AppFolio Property ManagerReviews of appfolio.com

This company has horrible customer service plus charges different amounts every month! It should be 1.00 a home and we have just about 250 doors, we were charged 900 last month and 1,500 dollars this month!!!! Stay away go with Buildium instead!!

We decided to cancel our contract even before our scheduled “live” date because of issues with the software. The Appfolio software does not meet the needs of our company. Many features of the software emphasized by Appfolio’s marketing staff are non-existent or exaggerated. I was assured by Appfolio sales staff that ‘all’ of the reports were customizable. However, most of the reports don’t permit alteration of any kind. The “Customize” tab on the Reports’ page doesn’t do anything. Under the Help topics, Customize Reports, the “View How to Run, Customize & Save Reports“ was a dead link and didn’t do anything. Help is not helpful at all. Something as simple as creating a custom tenant statement is impossible to do. If you can’t use the boilerplate tenant statement, you’re out of luck. Appfolio’s reporting function is very limited and does not provide elementary features. I tried to construct some simple tenant letters, without much success. The software’s letter creator isn’t very good. Appfolio sales staff mentioned at the outset that ACH payments to Owners could not presently be handled the same way that we were doing now (seamlessly with our current software) but that there was a work-around. Specifically, I was told that Appfolio would provide ACH data to my local bank and it would be set up. I’ve since been told that the work-around involves separately subscribing to ACH services through our local bank, and I’ve learned our bank will impose an additional cost to us of a minimum $40.00 per month plus transaction fees. (I’ve since been told by another local Appfolio subscriber that Appfolio has told them since January 2015 that ACH owner payment was imminent. It’s now December 2015 and it’s not yet available). I was told by their sales staff that there would be no problem loading our PDF residential lease into the online leasing system. That is not true, as our lease document has check box fields and other fields that are not compatible. You can only paste text into the lease creator. While I won’t say that Appfolio sales staff blatantly lied or crossed the line into fraud, I do believe that the product was purposely oversold and that features of the software were grossly exaggerated. Unfortunately, no time is provided to try out or work with the Appfolio product without signing a contract and paying the fees in advance. After spending the first two weeks trying to work with the product I found that it has far fewer features than our current software, and will not only fail to be a time-saver it will actually require more time for selected tasks. I feel fortunate that I discovered these shortcomings quickly. I don’t have weeks or months to try to reconcile issues that may or may not be solved. I am willing to absorb the $400.00 implementation fee and the numerous hours of my time completing the spreadsheets and move on amicably. Since we canceled prior to our ‘live’ date, I believe a refund of the annual fee of $2,160.00 paid in advance is extremely fair & reasonable. Unfortunately, Appfolio disagrees, and has advised me they will not refund the advance fee. So we’re out $2,160.00 for software we can’t use.

The software and platform is good but support and people are not. They understand the concept but do not posses the real world experience necessary to perform their jobs. Being in property management business it is crucial to pay owner in a timely matter and having issues with this part of the software would be very important to solve. Instead we get answers like "well they will just have to wait longer." This stems from the fact that their software does not allow direct payments to owners. Rather one has to upload files for the ACH to be executed on bank level. Well this comes at a cost that is not mentioned when they are selling you the software. In our case it would be about the same monthly dollar amount that I am paying for their software. This now doubles my cost from original software use, Buildium. Ugh! Very frustrating and would not recommend!

1. They bungled the install by sending a email to our current tenants, instructing them to start a portal with them so they could pay rent online, without our permission. In addition to the email being filled with inaccuracy and poorly written, the link provided directed them to our old site, which contained our tenants old portal system. Over 50% of our tenants made their payments on the old system due to the confusion created by APPFOLIO. The damaged from their negligence is significant. 2. Due to the above mentioned malfeasance, now we have an accounting nightmare to deal with, appfolio's response is beyond obtuse, demanding that we manually update their site in order to continue with online payments. 3. They charge their monthly fee while our system was being built in addition to the startup fees, but we paid for 2 months of a system that wasn't working. 4. They didn't label our deposits initially, causing havoc within our reconciliation process. 5. They drastically overstated their capacity, as many simple features found in other providers is still in beta (could for not working) 6. Have been unresponsive to challenges, your initial install team will not respond to any emails or calls after the initial install, no matter that the challenge originating during install, instead they cram a support team of very young people down your throat. 7. Their sales process was excellent, unfortunately they only deliver 25% of what they sell....we have experienced significant damages and losses.

Unacceptable that you have to leave a message on the "support line". In the fast paced world we live in, time = $ and no response for over 48 hours is without question, unacceptable. For the most part the software works good, but when things aren't working, there should be someone available to help. I got through to sales on one ring, ready to help me invest in appfolio. Nice to know where their priorities are! This needs addressed ASAP.