From streamlining operations and improving tenant satisfaction to unlocking new ways to scale your business, the right apartment management software can be a game-changer for property managers.
Finding the right fit depends on several factors: the number of units you manage, your available resources, your budget, and your long-term growth goals.
In this guide, we’ll compare six leading apartment management software platforms, evaluating their strengths, weaknesses, and pricing so you can determine which one fits your business best. But before we dive into the details, let’s first explore what apartment management software is and how it can take your property management to the next level.
What Is Apartment Management Software?
Apartment management software helps level up the operations. It solves specific challenges of managing an apartment such as maintaining shared amenities, communicating with multiple tenants, handling staggered lease schedules, and coordinating maintenance across units. Automating redundant tasks provides a system to ensure you’re on top of every step of the lead-to-lease process.
The best software scales with your business and is suitable for portfolios of all sizes, including large apartment complexes and multifamily properties.
7 Key Features of Apartment Management Software
Whether it’s automating repetitive tasks or uncovering insights to maximize occupancy and revenue—the right tools save you time and money. Let’s explore the essential features you should look for when sizing up apartment management software.
1. Multi-Unit Accounting and Tax Tools
Every business benefits from organized and transparent finances. The right apartment management software will give you a complete view of all your spending, plus the ability to automatically track every invoice, rent payment, fee, expense, and taxes—all in one place.
While most generic accounting software does an adequate job, property-focused accounting software provides features that are specific to managing an apartment. This can include features that help you stay compliant with local tax laws and manage rent roll, budgets, and more. Ultimately, your financial data should plug into your current workflow seamlessly.
2. Online Rent Collection
Rent collection drives cash flow. Offering tenants flexible payment options while automating reminders and collections cuts down on late payments and the time you spend flagging tenants down. Apartment management software with online rent collection also handles deductions and late fees and keeps a clear payment record—crucial for large complexes managing bulk payments.
3. Apartment Listing Management and Marketing
Apartment management software simplifies creating and managing property listings by offering tools to upload and edit listings across multiple rental platforms easily. Leading listing syndication tools will allow you to publish on all the most popular websites, such as Apartments.com, Apartment List, Zillow Rental Network, Craigslist, and Zumper.
Features such as occupancy management help track vacancy rates and streamline renewals so you know when to start advertising ahead of time to minimize costly vacancies. Additionally, many software suites include options to build an apartment management website, allowing property managers to showcase listings, promote their brand, and allow potential tenants to apply online.
4. Maintenance Requests
Apartment management software streamlines maintenance requests by centralizing work orders, vendor management, and maintenance histories. Property managers can easily track and prioritize work orders, assign vendor tasks, and monitor their progress. The best tools may automatically update tenants on the progress of each request and even ask for feedback to improve the experience in the future.
The best tools automatically reconcile maintenance costs and record vendor payments in bookkeeping systems. By storing everything in one place, managers can oversee vendor relationships, track maintenance histories, and coordinate timely property repairs.
5. Resident Portal
Online portals give tenants access to lease agreements, make rent payments, submit maintenance requests, and a place to communicate directly with property managers. Leading tools offer mobile apps that allow tenants access to these services on the go. Resident portals are ideal for community-wide announcements, booking shared amenities, and fostering communication among residents in the same building or complex, making day-to-day interactions smoother and more efficient.
6. Analytics and Reporting
Analytics and reporting capabilities include tracking occupancy trends, analyzing revenue by unit type, and forecasting maintenance costs. Apartment management software offers robust data analysis and report generation tools, helping property managers gain insights into their operations. These features allow managers to spot trends, optimize unit pricing, and control expenses. With real-time data, property managers can identify new opportunities to boost revenue, streamline maintenance, and improve overall efficiency.
7. Lead-to-Lease Tools
Apartment management software combines all the features above into one seamless platform that keeps tenant data in one place. Lead-to-lease tools ensure no one falls through the cracks by automating essential steps of the process, helping turn a lead into a tenant faster.
The lead-to-lease process includes key features such as online rental applications, tenant screening, and eSignatures for lease agreements. With customizable lease templates and secure document management, you can store records and send lease agreements with a few clicks.
For larger apartment complexes, software simplifies managing multiple applications per unit, automating lease renewals, and tracking tenant turnover, making it easier to stay organized and tightening up leasing operations from start to finish.
#1: Buildium
Great All-in-One Apartment Management Software
First up is Buildium®, an all-in-one property management software designed for property management businesses of all sizes, and it handles every step of the lead-to-lease cycle. From accounting and maintenance tracking to accounting and powerful analytics, Buildium brings together your entire business operation in one place.
Features
Buildium offers a wide range of features for property managers who maintain apartments. The major features include:
- Lead-to-lease tools that accept applications, conduct background checks, take online signatures, and accept online payments.
- Free website creation tool to list your properties and promote your business
- Listing syndication tools to manage, edit, and upload your property listings to all the major platforms.
- Extensive online payment and accounting tools, including 1099 eFiling.
- Advanced reporting insights that help identify business growth opportunities
- Work order tracking and vendor management tools, complete with a Maintenance Contact Center to get maintenance and repair jobs done faster and with greater transparency
- Tenant and owner portals that allow payments, maintenance, reporting, and communication in one place.
- Mobile apps (accessible on the Apple App Store and Google Play) that help you communicate with tenants, maintain work orders, and collect payments—including a dedicated app for your tenants.
- An ever-growing Marketplace of fully-integrated software partners, many of which are designed specifically for multifamily and apartment management companies.
Pricing
Buildium offers three tiers of pricing. Each of these plans include:
- Accounting
- Maintenance
- Online Portals
- Task Management
- Lead-to-Lease Management
- Resident Communications
The tiers are priced depending on the size of your needs:
Essential: Starts at $55/month and includes Buildium’s core features, including accounting and task management tools.
Growth: Starts at $174/month and includes reduced incoming ACH fees, unlimited eSignatures, and actionable insights in Analytics Hub.
Premium: Starts at $375/month for property managers who want to automate their workflows. It includes everything in Growth, unlimited incoming ACH (fees waived), plus access to Buildium’s Open API and Priority Support.
#2: ShowingHero
Time-Saving Software to Automate Showings
ShowingHero® is built to speed up every aspect of the apartment showing process, which it claims results in finding renters 3X faster while being up to 70% more profitable. With self-tours, automated scheduling, and performance monitoring, it eliminates some of the most time-consuming leasing tasks with less work from you or your staff.
Features
ShowingHero’s automation-focused features include:
- Import listings: ShowingHero can automatically import and update your listings based on information stored in a property management software solution, like Buildium.
- Smart agent scheduling: The rule-based calendar system allows ShowingHero to schedule showings for you while taking your availability into account.
- Pre-screen prospects: This software allows you to ask pre-screening questions, so that only qualified prospects can schedule a showing.
- 24/7 lead nurturing: ShowingHero responds to every lead for you and sends out automated reminders to get your prospect in the door.
- Self-tours: SMART lockboxes with one-time-use codes give potential tenants the ability to tour properties themselves.
Pricing
Pricing for ShowingHero starts at $22 per listing per month, with a minimum requirement of four listings. Included in that price tag are unlimited users, leads, and showings, with no obligation to sign annual contracts or cancellation fees.
#3: PropUp
Apartment Management Software to Reduce Turnover Time
Handling vacancies can be one of the most stressful and costly part of apartment management. PropUp’s® software directly addresses that challenge with tools to minimize the time from move-out to move-in. It keeps all your details organized in one place to accelerate each vacancy-related task and even take many of those tasks off your team’s plate entirely.
Features
PropUp’s features help you automate workflows and reduce reliance on manual spreadsheets and organization tools.
- Unit turnover workflows: Automatically assign team members to spearhead each step of the process
- Task tracking: Track your team members’ progress in real time
- Mobile app inspections: Create compressive checklists to make inspections easier and take pictures on the go
- Maintenance and repairs: Unit turnover tasks, maintenance requests, and capital projects can all be monitored in Propup’s interface
- Custom board design: Ditch your whiteboard for a digital version that can be continuously updated with PropUp’s data.
Pricing
Propup’s pricing strategy follows a simple model of $1/unit . It doesn’t have more complicated pricing tiers or pick-and-choose features, so you’ll know what you’ll be getting right out of the gate.
#4: HappyCo
Technology to Keep Your Units in Top Condition
HappyCo® is built specifically to meet multifamily property managers’ inspection needs, letting you document conditions, and manage work orders, and spot issues early on.
HappyCo integrates with Buildium, as well, so you can perform thorough inspections on the go and sync data with Buildium in a single step, through the Inspections mobile app.
In the app, you can view and share inspection details using Buildium’s communication portals and HappyCo, and tie inspections to your leasing process. This gives you a more complete picture of every unit, property, and active lease in your portfolio.
Features
HappyCo’s has a long list of features and uses a checklist-style interface that displays details and your inspection report in an easy-to-navigate format. The platform’s major features include:
- Virtual inspections
- Guest inspections to assign inspections to team members, vendors, and even residents
- Real-time due diligence monitoring
- Intuitive work order management lists
- Time-saving, pre-built templates
- Fully customizable inspection checklist forms that let you adjust sections, items, ratings, and other details to suit your property type and the layout of individual units
- Reporting features that capture all past walkthrough, including scoring, comments, and photos
- The ability to save drafts automatically on the mobile app and sync details with all your users
- A digital management tool for larger projects
- IVR technology to auto-capture and route missed calls
- Performance reporting and analytics based on technology from Looker®
Pricing
HappyCo is free to use as part of Buildium’s Growth and Premium plans. For a standalone option, subscriptions are priced per unit, per month with a minimum requirement of 500 units. You can reach out to them directly for more specific pricing information.
#5 Property Meld
Tools to Streamline Apartment Maintenance Management
Property Meld® is another specialized solution to support your apartment management software needs. It’s a platform aimed at making maintenance easier for your team and your tenants.
Both individual unit and building maintenance can be extremely resource-intensive, especially if your team is stretched thin between multiple apartments, so a dedicated solution such as Property Meld can be a game changer if you’re looking to cut down on staff time and provide consistent, responsive service to tenants.
Features
Property Meld has several helpful features, including maintenance scheduling, automated alerts, and the ability to directly message vendors and tenants.
Maintenance staff and vendors get an alert when a work order is assigned and they can update the status of those work orders in real time.
With the Projects feature, you can assign and keep track of multiple work orders for the same project and keep track of them all at once. Vendors can submit invoices through the platform, as well.
While software is specifically for maintenance, it also integrates with other more holistic property management software tools, such as Buildium.
Pricing
Property Meld doesn’t list its pricing on its website. However, the company does provide the ability to book a free demo of the product.
#6: Nutiliti
A Service to Speed Up Utility Activation in Your Apartments
Even with effective tenant retention, you’ll likely have to deal with move-ins regularly alongside your other apartment management tasks. Nutiliti® makes one aspect of that process easier, by activating and coordinating utility services, including electricity, water, gas, and internet. The service manages tenant billing across units for both property managers and renters.
Features
Nutiliti handles all aspects of utility activations and deactivations. You’ll have access to pre-configured extensions which you can tailor easily to meet the specific needs of your properties and your business. Their team monitors the service continually to make deployment easier and implementation faster.
They also take care of service appointments, in-person activations, and the tenant bill-back process—from invoicing to collections—including answering billing-related resident phone calls.
Nutiliti obtains, processes, audits, and pays all of your provider invoices and offers a standalone web application, along with a mobile app for iOS and Android.
The platform bills and collects from residents directly, allowing residents to split water, electric, gas, and other shared utilities among roommates.
Pricing
Nutiliti does not have pricing details available on their site, so you’ll have to reach out directly to schedule a demo and get more information.
Which Apartment Management Software Is Best for You?
To choose the right apartment management software, you’ll want to think about your portfolio size and the features most critical to your business. Smaller portfolios benefit from streamlined accounting and basic management tools, while multifamily properties thrive with automation.
For larger portfolios and businesses, customizable tools and advanced reporting tend to be more important—not to mention complex workflows that integrate with everything smoothly.
For those looking for an all-in-one solution, Buildium stands out. It covers every aspect of apartment management, from lead-to-lease tools and online payments to accounting, maintenance tracking, and tenant communication—all through an easy-to-use interface.
One of Buildium’s strongest features is it’s compatibility with other tools. It even integrates with all the other software on this list, so you can seamlessly introduce the specific software you need with the platform and add new capabilities as your business grows.
Buildium’s flexibility makes it perfect for businesses of any size, and its pricing tiers cater to different needs as your business grows. You can explore Buildium’s capabilities further by signing up for a free 14-day trial (no credit card required) or requesting a demo.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I choose the right apartment management software for my needs?
When choosing apartment management software, focus on the features your business needs and your budget. These factors will narrow your options. Also, consider software that can scale with your business, has an easy-to-use interface, and offers strong customer support.
What are the benefits of using specialized apartment management software for accounting?
Successful property businesses rely on organized, transparent finances, and apartment management software offers a complete view of spending while automating tracking for invoices, rent, expenses, and taxes. Property-specific software offers apartment management features such as rent roll tracking and local tax compliance, unlike generic accounting tools.
How can apartment management software help me manage vendors and payments?
Apartment management software can help you track maintenance, centralize work orders, and streamline payments online. The accounting tools will automatically record invoices and costs, while the online payment tools ensure timely payments.
How much does apartment management software cost?
Prices vary depending on the software. However, to minimize risk, some software such as Buildium offer risk-free trials. Others may use a ‘freemium’ model, where you can start for free and pay more as you upgrade features. It’s easy to get lost in convoluted pricing, so when choosing your next software, prioritize a platform with transparent pricing.
Can apartment management software integrate with other tools or platforms?
The best apartment management software should integrate with your existing workflow and tools. Most software will list their direct integrations and partners on their website such as the Buildium Marketplace. Plus, the best tools will offer an open API that will allow you to transfer your data freely to platforms that they don’t directly integrate with.
