Who it's for / Property & lettings
For lettings & property businesses
Property management software — and what to do when your lettings business outgrows it.
Every roundup ranks the same tools — and half of them are for a different reader. Here's a fair look at what fits landlords, what fits agents, where a growing lettings business hits the wall, and the option none of the lists mention: software built exactly around how your book actually runs.
The real options.
"Property management software" means two different markets wearing one name. Landlord tools track tenancies, money and tax for the person who owns the properties. Agent platforms run sales, lettings and client accounting for the business managing hundreds of them. Work out which you are first — then, for a lot of readers, one of these is exactly the right answer.
If you're a landlord
| Tool | Known for | Typically best for |
|---|---|---|
| Landlord Vision | Full landlord accounting plus Making Tax Digital, long established | Portfolio landlords wanting management & tax in one place |
| Landlord Studio | Mobile-first bookkeeping with HMRC-recognised MTD submissions | Smaller landlords focused on the tax side |
| Rentila | The genuinely free option — tenancy admin, documents, reminders | One-or-two-property landlords |
| Arthur | Automation & workflow with tenant, owner and contractor apps | Larger portfolios, HMOs, small agents |
If you're a letting agent or property manager
| Platform | Known for | Typically best for |
|---|---|---|
| Reapit | Sales + lettings CRM with client accounting; the multi-branch stalwart | Established multi-branch agencies |
| Alto | High-volume cloud CRM — ex-Jupix and Expert Agent users are being moved onto it | Smaller & independent agencies |
| Street.co.uk | The modern challenger — app-led client experience | Independents prioritising client-facing polish |
| Dezrez (Rezi) | Cloud CRM with an open API | Mid-size agencies wanting flexibility |
A snapshot, not a ranking — and check who owns what today: Alto, Jupix and Expert Agent are one group consolidating onto Alto; Reapit and PayProp share an owner; so do Arthur and Fixflo. Note too that three big lettings names aren't rivals to any of these — Fixflo (repairs), PayProp (client accounting) and Goodlord (referencing) sit alongside a CRM. That's the tell about this market: the all-in-one usually isn't, and the subscriptions stack. If one of these fits how your business actually works, buy it — we'd tell you to, and help you wire it in. This page is for the businesses it doesn't fit.
Where a growing lettings business hits the wall.
A property platform is built around how most agencies work. Your edge — the reason landlords hand you their book and don't leave — is the part that isn't like most agencies. That's the part the box can't bend to. So the workarounds start:
- You end up running the CRM and the repairs tool and the client accounting and the referencing service and a spreadsheet for compliance dates — five subscriptions that don't share data, so your team re-keys every tenancy between them.
- The compliance calendar — gas certificates, electrical reports, EPC deadlines, deposit re-protections, licence renewals, across hundreds of tenancies — lives in a spreadsheet that one person understands and everyone fears.
- Communication drops in the gaps between systems: the landlord asks what's happening with the repair, the tenant asks about the deposit, and the answer lives in someone's inbox.
- Per-user and per-unit pricing compounds as the book grows — and the workflow you actually need sits in someone else's roadmap queue.
The cost of standing still
The rules just changed. The spreadsheet didn't.
England's private rented sector is 4.7 million households — 19% of all households, with one in twenty of those renters behind on rent at some point in the past year (English Housing Survey 2024-25, December 2025 — arrears: ch. 2). Managing any slice of it now means these three dates:
The Renters' Rights Act took effect in England — Section 21 gone, every tenancy periodic, rent rises once a year, and the biggest change to tenancy law in a generation already live. Behind it, on the government's published roadmap: a mandatory PRS database rolling out from late 2026, and a landlord ombudsman expected in 2028. Three regimes, each with its own record-keeping. (MHCLG roadmap, November 2025)
The date by which the government has confirmed it intends to require every in-scope private tenancy in England and Wales to meet an EPC C-equivalent standard — still subject to Parliamentary approval, with its impact assessment estimating an average £5,400 spend per property, capped at £10,000. That's an upgrade plan and an evidence trail for every property on your books. (Government response, January 2026)
Of the 3,119 lettings disputes the Property Ombudsman resolved in 2025 (a scheme funded by its member agents), 1,192 were about one thing — poor, unclear or delayed communication — more than the next three categories combined. Lettings awards to consumers averaged £497 and totalled £778,849. Silence is what agents actually get punished for. (TPO Annual Review 2025, March 2026)
What we'd build instead.
The smallest thing that removes your worst pain first, then the next — each module shaped around how your book actually runs, live in weeks, and yours to own. For a lettings business, that usually starts here:
The compliance calendar, watched for you
Gas certificates, electrical reports, EPC deadlines, deposit re-protections and licence renewals watched in one place — chasing the right person before anything lapses, with the audit trail accumulating as it goes.
A document vault that proves it
Every certificate, agreement and notice filed against the property and the tenancy, dated and searchable — so when a scheme, a council or an ombudsman asks, the evidence is one search away, not one ex-employee away.
A portal that answers before anyone rings
Landlords see their statements and compliance status; tenants see exactly where their repair is — the communication failures that top the ombudsman's list, designed out rather than apologised for.
Rent watched, arrears chased
Rent watched daily, polite reminders that escalate on their own, and a clean dated history for the cases that go further.
Every one is a capability we can build now with AI-assisted development — not a promise your business needs all of it. We start with the one that hurts most.
Where we've done it
We haven't built for a lettings business. We've built this exact pattern.
A UK accountancy practice — the same shape of business: deadlines that must never slip, documents that must be collected and proved, clients who need chasing and answers — came to us running on five separate subscriptions and a wall of spreadsheets. Two years later, a module at a time and without the business ever stopping, it runs on one custom platform that replaced all five. The compliance calendar, the document trail, the portal, the chasing: the modules above are that same pattern, mapped to tenancies instead of tax returns.
Fair questions
What lettings businesses ask us.
What's the most popular property management software in the UK?
It depends which side of the fence you're on. For landlords, Landlord Vision is the usual answer when you want management and accounting together, with Landlord Studio the common pick for MTD bookkeeping. For letting agents, Reapit leads the multi-branch end by branch count while Alto claims the largest number of agents overall — both claims are true on their own metric. For many businesses one of these is exactly right, and we'll tell you so.
Is there free property management software?
Yes — Rentila is genuinely free for a small portfolio, and Landlord Studio has a free tier. For one or two properties that can be plenty. Two cautions: free tiers cap out quickly, and if you'll fall under Making Tax Digital, check HMRC's recognised-software list before relying on any free tool for tax.
Do I need custom software, or is off-the-shelf enough?
Off-the-shelf is enough until the way your business actually runs lives in the part no tool covers — or until the CRM, the repairs tool, the client accounting, the referencing service and the compliance spreadsheet stop sharing data, and your team re-keys tenancies between them. That's the point custom on a monthly retainer starts to cost less than the workarounds.
How much does custom software for a lettings business cost?
It's a monthly retainer, not a big up-front project — tiers from £2,500 to £6,500 a month, with a free process audit and an optional fixed-price discovery sprint first. You own the code and data from day one.
Can AI keep a lettings business compliant?
AI alone, no — and you shouldn't want it to. The version that works is dull and reliable: AI reads certificates, tenancy documents and invoices into tidy records, deterministic rules check every date and figure, the compliance calendar and the chasing run on plain logic, and a person signs off anything that matters. We build with AI-assisted methods ourselves and say so plainly.
Start here
Bring us your compliance spreadsheet.
A free process audit is thirty minutes. Walk us through the part of running your lettings business that wastes the most time — or worries you most about the new rules — and you'll leave with a written map of what could run itself, whether or not we ever work together.
No pitch deck, no obligation. The map is yours either way.