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If you’re shopping for property management software, a little research can save you a ton of wasted hours.
Why? Well, not every software is made equal.
And finding the tool that is the best fit for your business can save you potentially hundreds of hours of headache and wasted time.
The truth is, some property management tools simply do more than others, though in some cases to the point of being bloated and difficult to navigate.
Others have a great feature set but minimize the importance of great customer service. Because, let’s face it, we’re not all software engineers who can fix our own tech issues.
Ultimately, those are just examples of some of the things to watch out for when choosing a property management tool to manage your portfolio.
But without enough information, it can be difficult knowing which software has the ideal mix of the above and what you’re specifically looking for.
That’s why we’ve compared three of the best property management software tools available today:
- DoorLoop
- Buildium
- and TenantCloud
Each does the job of being an effective property management tool, with all the major features you’d expect.
But which wins out? Keep reading to find out what makes them unique and which is best suited for your property management needs.
What property management tool is best for your business?
The first step in finding the best property management tool for your business is knowing what you’re looking for.
With that in mind, we broke down this review based on a few major categories:
- Features, further broken down by major categories
- Pricing
- And a summary of general pros and cons, including everything from customer service to responsiveness and UI
The goal is that by the end, you have all the information you need to decide which software is best suited for your business.
Let’s start with an overview of the feature set of Buildium, TenantCloud, and DoorLoop.
Buildium vs. TenantCloud vs. DoorLoop: Features
Features make up essentially everything that software is capable of.
As we cover each of the major feature categories, be mindful of which features would be most beneficial to you.
For example: maybe you don’t need much help in marketing, but maintenance management would be a game-changer.
Let’s start with what many would agree are the most important features: accounting.
Feature: Accounting tools
Each of the below tools offers a well-rounded group of accounting features, allowing you to replace QuickBooks if you sochoose.
Some even offer a convenient QuickBooks integration if you’d prefer to continue using that as your main accounting solution.
Buildium
Buildium offers a well-rounded set of accounting features, including:
- Multiple payment methods (credit card, ACH)
- Automatic rent payments
- Bank reconciliations
- and payment tracking
They do not offer a QuickBooks integration.
TenantCloud
TenantCloud, while much lighter in terms of overall features, is strongest in accounting. It offers accounting features such as:
- Automatic rent payments
- Payment reminders
- Vendor payments
- Deposit tracking
- and a QuickBooks Online integration
DoorLoop
DoorLoop comes with a full suite of all the vital accounting features you need to manage your property business, whether you’re a landlord or property management team.
Features include:
- Automatic rent payments
- A convenient tenant portal where you can post payment reminders
- Multiple payment methods including credit card and ACH
- Complete chart of accounts
- Easy bank account syncing with Plaid, allowing you to automatically sync and categorize your income and expenses right within DoorLoop
- A convenient QuickBooks Online integration that’s incredibly easy to set up
Feature: Tenant portal
One of the really unique and powerful features of most property management software tools is the tenant portal.
A tenant portal gives your tenants one convenient place to take care of all of their business with you, from paying their rent to taking care of late fees or sending in maintenance requests, while giving you a way to improve rent collection and streamline your operation as a whole.
Let’s see how each of our tools contends:
Buildium
Buildium offers what they refer to as their “resident center”, which offers much the same features as any tenant portal. With it, you can:
- Collect rent payments online
- Association fees
- And send and receive tenant communications
TenantCloud
TenantCloud also offers a tenant portal with similar features, including:
- Collecting rent online
- Setting up automatic rent payments
- Making partial rent payments
- And creating late fee invoices that will post to tenant’s dashboards
DoorLoop
DoorLoop offers a convenient tenant portal with an extensive list of features, including:
- Collecting rent online
- Setting up automatic rent payments
- Issuing and paying late fees online
- View payment history
- And more
Feature: Communications tools
One of the most powerful aspects of property management software are the communications tools.
With the average tool’s tenant portal, you can streamline and simplify tenant communications by bringing everything together into one place for both you and your tenants.
Buildium
Buildium offers communication tools such as bulk emails to tenants, in-app maintenance requests, and a unique physical letter service with EZMail.
TenantCloud
TenantCloud offers some basic communications tools, most notably communicating with tenants on maintenance requests in-app, though it falls short of DoorLoop and Buildium here.
DoorLoop
DoorLoop allows you to communicate with tenants through a variety of means, including SMS text messaging, email, and directly with tenants through maintenance orders, allowing for more diversity in communications methods while still keeping everything centralized.
Feature: Maintenance management
It’s no secret that maintenance requests can be a huge time sink.
With great property management software, you can typically streamline maintenance requests into one place, communicating with tenants on those requests, issuing the work order to a vendor, and paying out that vendor for the completed job.
Here’s how each tool tacks up:
Buildium
With Buildium, tenants can create maintenance requests, communicate regarding those requests, add attachments, and get status updates to your smartphone.
TenantCloud
With TenantCloud, tenants can create maintenance requests, communicate on those requests, and you can create an invoice linked to that request and track materials used.
DoorLoop
DoorLoop makes maintenance management headaches a thing of the past by giving you the ability to:
- Create and edit maintenance requests with attachments
- Assign a vendor
- Communicate with tenants on that maintenance request
- Give them status updates
- and even pay out vendors when the job is done
Feature: Owner portal
With an owner portal, you can typically print checks for owners and allow them to print reports, offering a convenient place to streamline owner communications as a whole.
Here’s what each offers:
Buildium
Buildium’s owner portal allows you to generate reports for your owners or give them access to those reports as well as print checks.
TenantCloud
TenantCloud allows you to give your owners access to various reports as well as print checks.
DoorLoop
DoorLoop gives your owners access to everything needed to keep them happy and informed. They can view and print reports such as their property’s balance sheet, income statements, and you can print checks directly from the app.
Pricing
While comparing features is important, pricing is often the main sticking point when it comes to considering software.
The pricing model used by each of our contenders is somewhat different, with pros and cons.
Let’s do a deep dive to see what you can expect from each:
Buildium Pricing
Buildium’s pricing is unique in the industry. Where most property management software is priced at per unit per month, Buildium is priced based on tiers of feature sets.
Their starter plan, Essential, is $50 per month and comes with most of the standard features you’d expect including:
- Tenant portal and online payments
- Accounting
- Communication tools
- Maintenance management
However, you’ll to invest in the higher-tier Growth plan at $160 per month:
- Live phone support
- Analytics and insights
- Onboarding
- And eLeasing
Lastly, Buildium’s highest-level Premium plan comes in at $460 and includes a few premium features and benefits:
- EFT transactions are waived
- Priority support
- Open API
The Verdict:
Several key features are gated behind a much higher price point at $160, most notably eLeasing and live phone support, making Buildium the least affordable option.
You’ll get most of the basic features at an affordable $40 per month, but as you’ll see from our other contenders, features like eLeasing are generally basic features made available in starter plans, so you’ll be paying much more for the same features with Buildium.
TenantCloud Pricing
TenantCloud is the one option on this list that offers a free plan up to 75 units, making it a great place to start if your budget is especially tight.
However, you’ll get what you pay for, as their free plan is highly limited in terms of features.
You’ll need to upgrade to their $12 per month Starter plan in order to get access to features like:
- eLeasing
- Tax reports
- Vendor management
- Automatic rent payments
- ACH payments
- And more
However, you’re still limited in terms of features with their Starter plan. To get other typically basic features like tenant communications, most of their accounting features, and QuickBooks Online integration, you’ll need to upgrade to their $40 per month Growth plan.
The Verdict:
The option of a free plan is nice, but given the large number of key features that you don’t get access to unless you pay for one of their premium plans, there isn’t much you can do with it.
When all is said and done, while the free plan is attractive, you’ll end up paying roughly the same amount with TenantCloud as other property management tools to get the same features.
DoorLoop Pricing
DoorLoop offers the simplest and most straightforward pricing among the three options.
The Starter plan comes in at $59 per month for up to 20 units.
That already makes it the most affordable option on this list features-to-features, especially considering the fact that you get the lion’s share of those features you’d expect from the Starter plan.
However, to get those few additional features that are important to you, you’ll also find huge savings.
Several of those features which Buildium only offers in its premium plans for $160 and $460, DoorLoop offers for far less.
With DoorLoop’s Pro plan for just $79 per month up to 20 units (currently discounted to $34.50), you get:
- Owner portal
- Custom IDX-approved website
- And bank reconciliations
And with DoorLoops Premium plan, for just $109 per month up to 20 units (currently discounted at just $54.50), you get:
- API access
- Website portal integration
- Gmail and Microsoft Outlook add-on
The Verdict:
DoorLoop’s pricing model is both easy to understand and highly affordable. It not only offers several premium features that you just can’t get from TenantCloud and at a comparable price, it offers those premium features for far less (in some cases, hundreds of dollars less) per month.
Pros and Cons: A summary
With our features and pricing deep-dive done, let’s take a step back and look at some general pros and cons of each software.
Keep in mind that our pros and cons list is based on not only that software’s reported feature set and pricing.
We also looked to user-reported customer service, usability, and other factors via software review sites such as Capterra to provide the most unbiased review possible.
Buildium
Buildium has a robust feature set with a good knowledge base for getting started. However, their higher tier plans aren’t affordable, while users report their customer service is spotty at best.
- Pro: Comprehensive feature list
- Pro: Good knowledge base
- Con: Comparatively expensive higher-tier plans
- Con: Mediocre customer service
TenantCloud
TenantCloud offers a free plan that makes it easy to get started, but their limited features and commonly-cited issues with their tenant portal and customer service make it hard to recommend.
- Pro: Free plan, easy to get started
- Pro: Decent accounting features from higher-tier paid plans
- Con: Highly limited features, especially at lower-tier plans
- Con: Commonly-cited issues with tenant portal
- Con: Unresponsive customer service (ticket system only)
DoorLoop
DoorLoop is not only the most affordable option along with a competitively robust feature set, users commonly cite great ease-of-use as well as incredibly responsive customer service.
- Pro: Pound-for-pound most affordable
- Pro: Great ease-of-use
- Pro: Robust feature set
- Pro: Responsive customer service
- Con: Lacks community features
The verdict: Who comes out on top?
Each of our three contenders proved themselves to be great property management tools for portfolios of all sizes.
However, when pitted against one another on a variety of levels, including:
- Comprehensive features to manage your entire portfolio
- Great ease-of-use
- Responsive and dependable customer service
- And affordable pricing
There was only one that won out in every category: DoorLoop.
And it’s not just us: user reviews across software comparison sites agree that DoorLoop is the most well-rounded property management software option available.
So, if you’re looking for a property management tool that can streamline, optimize, and even automate many of your property management processes, try DoorLoop.
Want to compare more property management software systems? Download this free whitepaper to get the inside scoop on the most popular picks!
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