TenantCloud vs Hemlane: Which is a better fit?

Alex: My name's Alex, and I am a property manager for Picking Enterprise LLC. We've been using TenantCloud and give it a five out of five. So we use TenantCloud for a variety of tasks, to track rental balances, late fees, maintenance requests, how we're doing with the maintenance request, as well as balances with contractors, tax bills and inventory in each of the properties we manage. We like most about TenantCloud, that it's available on mobile apps. When we're traveling, we still manage a portfolio, that there's a seamless connection with our residents, and the residents feel like we're right around the corner when we may be halfway around the world. Right, so one of the opportunities we found with TenantCloud is the fork in the road for customer service. TenantCloud asks for ideas or to submit a ticket for help. And our trouble tickets have been awesome. We get turnaround, feedback, it's delightful. One of the growing edges and opportunities for TenantCloud is with the submission of ideas, because the ideas are submitted, but the turnaround time on the tweaks with the software seems to be a little longer, and the turnaround on ideas seems to be beyond the reach of the customer service representatives. They say they have to kick it over, kick it up to programmers, which is understandable, but it is a little less elegant than the rest of the parts of TenantCloud. So that's an opportunity for TenantCloud to grow.

Jay: Hey, my name is Jay. I'm the founder and property manager for Palmettosome Properties. We have two employees, and I give Hemlane five stars because five is the max allowable. All right, so what we had before Hemlane is we had a, and I'm using air quotes, "a professional property manager." And the reason that didn't work out, we signed a contract, they were in charge of managing our properties, rent, collections, filling units, the whole nine, handling maintenance requests. The reason that did not work out is A, they were not collecting rents supposedly. B, they were not evicting or posting notices for tenants who were not supposedly not paying rent. But ultimately, after a year of having them as our property manager and things starting to reveal themselves, we discovered that they were stealing from us-- and not just me, from our owners, from our property owners. And so we made the decision to transition to a self-management concept and that's where Hemlane came in. Okay, so the reasons that we chose Hemlane, several. Things that stood out. Number one, having additional jobs and different properties that we manage, we needed some flexibility on who was going to take that initial call, right? As a self-managing landlord, I did not want to be getting phone calls from tenants at 2:00 AM saying, Hey, we've got a leaky toilet, or the neighbor upstairs is being loud or whatever. And so Hemlane, they definitely fill that bucket to where they have a 24/7 manned service desk where our tenants can contact them 24/7, contact a live US-based body. And as we've grown our relationship with them, that has turned out to be the most likable thing I have because we have their service coordinators. I really feel like our team, it's just my wife and I, but I feel like our team has expanded exponentially because of how Hemlane's service coordinators really work with our tenants and do as much possible before dispatching a trade or getting us involved. And that is the biggest thing that led us to try them out. We wanted that somebody to fill that gap of handling that initial contact from our residents. Getting started with Hemlane was really easy. They made the onboarding process extremely easy. One of the biggest things, and we even get asked this now from people who are transition property management from professional property management to self-managing with Hemlane is like how do you notify the tenant or how do you notify your residents of the change and how you're going to start collecting rent and receiving maintenance requests. And Hemlane's thought this out. They provided a template for us to use and the system is so easy. We had two tenants out of our 20-unit portfolio that's with Hemlane that had issues with signing up. However, they are bit on the elderly side and technology was not their biggest thing. So we were able to walk them through, Hemlane support helped us out in that, and then we got their younger cousin or niece or nephew to help them out as well. But the onboarding process with Hemlane is just super, super smooth. Again, it's one of the best decisions we've ever made as a real estate investor. All right, so for anyone interested in or pursuing Hemlane, I know there's a lot of different packages out there and we tried them all. Matter of fact, we've probably tried them as well. The reason why I want to push you to Hemlane is number one, there's service coordinators. If you feel like you need a team that's going to go expand your reach and really fill that gap for being that first line of defense for your residents and always available for your residents, Hemlane, to my knowledge, is the only group that does that. The other thing is their online bill pay has been one of the best things that I know. A lot of the same systems do it, but most of the other systems charge the residents or your residents a fee where Hemlane, to my knowledge, does not. And it doesn't charge us a fee. So it's one of those things where it's really a good win-win to some of the biggest pain points that I hear is what a fees are associated and how do you handle those calls at 2:00 AM, and Hemlane's checked both of those boxes and it's really allowed me ... I say this quote all the time, is even though with Hemlane there, I don't feel like I'm self-managing.