AppFolio Property Manager vs Buildium Comparison

I switched from Buildium to Appfolio 5 years ago and have not had any regrets. It is very robust and Appfolio is always updating the system

It is a little pricey, but I think it is worth it.

Ease of use. Love all the different links to search from just about any page.

The accounting portion. Need tenants to see scanned in bills on their tenant ledger.

LESS CLICKS. We used Buildium for years, and while Buildium is user-friendly, AppFolio just takes it to a whole new level. In Buildium we had to click 3 or 4 times to sometimes get to the page with the right information. In AppFolio it sometimes only takes 1 or 2 clicks. Their 'universal search bar' is fantastic - we can pull tenant/vendor/owner contact info, financial tasks, leasing tasks, reports, and more in one single search. If something is in AppFolio, you'll be able to find it with this search bar. The financial capabilities and ease of accounting are also a plus. Reporting is more in-depth and is more customizable than Buildium's. Another advantage of this program are the easy-to-use tenant and owner apps. Game changer for the tenants especially!

There's not much here, honestly! And if there are downsides to AppFolio that we come across, we can report them to the support team and many recommendations are considered for future improvements.

First and foremost, the value of the product. You get everything you need for cheaper than most of the other products out there. For my company, we transitioned from Buildium to AppFolio and instantly reaped the rewards. AppFolio provided us with an inexpensive company website, a quick and easy tool to post our vacancies to multiple websites, and great assistance during set-up.

I know some of the more expensive options offer more competitive pricing tools and a little more automation. Also, AppFolio had a few issues (like maintenance personnel not being able to see pictures on work orders using their mobile devices) that took AppFolio a while to start addressing.

Dear Drew, thanks so much for taking the time to leave a review. We're happy that your transition to AppFolio was a good one and that you are already reaping the benefit!

I have been using Appfolio for 2 years. I have seen a great improvement with tenants paying their monthly rent on time. The website options are perfect. I love the software.

Only allows businesses with 50 units or more to join. Can be confusing at times especially when it comes to the financial aspect. The biggest issue I have is not allowing me to post the charges I want due at lease signing. Appfolio has been making this very difficult because it says the payment is not due until move in. It has been making it very difficult for tenants paying us the full amount at lease signing. I like the way Buildium allows you to post your charges and the dates you want them to be paid.

Dear Nina, we appreciate your kind response and feedback. If you would like to post charges prior to the move-in date, charge a holding deposit from the rental application and the tenant will be able to pay this online at the time of lease signing. Feel free to follow-up with us if you'd like further assistance with this process!

We were happy with Appfolio until their new charge for tenant EFT payments.

We've overall been happy with Appfolio, but with their decision to charge our tenants $2.49 (from free) for EFT payments and how they rolled this out is frustrating. Appfolio spent a lot of time offering training on how to get tenants signed up for their portal, and how to "sell" the (then) free EFT payment option. Now, tenants either have to pay $2.49 for every EFT payment they make, or as the property...

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Access to reports without contacting property manager for details.

I have 76 different multi family properties. Our property manager recently switched to Buildium. It now takes me hours to find and locate all the invoices that I used to receive via email and could review in minutes. I have no confidence that I have reviewed every invoice charged to me, as every invoice is hidden within layers of various expense categories, rather than making the option to simply load ALL attachments in one place.

On the property management side, the tenants and property manager have a lot of good functions to help with communication including applications online that the property manager can review, notes for repairs, security deposit information, ACH payments, and payment history for the tenant.

The least favorite thing is the accounting side is lacking. Some of this is very tedious to enter accounting information one by one especially if you want to account for fixed assets/depreciation or even on the AP Side. It is very manual and time consuming, even more so if you are dealing with multiple bank accounts. There were certain things that the customer support was still working on getting onto Buildium.

All the automated things I don't have to do.

Communication between property manager and tenant but this has gotten better with texting now available.

Easy to use, especially for a first time property manager starting up.

Unable to allocate property reserve money.

It basically meet all requirements we have as a landlord and property manager.

I'm wondering about Buildium's Criterion of Tenants Screening. We stopper replying on Buildium's recommendation of tenants screening, because we found lots of them got straight Approved while they have serious issue like Criminal and Eviction history.

The website is user friendly. Anytime I've ever had any tech issues, the response and customer service was friendly and professional. I'd recommend Buildium to anyone who manages properties in any state! All the new updates to the website have been for the better and really help with response times being more instant than before!

I would say that one of the cons is the texting feature. I think it might be bugged. I'm always receiving updates when I do not want to see them. I'm sure it's something I can turn off, I just haven't had a chance to.

Hi Khadijah, Thank you for your feedback. In regards to our texting feature, you can turn off individual text messaging notifications on the text messaging page on the Communication menu. If you want all notifications turned off, you can adjust that under 'My settings'. Thank you! Buildium Team

As a property manager Buildium is excellent to keep all financial information about owners and tenants in good order

This software is not adapted to Canada. We need to keep the Goods and Services taxes separate which is cumbersome and error-prone. Also it does not link with QuickBooks Pro. Since we are a Canadian company we need to keep our books in QuickBooks Pro for two reasons: Buildium does not integrate with our tax system and, because of it, accountants in Canada do not know Buildium.

Everything is in one place. You can do everything you need as a Property Manager including receiving and sending payments.

I feel like some things can be condensed. There are a lot of different buttons and tabs. This does get frustrating at times. I feel like there could be a way to combine some of them.

I love that I can keep track of every renter and every property manager. Also the customers service is TOP NOTCH!

It's a little on the pricey side compared to other accounting software out there. Other than that I can't think of anything else.

As a property manager, Buildium has been a great tool that helps me to keep organize and make my job easier.

I would like to be able to grade the vendors that the company used.

It keeps me organized as a Property Manager. I am able to keep up with payments, Income Statements, detailed reports and 1099s.

Buildium doesn't need to do anything. I like the product just the was it is.

I like the ease of it and the interface for tenants. I get a lot of good feedback from my tenants saying how easy the Buildium portal is to setup and use. As a Property Manager, it's very easy to understand and use, and I like how easy it is to learn. Not complicated at all!

No cons so far, it's very basic which is all you need as a residential property manager. No bells and whistles, it does the job.

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As a property manager who drives around a lot to different rental houses in Portland, Oregon, I like the fact that my leases and property management agreements are stored in Buildium, so I can access them when I’m on the go.

Sometimes I get puzzled over an accounting issue, but all I need to do to resolve it is call Buildium. I register my phone number in the queue and get a call back from a Buildium customer service person who can answer my questions.

Buildium has a very robust and granular system. Nearly anything you need to do as a property manager you can do with this software.

The cost crept year after year and the added pay for items, specifically for electronic leases, was a bit much.

It has no gaps in the features a property manager needs. Support is the best especially for someone like myself who has no accounting background.

The wait for support should be no more than 1 minutes rather than the average of 20 minutes. Would like to upload more than 1 document when recording a payment.

This software allows my Property Manager to give me access to real time data on rents received, repair costs, and management costs entered into the system.

The software interface is not as smooth as I would expect or desire when my goal is to get back to the original data set that I started with. Once I drill down a couple levels, I have to start over to select all in order to get back to the top level of the data.

Buildium automates everything there is to do with property management.

There is nothing to dislike about Buildium. If you ever have something you think could be better just call them up and they create it!

The tenant portal is great, also it shows the landlord payment amounts in a precise order

As the landlord I have it has no functionality for me to use or benefit from itI can't check on invoices at all unless the property manager does it

Web based software allows access wherever a PC and Internet are available. Handles most of the day-to-day work that any investor or property manager would come across. PDF reports based on building performance, picture and image attachments to buildings or tenants, individual sign ins for owners/tenants/managers/maintenance, etc. Full of features and abilities to make your business better. The customer service and support is absolutely TOP NOTCH. They are constantly asking for feedback and you can see they take customer suggestions and implement them. They want to become a standard in the industry and will do anything to make a customer happy and get them the answers they're looking for.

Mobile apps for Android still in the works. iPhone app not as feature-rich as it could be. Some tasks can be tedious, but new update this summer may help that. Direct import/export to QuickBooks not available.

I suppose the dash board showing past due balances, expiring leases and activity of recent attempts to work with past due tenants.

That suddenly processes that you relied on suddenly stop working and tech support doesn't know why something doesn't work and they never get back to you with an answer other than that 'we're aware of the problem and we're looking into it." The search feature doesn't work as well as it used to.

This platform is easy tonuse and has a lot of automation and built-in tools. It has been extremely helpful for establishing systems as a new property owner & manager.

Some of the book keeping features have taken a little bit to play around with and understand how they work, but with a little trouble shooting I have it figured out.

I liked how easy the training videos helped me get the software up and running. It has a shorter learning curve than most softwares and makes automation easy for tenant to also register for e-pay via ETF online.

I didn't like that the ETF approval process took about two weeks and then I ran into some issues and it took another week to get approved. I hope to transition all tenants soon for next months rent being due.

All info is in one place. property management building info and accounting info

I've ran into a few problems that were tedious to fix but I believe that is user error. We did not set it up properly the first time and had to learn the hard way. I think it would have been helpful to have a starting conversation about our use and the best way to begin setting up your account. I think this was done but I guess we were not clear enough on the caveats of our company.

It is very simple to understand and the help & support button is very helpful.

We still have to calculate and enter manually the GST (property by property).