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Managing rentals requires many hands– and a little help goes a long way.
But there’s no shortage of tools out there promising to help you manage your property and make life easier for you.
The problem is, sifting through it all to find the ones that are really great.
The tool that can do more than just make collecting rent a little easier, but streamline your entire property management process from the ground up.
Two such options are Zillow Rental Manager and Turbotenant.
Both offer attractive (mostly) free plans that make it easy to get started, but how much time and money do they really save you with their limited set of features?
Below, we’ll compare both Zillow Rental Manager and Turbotenant together along with DoorLoop to see how they stack up.
Let’s start with the meat of things: feature set.
Notable Features
Whether you’re paying a large or small sum for a software, its features are the very thing you’re paying to get access to.
Even if you’re using a software that claims to be free, but the cost is passed off to your tenants, you’re still investing large amounts of time into it as well.
Either way you look at it, you’re making an investment.
So, let’s compare what you’re getting with each.
To do that most effectively, we’ll be separating this features section into the major feature categories that property management software can include.
Feature: Accounting
Accounting is one of the most significant aspects of property management software, and you can pretty much be guaranteed that a property management software has some kind of accounting software.
But how do our contenders compare to one another?
Zillow Rental Manager
Zillow Rental Manager offers basic rent collection features:
They also offer the ability to collect other fees such as utilities, security deposit, etc.
However, Zillow Rental Manager doesn’t offer any true accounting features other than rent collection.
Turbotenant
Similar to Zillow, TurboTenant only offers rent collection in terms of accounting features.
However, they also offer a few bells and whistles in the way of auto reminders and late fees.
DoorLoop
DoorLoop offers the same rent collection features as Zillow and Turbotenant, as well as additional features and a full accounting suite.
Features include:
- Automatic rent payments
- Convenient tenant portal where tenants can pay rent and other responsibilities, get payment reminders, and check payment history
- Multiple payment methods including credit card and ACH
- Bank account syncing with Plaid, giving you the ability to auto sync and categorize your income and expenses from within DoorLoop
- Full chart of accounts
- Bank reconciliation
- Easy to setup QuickBooks Online integration
Feature: Tenant management
Now, let’s move on to tenant management-related features.
This section includes not only tenant portals and tenant communication features but also maintenance management as that is closely tied to tenants as well.
These are some of the most valuable features of a great property management software tool, so let’s see how our trio compares here.
Zillow Rental Manager
We covered earlier that Zillow has rent collection features, which include the ability for tenants to pay online via the app.
However, Zillow’s Rental Manager doesn’t offer any tenant communications, maintenance, or other related features.
Turbotenant
Turbotenant offers a standard tenant portal where users can pay rent and see payment history.
They also offer a few basic maintenance management features in the way of tenant maintenance requests and work order history.
DoorLoop
DoorLoop offers a robust tenant portal with the ability to:
- Set up automatic rent payments
- Pay rent and all other financial responsibilities
- Check payment history
- Get payment reminders
- Send in maintenance requests
- And more
It also offers a complete maintenance management system including the ability to:
- Communicate with tenants in real-time on maintenance orders
- Assign to and pay out a vendor
- Edit the work orders with attachments and other information
- And more
Feature: Leasing
Now, on to another major feature: leasing.
Most property management tools have some sort of leasing tools, but exactly what features they offer all depends.
Zillow Rental Manager
This is the only other area where Zillow really has much in terms of features, and it’s only a few.
Zillow Rental Manager offers:
- Zillow property listings
- Tenant screening including background, credit history, and eviction checks
- Digital leases
- And online applications
Turbotenant
Turbotenant offers a few leasing features including:
- Property listings
- Online applications
- Tenant screening including background, credit history, and eviction checks
- Lead tracking
- Digital leases
DoorLoop
DoorLoop again offers not only a comparable feature set but goes above and beyond what the others offer.
Features include:
- Automatic listings to fill units faster
- Full tenant screening report powered by TransUnion, the leader in tenant screening and background checks
- Online applications
- Digital leases
- Full CRM to track leads from application to lease signing and finally new tenant
Pricing
Now that we’ve covered the major features, let’s take a look at pricing.
Here’s how they stack up:
Zillow Rental Manager Pricing
Zillow doesn’t charge for Rental Manager, instead choosing to make its money off of Zillow listings and its premium listings offer:
The cost comes in at $9.99 per week per property listing after the first free listing.
While its listings start off as low-cost, one complaint we see leveraged often toward Zillow Rental Manager from users online is that it can be really easy to forget about your listings while you’re busy managing the rest of your business.
A few days go by and suddenly you’ve paid an extra $30, 40, 50+ you didn’t intend to.
Turbotenant Pricing
Turbotenant offers a free plan with the only cost being credit and debit card transactions and application/screening fees, both which can be passed off the applicants.
DoorLoop Pricing
DoorLoop doesn’t offer a free plan like other more minimal feature options like Zillow Rental Manager and Turbotenant, but it comes in on the lowest end of premium full-service property management software and has transparent pricing plans starting at just $59 per month for up to 20 units.
Not to mention, you can schedule a free demo to see it in action as well.
User experience
Intangibles like ease-of-use and customer support are critical when it comes to getting the most out of your property management tool.
After all, when you have an issue, how quickly does it get solved? How much time does it ultimately waste?
Do you feel like you actually have someone at your side backing you up?
For this section, we referred to major software review sites such as Capterra to hear from real verified users of each tool.
Zillow Rental Manager
Zillow Rental Manager is simple and therefore relatively easy to use, but is the most limiting in terms of help and support.
As of currently, you can only send in a support ticket. There is no chat or phone support option.
In addition to this, users report receiving poor customer service and frequently being unable to resolve issues, in some cases waiting days or longer before even receiving a response about their issue.
Turbotenant
Turbotenant offers online chat and email support, as well as the ability to schedule phone calls. They also offer a decent help center where users can get answers to many of their own questions.
DoorLoop
DoorLoop not only has award-winning ease-of-use but award-winning customer support that users often report is the best they’ve experienced in the industry.
Not only do you have easy access to support but you can also get easy access to real human beings over the phone with a simple call.
Customer service is responsive and you can get resolutions to any issues fast, so you can get back on your feet sooner.
Our top pick
Ultimately, only you can decide which is the best property management tool for you.
With that said, we hope this guide has helped illuminate what options are out there and the difference between them.
Free doesn’t necessarily mean better, as in software it often means a more limited feature set with less power.
Property management software can help you do all kinds of things, such as:
- Automate rent collection
- Streamline maintenance management
- Simplify the leasing process
- Increase leads through listing tools
- And more
… but you need to find a tool that can do all that effectively (and more).
So, if you’re looking for a powerful solution to all your property management needs, check out DoorLoop.
Schedule a free demo to try it out and get a better idea of just how easy it is to use.
Check out DoorLoop’s robust set of property management features today.
Frequently Asked Quesitons
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