AppFolio Property Manager - Avis

AppFolio's user interface is the best in the business. They're short development cycle offers continued platform improvements. The software does every we need as a small owner/operator.

The lack of an open API. Support not as responsive as it was.

The software is definetly the right product. It is intuitive and very easy to use. Having used Yardi for 10+ years this product is simply outstanding. It is definitely not even close to what you can do in Yardi, but for 90% of what most of us do, it is allot easier and quicker then Yardi.

The company is suffering from a very bad support team. When they sell you the product it almost seems that these guys mastered the art of eSupport and you can solve problems with a click. This couldn't further from the truth. For most of the "how to" problems they are quick to respond and usually send you a quick article on how to. The problem becomes when you have a real problem, like late fees simply not posting the correct amounts at the wrong dates, or bank account balances don't add up...in general bigger problems call for a "we will put our head in the sand and hope it goes away" mentality.

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.

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.

The best thing about Appfolio is the constant improvements they make.

Some features that we need are not currently available and this increases the amount of time we spend in gathering what is needed to complete the task/report.

Online rent payments, online maintenance requests, customizable reports, robust accounting features, dedicated support team, software is constantly evolving.

eCheck payments being returned as NSF when they shouldn't be, credit card payments are able to be cancelled months later after we've already given the money to the owner, owners aren't able to sign leases through their portal, steep learning curve.

The software was easy to use. I started using it without any training but because I was familiar with several pother software programs was able to navigate through pretty easily. It's intuitive and user friendly. The self help articles are also very handy and most of the time answer my questions.

There is a minimum number of units we had to maintain in oder to begin using AppFolio. And a minimum monthly amount to spend. For serval years we had to pay for more than we needed to meet this minimum amount monthly. Because we bill our properties back per unit, our company had to incur the additional expense until we were large enough.

Its ease of use. It is very intuitive, there is only one role and it is really quick and easy to learn.

Tenant screening is a complete farce. AppFolio knows its a complete farce.

Easy to use. Helpful tool. Many funtiond.

Sometimes it goes slow to open tabs. Hve to log in everytime I start my work

I'm a property owner, and I rent my property out using a rental company here in town. Each month I get a statement from AppFolio that summarizes income, expenses, YTD numbers, and so on. I have found the report that I receieve easy to read and to understand. It highlights the important details that I need to know, just at a quick glance.

Sometimes, I end up with too much information -- if I dig into the statements, the numbers that I have to read can be too many -- so I end up having to sift through more than necessary, if I'm looking for some detailed numbers.

The tool is very much useful for rent. And effective, accessible to use.

Autoplay does not work for utilities. but just for rent.

It is easy to use for sure and support and on boarding was great.

The product is too slanted toward rentals or property management with one association. If you had 60 associations in a portfolio you have all your GL Accounts, Bank Accounts, Vendors all together. This is just good design from a functional stand point making customers name things to know the difference. You should keep things separated by Association. Weak design from a data structure point of view making it fit the small companies but not good for the larger portfolios.

I love how you can tie everything in from property to owner to tenant. You can click on the amount in any report to review a transaction. Attaching PDFs to the statements are fantastic. Communication is wonderful.

The finer accounting pieces. I would love to be able to run the balance sheet and click on Operating Cash to see what the balance of each bank account that makes up the Operating cash, then if I want to see by property, I could click on that total.

I like the customization of this software. It is ideal if you manage a variety of portfolios. The dashboard and tasks menu are placed well and easy to navigate. The software uses a tab feature that allows to easily work with different tasks at a time. Excellent reporting features. Great mobile app

HORRIBLE customer service. The software is extremely robust, which will normally be a good thing. However, with that comes a lot of questions. Unfortunately only 1 out of 5 agents can help you. Most issues will have to be advanced to a senior agent . Once that happens you will have to EMAIL what your issue is or wait anywhere from 3-7 days for a scheduled phone call. So if your issue is time sensitive you are simply out of luck. I am seasoned property management professional, and I have worked with many softwares. Appfolio, by far is one of the most difficult I have worked with. There is countless steps to complete
everything. Of course that allows for a lot of customization, but understand it takes a long time to learn it.

Additionally there are promised features that don't work well. For example text messaging. You can text within the software, but there is no push notification. So if you are not inside the software or checking you email constantly, you won't know someone sent a text. So Pointless!!!. That is just one of many.
There is reason there is no free trial and they bound you to a one year contract.

cloud based
master search function
often see new feature upgrades + introductions

Does not partner with other valuable services we use (compliance: site compli, external legal counsel, security deposit alternative products). Does not lend itself well to using external brokers for leasing purposes. Would like for EXTERNAL brokers to submit applications to us via the platform.
Does not have a good case management system for individual projects and/or legal cases. Does not lend itself to very necessary compliance efforts. We require tenants to submit certain types of documentation to us on a yearly basis.

Flexibility and ease of use. It allows you to delete transactions and edit them. Great training videos and articles. Enhancements and updates are made regularly.

Inability to assign due dates on manual invoices and an easier override of monthly late charges, making the latter process quite laborious. My only other criticism is applying credits in the diagnostics panel. It should populate the fields and then let you edit. Instead you have to enter everything line by line.

I love the ability to track collections, maintenance orders, and Tenant info/documents from my smartphone. This software gives me the option to have any staff work remote as needed and still do our jobs at 100% capacity.

Appfolio does a nice job at continuing to develop better features. One area that needs improvements is the ability to do inspections. It takes forever for photos to upload while at the property and uses a ton of data. Would be nice to be able to have the inspections saved locally to the phone and then upload all at once while on WiFi. This would speed up inspections drastically. Improving inspection templates is also needed.

The system-wide search feature, ability to change dates & descriptions of items most of the time & expiration date on recurring JEs. So far, customer support has been great for me - very friendly & helpful.

-Reporting is awful. Columns can be added but report pdf process does not auto-adjust size to page, which means converting to Excel to adjust. There are reports that do not have totals so have to convert those, too.-The financial reports were inadequate, so had to "upgrade" Excel to use Connect Tool just to make the reports look like the ones in the old software.-Rent Roll does not show correct occupancy rate (based upon SF not units, obviously).-Tenants cannot choose what to pay via online portal which causes time-consuming reapps.-The Smart Scan feature disregards recurring invoices, which are at least 60% of invoices paid.-Credits are auto-applied so have to unapply those to provide tenants a stmt that shows the credit, which should be a setting option NOT default.-Modified Cash Basis is not an acctg method choice. -We were not allowed to choose how to set-up cash accounts & must have AF's assistance when transferring banks.-Basic fields are not programmed into the tenant's page. There should be a lease abstract form for comm tenants. We should have option to choose what type of tenant to pull up apropos fields (res, comm, ind, etc.) &/or choose fields to add to the tenant's page.-Items rvsd from tenant's account disappear. We should have option to show rvsd items, as with the GL. Instead, items have to be manually credited & limited to one credit per g/l code per date. So much time wasted w/all the credits required for hurricane dest, esp since AF auto-applies credits.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I do accounts payable, plus deal with Owners and basically put out little fires that arise. Since using Appfolio I have reduced my work load or should I say the time that is necessary to do my job. By being able to do ACH's and emailing and texting. End of month statements was reduced down to a few hours from 2 days. The world we live in now does a lot of texting and emailing and that is always nice to be able to do when you are slammed. More than 50% of my Owners are retired or semi retired and are older so I find that it is important to have that conversation with them over the phone for that personal relationship that they like. I am friends with a lot of my Owners even though I have never laid eyes on them. So we need to balance things for good PR.

I don't have many, and I am at a loss right now to specifically point any particular problem. It is those times when you run into a situation that you rarely do and have problem figuring it out. The instructions are not real clear. As example off the top of my head. I have a problem right now with my Diagnostic under the Non-Zero Security Clearing Account Balances. I think that I have done it correctly after following the instructions and then I find my diagnostic with a problem that I will need help from Appfolio with. Right now I haven't had the time to contact Appfolio to help me due to my own personal issues, medical, vacation etc.

Switching from Promas to Appfolio would be like switching from mailing a letter to emailing a letter. The service is faster, more reliable, easier to do, takes less time, is more efficient. My list could go on and on. The main features that caught our eye were the ability to accept rent payments online for seamless accounts receivable from tenants, and online maintenance requests. For so long, we would take maintenance requests by phone or email. It was unreliable at best. Having this online feature gives us a smooth workflow from work order submission to mailing a check for work completed. Truly, Appfolio has saved our office countless hours! Oh and the customer service is awesome! I love how quickly we get responses with actual answers to our questions that solve our problems!

The onboarding was very tedious. Our Promas software was housed on an internal server at our office. That is the primary reason our transition was not that smooth to start off. Overall, we don't have many complaints. Of course, we all want cheaper software, but you get what you pay for. There are a few tweaks we have requested that Appfolio has implemented, and they continuously have updates and new features. It's really exciting! I do wish our owners could see live feed of their account balances in their portal and run their own reports as they wish.

I love that things are so well integrated. I have been with Chatel Real Estate for 7 years and we have been using Appfolio for the last 6 years. I appreciate all of the new features that you roll out and I'm super excited every time I see that little bubble at the top of my screen meaning something new has been added. Also, it's super nice that it's easy to use on the phone, I don't like the App. I only use it through my cell phones web browser but it works perfectly and I can get a ton of stuff done while visiting a building. I love that its a one stop shop for property management needs. I like being able to communicate with an entire building and record that information on unit owner pages. The key system is fantastic! We just started using it recently, and it has saved us so much time in addition to providing us with accurate records.

Prepayments on unit owner ledgers do not automatically apply to the next owners charge automatically. This makes the aged receivable detail look off which is annoying and clients complain about it. It's not a huge deal and its something we easily fix. I also wish the homeowner directory report had columns to add their tenant's information into it, instead of having to pull a renter directory and then an owner directory. Clients want just one spreadsheet not two! I wish you accepted AMEX for payments, I get a fair amount of compliants about it.

We have been using AppFolio for five years now. In that time, the features and adaptability of the software have increased significantly. When adopted the software, it really wasn't really geared toward commercial properties or owners associations. Since that time, they have really made it a great solution for us in those segments of the property management profession.

They listen. They make changes/additions to the features based on feedback from the users. They can't satisfy every individual firm's specific method of handling an issue, but they really pay attention to providing a feature for the vast majority of users.

One amazing feature they added was at a customer conference. At the beginning of the conference, they took a poll of what one feature would the users like. The overwhelming majority selected a calendaring feature. The initial roll out of that feature was released by the end of the two day conference. Since then, the calendar feature has become very robust and a great management tool.

Back-up issues are no longer a worry.

Nothing so far.

Another Pro: Another example occurred shortly after the first conference I attended. I was sitting at one of the outstanding mixers. A gentleman sat down next to me, said that he was with AppFolio. He asked if I had any suggestions as a new user. I said that as a data entry convenience (I'm an old programmer from the '60s), I was all about reducing keystrokes. I mentioned that it would be nice if you were in a date field that you could change the date by tapping the + or - keys. Turns out that he is one of the leaders of the firm, and the feature was activated in most date fields by the end of the week.

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.

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.

1. It has what I want from a property software,and if they don't have it, they will if you ask!
2. The customer service is spot on, they really love their customers and it shows!
3. Notes for EVERYTHING with PICS! No more tenants claiming they don't know what you're talking about or not knowing what they are trying to tell you is wrong with their units!
4. It makes it easy to keep track of all the data we have, literally everything has a place to be put.
5. I really love how in depth the help pages are and the fact that there are forums for the users to talk to each other about what they deal with and how they have worked around issues. It can take some time to find the right thing sometimes, but you can always find a way to make things work. Appfolio is very adaptable and it feels like there is no one way to use it. It works with each person in their own way!

1. The accounting took awhile to get used to and can be a little clunky and confusing at times (and I have an accounting degree).
2. Customer service can take up to 24 hours to get back to you, while that is still a good response time, when you have accounting questions, it can seem like forever.
3. Having the option for so much data can make it hard to remember WHERE your data for a particular item got placed. Was it the unit page? Owner page? Tenant notes? Vendor notes? Maintenance notes? Who knows! It would be great to see a system that links together notes a little better with catch words or a notes search option by date etc to make finding the large volumes of data we collect a little easier. But it is STILL a far better system than anything we have used before.