Property management software has become very popular among landlords. The features provided by property management software are designed to save you time and money in every area of your business.
There are many software options out there, and choosing the best one may seem overwhelming. For this reason, it’s important to perform in-depth research ahead of time so you pick the right platform for you. This is where reviews come in.
Reviews for property management software can help you understand what each platform has to offer. With that said, property management software reviews aren’t like most product reviews. Because of the sheer number of features to consider, and because the market is constantly evolving, it’s important to know how to best navigate reviews for property management software.
Here’s how you should use reviews when choosing a property management software platform:
Use Reliable Sources
Before diving into reviews, make sure the sites you’re using are trustworthy.
You should avoid sites that lack quality control. A site that publishes reviews without vetting information shouldn’t be trusted. Some signs of this include incentives for placement or positioning, a lack of identification verification, and a large amount of poorly written reviews that make no sense.
You should also avoid sites with biases. If a site has a reason to cater to a specific property management software, avoid it. You want to use sites that offer fair reviews of every platform, not sites that are trying to sell you something.
Three of the best places to look for property management software reviews are G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot. G2 and Capterra are well regarded because they have stringent quality control. To get a review published on one of these sites, a reviewer needs to connect their account to prove that they actually use the software they’re reviewing. Trustpilot is less strict, but it’s the site that Google trusts, making it a popular source for comparison.
There are plenty of other sites, but it’s important to ensure that they’re reliable. You should make sure that you’re using a variety of trusted sites in your research instead of fully relying on a single site. If a platform has a high rating on one site but a low rating on another, you may want to look into why this is the case and determine which site is more reliable.
Measure Review Quality
Most sites use a scoring system, making it possible to compare one platform to another. To better understand a platform’s rating, you should look into how a site calculates its ratings (i.e., how points are awarded, if certain features are weighted heavier than others, etc.)
It’s also important to understand that a platform’s rating only makes sense when compared to other platforms’ ratings. For example, a 4.6 out of 5 may seem great, but if most platform ratings on the site get a 4.7 out of 5, then a 4.6 would actually be below average.
While ratings are good for comparison, you don’t want to base your entire decision on a number. Read reviews to gain a more holistic understanding of what people think about a platform. In doing so, you may find that a platform’s average rating might be higher if it weren’t for one or two reviewers giving it a 1.0 rating without saying anything about the actual software.
Keep Recency in Mind
The property management software landscape is constantly evolving. A five-star rating from 10 years probably doesn’t have much relevance today. If the best platform 10 years ago hasn’t changed much since then, there are most certainly going to be platforms that are better today. On the other hand, it’s possible that a platform received some bad ratings a few years ago for an issue or missing feature that has since been resolved.
In your research, you generally want to pay more attention to recent reviews than old reviews. Because platforms evolve, you want to know where a platform stands today, not where it stood several years ago.
Conclusion
With so many options available, picking property management software can seem like a daunting task. It’s important to find a diverse set of high-quality and recent reviews to help you make your decision. Knowing what to look for in reviews will enable you to choose the right platform for you and your business.
