Property Management Software - DoorLoop
Hey there! I manage about 100 units, a mix of Commercial, Multi-Family, Single Family, and Warehouse. I currently use Quickbooks, a few Excel Sheets, and Google Calendars for everything. I'm looking to use property management software for accounting and all the other features PM Software comes with. I can find a lot of info on here and elsewhere about the ones that I am most interested in. All except DoorLoop. If anyone has any experience with DoorLoop and is willing to share, that would be much appreciated!
It's really between Buildium and DoorLoop for me. Why I hesitate to run with Buildium is because it is made with Residential in mind while DoorLoop is made with both in mind. I used Buildium to set up one of the commercial buildings and it did work but if I'm going to be paying $100s a month on something, I want to make sure it is the best option for me. Thanks again!!!!
Most Popular Reply
Hey @Tyler Schmick, thank you for testing out DoorLoop and sharing your feedback.
I am David Bitton, one of the co-founders at DoorLoop. I'm happy to let you know that thanks to your feedback and many others, we now have all the features you were looking for, including:
1. Full accounting built-in with QuickBooks Online Sync if needed. You don't need to use QuickBooks if you don't want to. You can also sync and reconcile your bank accounts and credit cards.
2. List and advertise your rentals on Zillow, Hotpads, Trulia, Dwellsy, Apartments.com, and more.
3. Add a picture of your property or unit.
4. Sign leases electronically without creating a DocuSign account. You can also create reusable templates with custom fields.
5. Our tenant portal has been updated with two-way messaging and our new tenant announcements feature. You can send messages to your tenants by SMS, email, tenant portal, and even an automated phone call.
TenantCloud's free ACH payments take 4–6 business days to enter your bank account (longer if it's on a weekend or holiday). ACH payments made in DoorLoop on Monday can be in your bank account by Wednesday. With TC, you will need to wait another week. TC charges the tenant 2.9% and 30 cents per payment with credit cards (with longer funding times as well). All this info is taken from their site.
We are moving extremely quickly and adding many more exciting features that other programs don't offer yet.
We would love everyone's feedback on how we can make DoorLoop the best property management software on the market. Feel free to email or DM me on BiggerPockets.
Speak soon!
Hey Tadd, yes, it's actually in beta right now. We will likely roll it out to all clients in the next few weeks after testing is complete.
If you're interested in being one of the first beta testers and giving us feedback, please DM me here and I will set you up.
Speak soon!
Hi David. That sounds great. DM sent
On Friday 10 07 2022 I signed up for Doorloop after looking at several options. I spent most of the weekend trying to get things set up. I am learning that I might know more than the team members at Doorloop as I use the software. Maybe it is because they are building out the product or maybe it is just lack of actual use in the product. I felt that my sales rep only really knew 90% of the product but I feel the knowledge gap is actual daily use in the product.
I AM CONSIDERING CANCELING this week only because I feel that it might be too soon to be using the product. I feel that they might not be ready for prime time. There are a couple key features for me that are important and I feel that they are still learning. That being said I do get told that they are working to roll out more features and maybe things will come in the near future.
There are work arounds for several things that are not currently there, but those are work arounds and I dont want to invest and get started in a system that has so many work arounds. I am looking to simplify my property management not create several work arounds. So they currently have Properties and each property can have multiple units, just like all other property management software groups out there. The challenge here is that they do not track income and cost at the Unit level, they only track it at the property level. So take a sixplex for example. You have 1 property 1 address and 6 units. If you wanted to track a P&L by Unit, you would have to create 6 different properties to accomplish that. Units follow the rules of their parent account "Properties". So if you make your Units, Properties then you have to manually enter the rules for all those Properties. And it is a lot of additional work. So we are looking at building a 100 unit storage facility. That would require me to enter 100 Properties and set up rules for 100 properties, over setting up one property that passes its rules down to 100 units. Just cleaner and easier.
I have also been considering XERO as I have found that it is more real estate friendly over quickbooks. Full disclosure I am in accounting and have used Quickbooks for 15 years. It comes with its long list of work arounds.
I do like that Doorloop is one software and one system, I think that there is huge value in that. And I do think that their accounting functions are about 85%-90% what you would experience from a true accounting system. Just for context the Accounting Functions are more of my focus that the property management. I do think that Doorloop is probably one of the few software options for new and fresh.
They want to do a good job and I think they are open to feedback. If you are newer or have less complicated portfolios you would be fine in my opinion.
I am worried that as I grow there are key features that will simplify my life that are missing. I am looking for anyone who is currently using the software to see how they feel about the work arounds and if they feel that they are still worth it or if they feel that there is something better out there.
I was told that you have to pay for this so it is not an included feature like it is with Tenant Cloud etc.
@Sheena do you feel that there is enough within Innago on sourcing new tenants? I have Short Term Units and I am concerned they might not have the short term market aligned.
Interesting question Nickalaus. I also have a short term rental within my portfolio and I have never considered sourcing leads for that unit through Innago or any other traditional PM software for that matter.
For our truly short term leads we use Airbnb and solicitation direct bookings outside of the Airbnb platform when we can.
For midterm bookings (1-3 months) we list on Furnished Finder and market the property in Facebook groups designed for travel medical professionals and landlords to connect.
Hope that helps!
In addition to the "top four" I would include RentVine! We left Appfolio for RentVine and LOVE it! Happy investing!
- Melanie Thomas
- [email protected]
Like @Sheena R Roth mentioned, we too have been using Innago to manage our rentals. The software is very intuitive and they have a fabulous customer support team and also provide you with your personal account manager. We've tested several PM softwares in the past and found that Innago worked best for us. Plus it's a free software, and they're always adding several new features that have been very helpful for us!
@David Bitton My compliments on you engaging this forum. I just have a few units and growing. This is tough crowd with good questions who have done a nice job of expressing their needs and it seems like you have used it to upgrade your product. Your pricing is similar to online quickbooks, so financial risk is none. Now my only risk is time if I don't like it and have to migrate. You have convinced me to sign up, please stay active on BiggerPockets and use it to be best in class so I don't regret my decision.
@Michael McManus - I actually went with Innago and Quickbooks and potentially moving to Xero to help even additionally reduce my cost. I did give #Doorloop at Try and felt that they do a good job at Basic functionality. @David Bitton said it best that they are still in "Beta" phase. I kicked the tires for several weeks and quickly learned that they are still Basic in their functionality. I did find everyone to be very nice through the process. A little difficult actually getting in the "door" but found that the customer experience to be decent. I did get a call from Matthew Cave who asked me to follow up with him in 6 months to see if I was willing to give it another try. Interestingly he did not give me any contact information but I was appreciative of his call. It tells me that they do care. @Michael McManus with regards to your concerns about starting and stopping with them. With any software getting the data back out is really painful and why I think that having a clear way to have the necessary information in a backup fashion. Doorloop did advise me I could put the data into Excel which was a nice feature. But they do not IMPORT prior period data. Which I really think Doorloop needs to put focus on, because no one wants to have two separate sets of "books" for their accountant at year end. I think that this is a large opportunity out there.
I think I will go ahead and give them a try. I am about "reviewed out". I like what they are trying to build more than anything else that is under $100/mo and since I only self-manage 3-5 units, it shouldn't be too painful if it doesn't work out. Feel free to reach out to me down the road and see how it went. @Nickalaus A Goodman Thank you for all your input, it actually convinced me it was worth a try. Not being an accountant, I am still on the Quickbooks learning curve. They are trying to do everything I want and seem to be making decent progress, so will try them instead of settling for a program lacks the functionality.
@Michael McManus For what it is worth I think that with only 3-5 units you will be fine if you are interested in paying for a product. I assume that they are all the same owner and that makes it even easier. Quickbooks has been struggling in my opinion to meet the demand for real estate and in the recent years they have been trying to capture that market back. I am in Accounting/Finance full time and I have used Quickbooks Desktop for 20+ years. I HATE Quickbooks Online and most Accountants do. So do not beat yourself up over the QB Learning Curve even people in my position have challenges with it. It is not intuitive at all. I have 12 Doors today over numerous LLCs and looking to move into Self Storage so my needs are complex and Quickbooks struggles with this.
I think you will be fine, I can tell you the accounting in Doorloops looks familiar to Quickbooks so you should pick it up quickly. I am moving to Xero because it was built with a different outlook in mind and is geared towards my need to track numerous entities. And if Doorloop ever Tracked at the Unit Level they as well could accomodate that.
I do not think you are making a bad decision and if I only had 3-5 units in a single ownership structure, and I was willing to spend $100 a month I would do it too.
Hey all, thank you for the amazing comments and feedback. I love checking this thread and seeing the community of "Loopers" growing!
Updates for everyone:
@Nickalaus A Goodman - Thank you again for giving us a shot. We really appreciate all your feedback that will continually help us improve our software.
@Mary Smith - I'm not so familiar with them but happy to hear it was the right fit for you.
@Tadd Bennett - Thank you for being one of our first to try our new "website" feature. I personally spent a lot of time designing, editing, and developing some of the templates and I think everyone is going to love the modern design options. Please let me know how it turns out for you with AJ's help!
@Michael McManus - Super excited to welcome you to the DoorLoop family. I saw your recent chat message to our team - you're in very good hands with Jackie and we're all here to help anytime.
Just to clarify another comment - our software isn't in beta, only the new website feature where you can list your properties online on your own website.
Thank you again everyone, looking forward to speaking soon.
I am going to be playing around with Door Loop this weekend. I have only 9 doors and self manage. Looking to scale and not have to move to another platform but don't also need the same stuff and cost as the huge portfolios.
I just want to say I've been using doorloop for about 5 months. I was a little on the fence at the beginning but they have been rolling out features and with the new funding I would bet their tech map will push them over the edge.
Thank you Steven. Yes, you are 100% correct - with our new funding, we've been able to triple our headcount and product teams already and are releasing new updates and features 3x faster. We just released our largest update ever and I hope you're enjoying the new design, faster navigation, and added functionality.
Thank you so much again for all the love and support!
Can DL manage vacation rentals as well as traditional rentals?
Hi Justin, we can, however there are better programs that specialize only in vacation rentals and have more features for short-term rentals, like posting the listing on AirBnB for example.
If you want one software that can manage both, then we are likely a good option, however you should be aware of the limitations for short-term rentals.
You are welcome to schedule a demo and can ask them to show you how our members use it for vacation rentals: https://www.doorloop.com/demo
Let me know if I can help in any way, thank you!
David Bitton, Other than the marketing issue for the STR is there anything else about our use case that I should be concerned with?
Hi @Anne Darer,
Great question! Here are a few other limitations that you might find in a software that ONLY specializes in short-term listings:
1. Ability to pull in the bookings directly from AirBNB/Vrbo
2. Having your own online booking capability on your website that allows people to book or reserve the unit
3. Cleaning management - Automatically schedule cleaning at the end of the booking. We have a workaround for this though but it might get tedious if you have hundreds of units with thousands of bookings.
If any of those aren't deal-breakers, and the ability to manage all listings in 1 platform is a much bigger benefit and time-saver, then we might be the right fit! Let me know if I can help with anything else at all and feel free to DM me anytime.
@Drew Sygit I am a software developer and know a few others who may be interested in building something to do import/export. Data migration is a costly exercise and many times very labor intensive. If there is a demonstrable need and market for this kind of thing I am willing to explore with you or anyone else who wants to participate.
We use https://www.stessa.com/
It is missing some functionality but over the course of the last few months it has added much needed functionality. The team seems to be active and is responsive to requests for help.
We manage only about 25 units. But it works for me as it includes multiple portfolio management, multi properties per portfolio and multiple units per property.
It is a freemium product.
Based on content in this thread I will probably check out Doorloop