Most property software pricing pages start with a slider. Move it to your unit count, watch the monthly figure change, add the modules you were going to need anyway. Rentara has no slider, because the price does not depend on anything: $119, once, for a portfolio of roughly five to fifty units, with no renewal date and no per-unit meter. This page is Rentara's own account of what that buys, written the way we would want a vendor to write it — the refusals first.
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The four things it will not do
- It does not run a payment rail. Payments are recorded as they land; since 3.2 a tenant can also pay by card from their private link, but only through your own Stripe account and only once you switch it on, and its rent reminders (by email since 3.2, by text since Own It 4.1 for tenants who agree) do ask a tenant to pay. If you want the software to collect rent for you without your own Stripe account, you want a subscription with a payment rail, and the pricing comparison names them with their prices.
- It does not find tenants. No listings, no syndication, no applicant screening. Rentara is for the portfolio you already manage.
- It is not a general ledger. It keeps the rent ledger per lease and the owner statement per property; your accountant's books stay in your accounting software.
- The tenant portal is a link, not an account. Each lease gets a private link the tenant opens; there are no passwords to reset, and the only payment page is Stripe's own, when you switch card payments on. You can regenerate or revoke the link per lease at any time.
One portfolio per installation, and email goes out through your own SMTP server, which stays off until you turn it on.
What the license covers
The roll and the arrears. Properties and units with beds, baths, rent and occupancy; tenants with their history; leases that flip a unit to occupied when assigned and renew or end when they end. The rent roll shows what is due, what has landed and what is overdue, per lease and in total.
Rent that posts itself. Each lease bills itself monthly or quarterly, anchored to the day it started. There is no cron job to set up: missing periods post the moment you open the dashboard, the roll or the lease. Every posting is keyed on lease and period and backed by a database unique index, so a re-run, a double click or two people opening the roll at once can never post a period twice. That guarantee is tested, not promised.
Late fees that post once, ever. Set a grace period and a flat fee, a percentage of the overdue rent, or both. One labeled fee — "Late fee — Rent 2026-06" — posts per overdue period, exactly once.
The tenant's own view. The per-lease link shows the tenant their lease terms, their ledger and their current balance, and lets them submit a maintenance request with an optional photo. Requests land in your queue flagged as tenant-submitted. The public form has a honeypot and a per-address rate limit.
Owner statements. A printable income statement per property or per owner for any date range — rent collected, late fees, maintenance costs, net to owner — with CSV export for the accountant.
Documents with the lease. The signed lease, inspection reports and photos stay with the lease record; files are checked by their actual bytes, stored under random names and served only to logged-in staff.
The receipts and notices. Since 3.1, a receipt can go to the tenant when a payment is recorded and a status notice when their maintenance ticket moves. Both are off by default and use your own mail server.
The API and the MCP endpoint. Since the 3.0 release every Ownware product carries a REST API with an OpenAPI description and an MCP endpoint behind the buyer's own key, so Claude, ChatGPT agents, n8n or your own script can read the roll and move a ticket under the same roles and audit trail a person uses. Keys are minted read-only or full. Connect your AI explains the pattern; the earlier release notes are in what's new in 3.0.
The price, and the arithmetic beside it
$119 once. The Property Suite is $149 and adds Consigna, a consignment-shop manager — a pairing that helps a landlord who also runs a resale counter and nobody else, so most buyers want the single license. For comparison, and read from the vendors' own pages on the dates shown: Buildium's Essential tier "starting at $62/month" (5 July 2026), DoorLoop's Starter at $69/month on yearly billing and capped at ten units (5 July 2026), TenantCloud's Starter at $15/month on annual billing (5 July 2026) — all three re-read on 3 September 2026 and unchanged. Multiplied out, not forecast: $2,232, $2,484 and $540 over three years against $119 once. The owned side also carries hosting, ten minutes of install and your own backups; what property software actually costs when you self-host it prices every one of those lines.
Who it is for
A landlord or a small property manager with a portfolio between about five and fifty units, who wants the records — roll, leases, arrears, fees, statements — on a server they control, and who either collects rent by transfer, standing order, cash or card already or is content to keep doing so. The live demo is open without a sign-up. If the refusals at the top of this page are not the features you were buying, the rest of it is probably yours.