Replace a subscription · every price cited

The self-hosted Rentec Direct alternative

Rentara: Automatic rent posting, late fees, and a tenant self-service portal for the portfolio you already manage. Own it once, run it on your own server, and stop paying Rentec Direct every month.

Own Rentara for $119 Try the live demo

Stop renting Rentec Direct.

Rented Rentec Direct Rentec Starter $25/month (up to 10 properties and tenants); Rentec Pro and Rentec PM from $50/month, scaling by unit count ^[1] billed every month, for as long as you use it; your data in their cloud

Yours

Rentara

$119 once · self-hosted · your data on your server

5 months of Rentec Direct costs what Rentara costs once.

Buy once

How we counted: The $45/mo figure carried here until 2026-09-03 is no longer on the page - $45 appears nowhere on it. Starter is $25/mo for up to 10 properties; the manager tiers start at $50/mo and scale by unit count, with annual billing stated as saving $60/year. Re-read 2026-09-07, unchanged: "Rentec Pro and Rentec PM start at $50 per month and grow with you as you add more units."

How Rentec Direct pricing grows

Rentec Direct's price scales with unit count through its live pricing calculator, and portfolios above 2,500 units are routed to a custom quote instead of self-serve pricing.

“Contact us for pricing above 2,500 units”, their own page, read 2026-08-11

What Rentec Direct does that we don't

Rentec Direct includes unlimited US-based customer support and free onboarding with every plan.

“Unlimited US-Based Customer Support”, their own page

Who should stay with Rentec Direct

If you need tenant login accounts with a dedicated portal rather than shared links, stay with Rentec Direct — Rentara has no tenant login accounts, only private per-lease token links.

What Rentara deliberately doesn't do is on its product page.

Why owning beats renting Rentec Direct.

One payment

No monthly, per-seat or per-location fees. The license is perpetual.

Your data stays on your server

It never lives in Rentec Direct's cloud.

No plan ceilings

Records and users are limited by your hosting, not by a pricing tier.

It keeps working if the vendor doesn't

Self-hosted software can't be sunset or repriced out from under you.

The fair trade-offs: you host it, back it up and apply updates yourself. See the product page for its limits, and the full Rentara vs renting comparison.

Questions about moving off Rentec Direct.

Do tenants need accounts?

No. Each lease gets a private link; tenants bookmark it, see their own balance and ledger, and submit maintenance requests. You can rotate or kill any link instantly.

Does Rentara collect rent online?

Only if you switch it on, and only through your own Stripe account: the tenant pays on Stripe's page from their private link, and Rentara records the payment when Stripe confirms it. Otherwise you record payments as they arrive.

I already installed 1.0 — do I lose data?

No. Drop the new files over the old install (keep config.php and data/); the database upgrades itself in place on the next page load. Existing leases stay on manual billing until you enable auto-billing per lease, so nothing back-posts by surprise.

Will this run on my hosting?

Almost certainly. Rentara needs PHP 8.1+ with PDO — present on virtually all cPanel/Plesk hosts — and either MySQL or SQLite. Installation is a two-minute web installer.

Related on this site

Front-office software Rentals & property software Rentara vs SaaS pricing What's new in Own It 4.1 What's new in Own It 3.4

Sources

Rentec Direct: price checked 2026-09-03, source“$25 /mo”

Competitor prices change, so always confirm on the linked page. We only print figures we could verify on the date shown. This vendor is tracked in the Price Observatory: every figure verbatim, dated, re-checked quarterly.

Replace Rentec Direct with Rentara.

Open the live demo first; it costs nothing.

See Rentara Rentara vs renting All alternatives