AppFolio Property Manager is an all-in-one property management solution for residential, commercial, student property and community association management professionals. Features include marketing, leasing, maintenance, accounting, and reporting to enable property managers to modernize, automate, and grow their business. AppFolio’s web-based solution is also fully mobile, accessible on any device.
With AppFolio, property managers can manage their accounts, list vacancies, screen tenants, collect rent, schedule maintenance, and run marketing campaigns in the office or on the go. AppFolio's real-time vacancy dashboard enables property managers to manage all of their vacancies from one location. Listings for vacant units can be added and updated across multiple websites – including the property manager's own. Vacancies are posted in just one click, with all property information and photos stored and accessible within AppFolio.
Through online rental applications, prospective residents can apply and pay application fees via credit card, with all data automatically entered into AppFolio. AppFolio's reporting dashboard provides property manages with an easy-to-read visual about leasing activity, online payments and more. Property owners and managers can maximize revenue by analyzing rent prices in their area with AppFolio's RentMatch comparison tool. AppFolio provides rental contract templates, a built-in tenant screening service with automated decisions, third-party integrations and more. Property managers can accept rent payments and online maintenance requests via AppFolio, with the latter automatically turned into work orders.
Avantages
1. When Money is collected electronically you never have to think about who's paid and who hasn't.
- Even with a handful of units, it's time consuming to collect checks and deposit them on a regular basis. This causes sloppy book keeping and helps tenants get away with not paying timely.
2. When a computer keeps track of payments late fees are always charged.
- late fees get charged automatically. This trains tenants to pay automatically. No more not paying late fees. " It's already charged and it's part of your lease ".
3. When communicating with tenants electronically, there's a record of the conversation.
- " I didn't say it was my fault ". This is no longer an argument. Every text, email, and even notes from phone conversations are stored in the tenant profile.
4.Utility billing can become a profit center instead of a nightmare.
- When incorporating RUBS or just paying for the water bill, when done with the correct process, unpaid utilities can legally incur late fees which makes tenants pay them instead of sticking the owner with them at the end of the lease.
5. It's much easier to protect a property through liability insurance.
- By using the automatic liability insurance module, there is much less of a chance in lapsing renters insurance and the property has a better chance of recuperating losses due to " I fell asleep while the stove was on ". Yes, this has actually happened.
Inconvénients
Appfolio is not something you plug into your current systems. To do it correctly and efficiently you'll need to rework your processes around it. This can be good or bad. Depending on if you like creating systems. When you're done, you'll have an employee that never sleeps and takes care of a ton of your management tasks.
Initially, I was thrilled with Appfolio. They had live support, and same day follow up calls when submitting tickets. Suggestions on the user forum were implemented, or at the very least, were updated by Appfolio so we knew they were aware and cared. None of that anymore, but we are regularly being innundated with value added junk that we can pay for if we want it or obscure improvements that seem pretty specialized/not broadly impactful. Meetups, etc. are heavily geared toward sales/recruitment and have virtually no value for current clients. I was fine with shrugging my shoulders as this is often how things go with growing companies, but looking completely unprofessional to my tenants/owners due to unreliable email/text, suppressed fee accounting/commingling problems (that are legit problems, not user error), and confusing owner statements have me in talks to switch. Property managers are dealing with stigma to start with - I don’t need my management software making my company look unreliable/unprofessional/untrustworthy on top of it. Not to mention - I dread having to explain during a state audit why income is “suppressed” from owner reporting.
Avantages
Extremely easy to navigate/train employees to use, tenant rent payment/owner contributions are free with ACH, application-move in flow is smooth, mobile app works well, available property postings look great on my website.
Inconvénients
Suppressed fees amount to commingling, and that is so bad. It could easily be resolved and the idea has lots of votes in the forum yet it remains unaddressed. Not to mention, suppressed application fees can be passed on to an owner before you need to refund the fee depending on the timing and that leads to a nightmare of accounting, and having to explain to an owner why you are unprofessionally having to withhold the money in the next month. I tried to get help from support to no avail (it was repeatedly blown off as user error) so then I started going to their live meetups when they came to town begging for help from support in person to make it clear it is not user error. That led to more dissmissal from user support as being due to user error, so I finally said I wasn’t taking no for an answer. After talking to tons of people, I finally got a support person who understood what I was saying, and all they could offer was a VERY time consuming work-around. The integrated email/text feature often fails and does not notify you that it failed causing huge problems. Notification emails when a lead inquires have started being unreliable. If tenants wait too long to respond to an email I sent via appfolio, they are told the thread has expired. Since every email sent from appfolio is sent from a different spammy looking email address, I get frustrated tenants asking which of the 15 email addresses they should use to reach me. Owner statements are confusing to owners.
Hello Tara, thank you for taking the time to leave this review. We understand your frustration and we are glad that you were able to talk through these items with one of the managers on our Customer Success Team. Based on your business practices, not consistently paying our your suppressed fees seems to have caused an issue with your owner's statements. We hope, after speaking with a manager, you will be able to establish a good cadence of paying these in order to avoid error in the future. We take our client feedback seriously and take all of it into consideration when building and improving new features. We hope you will stick with us and continue to provide this vital feedback.
The software has always worked for us and we have seen constant updates from appfolio to better compare to the competitors software but at this time we are really evaluating a software change due to the lack of functionality explained above.
Avantages
The ease of use is amazing and makes it very easy to train. Very visually appealing. Help[ center is a great benefit. Love the online payments platform.
Inconvénients
Not a robust enough accounting platform. I don't think the CAM rec feature is robust enough to handle most retail CAM, Tax, Insurance reconciliations at the end of the year. Most tenants pay different versions of CAM, admin fees, CAM caps, etc... It is very rare that tenants all pay the same NNN at a property.
The delinquency report is way too simple for our company processes. The delinquency report really needs a section for notes to easily review. No way to order parts through software like competitors. No way to audit utility billing like competitors.
Websites leave something to be desired. Accounting reporting seems way to complicated. (This could be from trying to "dumb" down the platform for ease of use but really handicaps the bigger players on the software.)
I don't think we have a dedicated account rep. It seems like every time I need something I speak to a different person. It would be much easier to have a dedicated rep that i could reach out to for everything and then he could delegate internally for you.
Hi Braden, we appreciate your review. It's great to hear that you are finding training to be easy with the software. We have built out a comprehensive help center with articles, videos, live trainings, and soon we will be adding live chat to better serve you! You'll be happy to hear that we have added new CAM reconciliation enhancements that will hopefully ease some of these points. Check out the What's New section of your database to explore these recent updates. In addition, I have provided your feedback to our Product Team who works on this initiative to help inform how we will build this out in the future! Thank you!
Run don't walk from this software. Read the reviews on other sites to get 'the rest of the story'!
Avantages
The UI is simple and easy for new staff members to learn. The features are 'simple' and provide entry level functionality to get tasks done.
Inconvénients
Since signing up with Appfolio in 2010, they've lost their consumer focus - and replaced it with what can best be described as 'Wall Street Arrogance':
- selling 'value add' services to our clients without our prior consent
- adding a maintenance call center that is a joke and an embarrassment
- their suppressed fees feature is a nightmare to use, requiring hours of extra labor to ensure it works
- coming out with simple versions of software 'improvements' that don't compare or compete with online alternatives
That last point is why I am actively searching to leave Appfolio.
Instead of letting me connect Appfolio to Docusign, they develop their own lousy lease writer which noone likes or uses.
Instead of letting me connect Appfolio to TenantTurner or other showing softwares, they insist on making us wait for their 'simple' (less powerful) version to come out.
Instead of letting me connect my Appfolio to SalesForce or Hubspot or Infusionsoft, they say 'who needs a CRM anyways'? Mind you they use Salesforce to grow Appfolio... but we can manually add new clients versus importing them from our CRM
Instead of letting me connect my Appfolio to Podio or Asana or another workflow management software, they say 'use paper checklists, or maintain a dual database' if you want to get your work done with the latest cutting edge software tech. Folks - THIS MATTERS, and means you will spend TONS of extra hours doing labor that could easily be automated otherwise.
Instead of letting me connect my Appfolio to Survey Monkey, they make us use a dual data base, and miss the chance to survey our clients. Appfolio surveys us all the time, but apparently we don't deserve to use an integrated survey feature.
Instead of letting me connect my Appfolio to PropertyMeld, they want me to use their Model 'T' version of a workorder system. So I went with PropertyMeld, and deactivated the Appfolio maintenance portal so I could replace it with PropertyMeld's portal. We now run far more efficiently - no thanks to Appfolio.
I recently used a competing call center to answer our maintenance lines, and received a 'cease and desist' style letter from Appfolio?! They said that 'for the safety of my data', I was to no longer use any 3rd party services!? I shook the tree long and hard and they retracted that statement. A thinly veiled attempt to shut down a competitor. Shameful actually.
When Appfolio went public, I told my Stock Broker 'you should buy it, cuz I know it will go up'. Their share price tripled over the past two years, but I refused to buy their stock. Why? I HATE that Wall Street Greed and Arrogance has entered our industry, and refuse to support them.
An open source API solves all of the above 'connection' issues, and is what's best for the customer. But Appfolio will not release their API. So folks, before considering moving forward with Appfolio, remember that the folks who play God with your data will decide WHAT improvements to bestow upon us at THEIR leisure. They'll decide what products to sell to our clients WITHOUT our knowledge or consent.
I'll leave you with a closing thought - why would Appfolio decide to shut down live support while their share values triple? One would think that escalating share values means they could afford to give us excellent live support... apparently the shareholder is now more important than the customer at Appfolio.
Hi Todd, thank you for providing this feedback. We are sorry for your poor experience with AppFolio. We work to provide an all in one solution to meet needs across your business and we created an online leasing flow that allows for the automation of your move-in processes and the ability to e-sign a lease. We also launched the ability to survey your tenants directly from AppFolio and we welcome your feedback regarding other features that you believe could be improved. We would be happy to disable the ability for tenant's to purchase renters insurance through their portals and to clarify, we launched this as a feature offering to help property managers mitigate risk. In regards to our customer support, our Customer Success team's first priority is your success, and they work hard to help improve each situation. Our team has also created an online Help Center that can provide step-by-step assistance in time of need, it is a great place to start when you have a question. We take your experience seriously and hope that we are able to provide you with excellent service moving forward!
Avantages
The product itself is great and very intuitive. The mobile app is very helpful for the entire staff.
Inconvénients
Support is really lacking. I would like to just call and get support, rather than submitting a request and waiting for an answer. I've submitted a request once and was told that what I was requesting was not supported and that I should make a suggestion. I feel that I'm already communicating with Appfolio, why do I have to re-communicate to Appfolio? The support person should have said that the feature I was looking for will be passed on to the appropriate department. I get the impression that the suggestion board is mainly a feel good function and not something that Appfolio takes seriously. I base this on the fact that there are suggestions that have several votes, have been on the board for several months and not getting a response. As an example there is as suggestion for lease expiration notice which has 1,231 votes and was suggested May 2015. It was not responded to until February 2016 and we still don't have this function. What's really funny about this particular function is that before I went to Appfolio 5 years ago I had this function on my website that I designed and had developed. This is just proof that Appfolio doesn't listen to it's clients
Hi David, we appreciate you taking the time to provide this review. The nature of our software and support often requires us to look into complex accounting issues that our Customer Success Team researches in order to provide an informed response to meet your unique business needs. Thank you also for providing feedback directly to our Product Team for enhancements you would like to see. The reason we ask clients to submit feedback directly to our Product Suggestion channel is so Product can hear exactly what you are looking for with nothing lost in translation. The format also allows for us to aggregate requests so we can see what is the most highly suggested and follow up with clients to learn more. Thank you for participating and submitting your feedback to our Product Suggestion Board, as this is the most direct way for us to hear your feedback. In regards to the specific suggestion you have detailed, I have reached out to a Sr. Product Manager to provide more insight and you should be hearing from us soon. We hope to improve your experience going forward!
Residential: $1.25/unit/month
Commercial: $1.50/unit/month
Student Housing: $1.25/unit/month
Community Associations: $0.80/unit/month
A $250/monthly minimum applies. Discounts are available with annual billing.
Pricing includes Online Applications, Automatic Data Backup, Bank-Grade Security, Company-Wide Training, Dedicated Support, Ongoing Upgrades, Unlimited Users, Unlimited Data Storage, Complete Accounting, Integrated Vacancy Posting, Professional Website, Online rent collection
• Professional, integrated websites position your business to stand out from the crowd.
• A streamlined leasing flow simplifies the move-in and move-out process with automated rent and bill posting, unit vacancy tracking and rent increases.
• Online portals and a convenient mobile app keep renters and owners happy with 24/7 access to their accounts.
• Two-way texting reaches renters and owners where they are and keeps a digital record of all communication.
• Dynamic universal search helps you easily find anything in the database.
• Powerful, customizable reports allow you to keep a finger on the pulse of your business at any time, from any device.
•A dedicated client services manager is provided to personalize your unlimited support.
Voici quelques-unes des questions fréquentes sur AppFolio.
Types de licences disponibles pour AppFolio :
À partir de: $250/mois
Type de licence: Abonnement
version d'essai gratuite: Non disponible
Residential: $1.25/unit/month
Commercial: $1.50/unit/month
Student Housing: $1.25/unit/month
Community Associations: $0.80/unit/month
A $250/monthly minimum applies. Discounts are available with annual billing.
Pricing includes Online Applications, Automatic Data Backup, Bank-Grade Security, Company-Wide Training, Dedicated Support, Ongoing Upgrades, Unlimited Users, Unlimited Data Storage, Complete Accounting, Integrated Vacancy Posting, Professional Website, Online rent collection
Fonctionnalités du logiciel AppFolio :
Utilisateurs habituels du logiciel AppFolio :
Grandes entreprises, Entreprises de taille moyenne, PME
Langues dans lesquelles AppFolio est disponible :
anglais
Types de licences disponibles pour AppFolio:
Abonnement
Appareils pris en charge par AppFolio :
Android, iPhone, iPad
Applications s'intégrant à AppFolio :
AvidXchange, Procurify
Ressources d'aide disponibles pour AppFolio :
FAQ, Forum, Base de connaissances, Support en ligne, Support téléphonique, Tutoriels vidéo
I wouldn't manage property without it.