Rentec Direct

Pros

Rentec is very user-friendly. It's functionality is laid out well and it offers modern integrations such as online rent collection, pay owner by ACH, and electronic signatures for lease agreements. I also am impressed with their customer service. They are always very prompt and helpful.

Cons

I wish they offered a mobile app for property managers.

Cons

I honestly can't think of anything. Sure... there's a quirk here or there.... BUT GUESS WHAT?!... They take suggestions for future implementation AND ACTUALLY DO THEM when they are able!.... So my quirks eventually end up going away at some point! I've actually had some of my very suggestions implemented on future updates!

When they say they passed your idea on to the developers, THEY DO!!!... not just "toss it in the bin" after the conversation ends.

Pros

Good for residential properties. Good Support from company

Cons

Was not set up for use with Commercial properties. they tried but should not advertise themselves for commercial

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Rentec Direct

Cons

Cannot access login from search engine, locked out.

Pros

Easy to use, excellent and responsive customer service, no issues in the 3 years I have been using it.

Cons

Nothing major.... They are always improving the QOL tidbits and adding new features..... I just make suggestions on improvements wherever I feel something could be improved or implemented.... They do listen to them and I've noticed implementations of things I have wished to see.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Rentec Direct

Reasons for Switching to Rentec Direct

Pros

Simple enough and still has lots of power

Cons

nothing I like the program. and how easy it is to use

Pros

The software is very intuitive and has many features I wasn’t even looking for in software but couldn’t imagine living without now. I’m looming at you Mr “text from the system” feature! As far as the things I actually knew I needed, it had all of that at a price that was great. In fact, I run a property management company as well as my own rentals that must remain separate. I have two subscriptions to Rentec now, one for each!

Cons

while the website has a great mobile friendly option, it would be easier for my team and I if you had an app. The portal and owner apps are great, just get us a good managers app to complete the trifecta.

Pros

So it is very affordable, and some of the software is pretty simple to set up. They are continuing to add support articles and more functionality.

Cons

Functionality, especially in the accounting area is limited. No ability to select "classes". You have to find work arounds for things that you shouldn't have to. The support team is of little support. I have email chains with OVER 15 EMAILS AND THE QUESTION STILL HAS NOT BEEN ANSWERED. It is difficult to reach anyone when you call most times, so you are relegated to chat/email, and often my main question or issue is NEVER actually answered. I still have issues from my first month, and I am now in month six, that are unanswered. Many of the things I have learned, were from hours of trial and error. If they are not going to have a free support option that is actually helpful, then they at least need to offer a paid option. There is also a big gap in the merchant processing area. Their processor, Forte, often sends you back to Rentec, and Rentec sends you back to Forte, and the pricing of the merchant options is not clear or transparent until you get your bill.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Rentec Direct

Pros

We use the property setup screens, the rental website portal, and syndication. We love that we can list a rental property and either syndicate it to listing services or just advertise it without syndicating it. This has helped us greatly in our marketing, especially for properties that we will only lease and not manage.

Cons

Rentec has accounting built-in but we were never able to make a go of it as it didn't have all of the functionality that we needed so we stayed with Quickbooks Premium for years until deciding to jump to Buildium for accounting and leasing.

Pros

It has all the functions you need and more, it just lacked in some areas.

Cons

It felt like they didn’t want to upgrade to the new era, it wasn’t any app features, the colors weren’t bright like other sites.

Pros

The software is easy to learn, use. The people are very nice. Very good for the money. They have thought of everything.

Cons

Online payment could be easier to use. The app for the phone should be for managers as well. Pay checks should be easier to do.

Pros

I like the customer service and how they can remote into my computer. I am a visual person and being able to be talked through what I need to do while doing it is extremely helpful!

Cons

There are a few things that could be changed with the software but they aren't major issues. Just things that would be more helpful to me while creating certain reports.

Pros

The many features that Rentec has bundled into one package making the management of our apartment leasing streamlined and easy.
Excellent customer service and hands on training!

Cons

At this time we have no dislikes with the software.

Pros

RentecDirect gives us a clear accounting of our properties and our tenants. With intuitive drill-down features, you can easily track and locate tenant's important information in seconds. You can also store important property information as well, such as door key codes. Besides giving you an accurate accounting of everything financial, RentecDirect has thought out every aspect of property management and delivers a package which simplifies the process and gives us a one-click report for our annual taxes.

Pros

Clean, easy, efficient ... and forgiving. It is easy to set-up new owners, properties and tenants. And just as easy to process rents, invoices, etc.

Cons

Some of the suggestions in the knowledge base sound like good ideas. And what about a property manager portal, or app?

Pros

It streamlines so many things for me. There is a bit of a learning curve as with anything but you have their total support to get you through it. Whether it be email, phone, chat or their knowledge base.

Cons

Each state handles some things differently and so in some situations I have to manually do things and it can't be automatically set up.

Pros

I love the option and the way everything I need for my business blend perfectly! Everything I need is in this software

Cons

I only hate that I can’t delete multiple late fees at a time. You can only delete them one at a time.

Pros

Program is very easy to use. I used quickbooks for my rental property accounting and then a combination of paper, Word and Excel to keep track of everyone.With 50 units, I really needed something to keep better track of my tenants. It takes a while to get everything set up, but once you do everything works together seamlessly. I now only need to enter things once and not use multiple systems. The customer service is Amazing!! When I have questions they email me back within a couple of hours and have the answers I need. I haven't moved my website to Rentec yet, but I plan to soon.

Cons

Haven't really found anything that I don't like yet. The only thing I would change would be the deposit slips. I don't like that they don't print each check individually on them, just the total amount of deposit.

Pros

Although I have managed my own real estate investment portfolio for years, I needed to upgrade and strengthen my record keeping and reporting capability as I launch a property management business next year. After reviewing a number of vendors, I selected Rentec initially. The drivers for my selection were the apparent completeness of the capability while being quite simple to scale. Now, six months into the use of the system, my choice has been validated. I might add that one time, early on, I had to contact their tech support for advisement. I was able to reach a real person who had a very simple solution to my question. I'll be staying with Rentec.

Cons

I have "corporate expenses" that really are spread among my properties. I didn't find a straightforward method of capturing these expenses. I created a "Corporate Expense" property to capture these shared expenses. I'm probably missing this capability that likely already exists, but I haven't seen it yet.

Pros

The price is right, but so is the functionality. I am not sure how well this application would work for an operation that had several hundred units, but for our small business it seems to be good. It saves us a great deal of time and enables us to be more productive by allowing us to assess our expenses per property quickly and accurately.

Cons

At times, we have to sort of figure out how to get the output we want. Some of the pages use terms that do not always seem intuitive, but this is really not a major issue.

Pros

I would have to say I like that support has remote access to my system. It makes it so easy to explain an issue that I am having. Although they will not do it themselves, they have me solve the issue so that I can "learn" how do take care of it next time.

Cons

There are a few things that I would change in Rentec and have submitted my requests. It does take a while for them to be implemented, however, I'm sure they get many suggestions daily.

Pros

It was easy to set up, and it's easy to use. I can easily pick and choose how much or how little of the program elements I want to use. It has plenty of report and tracking options, and provided lots of room for growth.

Cons

Really don't have any complaints. I wanted a way to compare properties profitability to one another and it doesn't do that. But I don't know that any of the rental property software out there does.

Pros

Clean, easy to use product.
Very good tech support.
Keeps improving.
Priced reasonably.
Good features like ACH, screening reports.
Automatic posting to rental sites like zillow, hotpads etc.

Cons

Managing marketing info for the unit rental is not very straight forward. Cant easily replicate info from one unit to another. Loading pictures and arranging them could get better.

Pros

Easy to use. Accessible anywhere. Reliable. I have been using for three years and when it is tax time, I just put on a USB stick and give to my accountant.

Cons

Nothing. It was easy to download and easy to see where my problems are -- lack of payment, too high of a water bill, etc.

Pros

Ease of use, great customer support, intuitive and non-intimidating.

Cons

Missing key features and some functions involve too many steps or work around.

Pros

I switched to this software from another, $10/month cheaper software. Rentec's software is really easy to use. You don't need accounting or business knowledge to operate this software. It is really easy to use. I switched to Rentec so I could have my listings automatically populate on my website (tired of manually entering them on website by Wix). Tenants can also apply electronically from website, and log in to view their tenant or owners portal. The features for the tenants are quite nice, and make my company look professional and modern. The accounting features are great, and paying property owners is a breeze. I had little accounting knowledge when I migrated to this property, and everything makes sense. The auto syndication features are amazing, straight to Zillow and its affiliates overnight.

Cons

I have to be honest, I'm complaining about a free feature, but my least favorite part of the software is the website in which I migrated to Rentec for. If I try to edit my website and add items that are not on the template, my website has major HTML coding issues and will not publish properly. The visual appearance of my website thru Rentec is subpar considering what I had before. That said, I could not get the functionality I needed from my old website, and I will sacrifice appearance for functionality. I actually learned HTML coding so I could add a contact us field on my website, but I couldn't save the website with HTML coding.

Another item I dislike, although it's more a feature I don't use as opposed to an issue with Rentec, is there are so many redundancies when it comes to the tenant. I plug in their email and name, and that should be all for my purposes. But I have to manually go in and authorize them to receive emails from me. And then authorize them access to the tenants portal. And authorize them to make partial payments, and so on.

Pros

The price is good and it works....just not smoothly. It is like working on an AS400 from the 90's

Cons

For years I was promised fixes, now they have rolled out a new version that has it own set of glitches on top of the old ones.

Support is always delayed, phone is never answered. (In five years no one has ever answered the phone) You have to text or email, response time can be an hour to a day. Sometimes i feel like they dont here my issue and send responses based on keywords they heard

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Rentec Direct

Pros

I love this software because it enables easy collaboration between team members. Multiple users can access and work on the same documents simultaneously,

Cons

I haven't encountered any setbacks using this software

Pros

The last version was half way decent. New version was convincingly bad and didn't solve any of the old issues.

Cons

Everything since the "update". They improved on WORSE.

Pros

Easy to set up and pretty easy to use. Most likely, the confusion sometimes has more to do with my accounting abilities than the software itself. Customer service is very quick to respond, which is great, although not the friendliest. They seem to work to continue improving, which is important. They recently added a co-renter option for portal access, which is fantastic, and I'm so happy they added that. We have only had the service a month or two, but so far, we are pleased.

Cons

Like I said, customer service is responsive and quick, but not the friendliest, but they get the job done & that's most important. I feel like there are some functionalities that I feel would be pretty standard, yet Rentec doesn't have the feature. For instance, you have to do a work around for multiple property owners, but it doesn't really help much. Reporting functionality is lacking. There are a good bit of reports, but some that should be standard are not available. I also do not like the way ACH is reported, because you have to do a little digging to find out if payments went through or just trust it's working. However, technology, as we know, does not always work properly, and I hate to just leave it to chance. Although, this is probably more of an issue with Forte, who processes the payments, than Rentec. However, Rentec did partner with this company, so it's basically lumped in together.

Pros

Very user friendly
No learning curve
Reports are easy to read
Information is formatted in a way that most would understand
Price is great and this is good for those with only a couple rentals or if you have 100's

Cons

When I used this product, it didn't offer all the bells and whistles that others did like an app for your phone
The ACH process was too slow when I used it and it could take too many days to get money and send money

Pros

We used this product for a few years when our property management company was just starting to grow. It was great in the beginning because it got everything out of excel and quick books and onto a property-oriented platform. The reports were excellent. The program was extremely user-friendly.

Cons

We ended up changing to another program when we grew out of Rentec Direct. The program only allowed you to deposit ACH payments into one account and that was an issue for us.

Pros

This software is very easy to use, and it offers all that I need to make managing our properties easy. The customer service and tech support is amazing. The support team has been very helpful several times in guiding me through some of the technical aspects of the software that have made things run more efficiently for our daily flow. I felt very capable of using this software after having the training provided over the phone.

Cons

There are a couple of things that I would like to see Rentec Direct offer in the future. However, I love how it has a suggestion area which lets me know that some improvements or upgrades are in the works or are being considered.

Pros

It makes life a lot easier in the rental managing world. This program helps keep up with tenant payments and owner disbursements.

Pros

Built in marketing tools (website).
Right-priced screening tools.
Accounting features.

Cons

1. Asking someone to "Apply now" (from just the pictures) is a bit intimidating for many prospective tenants. There should be button for "request more information, and maybe "for a faster response answer these questions". Basically looking to have them fill out a brief questionnaire before actually applying with social security numbers, kids names, etc. So for now I'm using the "apply now" button as a questionnaire, and still have tenants completing paper (full) applications (after viewing property). Would love to be able to do BOTH online.
2. It was not immediately clear that we needed to set a fee for credit cards. In our first month a bunch of tenants saw no fee for the credit card, so we got charged a bunch of fees we did not intend to pay!
3. In addition to rentals, we do some fix/flips and some fix to hold. It would be awesome if there was a way to track ONLY capital expenses for a property

Pros

1. Customer Support is excellent. There is great help on the Chat window and when that isn't available, phone support is great.

2. Easy to use. Once I got familiar with the system, it became a slam-dunk to manage monthly rent collection and on-time lease renewals. Training was great so I got up to speed quickly.

3. Tenants like it. Ease of use applies to tenants also. Rent reminders and late notices are clear and tenants have no problem working with the system. Rentec takes that burden off my desk. And tenants love the ACH and credit card options.

4. Software works as advertised. The Development team has built a solid product.

Cons

It would be nice to have a reporting tool that allowed me to create my own reports. Owner reporting is not very elegant as it is today.

Pros

Easy to use, organized and simple design

Cons

Running some reports can be laborious since you can't run some categories for all properties at one time, as we need to do each month.

Pros

I had a list of items applicable to my specific circumstances, of course. I used this to compare software, so that I knew these would be accommodated, then on to the functionality. Like many of us, I didn't want a difficult system for my clerical help. At the same time, the integrated accounting and background/credit checks were good matches for our needs and money-saving, to boot.

Cons

The setup for properties and their perimeters takes some time, but all systems require it. The first, general setup did give us an opportunity to look at our policies and procedures overall, which is important to do, especially when switching to a new system.

Pros

The software is easy to learn for both me and my assistant. We were able to get up and running using the software in days, and that included bringing in all our data. The staff at Rentec was also tremendously helpful in getting it all imported.

Cons

The video training material is a bit dated, but still useful.

Pros

Great functionality for smaller companies and number of rental units (4 or fewer employees)
Easy to use to get the basics started

Cons

If you plan on growing past 5 employees, consider something else. Not enough controls for various employee access/restriction to appropriate data/pages. Customer service used to be great, has slowed considerably in the last 2 years. The company has gotten a lot larger, and thus don't listen as well as they used to. Make sure that the software meets your current (and future) needs. Don't expect major changes. Small rollouts of capabilities do continue to happen.

Pros

It was easier to have everything in one place instead of trying to juggle everything yourself on different methods.

Cons

It was not so easy to use and once you have too many properties it become more of a problem.

Pros

RenTec Direct Software is extremely user-friendly and so easy to use. I am not very computer literate and I was able to teach myself the program. When I have a problem or question or something out of the ordinary comes up I just call support team and is there so helpful, friendly and personable. That definitely helps when your stressed and need help with your software!

Cons

There are a few things that I would change regarding some of the reports, however, they have been adding and changing things daily so I do not really have many cons.

Pros

Rentec has really simplified the lease management and payment system for our tenants which has been a huge time-saver.

Cons

It was a little challenging to set up for both our secretary and tenants. But once we got through a few weeks of questions and issues we haven't had many issues.

Pros

Robust features at a reasonable price. For instance:
- ACH transactions (for both tenants and owners!) included, or for minimal price for startups, in Rentec Direct subscription
- Rapid-response customer support
- Excellent webinar/blog content for onboarding and growth

Cons

The primary tenant screening option is only available for PM companies managing at least six properties. Rentec Direct does provide a tenant-initiated option for companies managing one to five properties.

Pros

I love the affordability of the software and the ease of use. I also like the ability to communicate and text the tenants through the portal and track them. Another great feature is the owner portal. Ny owner absolutely loves the easy access and variety of reports available as does her accountant.

Cons

Just a little difficult in the beginning setting up and getting the ACH approved for the payment of my owners. Another drawback was that the platform does not sync with my bank management account even though it says it can. I have to manually reconcile.

Pros

Ease of use and allows us to do every thing we need to manage our properties effectively from rent collection, maintenance, application validation, marketing, reporting and more! The customer service is excellent!

Cons

The right click to get to menu items was tough without a mouse but now it is seamless.

Pros

It was relatively easy to learn and behave the way you expected it to. It was easy to find the controls for changing what little you could change in the functionality.
The reports are what you expect them to be, income/expense, income, expense.
The rent-roll was reasonable.
Everything is exportable.
The bank accounts acted like bank accounts and were thus easy to understand.
Entering the data didn't take an excessive number of steps

Cons

Going from one screen to another sometimes took an excessive amount of time. Some archiving of data locally to the users browser would probably enhance the user experience significantly.
Use of an input worksheet for income and expenses would make these tasks much more effective and efficient.

Pros

Great customer service and easy to use. Plus many services at a cost effective price. Very good reports

Cons

Not easy to call. Have to wait for call back, not always convenient. I would also like more freedom to be able to custmize reports

Pros

Reasonable price for a small startup, easy to learn, good accounting piece, website is included, customer service is very responsive to inquiries.

Cons

On-line application limited to 5 custom fields, included website could use a bit more functionality, nothing more at this time.

Pros

Colorful buttons lead you along. Lots of options to enter contact information, ie address, phone number and email. Nice to be able to email work orders directly to the vendors.

Cons

Really have to think about how to get back to where you were before and just getting around in general does not flow well.