AppFolio Property Manager vs. Yardi Voyager

We have 6 apartment buildings that we manage. Every month we were having to drive to each location to collect rent checks. Since using appfolio, we only have a couple of renters that still send in a paper check, the rest pay online, so we are ensuring that our renters are paying on time. Once we have an applicant apply, the old way was to take their scanned application, review, and then pay to have a background check conducted. Now, with appfolio, we are able to have them apply, sign off on the background check, and pay their deposit all in one shot. It has allowed our property managers to focus on other property items rather than conducting background checks.

Incentivized

I think it really depends on what you're looking to get out of the system. In terms of managing, updating, creating, and following prospect records, Yardi Voyager is absolutely fantastic. There are a number of existing API integrations already on the market that can connect into the record, and I commissioned a custom one to be built to work with the website that seems on the whole to work fairly flawlessly, so long as your community codes aren't regularly changing. That said, you definitely need to do strong onboarding with anyone coming into the system, particularly if they have limited former CRM experience. There's a great opportunity to input (and aggregate reports) from multiple facets of the system, but if people are inputting poor data, or missing it entirely, or you haven't formalized an even plan for things like Source and Sub Source then even the best system is likely to end up disappointing you and your stockholders when it comes time to analyze data. But, when used properly I'm impressed with how robust it is.

Incentivized

• Multi-entity accounting management
• Checking printing: We have multiple bank accounts tied to our account and utilize blank check stock. Appfolio automatically prints the routing numbers and account numbers at the bottom of the blank checks based on which property we are paying a bill from.
• Tie-in with their Investment Management tool gives our investors a great resource while keeping our investments in sync with our accounting software.

Incentivized

• Reporting in Yardi is really strong, especially the financial reporting.
• Yardi also is good at versatility when it comes to finding information - you can locate data in many ways and output in many forms.
• Yardi is pretty seamless with allowing you to switch from property to property.

Incentivized

• Only a few very technical items that wouldn't necessarily make sense to non-users and I haven't even cared enough to submit requests on the issues. It'd be nice if parking was easier to keep track of on the system. Right now, if you run a report it doesn't show all the information our company requires for the vehicles and therefore we have to keep track of it elsewhere.
• Another obstacle we've encountered is that the program charges "by door" so if you have multiple units and properties you can really rack up pricing. That's especially true for large multi-unit buildings with parking.

Incentivized

• Upon disposition the retrieval of all on line documents by unit instead of tcode.
• Menus are all over the place and need to be standardized.
• Ease of finding reports, seems like if you are looking for a recurring pmt report typing recurring payment would get you the result, but instead it is a payment manager analytics report.

Incentivized

We have invested 5 years of setup, implementation and training on Voyager. It's doing a very good job for us and I feel we've only scratched the surface of its capabilities. Yardi support has been very responsive with very little down time. The training materials are great from Client Central

Incentivized

The system is so intuitive and easy to use. There’s almost nothing in the system that can’t be undone if you make a mistake. Important things also have their own tabs. It’s also easy to use from the resident side which is helpful for in a world where everyone is not tech-savvy.

Incentivized

I'm coming from the perspective of a fairly tech-adept person, so I didn't find the system too hard to learn. That said, I do feel some of the buried menus and the system's own internal search feature could use some improvement, but I have that feeling about the vast majority of CRMs I've ever used. There may be a little bit of a struggle to onboard/train up someone who isn't used to this sort of system, but once up and going it should be smooth sailing.

Incentivized

In our experience, customer support consists of submitting questions to a bot. When the bot can't answer the question it repeats your question back to you. When you ask for customer support, someone says they will email you with an answer. The answer never comes and then your question is closed out. In my experience, customer service reps then direct you to go to the suggestion boards where you realize there are thousands of frustrated AppFolio Property Manager users who are receiving no help. On our particular hot-spot issue, other customers have submitted requests for help since 2015, but no help is forthcoming

Incentivized

The local office is very knowledgeable, however recently it seems that Yardi has begun to route calls offshore and the knowledge base there does not seem to be as strong as the USA based support centers. All customizations are done by offshore personnel, which presents issues in terms of the language barrier and time zone differences.

Incentivized

If you are converting from another system, grouping your properties by subsidy type seemed to help us. We were able to focus on a half dozen properties at a time, rather than the entire portfolio.

Incentivized

Before we used AppFolio Property Manager we used Skyline. Skyline Property Management was super outdated. The tenants did not have access to that program so we had to purchase another program for them to make their payments through. We would then have to manually enter every single payment. Onboarding and transferring data to AppFolio from Skyline was a nightmare and took us several months. AppFolio is so much easier for tenant use.

Incentivized

Yardi is more user-friendly, dynamic, and comprehensive than other similar products in the real estate space. While there is some ramp-up time to learn the system, Yardi is pretty intuitive and literal, which removes much of the confusion that other systems offer. Voyager also allows us to integrate better with outside vendors, as it is one of the most common ERP systems on the market.

Incentivized

• Wonderful to see how much rent we are drawing in, so we can base budgets off of that. It is a great way to retain that rent and put towards future improvements.
• Wonderful way for tenants to pay their rent without us using a separate payment system or ACH payment. They can set up an account with a credit or debit card, or checking account and it drastically helps us with time management!
• The help that the AppFolio staff is willing to do, saves time on us trying to troubleshoot.

Incentivized

• Yardi saves much time whenever my company is involved in consulting a property manager or an asset manager on their real estate asset. Because we can look at their Yardi financials, it's easy to tell where cash is being spent.
• Yardi has a positive ROI by making us able to answer these questions quickly, and thus keep clients happy.

Incentivized