. Don't even both listing elsewhere for most properties now. They've got that two-sided market wrapped up. The fact that they pay-walled off and, I assume, now prevent syndication (I could be wrong on this - please correct if so) means my listings have to go there. Which means accepting Zillow applications and screening as at least one option has to go there. We have an independent system as well (RentApplication.net / RentecDirect) that sees about 50% of our activity. I'm fine paying the $10/wk because I'm getting the value and know that it's stable long term.
But Zillow has their own problems - they don't allow multiple users to collaborate on property listings or showings. Their application options are pretty basic and non-customizable. Their UI isn't very modern. Roommates can't pay rent separately. For whatever reason, my applicants and residents with limited English skills seem to have lots of problems navigating it.
So, the question is how to handle doc management and communication (leasing and move-in), and then payments. I don't see any logical reason why the "Find a Place" and "Live in a Place" user experiences need to be linked. Once a tenant is moved in, I don't even WANT them to be using sites that show them new places they could live. So, why would I want to encourage them to go back to Zillow or Apartments.com websites every month? Better to focus them on a great payment and communication experience elsewhere.
I'd note that most of the sites I tested use Plaid for payments ... so the underlying ACH infrastructure is often the same.
I haven't seen the credit bureau reporting feature on Apartments.com and can't find it advertised anywhere. You sure it's a feature there? Regardless of whether it's a feature they have, the tenants I tested with didn't realize it.
Rentler.com definitely isn't perfect. It's trying to be a place to find an apartment (bad for me). It's Properties/Units/Payments data model is bonkers weird for the owner/manager and needs to be fixed. The maintenance feature isn't good enough. There's no tenant-centric mobile app. But, those are all things that only impact me -- the tenant experience is really good. And, it was the best at getting all the standard features and basic details right.
We'll probably run a cohort test on PayRent.com to see what our tenants think. It'll run about $50/m, but given that it's sole purpose is payments, I have high expectations that they've focused on getting that right instead of focusing on being a ecosystem that does everything marginally well.
Glad you took the time to write up your thoughts - I love to hear what everyone else is doing so I can steal from their experience! :-)
I was told that Apartments.com would let you opt in to credit reporting like Cozy, but maybe that fell off through the transition. Great point about Zillow or Apartments.com pushing a new place to live. I have a separate account with Zillow as a renter profile. I set it up under a different e-mail so I could test and see what the user side looks like. During the pandemic I got emails from Zillow telling me my landlord couldn't evict me if I didn't pay rent. I was irate that they would encourage tenants to not pay rent after charging landlords to list properties on their site in the first place. This can be the trouble with any of these third party companies. They think the end user is their customer, not you as the landlord. I am not sure any third party vendor is safe, unless you are buying the license.
Curious, how can you tell who is using Plaid?
Good idea to have separate tenant account long term to keep an eye on their messaging.
What you're describing is the reason I'd prefer to pay a little for something than to get it free. That way it's very clear who the customer is.
Most of the sites I looked at advertise Plaid and tout the security aspect of it. Maybe they're contractually required to promote Plaid. You can always tell for sure when you link a bank account as landlord or tenant - Plaid has a specific interface for that. Multi-billion value company just for that niche.
- 5yOleksandr IvanovskiyPro MemberRental Property Investor · Member since 2019 · 124 posts · 38 votes
@Carolyn Fuller
Why would you stop? Cozy works great for me.
- Member since 2021 · 94 posts · 45 votes5y
I use Innago and definitely recommend it, except that there is a small transaction fee. From my understanding, if you're looking for online rent collection services that are free for both the landlord and the tenant, you're usually going to need some compromise such as to pay some sort of monthly fee or receive the funds much slower.
- 5yKatie MillerPro MemberGeneral Manager, Publishing at BiggerPockets · Denver, CO · Member since 2017 · 463 posts · 642 votes
@Carolyn Fuller I use RentRedi and find the platform to be way better than Cozy! You can check them out (and a few other options BP partners with) by clicking here!
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