Free property management software: only one of these three publishes a $0 plan

Only one of the three pages publishes a $0 plan: Hemlane Starter, free forever, no credit card. It is software only — rent collection and e-sign begin on Basic, $30/mo for one unit. TenantCloud starts at $15/mo billed annually; Rentec Direct at $25/mo flat. Where rent collection reads as "free", check whether the $1.95 is landing on your tenant.

Three line items decide what a cheap plan really costs you: the payment rail, the screening report, and the signature on the lease. Each of the three vendors puts those in a different place. Hemlane hands the screening bill to your applicant and keeps ACH at $0 once you are paying a platform fee. TenantCloud prints "*paid by a tenant" next to every ACH price. Rentec Direct lets you choose who absorbs card fees, and prices screening as a landlord-side purchase. None of that is hidden — it is just three pages away from the headline number.

Count your doors and your rent payments before you compare anything

The three vendors do not count the same thing. Hemlane charges a $28 platform fee plus a per-unit rate, so its unit is a rentable unit and the fee starts at unit one. Rentec Starter is a flat $25/mo for up to 10 properties and tenants, and Rentec Pro and PM start at $50/mo and grow with unit count. TenantCloud's Starter, Growth and Pro tiers are published as flat monthly prices with no unit count attached in the page text, so the thing that varies for you there is transaction volume, not doors.

Write down four numbers before you open any signup page. One: doors you own. Two: how many of those doors send you a rent payment every month — this is the number that multiplies against ACH fees. Three: how many applicants you screen in a normal year, because at $40 or $29.45 a report that line can beat the subscription. Four: how many leases you sign a year. A landlord with three doors, one turnover and six screenings has a completely different cheapest answer than a landlord with nine doors and no vacancies.

What the three pages publish today

Hemlane's free tier, and exactly where it stops

Hemlane Starter is the only genuine $0 row here — "free forever, no credit card required", described as software only and pitched at moving off pen, paper or Excel. What sits above it tells you what the free tier lacks: Basic is sold as "all FREE features, plus" lease tracking and management, document storage and e-sign, rent collection with late fees and financial tracking at $0 ACH fees, private messaging with tenants, and tenant perks including insurance and credit bureau reporting. So on $0 you can list, take applications and screen. You cannot collect rent through the product or sign a lease in it.

Screening on Hemlane is $40 total, paid by the tenant, on every plan including the free one — a proprietary questionnaire, income verification and tenant risk analysis. That is the cleanest version of the pattern in this comparison: the landlord-side price is zero and the applicant funds the report. Marketing has its own catch. Listing details and advertising on top listing websites are included, but the page marks premium listing to seven exclusive websites as $89 for 30 days. If you fill vacancies on the free tier, budget $89 per vacancy for the premium push, not $0.

What Hemlane costs the moment you want rent collection

Basic is $2 per unit on top of a $28 platform fee, which is why the page shows $30/mo — that is one unit. Four doors is $28 + (4 × $2) = $36/mo, or $432 a year at monthly billing, and ACH rent collection is $0 on top. Hemlane says you save up to 20% with annual billing but does not break the discount out per plan, so treat $432 as your ceiling. Essential is $20/unit, so four doors is $28 + $80 = $108/mo, and that buys a dedicated repair coordinator, not more software. Complete is $58/unit — $86/mo for one unit.

TenantCloud: no free plan, and the fee lands on your tenant

Now the ACH line. TenantCloud prints $1.95, $1.75 and $1.50 per ACH payment as you move up the tiers, each marked "*paid by a tenant". Your landlord-side bill on Starter is $180 for the year and the payment rail costs you nothing — because four tenants paying once a month at $1.95 is 4 × 12 × $1.95 = $93.60 a year out of their pockets. Total cash leaving the building: $273.60. That is genuinely the cheapest combined number in this comparison, and it is the cheapest by a wide margin for you alone. Decide whether you are comfortable with where the $93.60 sits.

Rentec Direct: your Starter-or-Pro call is an ACH count

Rentec Starter is a flat $25/mo for up to 10 properties and tenants, but incoming ACH is $2.00 per transaction, outgoing ACH is $2.00, cards run 3.50% and screening packages cost $14.95, $20.95 or $29.45. Rentec Pro is $50/mo — the page states "Save $60, billed annually" — with complete accounting and free online rent payments, where free means one incoming ACH per active property per month, excess payments at $0.50 each. Pro also drops cards to 2.95%, outgoing ACH to $0.50, and screening to $10, $13 or $18. Amex stays at 3.50% either way, and ACH Verify is $0.50 per new bank account on both.

Run it for four doors. Starter is $25 × 12 = $300, plus four rent payments a month at $2.00 = $96 a year, so $396. Pro billed annually is $600 − $60 = $540, and the fair-usage allowance of one free incoming ACH per property per month covers exactly your four payments. Starter wins by $144 until screening volume closes the gap: the premium package is $18 on Pro versus $29.45 on Starter, saving $11.45 a report, so about thirteen screenings a year flips the answer. Two things to note before you pick: once you upgrade to Pro or PM you cannot downgrade to Starter, and Rentec says card fees can be paid by the tenant or the manager — your choice.

Which one to start with

- **If you have one to three doors, stable tenants and mostly need listings, applications and screening**, start on Hemlane Starter at $0 and keep collecting rent the way you already do. You pay nothing, your applicant pays $40 a report, and you can add Basic later when a turnover forces you to sign a lease in the product.

- **If you want the lowest possible landlord-side bill and you are willing to pass the transaction fee on**, take TenantCloud Starter at $180 a year billed annually. You get online rent payments with no per-payment cost to you, because the page marks the $1.95 ACH fee as paid by a tenant.

- **If you refuse to put any fee on your tenant and you collect rent from four to ten doors**, take Rentec Pro at $540 for the year billed annually. Its fair-usage allowance of one free incoming ACH per property per month absorbs your rent collection, and screening drops to $10–$18 per report.

- **If you screen fewer than about thirteen applicants a year and have ten or fewer properties**, Rentec Starter at $300 plus $96 in ACH fees ($396) beats Pro's $540 — but remember Starter cannot be re-selected once you upgrade.

What to check before you pay

- Confirm with Hemlane whether the free Starter tier includes state-specific leases and eSignature. The feature grid shows an eSignature row marked "no fee", but Basic is described as adding document storage and e-sign, and those two statements do not resolve from the page alone.

- Ask Hemlane who absorbs the 3% on debit and credit transactions. The percentage is published on every tier; the payer is not, and 3% of a $1,800 rent is $54 a month if it lands on you.

- Get a Rentec Pro quote for your exact unit count from the calculator on their pricing page. $50/mo is a starting price that grows with units, and the page text does not publish the per-unit step above the base.

- Open Rentec's pricing transparency page, linked from the pricing page, before you commit. It is where they say every subscription, processing, screening and incidental bank fee is listed, and we did not read it for this comparison.

- Ask TenantCloud for screening and lease e-signature prices. Neither appears anywhere on the pricing page, and both are things you will need within a year of taking on a new tenant.

What we'd do

With three doors and no vacancy coming, sit on Hemlane Starter at $0 and pay nothing for a year. With four or more doors and rent to collect every month, take TenantCloud Starter at $180 annually and tell your tenants up front that ACH is $1.95 — that is the honest version of the deal, and it is still the cheapest structure on the table. If you would rather eat the fee yourself and want real accounting behind it, pay Rentec Pro's $540 for the year and use the free incoming ACH allowance. What we would not do is choose Rentec Starter on price and then discover you cannot go back down after upgrading.

The one number to keep in front of you: $0 in the landlord column almost never means $0 in the building. Find the tenant-paid line on the page before you sign anything.