Hemlane vs Avail: Software or Hands-On Help, 2026

Key Takeaways

• Avail was founded in 2012 and acquired on December 15, 2020 by Move, Inc., the operator of realtor.com, according to Avail (2026). It is still sold as Avail. Hemlane still sells four named plans on its own pricing page. Neither product was discontinued on the pages read for this guide.

• Choose Avail, or the lower software plans on Hemlane, when you will list, screen, lease, and collect yourself. Choose the higher Hemlane plans when you are paying a person to coordinate repairs, and choose the top plan when you also want tenant messages handled for you.

• Individual SFR ownership: 59.6% according to CRE Daily (2026), the 2024 share of one-unit rentals held by individual investors, down from 70.9% in 2021. A landlord with a few homes is still the buyer both products describe.

• The price gap is not a single per-unit number. Avail's paid plan is a per-unit software fee. Hemlane's paid examples add a flat platform fee, then a per-unit rate that jumps when staff are included. The dollar table is below.

• Tenants pay part of the cost. Hemlane publishes a screening fee and a card fee. Avail publishes a bank-transfer fee on the free plan and a higher card fee, and it does not print one national screening price.

• Price the top Hemlane plan by multiplying the per-unit rate by your doors before you add an assistant you will not use. The four-unit arithmetic is in the year section.

What you are actually choosing

Hemlane versus Avail is the choice between rental software you run yourself and rental software that can add paid staff for repairs, tenant messages, and leasing help. Both still exist under those names. Avail was not renamed out of existence after the 2020 acquisition cited above, and the pricing page still sells an Unlimited plan and an Unlimited Plus plan. Hemlane's pricing page still sells a Starter plan, a Basic plan, an Essential plan, and a Complete plan, from free software to a property-management assistant.

Rental vacancy rate: 7.3% according to Joint Center for Housing Studies (2026), for the first quarter of 2026, up from a record low of 5.9% in 2022. A vacant month is a more ordinary risk than it was four years ago, so listing reach and the speed of a new lease matter. That does not, by itself, mean you should hire a coordinator. It means you should know which product only supplies the listing and which one also supplies a person.

In short, stay with Avail or with Hemlane's software plans when you will make the calls, and move to Hemlane's Essential or Complete plans when the bill is buying labor. The software prices can land in the same neighborhood. The work they include does not. Avail's free plan already lists online rent collection, state-specific leases, and maintenance tracking. Hemlane's free plan lists advertising, screening, and accounting, and the rent-collection line shows up on the Basic plan card, not on Starter.

A landlord with a few units usually feels the split on the first after-hours repair and the first late rent, not on the signup form. If you already have a plumber, a lease file, and a Saturday morning for showings, a do-it-yourself system matches the way you work. If those hours are gone, the higher Hemlane plans are the public offer that names a coordinator and, on the top plan, an assistant. Traditional percentage-of-rent management is a different purchase. These two pricing pages sell software, plus, on Hemlane, optional service layers with published starting prices.

Who this is for

This comparison is for an independent landlord who owns a few residential rentals, still signs the leases, and still controls the rent account. You are close to choosing. You want the monthly number, the tenant-paid fees, and a straight answer on who calls the vendor. You do not need a 200-unit operating system to make that call.

You are in the right place if the next lease, the next turnover, or the next repair queue is the decision in front of you. Owners who self-manage houses, condos, or a small multi-unit building will recognize both products. Avail's plan cards speak to listing, screening, leasing, rent, maintenance tickets, and a tenant portal. Hemlane's plan cards speak to the same cycle and then, on two paid plans, to people who join that cycle.

Red flags: you want a percentage-of-rent manager who stands in as your agent in eviction court; the portfolio is short-term stays, an HOA, or commercial space these pricing pages do not sell; you need Hemlane's local leasing network in a city the pricing page does not list, and you have not confirmed coverage before you rely on it.

How we evaluated Hemlane and Avail

The weights below are a buying order for a few residential units, not a lab score and not a rank from a test tenancy. Public plan cards, the fee lines on those same pricing pages, the Avail press kit, and housing research drove the order. A review average is a separate signal from fit. No customer, quote, or deployment was invented to fill a gap. Where a dollar was not printed, the cell says Quote-based.

Monthly cost is a quarter of the weight because a wrong plan is a bill you feel every month, and the two products do not price a unit the same way. Repair and message labor is next because that is the actual product difference: ticket tracking versus a named coordinator and, on one plan, an assistant. Fees and deposit speed matter once rent is moving, since a $0 software line can still produce a tenant fee or a slower deposit. Listings and screening are how the vacant unit gets a payer. Lease documents, the books, and a one-time placement fee are real, and they are lower weight because both products already cover the basic lease-and-ledger path for a small owner, while placement is optional.

Median capital spend: $900/unit according to HousingWire (2026), a 2023 figure, alongside 79% of rental properties reporting a capital improvement that year. Repair coordination earns its weight because owners already spend money on the building. The open question is who finds the vendor, who approves the price, and who tells the tenant. Low-rent unit decline: 7 million according to Joint Center for Housing Studies (2026), the drop in units renting for less than $1,000 over the prior ten years. A vacant cheaper unit is harder to replace with another cheap unit, so a slow listing or a fee that scares applicants has a cost even when the software invoice looks small.

The prices printed on the page

Pricing checked October 10, 2026. The monthly figures below are the ones printed on each vendor's pricing page. Hemlane's page also says annual billing saves up to 20%. This guide does not invent the discounted dollar amounts, because the monthly view is the figure set that was printed in full. Four-unit totals are arithmetic from the printed platform fee and per-unit rates, not a second published invoice.

Paid unit rate: $9/unit/month according to Avail (2026), where the Unlimited plan is $0 per unit for unlimited units, the page lists syndication to 19 sites, tenants on the free plan pay $2.50 per bank transfer, the paid plan waives that charge, a card payment adds 3.5% regardless of plan, and the paid plan lists next-day deposits with FastPay. Basic plan example: $30/month according to Hemlane (2026), where the Starter plan is $0 per month with no card, the paid plans show a 14-day try, the Essential plan is $48 per month beside a $20 per unit rate, the Complete plan is $86 per month beside a $58 per unit rate, each paid example includes a $28 platform fee, the Basic example sits beside a $2 per unit rate, and annual billing is advertised as saving up to 20%.

Tenant screening is $40 and is paid by the tenant, a premium listing is $89 for 30 days, Tenant Placement starts at $695, inspections start at $300, Eviction Shield starts at $4.95 per month, card payments are 3%, and bank transfers are marked at no fee, according to Hemlane (2026). Avail's screening cost is Quote-based. The pricing page says the reports vary by location because of state law, and that the landlord chooses the reports and can put the fee on the tenant or on the owner. There is no single national screening price to put in the table.

Read the one-unit Hemlane column as the totals the page prints: $30, $48, and $86, each including the $28 platform fee. The four-unit column is $28 plus the per-unit rate times four. Starter stays at the published $0 per month. The page does not print a unit cap on that free plan. Avail prints unlimited units on both of its plans. On Avail's free plan, four tenants paying once a month by bank transfer at $2.50 is $10 a month and $120 a year, and that $120 is paid by the tenants, not by the software invoice. The paid Avail plan waives that bank-transfer fee. Hemlane marks those bank transfers at no fee on the pricing comparison, and the Basic card states a $0 fee.

At four units, the paid Avail plan and the Basic plan on Hemlane land on the same $36 a month. That match is software versus software. It is not a match in labor. The Essential plan on Hemlane is $108 a month at four units, and the Complete plan is $260. The extra dollars are the coordinator and, on the top plan, the assistant and the networks. A card payment is a separate tenant cost. On a $1,500 charge, 3% is $45 and 3.5% is $52.50. Avail's page says the card percentage is added to the tenant payment regardless of plan. Hemlane's page shows 3% and does not, on the lines used here, spell out who must bear it.

Side-by-side numbers a landlord can check

The matrix uses counts and fees from the pricing pages and the review page, not a private feature test. "Quote-based" means the pricing page does not print a single dollar. A zero means the plan cards do not list that staffed desk.

Hemlane's free card says advertising on Apartments.com, Zillow, and 7 more sites, which is the 9 in the table. The $89 premium listing is a separate 30-day push to 7 exclusive sites, not a replacement for that count. Avail's free card says the top 19 sites. More listing sites help when vacancy is 7.3%, and they do not replace a person who will answer the lead. Avail includes state-specific leases with digital signing on the free plan. Hemlane names state-specific leases, amendments, and notices on the Essential card. The Basic card names lease tracking, document storage, and e-sign, which is a lighter document set than the Essential line.

Maintenance is the cleanest split. Avail lists tenant and landlord tickets, auto-forwarding to maintenance professionals, and photo uploads on the pricing page's maintenance block. That is a log plus a handoff to vendors you already have. The Essential plan on Hemlane lists end-to-end repair coordination, 24/7 emergency support, diagnosis, work orders with your service professionals, and repair invoicing with no markups. The Complete plan adds a vetted repair network, price thresholds and approvals, and an assistant who handles tenant communications. Avail's "24/7" line is tenant portal access. It is not a repair desk. Mixing those two phrases is how owners buy the wrong plan.

Hemlane from free software to a paid assistant

Best fit on Hemlane depends on how much of the week you still want. The Starter plan fits an owner who will advertise, screen, and keep books, and who will collect rent somewhere else for now. The Basic plan fits an owner who wants rent collection, late fees, $0 bank-transfer fees, private messaging, e-sign storage, and tenant perks, and who will still hire vendors. The Essential plan fits an owner who wants that software plus a coordinator on repairs and the state-specific lease set, at $20 per unit plus the $28 platform fee. The Complete plan fits an owner who wants the assistant on tenant messages, repair approvals, VIP support, and the local leasing and repair networks, and who has multiplied $58 by the unit count.

Limits are concrete. The free plan does not list online rent collection, so a $0 Hemlane account is not the same shape as a $0 Avail account. Screening at $40 sits on the applicant. The local network is named and not mapped by city on the pricing page, so Complete is a weak bet until you know your address is covered. Eviction Shield starts at $4.95 per month and the page describes a team that communicates to avoid evictions and get rent paid. That is not a printed promise of a courtroom lawyer. Repair invoicing with no markups is a pricing claim on the Essential card, and you should still read the work-order total before you treat it as your only control.

Getting started is the path the pricing page shows. You enter a unit count, pick monthly or annual billing, and start on Starter with no card or on a paid plan that shows a 14-day try before the rate. Add-ons stay separate: placement from $695 including the lockbox fee, inspections from $300, and Eviction Shield from $4.95 per month. Primary evidence for the dollars is the pricing page cited above. Review average: 4.8/5 according to Software Advice (2026), based on 227 reviews, compared with 4.6 from 276 Avail reviews on a page updated October 1, 2026, with value-for-money scores of 4.8 and 4.5. The gap is narrow. It does not prove the coordinator is worth $20 per unit in your city. If you want a lighter do-it-yourself comparison in the same category, see TurboTenant and Hemlane for property managers.

Avail after the realtor.com acquisition

Best fit on Avail is the owner who will keep the vendor list and the showing calendar. The Unlimited plan fits that owner at $0 per unit: 19 listing sites, applications and screening reports, state-specific leases with digital signing, online rent collection, maintenance tracking, a 24/7 tenant portal, income and expense tracking, and messages. The Unlimited Plus plan fits the owner who will pay $9 per unit for FastPay next-day deposits, waived bank-transfer fees, custom application questions, a lease template you can edit and clone, a branded property site, and priority support described as 2 times faster. At four units that paid plan is $36 a month, the same arithmetic as the Basic plan on Hemlane, without Hemlane's coordinator.

Limits follow from what the plan cards leave out. There is no published staffed repair desk and no published tenant-placement price, so both of those are Quote-based if you expected a person. Custom questions and custom lease clauses are on the paid card, not the free card. Screening stays Quote-based and variable. You remain the one who approves a plumber. The pricing page also describes auto-assessed late fees, property-specific bank accounts, and rent reporting to credit bureaus, but the two plan cards do not stamp each of those lines with a tier. Confirm the tier on the page before you count on it. The product is cloud software for the residential cycle the cards describe, not a property-management company with a percentage fee.

Getting started is an account on the free plan, a property record, a listing, an application, a state-specific lease, and rent collection turned on. Upgrade only when the $2.50 tenant fee, the standard deposit timing, or the stock lease language is the part you want to change. On that same Software Advice comparison, 94% of the Hemlane reviews and 85% of the Avail reviews recommend the product, and the page tags 68% of the Hemlane reviews and 52% of the Avail reviews as real estate, according to Software Advice (2026). Both products are tagged there as popular among small businesses. Use that as a check that other small owners subscribe, not as a reason to ignore a missing coordinator. Listing prose and renewal notes are a writing task sitting next to this decision, covered in tools that draft listing copy and tools agencies use for client copy.

What four units cost for a year

The year table uses monthly billing for four units, no annual discount, and one Hemlane Tenant Placement at the $695 starting price. Avail has no placement price on the page, so those cells stay Quote-based. Inspections, Eviction Shield, the $89 premium listing, and card fees are left out of the year column so the software bill stays visible.

Take four units and assume $1,500 rent on each, which is an illustration and not a market average, so billed rent is $6,000 a month and $72,000 a year. The Basic plan on Hemlane is $28 plus $2 times 4, or $36 a month, which is $432 a year. The Unlimited Plus plan on Avail is $9 times 4, also $36 a month and $432 a year. The Essential plan on Hemlane is $28 plus $20 times 4, or $108 a month, which is $1,296 a year, $864 more than Basic for the coordinator. One card payment of the assumed $1,500 is $45 at Hemlane's 3% and $52.50 at Avail's 3.5%, a $7.50 difference on that one charge. Four free-plan bank transfers at $2.50 are $120 a year paid by tenants. When a cleared ACH of $1,500 hits the bank, the books step that matches it uses QuickBooks Online's Payment.TotalAmt for that amount. This math uses the published rates only. It is not a customer result.

The $864 gap between Basic and Essential is the cleanest "is the person worth it" test in these pages. If you spend more than that on your own weekend calls, missed vendor trips, and tenant chasing across four units, the Essential plan is the published way to buy the coordinator. If you already have the vendors and you answer the phone, the $432 software year on either the Basic plan or Avail's paid plan is the closer match, and Avail's free plan is $0 of software with $120 of tenant bank fees under the assumption above. Adding placement at $695 to Complete produces a $3,815 year-one figure before inspections. That is still a subscription-plus-fee shape, and you should compare it with a local manager's percentage only after you have that manager's written quote. This guide does not supply a percentage, because the two pricing pages do not print one.

When the rent payment has to hit the books

The rent tool and the books are different jobs. Hemlane's Starter card lists bank sync, a cash-flow report, and an income statement. Avail lists income and expense tracking. Neither pricing page used here prints a QuickBooks field map. A proposed US Tech Automations workflow can take a cleared deposit export from Avail or Hemlane, match the amount and the unit to an open charge, and write a QuickBooks Online payment whose Payment.TotalAmt equals the dollars that cleared. The trigger is the cleared payment. The action is the match and the draft payment. The output is that draft, which a person reviews when the row is short, duplicated, or a refund. The prerequisite is a QuickBooks Online company the owner can authorize, plus a CSV, bank feed, or accounting export the owner already downloads. This is a configurable design, not a live deployment and not a measured saving.

A second US Tech Automations pass can watch a maintenance invoice that crosses a ceiling the owner sets. The trigger is a new work-order total or bill in the same export. The action is to hold the bill and open a review task that shows the unit, the vendor, and the amount. The output is an approval record, and only an approved row becomes a bill draft in the books. The owner still accepts the repair price. The Essential plan's "no markups" line does not remove that review. The prerequisite is export access to the ticket or the invoice, and the design stops when the file is missing a unit id or an amount.

The practical alternative is to stitch that handoff in Zapier, Make, or n8n, or to build it in-house. Those tools can keep run histories, retries, error branches, and audit evidence when someone configures them. The buyer then has to design and own observability, idempotency, escalation, access controls, and the upkeep when an export column changes. A proposed US Tech Automations design can pre-map the cleared rent onto Payment.TotalAmt, park rows with no match for a person, and keep the maintenance approval in one configuration the owner can inspect. Prerequisites stay the same: the export and the accounting login. A person still approves exceptions. The difference is who maintains the map. The rent product still collects the rent.

Common mistakes before you pick

Treat the $30 Basic example as a one-unit total that already includes the $28 platform fee. The per-unit rate beside it is $2. Comparing that $30 with Avail's $9 as if both were per-unit rates makes Hemlane look more expensive than the four-unit math, where both paid software plans are $36.

Treat Hemlane's Starter plan as advertising, screening, and accounting. Online rent collection, late fees, and the $0 bank-transfer line are on the Basic card. Owners who need free rent collection in the product will see that line on Avail's free plan instead.

Buy the Essential or Complete plan when someone else will use the coordinator or the assistant. Paying $108 or $260 a month at four units and still making every repair call yourself buys a desk you did not put to work. Avail's tickets are the fit when the vendor list is already yours.

Count tenant-paid fees before you call a plan free. Avail's $0 plan still shows $2.50 per bank transfer. Hemlane's $40 screening fee is paid by the applicant. A card adds 3% or 3.5% on top of rent. The software invoice can be the smallest line on move-in day.

Read the annual toggle on Hemlane before you assume every line is 20% off. The page says up to 20%. The tables in this guide stay on the monthly figures that were fully printed. Avail's paid plan is already a monthly per-unit price with no annual dollar schedule on the page used here.

Keep Eviction Shield and Tenant Placement in the add-on column. A $4.95 starting price is not the Complete plan, and a $695 placement is not included in the $86 one-unit example. Avail does not print a matching placement product, so a side-by-side that forces one will invent a price.

Checklist for a few rental units

• Write down the unit count. For a paid Hemlane plan, multiply the per-unit rate, then add $28. For Avail's paid plan, multiply $9 by the units. For Avail's free plan, multiply $2.50 by tenant bank payments.

• Decide who answers a repair at night. Two Hemlane plans list a 24/7 repair coordinator. Avail lists a portal and a ticket.

• Decide who talks to the tenant. That assistant is named on Hemlane's Complete plan, not on Basic and not on Avail.

• Check who pays screening. Hemlane prints $40 paid by the tenant. Avail is Quote-based and varies by location.

• Check the card percentage, 3% or 3.5%, and whether your tenants will pay a bank transfer with no fee.

• Ask whether your city is on Hemlane's local network before you price the Complete plan as leasing help.

• Download one month of rent from the tool you favor and match it to the bank before you pay for a second layer.

• If the only gap is a late-rent email, keep the rent product, or a small Zapier, Make, or n8n flow you are willing to maintain.

Questions to settle before you subscribe

Is Avail still sold under its own name?

Yes. Avail is still sold as Avail after Move, Inc. acquired it on December 15, 2020, as the press kit cited above states. The pricing page still offers a free Unlimited plan and a paid Unlimited Plus plan. The acquisition changed the owner, not the brand you search for. Hemlane, on the pages opened for this guide, is still Hemlane, with Starter through Complete. You are not choosing a sunset product on either side. You are choosing who does the work inside a product that is still on sale.

Which Hemlane plan coordinates repairs?

The Essential plan is the first Hemlane tier that lists 24/7 repair coordination, at the $48 one-unit example and $20 per unit plus the $28 platform fee. The Complete plan includes that layer and adds the vetted network, price approvals, and the assistant. The Basic plan lists a repair-request path inside the software features and does not list the coordinator. Avail lists ticket tracking and forwarding and does not list a staffed desk. If the coordinator is the reason you are shopping, price Essential and Complete, not the free cards.

Do tenants pay extra to send the rent?

On Avail's free plan, a tenant pays $2.50 per bank transfer, and the paid plan waives that fee. A card adds 3.5% on Avail regardless of plan and 3% on Hemlane. Hemlane marks bank transfers at no fee. Four Avail free-plan payments a month, in the illustration above, are $10, or $120 a year, paid by tenants. That is why a $0 software plan can still be a poor fit if your tenants resist fees and you do not want the $9 per unit waiver. Screening is separate from the rent fee and should be read on its own line.

Who is the Complete plan on Hemlane for?

It is for an owner who wants the assistant to handle tenant communications and wants the repair thresholds, the vetted network, and the local leasing network, after multiplying $58 per unit and adding the $28 platform fee. At four units that is $260 a month, or $3,120 a year, before a $695 placement. It is a poor fit when you will still answer every text and call every vendor, because the labor you are buying goes unused. Confirm the network covers your rentals. The pricing page names the network and does not print a city list.

What is the lowest published cost for one unit?

The lowest published software price is $0, on Hemlane's Starter plan and on Avail's Unlimited plan. They are not the same bundle. Avail's free plan lists rent collection, with tenants paying $2.50 per bank transfer, plus state-specific leases and maintenance tracking. Hemlane's free plan lists advertising, screening at $40 to the applicant, and accounting, and it does not list rent collection. The cheapest paid Hemlane example is the $30 Basic total. The cheapest paid Avail plan is $9 for that one unit. Pick the $0 plan whose feature card matches the job you will do this month.

When should you skip an extra automation layer?

Skip it when one rent deposit and one bank account already match by eye, or when you are only advertising and no rent is being recorded yet. US Tech Automations is the wrong layer when a single late-rent notice is the whole job and you will maintain a short Zapier, Make, or n8n scenario yourself. It is also the wrong layer when the landlord software's own ledger is enough and you will not authorize an accounting file. The rent product wins in those cases. A configured handoff is for the month when unmatched deposits and held repair bills are the actual work, with a person still reviewing exceptions.

For a few units, choose Avail when you will run listing, screening, the lease, and rent yourself, including the free plan if tenants can live with the bank fee. Choose the Basic plan on Hemlane when you want Hemlane's rent collection and $0 bank transfers and you will keep the vendors. Choose Essential or Complete only when the coordinator, and on Complete the assistant, will do work you are ready to stop doing. Price four units before you add placement. Then see how US Tech Automations configures this if the cleared rent and the repair bill still need a reviewed path into the books after that choice.