Rentara
Automatic rent posting, late fees, and a tenant self-service portal for the portfolio you already manage.
The problem it solves
If you manage a handful of rental units, you're stuck between two bad options. Spreadsheets don't tell you who's late, when a lease expires, or which unit is empty — and they certainly don't post rent charges, compute late fees, answer tenants' "what do I owe?" calls, or produce the monthly statement your property's owner wants.
Hosted property-management platforms do all of that — for a recurring monthly fee, often priced per unit.
What you get
Tenant self-service portal
Each tenancy gets a private link with no login — tenants see their lease terms, ledger, and balance, and can submit maintenance requests with a photo.
Automatic late fees
Set a grace period plus a flat fee and/or a percentage of overdue rent, and Rentara posts exactly one labeled late fee per overdue period.
Automatic rent posting
Each lease bills itself monthly or quarterly anchored to its start day, with no cron needed and no risk of double-posting.
Owner statements
Generate a printable income statement per property or owner for any date range, plus CSV export.
Rent roll and arrears
See arrears the instant a due date passes, with an arrears report showing days overdue and tenant contact details.
Maintenance tracking
Track tickets from open to resolved, with tenant-submitted requests flagged and costs flowing automatically into owner statements.
Installable mobile app (PWA)
Add it to a phone or tablet home screen straight from the browser — a full-screen app served from your own server, with no app store involved. Business data is never cached offline, so what you see is always live.
Own It 2.0 — API, 2FA, backups, dark mode
Rentara 2.0 adds the 2.0 owner layer. Upgrade by replacing the files — the database migrates itself, and it is still the same one-time purchase.
- REST API with an OpenAPI spec and signed webhooks
- Two-factor sign-in (TOTP)
- Email notifications through your own SMTP
- CSV import with a mandatory dry run
- One-click backups
- Dark mode
Own It 3.0 — works for your AI, not just for you
Seven MCP tools cover properties, leases, ledgers, the rent roll, arrears and maintenance — the same engine the screens render, with ticket moves running the product-defined transition table, reopen included. New PDFs deliver the lease summary with its full ledger and the money artifacts your accountant expects.
- Roles with email invitations and a last-admin guard
- Append-only audit trail across browser, API and agent
- Your logo and colours throughout
- Scheduled backups with a guided dry-run restore
- Optional single sign-on (OIDC)
Pricing — one-time, yours forever
- ✔ Full source included — PHP you can read and change
- ✔ No subscription. One payment, yours forever
- ✔ It never phones home
- ✔ Your data stays on your server
No reviews yet — so here is what we offer instead. Every competitor price on our comparison pages is source-linked and dated, and when a vendor’s price won’t load we say so rather than guess. See the sources for yourself →
Screenshots
Honest limitations
- Records payments; does not process/collect rent online (ledger only — mark payments as they arrive by transfer/cash/check/card)
- No tenant login accounts — the portal is private per-lease token links (regenerate/revoke any time); anyone with the link can view that one lease's ledger
- Operations tool, not a marketing/listings portal for finding tenants
- Not a full accounting package — CSV export, then import into your accounting tool
- Single-operator: one admin login per installation
- No tenant-facing email: 2.0 notifies YOU through your own SMTP when a tenant submits a maintenance request or a payment is recorded, but portal links and statements are still yours to share
- Rent/lease/tenancy law varies by jurisdiction — late-fee rules are fully configurable (including off), and Rentara gives no legal or tax advice
Two-minute web installer with an in-place 1.0 to 1.1 upgrader; PHP 8+ with MySQL or SQLite, standard shared-hosting compatible.
Covered in these guides
Five verified SaaS list prices, sourced and dated, multiplied by 36 months — next to the one-time price of owning the equivalent self-hosted tool. Arithmetic, not a quote.
Data ownership explained for non-technical owners: where records physically live, what export and backup look like, and the honest responsibilities that come with control.
Spreadsheets are genuinely fine — until specific failure modes appear. The honest thresholds for moving to a real tool, and which category to look at when you cross one.
The complete guide to running rentals on software you own: what the job actually is, what Buildium-class SaaS costs, where spreadsheets break, and how a one-time tool covers the core.
The complete, honest guide to the hosted tier: what we run for you, what stays yours at every moment, the 12-month license promise, and when self-hosting is still the better call.
Frequently asked questions
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?
No — Rentara records payments as they arrive by transfer, cash, check, or card; it doesn't process or collect rent online.
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+ with PDO — present on virtually all cPanel/Plesk hosts — and either MySQL or SQLite. Installation is a two-minute web installer.
Is it a full accounting package?
No — it's not a full accounting/general-ledger tool. Export CSV and import into your accounting tool.