AppFolio vs Yardi: Price, Features & What’s Best in 2019

We compared property management software rivals AppFolio vs Yardi on price, features, and customer reviews. AppFolio is ideal for investors of small to mid-sized portfolios who want a simple, easy-to-use platform. Yardi is best for larger portfolios that need a web-based platform for operations management, executing leases, running analytics, and accounting.

When to Use AppFolio

AppFolio offers Property Manager for smaller portfolios and Pro for large portfolios. AppFolio supports residential, student, commercial and community housing. Pricing minimums are $250 a month for Property Manager and $1,500 for Pro. Use Property Manager for a small to mid-sized portfolio, and Pro for a large portfolio with 500 or more units.

When to Use Yardi

Yardi offers Yardi Breeze for smaller portfolios, and Yardi Voyager for larger portfolios. Both cover residential, commercial, and community properties. Yardi pricing starts at $100 a month for Breeze and $10,000 a year for Voyager. Use Yardi Breeze for a small portfolio and Yardi Voyager if your portfolio is reaching 1,000 or more units.

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When to Use Buildium as an Alternative

Buildium supports commercial and residential portfolios of any size. Pricing begins at $47 a month per unit for Core, and $156 a month up for Pro, both at 20 units. Buildium offers accounting, tenant screening, maintenance management and online payment processing. Use Buildium if you want software similar to AppFolio but at a lower price.

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AppFolio vs Yardi at a Glance

AppFolio and Yardi are online property management software ideal for both small and large real estate portfolio investors and property managers. Both cloud-based platforms help with tracking maintenance, communicating with tenants and service professionals, rent collection, online leases and e-signing, and marketing tools. We evaluated AppFolio and Yardi on the key features most landlords seek.

The eight areas we evaluated Yardi vs AppFolio include:

• Pricing: We evaluated pricing as it compares to features of similar online products
• Online leases & documents: Property managers and landlords ability to create, send and store documents quickly and easily
• Maintenance Tracking: Communicating with service professionals and between tenants and landlords to ensure work is completed in a timely manner
• Accounting: The system’s ability to handle large and small transactions and provide accounting reports
• Marketing: Access to listing syndication and application sharing
• Customer support: Ability to reach support and resolve issues quickly
• Client Reviews: What clients are saying about AppFolio vs Yardi
• Ease of Use: How user-friendly the platforms are, and how many bugs/glitches encountered

Based on our evaluation, we chose AppFolio Property Manager over Yardi Breeze as the best option for landlords and property managers with small to medium-sized portfolios who want a more user-friendly online property management solution. However, investors and property managers of very large portfolios of 1,000 units or more would want to consider Yardi Voyager as the better and more affordable option.

AppFolio vs Yardi: Pricing & Features

AppFolio and Yardi offer online documents with e-signing capabilities, solid accounting systems for creating income and expense reports. Both have two products with tiered pricing. Monthly pricing for AppFolio ranges from 80 cents to $3 per unit per month, with required minimums of $250 to $1,500 a month. Monthly pricing for Yardi’s programs range from $100 for up to 100 units to over $10,000 a year.

AppFolio Pricing & Features

AppFolio Property Manager is for smaller residential, commercial, community associations, or student housing portfolios. Monthly per unit fees are $1.25 for residential and student housing, $1.50 for commercial properties, and 80 cents for community associations. There’s a required minimum monthly fee of $250. The minimum number of units in the portfolio would start at 312 for community association, 200 for residential and student housing, and 167 for commercial properties.

AppFolio Plus is for large-scale residential, commercial, community associations, or student housing portfolios. Monthly fees are $3 a unit for residential and student housing, $1.50 a unit for commercial properties, and 85 cents a unit for community associations. There’s a required minimum monthly fee of $1,500. That translates to 1,765 units for community association, 500 units for residential and student housing, and 1000 units for commercial properties.

AppFolio features include:

Online Leases & Documents

AppFolio uses online lease agreements and e-signing of documents to save property managers the trouble of having to type, print, and meet with tenants for signatures. Their leases are powered through Blue Moon software, which provides industry standard leases throughout the U.S. AppFolio’s online leases are customizable and renters can sign instantly on their mobile devices. Information from the tenant’s application is automatically merged into the lease, and lease renewals are streamlined for ease.

Rent Collection

AppFolio’s rent collection tools allow landlords to accept rent via credit, debit, or e-check. Renters can pay application fees also through the portal. Late fees are assessed automatically. For renters without credit cards, AppFolio offers electronic cash payments which they can make at a 7-Eleven or ACE Cash Express location.

AppFolio also has a tenant debt collections feature to turn over past tenants to collections, report to credit bureaus, and increase revenue by recovering more lost revenue. The information landlords need to turn delinquent accounts over to collections already exists in AppFolio Property Manager. Landlords add any missing data and a fully licensed national collections agency, Hunter Warfield, takes over.

Maintenance Management

AppFolio’s maintenance management allows tenants to submit online maintenance requests directly in the app. The Maintenance Contact Center has a 24/7 answering service so landlords are not responding to calls during evenings and weekends. The Contact center has trained staff who dispatch your chosen service pros and log all activities in your database. They also provide mobile property inspections with speech-to-text compatibility so landlords can talk into the phone to record maintenance issues. Photos can be directly uploaded into the app.

Accounting Tools

The AppFolio accounting system is designed specifically for property managers, so users don’t have to make their financial management conform to software not suited for this purpose. Entering and searching for bills is seamless. Users can track budgets and compare income and expenses for each property. AppFolio also lets users sync their bank accounts, so they can quickly reconcile each month without reviewing every transaction.

Marketing and Listings

In addition to offering landlords a custom website for each of their properties, AppFolio let’s landlords advertise their residential and student housing vacancies to hundreds of sites including Trulia, Rentals.com, Zillow, and Apartments.com. Landlords can also download professionally formatted HTML code and images to manually post on sites like Craigslist. For commercial property listings, landlords can advertise vacancies by rent per square foot.

Yardi Pricing & Features

Yardi Breeze is for small to medium-sized portfolios consisting of single-family homes, multifamily apartments, commercial, or mixed-use properties. Yardi Breeze has separate pricing for commercial and residential properties. Yardi Breeze for residential is $100 a month up to 100 units, then $1 per month for each unit over 100. For commercial it’s $200 a month up to 100 units, then $1 a month for each unit over 100.

Yardi Voyager is an elite, high-end property management system for large residential and commercial portfolios. It works best for landlords approaching 1000 units or more. Pricing for Yardi Voyager starts around $10,000 per year.

Types of properties supported by Yardi Voyager include:

• Residential
• Affordable housing
• Public housing authorities
• Senior housing
• Condos, co-ops & HOAs
• Military housing
• Social housing
• Student housing
• Commercial
• Airports
• Government
• Ports
• Parks and recreation

Yardi features include:

Online Leases & Documents

Unlike AppFolio, Yardi currently does not offer online leases and rental agreements or other rental documents. However, Yardi does offer e-signatures for documents that landlords upload and share with tenants and applicants. When the form is uploaded and signed, landlords will receive an email that the process is complete.

Rent Collection

Yardi allows tenants to pay rent online and pay from their bank account, or with a credit or debit card. Yardi lets tenants pay rent via SMS text message with a debit or credit card. Tenants can also walk-in and pay rent in cash at over 20,000 participating retail locations. Landlords can also collect late fees through their payment processing system.

Maintenance Tracking

Yardi’s maintenance tracking gives landlords the tools to manage, track and schedule their routine and preventative maintenance and emergency repairs. Yardi’s property inspections work similar to AppFollio. Landlords can snap pictures, videos, and add notes and details from their phones and upload them right into the system. They can receive maintenance requests from tenants and attach supporting documents.

Accounting Tools

Yardi’s accounting tools provide landlords with the ability to create detailed financial statements, manage payables and receivables and input data into a general ledger online. The software can work for both small and large portfolios, and financial accounting can be shared with teams. Yardi gives landlords and property managers access to data at any time. They can create and track payments, and connect bank and credit accounts.

Marketing and Listings

Yardi gives property managers and owners access to advertising available units on RENTCafe.com and other popular listing sites. They also offer a professional looking website, and prospects and applicants can communicate with owners and managers through text messaging and email.

AppFolio vs Yardi: Ease of Use

When comparing AppFolio vs Yardi ease of use, AppFolio is the winner. AppFolio’s public website is visually pleasing and easy to navigate. Customers rated AppFolio’s ease of use very high overall. Yardi received mixed reviews on the site, saying it is moderately difficult, and somewhat outdated. Yardi Breeze appeared easier to use than Yardi Voyager.

AppFolio Ease of Use

Users reported that overall AppFolio is easy to use, but with a learning curve. Once they learned how to use the software, they said it simplified their property management exponentially. AppFolio’s platform is clear, with simple instructions, and everything is visually easy to find. They have tutorials and great customer support. Occasionally, the accounting software has had some glitches, but AppFolio quickly resolved them.

Yardi Ease of Use

Our analysis showed that Yardi was moderately difficult to set up and use; however Yardi has been working to simplify the software. The difficulties seemed more prevalent with Yardi Voyager than Yardi Breeze, which makes sense since Yardi Voyager manages larger portfolios with multiple users. Yardi provides webinars and demos to help users learn the software. However, an email address is required to access demos.

AppFolio vs Yardi: Customer Service

When comparing Yardi vs AppFolio on customer service, AppFolio ranked higher in our research. AppFolio’s transparent survey gives real-time customer support reviews, and reviews outside of the AppFolio website are positive overall. Yardi support received mixed praise, but overall there are more positive than negative reviews.

AppFolio Customer Service

AppFolio customer service includes phone, email, and chat support. Unique to the site is a live public customer support survey with real customer responses, unedited and updated every hour. At the end of every support session, they ask customers to rate their experience in the survey and it is posted directly on the site. Survey results were very high. Complaints were mostly about wait time for receiving support.

Yardi Customer Service

Yardi is an international company with support in five countries or regions for their various products. We focused on U.S.-based support for property management software and excluded other Yardi products. Yardi offers online instant chat, phone and email support, and help documentation, but calling directly is probably your best option. The website is difficult to navigate to support, and the property management pages give limited information on how it works.

AppFolio vs Yardi: Customer Reviews

AppFolio vs Yardi customer reviews left AppFolio ranking higher than Yardi in customer support, ease of use, helpful staff, and the resources offered within the platform. Yardi ranked higher with pricing for its Voyager product for large-scaled property management than AppFolio Pro, making Yardi Voyager our pick for managing large-scale properties. AppFolio ranked highest in customer support.

AppFolio Customer Reviews

Customer reviews of AppFolio received solid ranking. Customers reported that they loved the video tutorials, that customer support was outstanding, and commended the company on keeping up-to-date with the industry and customer needs. The only negative reviews we found said that response-time was sometimes slow, long-term customers didn’t like the price changes, and some new developments they are working on take time to roll out.

Additional AppFolio Customer Reviews include:

• Great support team
• Forums are helpful
• Great for organizing over 300 units
• Simplified online payment processing
• Superior marketing interface
• Easy, intuitive navigation

Yardi Customer Reviews

Based on our online search of customer reviews, Yardi ranked lower than AppFolio. Reviewers reported that they liked that they could upload invoices and run a report easily, keep track of work orders, payments, and lease expirations, and easily view which units are vacant. Areas where customers thought Yardi could improve were the software was not very intuitive, and configuration was difficult.

Additional Yardi reviews include:

• Nice to manage property from one place
• Slow to keep up-to-date with other property management software
• Useful invoice tracking
• Helpful training modules
• Complicated scheduling system
• No online lease templates
• Having to make frequent calls to tech support

Bottom Line

When comparing AppFolio vs. Yardi, we chose AppFolio Property Manager as our best pick for online property management software. The user-friendly platform offers investors and property managers the ability to manage their properties in one convenient platform. However, AppFolio Pro, which is for large-scale properties can become very expensive with very large portfolios, making Yardi Voyager the better choice for portfolios above 1,000 units.

AppFolio is an online property management software that helps landlords and property managers market and manage small and large portfolios. It focuses on residential, commercial, community associations, and student housing. You can go to its site to request a free demo.