AppFolio Property Manager

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

I love how easy it is to use and that it's got everything integrated from inspections to maintenance to accounting to contract management. It also posts my listings to a bunch of websites automatically.

Cons

It was initially a perfect fit for our company. We wanted our website and property management software integrated and we loved the features such as the tenant portal etc. In the past couple of years, it seems that they are gearing themselves more toward large companies (1000+ units) as they are only making certain features available to their larger clients (i.e. Lisa AI / artificial intelligence secretary) despite having the technology already to accommodate all clients regardless of company size. Additionally, we paid a lofty website setup fee when we originally enrolled in the software in 2014. They charge anywhere from $1000-5000 to redesign the website and as of March 2021, they are forcing everyone to migrate their website over to a new design and imposing a monthly fee to host the website in addition the the regular monthly fee.

Pros

It is fairly user friendly. Onboarding team was friendly.

Cons

1.- Customer Support is your worse nightmare. 2.- I can no longer receive over the phone payments, 3.- It has been very difficult for many of my users to login. 4.- It takes me too many steps to move from one function to the next and tabs open and accumulate making your viewing experience confusing.5.-The onboarding process and the way the information was placed made me think they had an unexperienced person doing a fill in the blank job. I don't believe they understand what they are really doing while importing the information from one software to the next.

Pros

Appfolio has not only a lot of functionality, but is easy to use across our entire organization. It has become the primary backbone of our property management business and we truly view Appfolio as a Partner, not a technology service provider.

Cons

Our primary critique with Appfolio is that they tend not to let other good real estate tech products plug into their software via API. In other words, they like to build new products/functions in-house instead of via partnership or integration. There are pros and cons, but in general I would like to see Appfolio play nicer with other prop tech products.

Pros

AppFolio is so easy to use! When learning a new task, we often find ourselves exclaiming, "That's it?!" The program is easy to set up and use. AppFolio has allowed us to automate many of our processes including posting rents, calculating management fees and owner distributions, processing payables, tracking tenant and vendor insurance, recurring work orders, sending monthly financial packets and much more. We love that all of our owners and tenants have access to a portal and that communicating with them via email or text is quick and effortless. When we do need help, the AppFolio team is always there for us. From onboarding through support, you know that the AppFolio team is there to help and make sure you're making the most of the program. We couldn't be happier with our decision to use AppFolio!

Cons

A big portion of our portfolio is Commercial. I think AppFolio was originally geared toward residential management. They've made a ton of progress toward commercial properties, but sometimes I wish the commercial features were more robust (example: CAM recoveries). Though this is sometimes a "con", we do not regret our decision to use AppFolio for our entire portfolio. They continually add new features and improve old ones, so I'm confident that we'll see more robust commercial features in the future.