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
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.
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!
Avantages
The updates and the "what's new" feature are great, this software keeps evolving along with our business.
Ability to mass-email or mass-text a property is great, and all the recording-keeping is great for peace of mind.
Can't possibly imagine doing business without the organization of AppFolio.
Universal Search is great, fast, and efficient.
The mobile app is great.
Inconvénients
The customer support can take a while, as in, there is no direct call option. Submitting a support request and waiting is fine most of the time, but having an "emergency" option would be great.
Lack of specific rules for rent controlled areas. For example, Oakland and Berkeley have different rules for rent control and we have to constantly edit the auto-populate letter. It would be fantastic to have the option to have the option to have a different auto-populate letter for each property. Each City requires different things to be referenced.
Charges are often auto-generated in the middle of the night when you manually onboard new tenants. For good record keeping, it's helpful to record when a rent charge started so we know accurate historical data and another way to know when tenants are eligible for a rent increases. But when we do this the system creates a charge for the current month in the middle of the night, which has to be manually reversed. The flow from application to move-in is very impressive, but AppFolio isn't as smooth when you take over management of a property that already has tenants, which is almost always the case.
We've received some negative feedback from the call center, including a time where a tenant called to complain about the door being on the wrong side on a new fridge. The tenant said a female employee laughed at him. Personally I think this is hilarious, and there is a part of me that is glad she laughed at him, but it just made matters worse. Also the occasional complaint about not being able to get through to someone.
There are requested features that seem reasonable and have a lot of support in the online community, but they don't happen, or at least not right away. I suppose you don't want to spoil us, but things like "weekly recurring work orders" and being able to toggle "payments required in full" for individual tenants seem like things that happen. Ultimately these are good things b/c I assume they will happen, but almost having the feature is painful.
Electronic Payment requires a cell phone. This is kind of strange and would love to be able to just submit payment without the phone.
Dear Tyler,
Thank you for providing your honest feedback. If you are ever experiencing an urgent issue, you can add this to the subject of your support request and we will try our best to facilitate your urgent needs. We are constantly seeking to improve our product and support offerings and I have forwarded your product feedback to all of the appropriate teams for review. They will also reach out to you if they need more information. We appreciate your interaction with our user community as we continue to implement new features from our Product Suggestion Board! We look forward to our continued partnership!
I am not a computer geek, but have had a little computer programming training in the past. As I read the different users complaining about things or how they think their issues should be addressed in the upgrades to the system sooner than other issues, I wish I could open their eyes to finding creative ways to make things work for them till the next improvement arrives. AppFolio is a very elaborate program and there are multiple ways to accomplish almost every task needed in the property management field. AppFolio's development staff has a very complicated job to make this program work perfectly for all their users coming from all different kinds of backgrounds and from what I have seen over the past 7 years, they are doing an amazing job (and it appears they have a lot of fun in the process).
Avantages
The support staff is amazing. Responses are within 12 to 24 hrs and solutions are found or suggestions for the future improvements. Over the past 7 years I have watched with admiration as this program has blossomed, filling the needs of multiple users in detailed ways. I use AppFolio in two different accounting venues, one with a large property management company servicing over 1600 home rentals, the other with one owner handling his 325 apartment units. This program provides excellent adaptable reports for both aspects of a property management company and for one owner with multiple apartment complexes in all phases of financial accounting, rental reports and maintenance. AppFolio encourages all discussions between all users and the staff of AppFolio resulting in ongoing improvements and additional options within the program. To be quite honest, since my specialty is the accounting department, there are many parts of AppFolio that I have not had the privilege of really working with, but those that I have come across look to be as detailed and helpful as the accounting processes. The Help & Training section within the program is also evolving and very detailed in explaining how things work.
Inconvénients
If I had to find something I didn't like it would be the constant change that requires me to think and be constantly attentive to the processes in the program. It seems that almost every week there is a subtle or large change that rocks me for a moment. It is frustrating at times to stop and relearn a process. But then to my amazement I am once again loving this program even more and all that it does to make my job easier. You can't use this program out of habit. It is always evolving for the better.
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
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.