Stessa is a good place to start. The wall shows up when you need to chase rent, give tenants a portal, or hand your accountant real books instead of a categorised bank feed.
Stessa figures read from stessa.com pricing and support pages on 16 October 2026. Vendor pricing changes — confirm before deciding.
Collecting the rent. Watching money arrive is not the same as making it arrive. Once you are chasing a late payment or applying a fee by hand, you want collection and accounting in one system rather than two.
Giving tenants somewhere to go. Without a working portal, every balance question and maintenance request lands in your text messages, and none of it ends up in your records.
Closing the year. This is the big one. A categorised feed answers roughly what you spent. It does not give you a balance sheet, a trial balance your accountant can audit, or a number you can trace back to the transaction that created it. Stessa does not dispute this — its own accounting page argues that double-entry is overkill for most owners. That is a reasonable position, right up until the year you need it.
| Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $0 | $0 |
| Manage | $12 / mo | $15 / mo |
| Pro | $28 / mo | $35 / mo |
All plans include unlimited properties. Payment fees sit on top: $2 per tenant ACH payment, waived when rent is deposited into a Stessa Cash Management account, and 3% on card payments, which is not waived. Rentwelly is $39/mo flat for up to 20 units.
Every rent payment, fee and expense posts to a real double-entry ledger. Your balance sheet balances because the system requires it, not because you reconciled it by hand.
Online payments, automatic late fees and receipts — recorded straight to the ledger, so collections and accounting never drift apart.
Tenants log in to pay, see their balance and file maintenance requests. Fewer texts, fewer lost receipts, less chasing.
Schedule E figures, 1099s and owner statements come out of the ledger instead of a spreadsheet you rebuild every spring.
We would rather you chose correctly than chose us. Stay with Stessa if:
You want a portfolio dashboard, not an operations tool. If what you actually want is to see value, equity and cash flow across properties at a glance, Stessa does that well and free does it for nothing.
Your tenants already pay reliably. Half the case for switching is collections. If rent lands on the first every month without a nudge, that half disappears.
Your accountant is content with a categorised export. Plenty are. Double-entry earns its keep when someone needs statements that tie out — a lender, a partner, a refinance, an audit. If nobody is asking, do not pay for it.
Budget is the binding constraint. $0 or $12/mo against $39/mo is a real difference at a small portfolio. Switch when the cost of a bad year end exceeds the subscription, not before.
No single tool suits every landlord. Here is an honest read on the options people shortlist alongside Stessa, with current pricing.
Rentwelly — best if you want a real double-entry ledger underneath ordinary landlord work: rent collection, a tenant portal, and books an accountant can audit. $39/mo, no unit minimum.
Landlord Studio — the closest like-for-like swap. Free to 3 units, then $15/mo or $144/yr plus $1.20 per extra unit. Excellent mobile app; accounting is category-based. See our Landlord Studio comparison.
Baselane — banking-first. Free Core tier, $20/mo Smart on an annual plan, ACH fee waived if rent lands in a Baselane account. Convenient if you are happy moving your money there. See our Baselane comparison.
TurboTenant — strongest when the bottleneck is filling units rather than keeping books. Free tier, then annual-only Premium at $149 to $999 a year. See our TurboTenant comparison.
Avail — free for unlimited units, $9/unit/mo for Plus, with Realtor.com listing reach behind it. See our Avail comparison.
DoorLoop — a full property-management platform. More capability, and more cost, than most self-managing landlords need, but fair if you manage for other owners. See our DoorLoop comparison.
All competitor pricing read from each vendor's own public pricing page on 16 October 2026. Confirm current details before deciding.
Also worth reading: Baselane alternative, DoorLoop vs Stessa, and software for small landlords.
Free for 14 days, no credit card. Import your portfolio and see a balance sheet that ties out.
Usually one of three walls: you need to chase late rent rather than just watch it arrive, you need somewhere for tenants to log in, or your accountant wants books rather than a categorised bank feed. A tracker is excellent at showing you what happened. It is not built to run the operation or close the year.
Essentials is free. Manage is $12/mo billed annually or $15/mo billed monthly. Pro is $28/mo billed annually or $35/mo billed monthly. All plans include unlimited properties. On top of that, tenants pay $2 per ACH rent payment, waived when rent is deposited into a Stessa Cash Management account, and 3% on card payments, which is not waived.
No, and Stessa is open about it. Its own accounting page states that traditional double-entry bookkeeping can be overkill for most rental property owners, and describes importing, categorising and indexing expenses. That is a categorised bank feed, not a general ledger. Whether that is a drawback depends entirely on who has to read your numbers.
No, and that is deliberate. Rentwelly is $39/mo for up to 20 units, with a free 14-day trial and no credit card required. Free tools monetise elsewhere; a small flat fee is what buys a real general ledger, rent collection and support.
A categorised feed produces an approximate P&L. Double-entry produces a balance sheet that balances, a trial balance, an audit trail for every number, and clean 1099s and Schedule E figures at year end. When something looks wrong you can drill from the report to the transaction that caused it. It also handles security deposits correctly, as a liability you hold rather than income you earned.
Yes. Rentwelly imports properties, units, leases, tenants and opening balances by CSV, so you can switch mid-year and keep reporting continuity rather than starting from zero in January.
More on the pricing page or contact us.