While TurboTenant and Avail offering similar-looking feature sets, many landlords end up choosing based on price alone—only to discover deal-breaking limitations months later.

This comparison guide will show you exactly how these platforms stack up against one another.

We’ll also take a look at Stessa, a free property management software that is already used by over 200,000 investors to track their properties. 

TurboTenant overview

TurboTenant provides features like online advertising, tenant applications, screening, rent payments.

With 24/7 customer service online and by phone, landlords can get started with TurboTenant with little to no upfront costs. Optional services, like lease agreements, landlord forms, and digital signatures for signing leases online are also available for an extra charge.

Pricing

TurboTenant offers three pricing plans: Free, Pro, and Premium. Pro costs $119 per year, and the Premium plan costs $149 per year. 

Free

• Unlimited properties
• Rental advertising
• Lead management
• Applications and screening
• Automated reference checks
• Rent payments
• Rent reporting
• Expense tracking
• Maintenance requests
• Messaging
• Document management
• Chat support

Landlords using the free TurboTenant plan can choose to pay for optional products:

• State-specific lease agreements: $59 per lease
• Landlord forms pack: $199

Pro

Includes all of the free features, plus:

• Faster response times for support
• Phone support
• Expedited rent payouts
• State-specific lease agreements included in the price
• Lease addendums
• Landlord forms pack

Premium

Includes all of the Pro features, plus:

• Unlimited connected bank accounts
• Digital signatures
• Lower screening fees
• Income verification
• Waived ACH fees

Software features

• Professional listing page with property description, amenities, and photos
• Advertising on dozens of rental listing websites, including Zumper, RentPath, and Realtor.com
• Automatic lead tracking, including tenant contact information
• Customized online rental applications 
• TransUnion tenant screening with credit reports, criminal history background checks, and past evictions reports
• State-specific leases 
• Landlord forms pack with over 30 rental forms and addendums
• Electronic signatures to execute leases online
• Online rent payments 
• Automatic payment reminders, late fees, and records of all rent payments
• Maintenance and repair tickets tracked by tenants and landlords
• Manual entering of expenses and assigning to the correct property and Schedule E category for tracking
• Backup expense receipts
• CSV transaction files for uploading to accounting software or sending to a certified public accountant (CPA)

Avail overview

Avail is now part of the Realtor.com network, which may help to increase marketing exposure. 

The software enables landlords to track rental income and expenses to see how profitable their investment is. The software also includes features for managing tenants, such as a lease builder and online rent payment options.

Pricing

Unlimited Plan

Free with:

• Syndicated listings
• Credit and background checks
• Criminal screening
• State-specific lease agreements
• Online rent payments
• Maintenance tracking

Unlimited Plus

$9 per unit per month with:

• Everything the Unlimited Plan includes
• Next-day rent payments
• No Automated Clearing House (ACH) fees
• Custom applications and leases
• Custom lease agreements
• Property websites

Software features

• Listings syndicated to a dozen online rental websites, including Zillow, Trulia, Zumper, and Realtor.com
• Lead management tools and messaging center
• Online showing scheduling from any listing platform
• TransUnion credit reports and background checks initiated by applicants 
• State-specific and lawyer-reviewed lease templates
• Customizable clauses and rules unique to specific rental properties
• Digital signatures to execute agreements and store documents online
• Automatic one-time and recurring payments to potentially increase on-time rent collection, plus rent reminders and notifications
• Tenant rent payments reported to credit bureaus to incentivize tenants to pay on time
• Maintenance and repair tickets created and tracked by tenants and landlords
• Rental property accounting software feature that tracks income and operating expenses logged through Avail
• Manual entering and editing of transactions not processed through Availkeep income and expenses accurate and up to date
• CSV spreadsheets for tax time, filtered and sorted by rental property, transaction type, vendor, and more according to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) categories and transaction types

TurboTenant vs. Avail

Here’s a closer look at the main features landlords should consider.

Listings

TurboTenant makes it easy to list vacant properties on many popular websites. With just a few clicks, your listing can be live on sites like Realtor.com, Apartment List, Rent.com, Facebook Marketplace, and Craigslist. Each rental property gets its own listing page on the TurboTenant website.

With Avail, rental listings are automatically syndicated to reach millions of renters on the top 12 national listing websites. In addition, landlords can manage leads online, coordinate in-person and virtual showings, and answer questions before beginning the application process. Avail also offers rent price recommendations to help landlords set competitive, fair market rents based on property location and features.

Tenant screening

Both TurboTenant and Avail use TransUnion to provide tenant screening reports, including credit, criminal, and eviction history reports to give landlords a complete picture of prospective tenants. The credit report is a soft inquiry, meaning it won’t impact the renter’s credit score.

TurboTenant charges a $55 fee for screening on the Free and Pro plans, and $45 on the Premium plan (this can be charged to the tenant).

Avail’s pricing for screening varies by state.

Leasing

TurboTenant and Avail offer the option for landlords to use their own lease agreements or create a state-specific lease agreement online. After the lease is drawn up, it can be sent to the tenant and signed using a digital signature, then stored online. 

Depending on the selected pricing plan, both companies may charge extra fees for lease agreement addendums or customized leases. For example, landlords using the free plan from TurboTenant are charged extra for state-specific leases, addendums, and digital signatures. In contrast, the free unlimited plan from Avail includes state-specific leases.

Online rent collection

TurboTenant charges $2 for ACH payments on the Free and Pro plan, while waiving it on the Premium plan. They also charge tenants 3.49% for paying rent using a debit or credit card.

Avail collects a fee from tenants of $2.50 per ACH transfer (waived for the Unlimited Plus plan) or a 3.5% processing fee for debit and credit card payments.

Financial reporting

With TurboTenant, you can keep track of all your expenses in one place. Simply enter the date, property, and expense category for each expense. Then, when it’s time to give your CPA a report or upload it to QuickBooks, you can easily export all your transactions by creating and downloading a CSV.

The Avail rental property accounting tool tracks income and expenses logged through the Avail platform. A landlord can manually add one-time transactions or edit ones already in the system to keep income and expenses up to date. The rental property income and expense tracker monitors the transaction date, type, category, payer, and total amount.

Tax management

Both software programs help landlords organize transactions according to IRS Schedule E categories to make tax management and year-end reporting easier.

Income and expense transactions entered on TurboTenant and Avail can be downloaded in a CSV format, uploaded to financial software such as QuickBooks, or sent to a CPA. 

Stessa vs. TurboTenant vs. Avail

Although both TurboTenant and Avail come with a lot of features, they do have their shortcomings:

• Avail can get pricey when you have a lot of properties and want the advanced features on their paid plan
• TurboTenant only allows for 1 connected bank account on the Free and Pro plan, and income/expense tracking is done manually

Stessa, a Roofstock company, is a cloud-based software that helps real estate investors maximize profits through smart money management, automated income and expense tracking, personalized reporting, and more:

• Automated income and expense tracking: Organize and categorize transactions automatically from connected bank, lender, credit card, and property management accounts with no extra fee or add-on required. 
• Financial reporting: Generate income statements, net cash flow reports, balance sheets (with the paid Stessa Pro plan), and more, all within the platform.
• Real-time performance metrics: Get 24/7 visibility into your portfolio’s performance with no third-party software required.
• Property management integration: Connect to some property management software platforms for a complete portfolio summary.
• Online rent collection: Automate your rent collection process, including payment reminders and late fees, reducing the likelihood of missed or late payments.
• Advertise vacancies: Publishing a vacancy for rent and syndicate your listing out to a variety of websites for maximum exposure to high quality tenants.
• Rental applications: Manage tenant applications efficiently and effectively by streamlining the process of publishing vacancies and collecting and reviewing applications.
• Landlord banking: Open FDIC-insured bank accounts and enjoy a more efficient way to manage your property-related finances. You can earn more than 10x the national average interest rate on every dollar deposited.*
• Tenant screening: Use a proprietary approach with RentPrep for comprehensive tenant checks, including a full credit report, background check, and more. Landlords can also add screening for income verification or of judgment and liens, increasing the odds of selecting reliable tenants.
• Unlimited properties: Add as many single-family homes, short-term vacation rentals, or multifamily units as you like.
• Tax center: Tax time is a cinch thanks to the Stessa Tax Package feature. It helps aggregate your transactions and sends you personalized tax reports via email with digital copies of all of your receipts packaged into a single ZIP file.
• eSigning (partnered with DocuSign): With the Stessa Pro plan, you can upload up to five documents monthly, mark them for electronic signatures, and send them to tenants, vendors, and partners.
• Smart receipt scanning: Add expense receipts to your transactions ledger quickly and accurately via mobile scans and email forwarding, reducing the risk of losing or misplacing vital receipts.

Stessa was launched in 2016 by 2 experienced real estate investors with 30 years of combined experience, and today it’s used by more than 200,000 investors who use Stessa to track over $60 billion in asset value.

Go here to create a free Stessa account.

*Stessa is not a bank. Stessa is a financial technology company. Terms and conditions, features and pricing are subject to change. This article, and the Stessa Blog in general, is intended for informational and educational purposes only, and is not investment, tax, financial planning, financial, legal, or real estate advice.