My family manages rentals. That is the whole reason this software exists. So when someone asks me Buildium vs AppFolio, and I can hear a spouse doing the books in the background, I already know the comparison they are about to read online is written for a different company than theirs.
Most comparisons rank these platforms by feature count. That is the wrong axis for a family-run shop. A family operation has three constraints that a 400 door regional manager does not have, and every one of them shows up in the bill rather than the feature list.
Here is the comparison I would give my own mother, with prices I pulled on September 7, 2026.
What "family-run" actually changes
When I say family-run, I mean a specific shape of business. Somewhere between 20 and 150 doors. One or two people who are not full-time software operators. A mix of units the family owns outright and units managed for outside owners, often relatives, neighbors, or a client from twenty years ago who never left. Nobody on payroll whose only job is data entry.
That shape creates three constraints:
- You cross the trust accounting line. The moment you collect rent that is not yours, you need owner statements, an owner draw, a management fee taken automatically, and in Texas a properly handled trust account. That rules out every landlord-only tool.
- Nobody has six weeks for implementation. The person doing the migration is also showing units and answering the maintenance line. An onboarding project that assumes a dedicated staff member does not survive contact with your actual week.
- Per-transaction fees hit you harder than the subscription. A family shop runs a lot of small transactions relative to its revenue. Rent payments in, owner draws out, lease signatures at renewal. Those fees scale with your door count even when the subscription does not.
The published prices, side by side
Two of these three publish real numbers. That alone is worth noting before you read another row.
| Platform | Entry price | Priced by | Unit minimum | Fee stack on top |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buildium Essential | From $62 / mo | Unit count | None | EFT in and out, eSignature, bank account setup |
| Buildium Growth | From $192 / mo | Unit count | None | Reduced EFT and eSignature costs |
| Buildium Premium | From $400 / mo | Unit count | None | Unlimited eSignature, first year incoming EFT included |
| AppFolio Core | ~$1.49 / unit, ~$298 / mo floor | Unit count | 50 units | Required onboarding fee, tenant payment fees, add-ons |
| KeyTurn Professional | $99 / mo flat | Property count | None | Flat tenant-paid rent fee, shown before they pay |
Note the third column, because it is the one people miss. Buildium and AppFolio bill by units. KeyTurn bills by properties. For a family portfolio of single family homes and duplexes, those two numbers are close. For a portfolio with a 24 unit building in it, they are not, and that difference cuts in our favor by a lot.
AppFolio: the door policy is the answer
AppFolio still does not publish pricing in 2026. The consistent figures across pricing trackers put the Core plan near $1.49 per unit per month against a monthly minimum around $298, with a 50 unit minimum to get in the door at all. I walked through the full structure in the AppFolio cost teardown.
For a family-run company, the 50 unit minimum settles the question before the price does. If you manage 45 doors, you are not a small customer to AppFolio. You are not a customer. And if you manage 55, you clear the gate and immediately pay the $298 floor, which works out to about $5.42 per unit rather than the $1.49 on the brochure. You do not actually reach the advertised rate until roughly 200 units.
None of that makes AppFolio a bad product. It makes it a product with a stated customer, and family-run shops are not it. I would rather tell you that in a blog post than have you find out on a sales call.
Buildium: good software, and then the fee stack
Buildium is the honest competitor here and I am not going to pretend otherwise. It publishes its prices, it has no unit minimum, and it does real trust accounting. For a lot of family-run companies it is a genuinely reasonable answer.
The catch is that the plan price is the beginning of the bill. On the Buildium pricing page, Essential starts at $62 a month, Growth at $192, and Premium at $400, and each of those reads "starting at" because the number climbs with your unit count. Underneath, the Essential plan charges per transaction:
- $2.35 per incoming EFT, which is every rent payment that arrives by bank transfer.
- $0.99 per outgoing EFT, which is every owner draw and every vendor payment.
- $5 per lease for eSignature.
- $99 to set up each business bank account, so your trust account costs extra to add.
Moving up to Growth lowers the EFT and eSignature costs, and Premium includes unlimited eSignatures plus the first year of incoming EFT. So the fee stack is a real cost that Buildium will trade you for a higher subscription. That is a legitimate structure. It is just one you have to model rather than read off a page.
To be fair to Buildium: it also lets you pass the ePay convenience fee to tenants instead of absorbing it, which changes who pays but not whether the fee exists. If you take that route, run the tenant-side number before you decide, because your tenants will.
The 45 door math
Here is a portfolio I see constantly: 45 doors across 28 properties, mostly single family homes plus a few duplexes, managed for about a dozen owners. Rent collected monthly by bank transfer. Owner draws paid monthly. Roughly a third of the leases turn or renew each year.
| Line item | Buildium Essential | AppFolio Core | KeyTurn Professional |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription | $744 | Under the 50 unit minimum | $1,188 |
| Incoming rent fees | $1,269 (540 x $2.35) | Tenant payment fees apply | Tenant pays a flat fee |
| Owner draws out | $143 (144 x $0.99) | Included | Included |
| eSignature | $75 (15 x $5) | Included | Included |
| Bank account setup | $198 (operating + trust) | Onboarding fee required | $0 |
| Year one, you pay | ~$2,429 | Not eligible | $1,188 |
Two things about that table. First, the Buildium subscription line is $744 and the total is roughly $2,429, which means the fees are more than twice the price you compared when you were shopping. That is the point of running this exercise at all. Second, the numbers assume the Essential plan holds at its starting price for 45 units, and it may not, since Buildium prices by unit count. Get a written quote for your exact door count before you sign anything, mine included.
What KeyTurn does and does not do
KeyTurn is $49 a month for up to 10 properties, $99 for up to 50, and $199 for up to 200. Flat, no per-unit multiplier, no onboarding fee, and no charge for adding a second bank account so your trust account does not cost $99 to open. The rent transaction fee is a flat amount the tenant sees before they hit pay, and it never comes out of what lands in your account. You can read the full pricing in plain numbers without a sales call.
What we do not have: a full open API, the enterprise reporting suite, or a decade of feature accumulation. If you need custom integrations into an accounting stack, Buildium Premium or AppFolio will serve you better and I will say so on a call. I cut institutional features on purpose, because every one of them is a line item a family-run shop pays for and never opens.
What we do have that neither of them does: an AI import that reads your existing spreadsheets and statements and stands the portfolio up in an afternoon instead of a six week implementation. For a two person company, migration cost is the real switching cost, and it is measured in evenings, not dollars.
How to choose in one question
Skip the feature grids. Answer this instead: what is your door count, and does your fee stack scale with it?
- Over 200 doors with back office staff. AppFolio. The per-unit rate finally makes sense and the depth is real.
- 50 to 250 doors, you want a mature platform, and you have modeled the transaction fees. Buildium. Price the Growth plan against Essential plus fees before you pick a tier.
- Under 200 properties, two or three people, and you want one flat number. That is who I built KeyTurn for, and it is who my family is.
The reason I keep publishing competitors' prices next to mine is that opaque pricing is how small operators end up on enterprise contracts. You should be able to run this math in ten minutes without talking to any of us.
See what the switch looks like on a real portfolio
Lockwood Property Management moved their doors onto KeyTurn, owner statements and trust account included. The case study covers what they paid before, what they pay now, and how long the migration actually took.
Read the Lockwood case studyIf you want a second opinion on your own numbers, the beta request form is on the KeyTurn home page. Send me your door count, your property count, and whether you manage for outside owners. I will run the three-way math on your portfolio and tell you which one I would pick in your position, including the ones that are not mine.
Related reading
- How much does AppFolio actually cost? 2026 pricing breakdown
- How much does property management software cost under 100 doors?
- AppFolio alternatives for small property managers (2026)
- How to let tenants pay rent online without paying $280 a month
Sources
- Buildium pricing page, retrieved September 7, 2026
- Buildium Essential plan page, retrieved September 7, 2026
- Buildium, ePay convenience fees explained, retrieved September 7, 2026
- CostBench AppFolio pricing tracker, retrieved September 7, 2026
- AppFolio pricing: per-unit rates and the 50-unit floor, retrieved September 7, 2026
Nothing here is legal advice for your situation. Prices change without notice, and every figure above should be confirmed with the vendor before you sign.