Propertyware vs AppFolio for Single-Family in 2026

Pick the system of record before the add-ons

Property management software, for this search, is the system of record that holds the lease, the owner ledger, the resident payment, and the work order on a rental home. A single-family manager typing "propertyware vs appfolio" is not browsing categories. The book is scattered houses, often with a different owner on each one, and the next signature is close. The useful split is simple. One product prints a per-unit price and was built around that scattered-home job. The other is a broader residential platform that will not print a dollar price and will quote you instead.

Neither name has been retired. Propertyware still sells under that name, and its about page says it is part of RealPage. AppFolio Property Manager is the current property product of AppFolio, Inc., a Delaware company whose Class A shares trade on the NASDAQ Global Market under APPF, with offices in Santa Barbara. The pricing page still organizes the offer as Core, Plus, and Max. Realm-X appears on that page as assistant, message, and flow features inside those plans, not as a renamed replacement for the product. If a salesperson uses a newer label, ask which of those three plans the quote is for.

TL;DR: if you need a number before a sales call, Propertyware is the product that prints one, and AppFolio is the product that does not. The printed number is not the invoice. A monthly floor, a startup multiple, an API add-on, and unpriced payment fees sit under it. AppFolio's missing number has the same kind of shadow: a unit minimum, an unnamed minimum spend, and value-added services that, in the company's own quarter, were larger than the subscription line.

Key Takeaways

• Propertyware prints three software rates, $1, $1.50, and $2 per unit per month, with monthly floors of $250, $350, and $450, plus a startup fee of 2 times one month of subscription.

• The Core, Plus, and Max plans on AppFolio are Quote-based. The Core plan states a 50-unit minimum and a minimum spend with no dollar amount on the page.

• On a 300-door book, the Basic plan on Propertyware is $300 a month, because that clears the $250 floor. The matching startup fee is $600. The API add-on is another $300 a month.

• The optional all-calls maintenance line is $1.10 per unit. On 300 doors that is $330 a month, which is more than the Basic software line.

• AppFolio reported 9.6 million units under management and $281 million of revenue for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. Subscription services were the smaller slice of that revenue. Read a software quote with the payment, screening, and risk-mitigation fees beside it.

Who this is for

This comparison is for a manager of single-family rentals, or a low-density residential book that behaves the same way, who will sign with one system of record in this buying cycle. You care about owner statements, scattered-site work orders, leasing a vacant house, and whether a second tool can read or write the record. You are past the "what is property management software" stage.

Red flags: you need a public dollar price from both vendors before any call; the book is mainly student housing, an affordable program, or a community association; you will not name a person to approve an owner charge.

If the portfolio is large conventional multifamily and the question is really Yardi versus AppFolio, use the Yardi and AppFolio comparison instead of forcing a single-family scorecard onto that book. If the quote that comes back is for a different product shape entirely, the AppFolio alternatives roundup is the wider map. This page stays on these two.

How we evaluated these two platforms

The weights below are a buying scorecard for a scattered single-family book, not a lab score and not a rank we measured. Price against the monthly floor is 25 percent because this reader is close to signing and the floor, not the headline rate, is what a mid-size book actually pays. Owner statements and fee accounting are 20 percent because each house can have its own owner, and a wrong fee or a slow statement is the argument you have every month. Maintenance on scattered homes is 15 percent because the work is a drive, a vendor, and an after-hours call, not a tech in one building. The path from listing to a signed lease is 15 percent because a vacant house is the cash leak. An API or a file export is 15 percent because the real argument under this search is what else has to connect, including accounting and a dispatch tool. Unit minimums and the startup fee are 10 percent because those two rules remove some buyers before features matter. The weights add to 100 percent. Every row was applied to the same illustrative 300-door book, which is a multiple of Propertyware's published 50-unit billing step and is above AppFolio's published 50-unit Core floor. We did not run the software. The cells are public terms, not a test.

A product can be a poor fit on a heavy row and still be the right signature. A 120-door shop that wants a printed rate will feel the floor more than the feature list. A shop that needs affordable-housing tools or a leasing CRM by name will not get those names off Propertyware's pricing page. The scorecard is there so you can move the weight. If owner reporting is the only fight you are in, the 20 percent row matters more than the API row, and you should not pay for an API you will not call.

Who owns each product, and what it covers

Propertyware's best fit is a single-family or low-density manager who wants one published rate, owner and resident portals, and accounting in the same login, and whose door count is high enough that the monthly floor is not the entire invoice. The about page speaks to single-family managers by name. The pricing page lists, on every printed plan, owner portals, resident portals, maintenance, accounting, marketing, screening, and payments. Limitations are in the fine print, not in a missing module name. The three plan cards print the same feature names, and the footnote says a feature counts only when it is marked, so you cannot read the tier gap from the names alone. Screening and payment transaction fees are acknowledged and not priced. The API is a paid add-on. The contact center is a separate service. Billable units move in 50-unit steps, and the page does not say how a count that is not on a step is rounded. Implementation cost is published as a multiple, not as a project plan: 2 times one month of subscription. The contact-center page says that add-on can be running in as little as two weeks. That sentence is about the call center, not about converting your owner ledgers. Ask for the data-migration scope in writing before you treat two weeks as the whole project.

AppFolio's best fit is a residential manager who may also touch affordable housing or student housing, wants leasing and accounting in one platform, and can wait for a quote. The pricing page describes the Core plan as the out-of-the-box system: property accounting and reports, marketing and leasing, work orders, inspections and unit turns, communication, standard Stack integrations, Realm-X assistant and messages, purchase orders, and standard support. The Plus plan adds affordable and student housing, advanced budgeting, custom fields, a read-only API, and maintenance scheduling with automated billing. The Max plan adds a leasing CRM, leasing signals, a read/write API, and a dedicated customer-success manager. The limitation that decides the first call is price. None of the three plans shows a dollar rate. The Core plan states a 50-unit minimum and a minimum spend. Plus and Max say a minimum spend and a unit rule apply, without a number. Implementation dollars are not on the page. One vetted review on TrustRadius, from an owner who marks vendor bills up, describes a long click-path to put a markup on a bill and says the office spent the day on that path. That is one company's experience from 2024, not a measured average, and it is the kind of owner-fee question a single-family shop should put on the demo script.

For the quarter ended June 30, 2026, Units under management: 9.6 million according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (2026). The same release put revenue at $281 million. The attached statement shows $59.8 million of subscription services, $219,467 thousand of value-added services, and $1,857 thousand of other revenue, which together are the $281,124 thousand in the table. The company says the revenue increase came mainly from payments, tenant screening, and risk-mitigation use. Customers on file: 22,751 according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (2026), for the June 30, 2026 quarter-end, compared with 21,403 a year earlier. Those figures describe the public company, not your quote, and they are the reason a software-only comparison understates the bill.

Pricing checked against the live pages

Pricing checked October 10, 2026. Basic rate: $1 per unit according to Propertyware (2026). The same page shows the Plus plan at $1.50 per unit per month with a $350 monthly floor, the Premium plan at $2 per unit per month with a $450 monthly floor, a startup fee of 2 times the monthly subscription, an API add-on of $1 per unit per month on any package, and billable units adjusted in 50-unit increments. The page also says transaction fees apply for screening and payments and does not print those fees. Core unit floor: 50 units according to AppFolio (2026). Dollar amounts on the Core, Plus, and Max plans are Quote-based. The vendor name and the plan name are in separate columns below so the rate is not read as a different product.

Read the floor before the rate. On the Basic plan, any book whose doors times $1 land under $250 pays $250. A 180-door book at $1 would be $180, so the invoice is the $250 floor, which is $3,000 a year before startup. Startup on that floor is 2 times $250, or $500. Year one of software alone is $3,500, and that still excludes the API, screening, and payment fees. The page adjusts billable units in 50-unit steps and does not say whether 180 is billed as 180 or as 200, so below 250 doors the floor is the only number you can treat as firm. At 250 doors the $1 rate and the $250 floor meet. Above that, the rate is the bill.

AppFolio will not give you that arithmetic from the website. Ask the quote for four lines in writing: the per-unit rate, the minimum monthly spend, whether the 50-unit Core rule applies to your mix, and which value-added services are assumed. The quarter above is the context. Value-added services were $219,467 thousand against $59.8 million of subscriptions. A low software quote with payment, screening, and risk fees turned on can outrun a higher software quote with those fees off. Propertyware's page is the mirror image: the software rate is public, and the screening and payment fees are the unpublished part.

All-calls rate: $1.10 per unit according to Propertyware (2026), and that page also lists a missed-call rate of $0.70 per unit, a plan minimum of $140 a month, and a one-time setup fee of $300. It says that service can be running in as little as two weeks. On 300 doors the all-calls line is 300 times $1.10, or $330 a month, which is already above the $140 minimum, or $3,960 a year before the $300 setup. The missed-call line is 300 times $0.70, or $210 a month, or $2,520 a year, plus the same $300 setup. Either add-on can cost as much as the Basic software line. Treat it as optional, and do not let it ride along because the $1 rate looked small.

What you can actually do on each plan

The matrix stays with items named on a page opened for this comparison. A blank is not a claim that the feature is impossible. It means the pricing page did not name it. Propertyware's printed lists match across Basic, Plus, and Premium, and the footnote says an unmarked item is not included, so confirm the check marks on a live screen share before you treat every row as purchased.

Propertyware score: 6.2 of 10 according to TrustRadius (2026), and that score sits on 4 reviews, which is too thin to treat as a market verdict. AppFolio score: 7.2 of 10 according to TrustRadius (2026), from 61 reviews. TrustRadius's own summary of the AppFolio reviews highlights work-order overview, tenant-payment tracking, and a reports-and-letters area. Its summary of the Propertyware reviews highlights navigation, support, and custom fields. Use the counts as a weight on the sentence, not as a winner's flag. Four reviews cannot carry a buying decision. Sixty-one reviews can tell you which complaints repeat, and on the pages opened here the repeating AppFolio complaint is support wait time, not a missing lease screen.

Who should sign which. Choose Propertyware when the book is single-family, you want the rate in writing before the call, the door count clears the floor you will actually be on, and you can live with a screen share to see which boxes are checked. Choose AppFolio when you want affordable or student tools, a leasing CRM by name, or a read/write API on the top plan, and you will hold the signature until the quote shows the minimum spend and the value-added fees. Walk away from both for this cycle if you are under the Core unit floor and also under the Propertyware floor in a way that makes the effective rate nonsense for your margin, or if you need a community-association product first. A separate read of Buildium and AppFolio and of DoorLoop and AppFolio covers those neighboring products without mixing their price pages into this one.

A 300-door year, with the math shown

Take a 300-door single-family book, which already sits on Propertyware's 50-unit billing step, so the example does not depend on a rounding rule the pricing page never states. The Basic plan on Propertyware is $1 per unit per month, and 300 times $1 is $300 a month, which clears the $250 floor, so the software line is $300 a month, or $3,600 a year. The startup fee is 2 times that monthly subscription, which is $600. The API add-on is another $1 per unit, or $300 a month, which is $3,600 a year. Add those three amounts and year one of software plus API is $7,800, before screening fees and payment fees the pricing page says apply but does not price. The same 300-door operator who also wants an owner cap on repairs can treat the sample webhook topic work_order_updates as the trigger, using the entity_id and update_timestamp fields in AppFolio's archived Stack webhook examples, and hold any work order over a cap the manager sets, illustrated here at $500, until a person approves it. AppFolio's software price for those 300 doors is Quote-based, so this math does not invent a matching AppFolio total. The sample repository was archived on October 16, 2025, so confirm that the topic still fires on the current Stack agreement before you design around it.

The $7,800 is software plus API plus startup. It is not a total cost of ownership. Add the answering line only if you buy it: $3,960 plus the $300 setup is $4,260 in year one, which is more than half of the software-plus-API figure. Add screening and card or ACH fees when the quote arrives, on both vendors. On AppFolio, put the quoted minimum spend next to $300 and see which number is larger. If the quote's value-added bundle is assumed on, ask for a second column with those services off. That second column is the comparison. The first column is a package.

A configurable handoff belongs on top of whichever record you pick, and only where a person still has to say yes. A proposed setup from US Tech Automations starts when a maintenance record is created or updated. On AppFolio the prerequisite is API access, which the pricing page places as read-only on the Plus plan and read/write on the Max plan, plus a Stack agreement that still emits work_order_updates. The action is to read entity_id and update_timestamp, compare the estimate with the owner's written cap, and park dispatch. The output is a review item for a named person on your staff. Nothing is billed to the owner and no vendor is texted until that person approves. This is a design you would configure. It is not a live customer, not a deployment you can tour, and not a measured time saving.

On Propertyware the same proposed design needs the paid API add-on at $1 per unit per month and the credentials the API reference requires before a call will succeed. US Tech Automations would read the work order, including the buildingID and the status the reference returns, and would write a hold back only after a coordinator confirms the owner approved the spend. A read-only AppFolio plan cannot do that write. If write access is not in the contract, the design stops at a queue and a file export. The public work-order reference has shown both read and write operations, and a May 10, 2026 note on that reference says the beta label was removed from closing a work order. Confirm the exact write you need before you promise owners a status that comes back automatically. A human review point stays in front of any owner charge either way.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: skip the extra layer when the only job is sending the vendor's own owner statement and the portals already do that, when one small automation that emails a new work order is enough and you do not need an approval record, or when the plan you can buy is read-only and you refuse a file export. In those cases the system of record, or a scenario you already run, is the simpler tool.

The do-it-yourself path with Zapier, Make, or n8n

The honest alternative for many shops is not a second property system. It is Zapier, Make, or n8n, or a small script your own staff maintains. Those tools can keep a run history, retry a failed call, branch on an error, and store an audit row when someone configures those pieces. They do not arrive with your owner-cap rules, your vendor list, or your idea of a duplicate work order. You design and own observability, idempotency so the same event does not create two dispatches, escalation when a call fails overnight, access control for who can see owner bank details, and the maintenance when a vendor field changes name. That is a fair trade when the flow is one notification and the person who built it still works there.

A proposed US Tech Automations design can put the owner-cap check, the retry, and the approval stop in one configuration, with the API or the export as a prerequisite and a named person clearing charges. It does not remove that person, and it does not run without credentials. If your book is 180 doors and the Propertyware floor already strains the margin, do not add a second subscription on top of a contact center you have not priced. If you are on a read-only AppFolio plan, a Zapier mail step may be the whole project until you pay for write access. Compare the upkeep you will actually do, not the diagram on a sales slide.

Terms worth pinning down

• Unit or door: the billable home. Both pricing pages price, or refuse to price, per unit.

• Monthly floor: the least Propertyware will bill for that plan, even when doors times the rate is lower. AppFolio's matching idea is an unpublished minimum spend.

• Billable-unit step: Propertyware adjusts units in increments of 50. A count off that step needs a written rule.

• Portfolio: the owner-side grouping you report on. Ask which object the owner statement rolls up to.

• Work order: the maintenance record. On AppFolio's sample webhook it shows up as the topic work_order_updates. On Propertyware's API reference the building tie is buildingID.

• Value-added services: AppFolio's payments, screening, and risk-mitigation lines, billed outside the subscription in the quarterly statement.

• Read-only API: the Plus plan on AppFolio can look at records. It is the wrong prerequisite if you need a status written back.

• Startup multiple: on Propertyware, 2 times the monthly subscription you will actually be billed, floor included.

Mistakes that change the quote

The expensive mistake is comparing Propertyware's $1 to a memory of an old AppFolio rate. The current AppFolio pricing page has no dollar rate. Any number from a blog, a review site, or a 2024 screenshot is not this quote. Ask for the quote, and keep the email.

The second mistake is ignoring the two different "50" rules. Propertyware's 50 is a billing step. AppFolio's 50 is a Core unit minimum. They are not the same constraint. A 40-door shop fails the Core floor outright and also pays a Propertyware floor that has nothing to do with 40 times $1.

The third mistake is assuming the API is included because both companies say they are open. On Propertyware it is $1 per unit on top of the plan. On AppFolio it is absent from the Core list, read-only on Plus, and read/write on Max. A connector that must update a work order does not run on a read-only plan.

The fourth mistake is letting the contact center or the value-added bundle ride along. Price the all-calls line at $1.10 and the AppFolio payment and screening lines as their own rows. The software rate is the smallest argument on a 300-door book once those rows are filled in.

The fifth mistake is reading Propertyware's three plan names as three feature sets. The cards print the same names. The footnote says check marks decide. Get the marked column in writing. If the marked column still does not show a leasing CRM, and you need that name, you are on the Max plan conversation at AppFolio, or you are reading a different product. Neighboring reads, including the Rentvine and AppFolio comparison, stay useful after this page, not instead of the quote.

Questions managers ask before they sign

Is Propertyware still its own product in 2026?

Yes. It still sells under the Propertyware name, and the about page says it is part of RealPage. Nothing on the pages opened for this comparison says the product was renamed, merged away, or discontinued. Treat RealPage as the owner, and treat the pricing page as the offer. If a proposal uses a different product name, stop and match it to Basic, Plus, or Premium before you compare dollars.

Does AppFolio publish a dollar price?

No. The Core, Plus, and Max plans are Quote-based on the pricing page as checked October 10, 2026. The Core plan adds a 50-unit minimum and a minimum spend with no dollar figure. Do not fill the gap with an old per-unit rate from memory or from a third-party page. The only AppFolio software price that belongs in your spreadsheet is the one in the quote, dated, and split between subscription and value-added services.

What does a 300-door book pay on the Basic plan?

Three hundred doors at $1 per unit is $300 a month, because that amount is above the $250 floor, or $3,600 a year before startup. Startup is 2 times $300, or $600. The API, if you add it, is another $300 a month. Year one of software plus API plus startup is $7,800, and screening, payments, and any contact center are extra. AppFolio's price for the same 300 doors is Quote-based, so do not put a guessed twin number in the other column.

Which plan includes an API you can write to?

Propertyware sells API access as a $1 per unit add-on on any package, and the reference shows work-order reads and writes you still have to confirm. AppFolio lists a read-only API on the Plus plan and a read/write API on the Max plan. The Core plan lists standard integrations, not the API. If the connector must change a work-order status, a read-only plan is the wrong purchase, and a webhook sample from an archived repository is not proof that your tenant emits work_order_updates today.

Does the $1 rate apply under 250 doors?

No. Under the $250 floor, the Basic plan charges the floor. A 180-door book at the $1 rate would be $180, so the monthly software bill is $250, or $3,000 a year, plus a $500 startup fee if the subscription used for the multiple is that $250. The 50-unit billing step may move the count again, and the page does not publish the rounding direction. Get the billed unit count on the order form.

Can Zapier, Make, or n8n replace a configured approval hold?

They can, if you build the history, the retry, the error branch, and the audit row yourself and you keep owning them. They are the right tool when the flow is a notification and a person already watches the inbox. They are the wrong tool when an owner charge must wait on a named approver and you need that wait recorded every time, including when the first call fails. Either way the property system remains the record, and someone on your staff still approves the charge.

After the quote comes back

Put the two quotes on the same rows as the tables: software, floor or minimum spend, startup, API, screening, payments, and any answering service. If Propertyware's marked column does not include the portal or the inspection box you thought you bought, the rate is not the offer you modeled. If AppFolio's quote hides the value-added lines, send it back. The public quarter says those lines are where most of the company's revenue sits, so a software-only total is an incomplete bill.

Sign the system of record that matches the houses you actually manage. Add a second layer only for the approval you cannot get from the portal. Read the quote against the rows above, then see how US Tech Automations configures this only if an owner-approval hold is on your list, the API or the export is in the contract, and a person on payroll is named to clear the charge.