An Innago alternative when free landlord software is no longer the constraint

Innago’s own FAQ says the quiet part out loud: landlords pay nothing, and the company makes money on $2 ACH fees, 2.99% card fees, and $30–$35 screening reports charged to the applicant ($10 more for income verification). You can absorb the payment fees yourself. Listing and applications are free. There is no contract to cancel — you stop logging in. Data can be exported. That is a cleaner free-forever offer than most “free plans” in this category, which usually cap units or hide owner reporting behind a paywall.

The Property Tool’s free tier is narrower: two units, full product, no tenant-funded rails. A fifth unit is $10 a month. Innago remains $0 at five, fifty or five hundred. If the only number you are optimising is the landlord’s software bill, Innago wins, and it is not close. The rest of this page is about the numbers that sit next to that bill.

A $2 ACH fee on a $1,800 rent check is small. Twelve of them a year on twenty doors is $480, paid by tenants you may or may not want to surcharge. Card-paying tenants add 2.99%. Innago lets you pick up those fees; if you do, the “free” platform has a real monthly cost that looks a lot like a subscription, just billed per payment instead of per unit.

Here the subscription is the price and rent collection does not add a $2 convenience fee of our own. Processor costs still exist — they always do — but they are not how the product is funded. Free property management software is the longer explanation of where “free” usually hides, and Innago is the cleanest example of the tenant-funded variant.

Independent US landlords, including ones with a lot of doors. Innago lists single-family, multifamily, commercial, student housing, self-storage, marinas, mobile homes and parking as in-scope, which is broader property-type coverage than The Property Tool (residential long-term, short-term and syndic/co-ownership — not commercial or storage). It has a landlord and tenant mobile app, automatic late fees, e-sign on templates or your own lease, a move-out workflow with deposit deductions, QuickBooks and Ledgre integrations, and an API. Screening reports typically come back through Experian. Vacancies can syndicate to Realtor.com, Zumper and Apartment List.

That is a full landlord operating system at $0. The missing centre of gravity, relative to this product, is the third-party owner. Innago lets you add co-owners and managers with access control; it does not present calculated management fees, per-owner statements and a portal generated from the same ledger as the core job. If you never send an owner a statement, you will not miss that. If you do, you will.

Owner statements are not a report you assemble. They are a view of the property ledger after the management-fee rule and owner splits have been applied, which the owner already has in their portal. That is the line between landlord software and property management software, and it is why a $10 or $20 subscription can be cheaper than a free tool the moment you are accountable to someone else. What owners actually want from a statement is the test to run on both products.

The calendar is the other line. Innago is a lease-and-rent system. The Property Tool is a stay system that also holds leases, which is why a mid-term or vacation unit does not need a second login. Short-term channel sync is the one paid module, listed on add-ons. Innago is not trying to be a channel manager, and we are not trying to be a storage-facility or marina system. Pick the shape that matches the doors.

Innago says your data stays yours and recommends downloading leases, payment histories and financial reports before you go. Do that, plus tenant and unit records and open maintenance. Because tenants may be on autopay, treat the payment method as its own project: new method live, old autopay off, first cycle watched. Switching property management software sets the order.

Budget for the listing gap. If Innago’s syndication was filling units, you will be posting vacancies elsewhere after you leave. That may be acceptable if owner reporting was the reason you left; it is a reason to stay if it was not.