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AppFolio Property Manager
What Is AppFolio Property Manager?
Next generation property management software designed for residential, commercial, homeowner & condo association, student housing, and mixed portfolio property managers with growing, complex businesses. Manage your business at scale with AppFolio's fully mobile, intuitive solution, which includes complete accounting & management functionality, instant access to customizable reports & owner statements, marketing tools, online leasing, tenant screening, and online rent collection and payments.
Who Uses AppFolio Property Manager?
Residential, student housing, commercial, community association, and mixed portfolio property managers that manage 50+ units.
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AppFolio Property Manager
Reviews of AppFolio Property Manager
Alternatives Considered:
Highly Recommended - Much better than our previous software
Comments: Overall I am very happy with our decision to switch to AppFolio. The awesome features and integrations are a really nice added plus as well. I would highly recommend to anyone considering making a change.
Pros:
The overall user experience is really simple. Pretty intuitive with some accessibility forgiveness for less technical users. The mobile app is also a really awesome feature that works really well.
Cons:
Our company is relatively new to using AppFolio, so it's hard to be 100% sure if some of the frustrations are just inexperience at this point. I would say that I thought the onboarding process was really clean and mapped out for the customer. After the conversion the process is a little lacking. Every staff member we've interacted with has been amazing, but the first 30 days of use really could use some additional support. We did have a data hang up which could have played a part in, what feels, like not enough support for those first 30 days but I still think it would be nice to have the ability to access additional support.
It’s Effective and Efficient
Comments: I love it! I prefer it over Yardi! It can be used as an accounting program, property mgr program, marketing program, affordable housing certification/ recertification. Communication with residents and leads.
Pros:
Being able to market specific units by adding videos/ photos and an auto generated marketing description based on tags added to each individual unit based on its own unique floorplan
Cons:
Sometimes different financial reports do not speak to each other so one report can be misleading from the other
Alternatives Considered:
Don't get involved with Appfolio
Comments: I should start by saying the product is great. It's robust, it's comprehensive, and once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy to use. But if you have a choice, don't get into bed with these guys. The customer support is beyond bad...good luck getting anyone on the phone. They recently switched to some sort of AI for customer support--and I didn't think it was possible to get worse--but I have given up on ever getting their help in solving any issues. I have to figure it out myself or find a work-around. And during all that time, their prices have gone up. Apparently, the only thing they care about is profits...because as their prices have gone up, the quality of their service has decreased. We now average more than $2,000/per month in charges and fees to them. But, like a divorce, leaving them is going to be expensive and messy. I'm going to retire in about 4 years...so I think I'm just going to suck it up and stick with them. But listen to me boys and girls: don't make the same mistake I made. Don't get involved with them.
Pros:
It's useful and is pact with all of the bells and whistles
Cons:
Just about every part of the user experience makes me wish we had never switched to Appfolio. Their customer service is so bad, it's legendary. They are the poster child for American corporate greed.
Great for your property management office
Pros:
Easy to read landlord statements, able to accept electronic payments, and vendor management as well as processing work orders.
Cons:
No complaints, my landlords preferred this software over our original one.
User Friendly
Comments: A world-class customer service with extremely quick response times. Implementing the software was as easy as it could have been. While it does take time and effort, the transition is certainly worth it for such a streamlined software solution.
Pros:
I love the constant addition of new features. The ability for owners and tenants to have their own portals is fantastic. Tenants can pay online and set up recurring payments, which enhances convenience and efficiency for everyone involved.
Cons:
While I appreciate the continuous addition of new features and the convenience of automated processes, the lack of quick human response can be frustrating. Additionally, the vacancy advertising link is also quite frustrating to use.
Property Management with AppFolio
Comments: Overall, I love AppFolio. The system is clear, clean, and easy to follow and learn. A lot of the fields are self-explanatory and the help button is just a click away and the team with AppFolio does a good job with I ask for help. The explanations are clear, concise, easy to follow, and make sense. In the past 15 years, I have used many different software systems to track property management. AppFolio has been the easiest to navigate to get me the information I need and easy to use to manage all my properties.
Pros:
AppFolio allows me to access my tenants and their information with a click of a button. It keeps all data about my tenant at my fingertips and also allows them to know what is going on with their lease, rent amounts, work orders, and other tasks they or I need to complete to keep our relationship working the best.
Cons:
I wish that the tenant's application would stay with the tenant as the entire process progresses. When a person no longer is an applicant, but becomes a tenant and moves in, that application is stored elsewhere in the system. It would be more helpful to have the application stay with that new move-in. The application is always needed for legal issues. The system makes it easy to find but it seems it would be better served to stay within the entire process of the new move-in.
Alternatives Considered:
AppFolio is the Apple of Prop Management Software
Comments: In general this is the best property management software on the market if you have a portfolio of 100 to about 1500 homes. Any smaller than that there might be simpler solutions that you could use in any larger than that you might need some customization that could be a little bit tricky to do an app folio. Before that midsize property manager this is the perfect product to really streamline your systems and give your residence and owners a great experience.
Pros:
AppFolio simply works. Or should I say that it works simply. Whenever you're purchasing software the folks that are in charge of selling it will always tell you all the things that it can do. If I lined up at folio side by side next to various other property management software that I've used they all would check the boxes of doing all the things that you need them to do. However from using many of the different providers and have folio I can tell you that when our team turned on that folio it was far less training because everything just simply made sense. The screens look nice the reports made sense the dashboards made sense the flows were simple and easy to understand. It's very difficult to understand this type of nuance when buying software so I can only tell you that our experience was extremely smooth and running this especially when compared to using the competitors that we had done previously.
Cons:
Personally I find some of the accounting functionality to be a little bit challenging but that could be simply a part of me not being an accountant.
Need to take a course to use the program
Comments: In general, a manual would be helpful, or a FAQ sheet. Wonderful customer support and help with any errors and questions, but it still took a long time to get used to all the information. In the end, the [sensitive content hidden]sold the property.
Pros:
The financial part was amazing if you put the numbers in the right area.
Cons:
I needed extra training to get everything up and running. There were two of us trying to learn how to work the program. We lost time in managing our other 93 doors trying to learn this system for managing 250 doors of private student housing for The University of Arizona.
Great and still learning!
Comments: With anything new, it takes time to learn it. There are many great options inside of Appfolio that makes it the software to use. Appfolio is always trying to improve and do more to make work easier.
Pros:
Love having one platform for all things property management! Owners, tenants and vendors all using the same software!
Cons:
I don't particularly care for the chat option of customer service. It is not as personal.
Alternatives Considered:
Started put ok until they started adding fees
Pros:
Like the website they built for us that integrates with the software.
Cons:
Software is ok but very unhappy with their business practices so far. We switched around 1000 units to them a year ago. One of the selling points for us was that they promised no charge to our tenants for ACH payments. We even signed a 2 year contract to "lock in" our price. Not even a year into that contract we were told that we can either begin paying $1 per unit per month to continue to offer our tenants free ACH or pass it on to them to pay a fee every time they pay online. We have made complaints and even had our lawyer contact them and all they have responded is that they will run it up the flag pole. We are definitely looking at switching companies as soon as we find the right fit.
Appfolio is great! But on the pricey side
Comments: I still compare my new property management software that we use to Appfolio. There are things I miss about it, but both have their pros and cons. However, with competitors offering equivalent software functionality while also being cheaper, we ultimately chose to switch to a different company for our property management software needs.
Pros:
Appfolio is ubiquitous and versatile in its uses, and its design is easy to figure out and navigate. I most frequently used it for keeping track of rent payments, communications with tenants, track/generate/sign leases, and for tenants to use its tenant portal. We liked that tenants were able to pay their rent at 7-11. Surprisingly, a high percentage of tenants opted to do this as opposed to setting up payments via credit card on their tenant portal. The software itself ran smoothly, had no shortages or timeouts in the 6 years we used it, and didn't take up a lot of memory to run on our computers. We liked the phone app as well.
Cons:
The company I worked for did not use the banking and accounting elements of the software to their full potential, due difficulties with the owners using Plaid via Appfolio to connect to their bank accounts, as well as privacy concerns with other owners who used the software as well. This made accounting/reconciliation difficult. The cost of the software is what ultimately lead us to decide to go with a different property management software. We could get all the same functionalities except two , plus more privacy, for 2/3 of the cost with a different property management software. One thing we really like about our new software that Appfolio doesn't have is the ability to sign documents besides the lease within a Docusign subplatform within the software, which is a feature we really like and will use extensively in our new property management software.
Appfolio WORKS
Comments: Very well. I think its a good product. Id use it as a property manager.
Pros:
the layout is bright and easy to use, and it makes it convenient to make payments and keep track of them.
Cons:
Very basic looking and I cant seem to get emails from it , like setting reminders if that is even a feature. Also, it tends to put NOT YET DUE amounts as due amounts and that can be confusing and alarming.
not that great
Comments: not so great, definately recommend entrata
Pros:
not so many pros as there are cons.......
Cons:
not many beneficial parts to it to help run a business
Gets the Job completed
Pros:
Overall the system is user friendly and has good tutorial videos.
Cons:
Online portal options not available to choose authentication.
Pop ups & too many changes.
Pros:
I'm able to efficiently handle the properties I manage.
Cons:
Pop ups- I'm busy, I don't need pop ups about how much I like the program, would I recommend, etc.
I have seen better
Pros:
I have used Appfolio in my previous employment and I was not very impressed. Using numerous other property management software, this was my lease favorite. It doesn't offer a lot of resources like Entrata does. I understand smaller companies tend to use Appfolio, and I believe it is due to cost.
Cons:
prospect management, moving residents in, accounting, etc.
AppFolio does not Value their Customers
Comments: Unsatisfactory. Do not recommend AppFolio to anyone.
Pros:
Client profile is very well thought out, laid out and incorporates all the information in one place that is necessary. Rent tracking and simple reports are great.
Cons:
AppFolio fails at customer service. You can't get trough on the phone plus AppFolio recently made changes so that you can't get through to the Chat Line. You have to go through a maize before you receive any help.
Ease of Use and Great UI
Comments: Overall everything is very seamless and the most important part, the payment process, is seamless month to month.
Pros:
The online bill pay is so easy to set up, and is seamless each month.
Cons:
Being able to fully customize the app to where it shows as a personal app would be cool. Everything else within the app is already very personalized.
Contract Changes When They Want - Do Not Care About Customers. Lousy Customer Service
Comments: It's clear it's a public company and it shows. Customer service has been lousy, and getting answers to more complicated items can take weeks.
Pros:
Relatively easy to use interface, tenant portals are easy to navigate
Cons:
Websites cost $139/month, constant up selling of items, adding in $2.49 e-check charge during everyone's contract with a 60 day notice. We asked if we could get out of our contract and we were told no, to kick rocks. Really don't care about their customers, but only about their investors. If you don't want your tenants to pay the $2.49 you can eat the cost and pay $1 per unit extra. If you use their "basic" product you already pay $1.40 per unit, a 71% increase
Very disappointed with Appfolio they clearly don't care about their customers
Comments: I have used this software for 6 years. I would say I am an expert user. It has become clear to me lateley that Appfolio does not care about servicing their customers, only about bottom line profits.
Pros:
One stop shop for all property management needs.
Cons:
Expensive plus all the bundled services are top $. They nickle and dime you to death. Customer service is not good. You can't call and talk to someone, you have to open a ticket and or chat online. If you can get an appointment to talk to a live person if may be days away.
They are making new bad decisions. Customer support is going downhill for 3 years. ACH charge, BAD
Comments: Good at first but now we are considering alternatives
Pros:
No it was difficult. We don't look forward to doing it again
Cons:
When they started they built and improved. Lately they have stopped improvements and have destroyed valuable functions
Good Software, some difficulty
Comments: Overall my experience is good. Takes some time to learn
Pros:
It is pretty straightforward and easy to use as a vendor.
Cons:
It can be a pain to upload documents into work orders
AppFolio
Comments: Over all my experience with appfolio was good. I was able to track all AP, AR, work orders, communication with residents.
Pros:
I was able to message our tenants as needed
Cons:
Training was not provided but this was on the management side not appfolio side
Property Management
Comments: Great
Pros:
It's very user friendly and easy to navigate.
Cons:
It's extremely difficult to get customer support.
AppFolio review
Pros:
I can track all my projects and have all necessary tabs to do my work process efficient
Cons:
when it updates it can get very slow/or get bugs