10 ms·

Ask HN: Review RentPost.com

179 points by oojacoboo 16y ago

After our team has spent the last 2 years in development, working countless hours, we have been able to FINALLY push out our service to the public! We welcome your feedback and thoughts. Cheers.

murry537 16y ago
This looks sweet! I wish my landlord used it.
- btucker 16y ago
  I think with tools like this, that's a very common reaction. My suggestion to the founders would be to work to leverage that sentiment to get RentPost in front of landlords. A couple ideas: * Allow roommates to collectively pay their rent online without the landlord being a customer of RentPost. You then turn around and cut a cheque which is mailed to the landlord. Included with the cheque is the upsell to subscribe to the service. * Allow tenants to submit maintenance requests, etc, turn these into an email to the landlord. The property manager could simply reply to the email, but you could also give them the option to manage the "ticket" online & you could ease them into your service. On a different note, hit up the Property Management trade shows!
  - theoreticalee 16y ago
    Awesome suggestions! We haven't thought of the 2nd concept at all. I'll have to bring this one up to the guys. thanks :)
granto 16y ago
can you describe what took two years? It looks nice, but just trying to understand where the time went. Thanks!
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  day here, day there, all adds up, the application has thousands of files... these things just take time.
  - sahillavingia 16y ago
    Sorry to be pedantic, but that's not really the definition of full-time.
vaksel 16y ago
the problem is that most property owners aren't tech savvy. Most of them don't even have a webpage. And I'm not talking about the 1-2 unit owners...I'm talking about multi building companies with $600K in yearly revenue who haven't even bothered to setup a 1 page site with their phone # and hours of operation. If you are going to take on this market, you are going to need a direct on the ground sales team.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  you would think this is the case, and yes, an on the ground sales team will be helpful in addition to our affiliate program and partnerships, but these days are starting to phase out. These people are starting to realize they can't operate their companies the same way they did 10 years ago, and as the younger generation steps up the ladder in these companies, it's getting more attention.
  - earle 16y ago
    Additionally, since the aforementioned demographics on property owners and management companies is accurate, you should consider alternative tactics. What about modifying the initial workflow from the Tenants perspective and allow Tenants to make rent payments to Landloards who are not yet even on this site? Seems like the easiest way to address your potential market (landlords) since there is certainly a huge demographic of renters who would like to use this service from the payment perspective. Changing the focus on the landing page to be directed at the Tenant -- as in PAY YOUR RENT NOW, and focusing on the benefits to the tenant as part of your conversion process.
    - oojacoboo 16y ago
      YES, but there are SERIOUS issues to doing this with regards to payments. You essentially have to be a registered bank or approved status in order to aggregate payments in order to support this. It's very complicated, expensive, and there is tons of red tape. This is where we wanted to go from the start before addressing many of these concerns.
amirmc 16y ago
What's with the '$get_social()' on the bottom right of the page? I'm guessing it's not meant to be like that.
- dannytatom 16y ago
  I think it's just a clever way to show their Twitter, Facebook, etc.
  - amirmc 16y ago
    I found the dollar sign and underscore confusing. As though there was something wrong with the markup.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  the change is going to be made... I thought it was cheeky... but people don't get it, it's a FAIL, I realize ;)
- rradu 16y ago
  I think it is a silly way to present the social networking links, but not exactly appropriate given the audience. I'd take that off.
il 16y ago
If I were you I would strongly reconsider your pricing....you're underpricing by quite a lot. The last place I was in, the company my landlord used for online rent collection charged 1.50 per transaction...to the tenant. That's in addition to whatever fixed monthly fee the landlord was paying.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  We charge $1 per transaction, and have thought about 1.50, but we like the solid $1 number. We'll play that out and see how it works for a while. As per the pricing for the software, we know it's cheap and will be considering price hikes in the near future. We wanted to come out of the gate swinging and get some traction.
- Joeri 16y ago
  The danger with underpricing is that it can make it harder to sell. If you're priced too cheap, there must be a catch, so potential customers will be less likely to buy.
- studiofellow 16y ago
  I agree the pricing seems low. I was shocked at the low monthly price considering how much money changes hands for an average rent check. Does the target market behave more like consumers than businesses?
marknutter 16y ago
The design is sick. Wonderfully balance color scheme, beautiful call-to action buttons (I clicked "see pricing" a few times just because I was compelled to), and I love that it's iPad and iPhone compatible out of the gate. These are my initial impressions, I didn't dive too much into the content. But looks great on the surface!
- darwinGod 16y ago
  "The design is sick" - think there may be a typo there, reading your comment- "slick"? :P
  - simonista 16y ago
    "sick" can be slang for great or cool. see http://onlineslangdictionary.com/definition+of/sick http://onlineslangdictionary.com/definition+of/sick
    - shod 16y ago
      and to shake one's booty means to wiggle one's butt. allow me to demonstrate.
  - adamzochowski 16y ago
    I think sick is the new wicked/cool/insane.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Given the rest of the comment, yes, that's a typo.
lpolovets 16y ago
This looks great! Do you have any thoughts on lower tiers? I have 1 rental unit. On the one hand, $9/month is pretty low; on the other hand, paying the same as someone with 15 units is psychologically painful =). If it was like $20/unit/year for 1-4 units, that'd be pretty cool.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  We've considered a very small free plan, and will think more on that. As per the rent collection for these accounts, it doesn't become profitable for us at these smaller numbers, so this is why the $9 plan exists.
  - roel_v 16y ago
    Are you thinking of making this internationally available? The whole concept of 'rent collecting' and 'checks' or 'paying rent is cash' doesn't exist in Europe. Rents are paid by bank transfer, usually automated (with rental contracts stipulating that the tenant needs to set up this automatic transfer or otherwise there will be a rent hike). Re: pricing, I agree that a smaller or freemium plan would be nice, but for people who don't need anything from you to do automatic collections (i.e., everybody outside of the US ;) ), it would be quite hard to see how you could make money off them.
- theoreticalee 16y ago
  Hah, good point. Probably should add a plan w/o the online payments to cut down on the internal cost so we can push out a cheaper plan.. Heck even a freemium plan
pjleonhardt 16y ago
I've thought about doing something like this for a long while. Finally I had an apartment complex a couple years ago that allowed you to pay online (e-checks only), so maybe the industry is finally ready for this. Expect a lot of resistance to landlords letting tenants pay with anything but e-checks, though. Think about adding something like automatically sending out emails to tenants to remind them to pay the rent (opt-in on first payment)? Oh, and I think you might be underpricing yourself.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  thanks for this, yea, we are connected with the ACH network for check processing, and we do send notices to tenants. We realize that the pricing is a bit low.
thecoffman 16y ago
This looks absolutely incredible - I would love it if you could get landlords to use it. Unfortunately both of my previous two lacked even an email address. My job has a contact email for employment verification and I had to get a special phone number from HR for my landlord because they didn't use email. This company probably has two dozen properties around town (each with multiple units) and doesn't even have email. Sometimes its amazing when we step out of our tech field and see how normal people live and work. That being said - if you could convince landlords to give you 20 minutes for a demo, I bet you could sell a lot of them on it. You would probably need a sales team for that though.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  for the large operations with massive numbers of properties that where people are old school that make the decisions, this is absolutely the case. There are a large number of 200 and less companies and owners that are quite tech savvy and absolutely willing to adopt, at least from everything we have seen so far.
  - thecoffman 16y ago
    That's awesome, I'd love to see a new generation of landlords that use stuff like this. When I get my utility bill - he calls and leaves me a voice mail with the total and then I combine it with my rent on a single check and send it in. That's not efficient by anyone's standards. Best of luck to you guys, maybe my next landlord will be using RentPost!
javan 16y ago
I would change the "Few Goodies" wording on the Take the Tour page; it feels like there's very few goodies. "Highlights" or even "A Few Goodies" works better.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  wow yea, I thought for sure that said "A Few Goodies" :/ I dont' like that section all together though... needs redoing.
  - mgw 16y ago
    There's also a typo on the tour page in the 'Few Goodies' section. You wrote 'Fuly' instead of 'Fully'. Other feedback: I am overwhelmed how great your design is.
faitswulff 16y ago
RentMonitor beat you to the punch. What would you say the advantages of choosing RentPost over RentMonitor are?
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  wow, this is the first time I've seen them... I will have to check out their offering more. There are others too... http://appfolio.com http://appfolio.com http://buildium.com http://buildium.com http://propertyware.com http://propertyware.com http://tenantfile.com http://tenantfile.com and others. This isn't a new idea, people have been using property management software for years. We have just taken a slightly different approach to implementation with automation and communication between the two parties, landlord/tenant.
- theoreticalee 16y ago
  Good question. We are hitting 2 different markets. Our ability to automate a lot of the managers monthly activity sets us appart. Rentmonitor currently only does 'after the fact' accounting, meaning tenants still have to bring in a check or pay an e-bill. Our system allows tenants to pay electronically through their site and submit work orders. So the time savings w/ our software can be huge. As well as payments getting 'lost' or not recorded doesn't become an issue anymore.
- nedwin 16y ago
  There are a whole heap of competitors in this space. I would say the way to get ahead is via a direct sales force.
bowmande 16y ago
This looks great. I think you have a great looking and useful product here. It could take awhile to catch on, but I think you have something.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  it's not a blow-up-over-night groupon or zynga business, we know. Our goal is to create a sustainable business with healthy growth. Thanks for your kind words.
mattlanger 16y ago
Amazing! I run a coworking space for entrepreneurs in Brooklyn, which means every month I'm running around gathering up a dozen or so checks from tenants--so this the most exciting tool I've seen in a long time. Thanks, oojacoboo. You're a lifesaver!
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  that makes me :)
  - delano 16y ago
    Congrats on the launch! A few people here aren't sold on the concept but that's fine. There are obviously others that are.
    - maukdaddy 16y ago
      Don't mistake constructive criticism for not being sold on the concept.
      - oojacoboo 16y ago
        Couldn't agree more, I appreciate the input on things! I am a very harsh critic myself ;)
rwhitman 16y ago
I think this is great. I've been dreaming of a day when I can do online billing with a landlord. I once had a landlord where I was doing online bill pay from BofA, and they would mail the landlord physical checks, but the landlord wouldn't accept them. Apparently they periodically would think the bank's automated check was junk mail and would toss them in the trash and persisted to accuse me of not paying rent. So I will never mail a rent check again without a physical check in a handwritten envelope.
gruseom 16y ago
I wouldn't use the term "cloud" in the main slogan. A lot of people don't know what it means.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
DevX101 16y ago
Who did your design? I'm looking for one.
tsalfie 16y ago
As a current Buildium user, I really like the look of this. I'm a small property manager and although I love the convenience of having software like this available I'm curious how your online payments are processed. My biggest complaint with my current program is that it takes 5-7 days for rents to hit my account and then another 5-7 for them to hit the owners' accounts. I think a great market for a product like this would be real estate agents that do some property management (10-25 units).
stefanobernardi 16y ago
I'm really hoping you actually become mainstream and the only way to manage rents and payments. I've had this idea a couple hundred times while looking for a place and then while having to deal with payments etc. Goog luck guys, keep us posted.
AHorihuela 16y ago
oojacoboo this looks awesome man - congrats! What did you develop it with?
- uxp 16y ago
  I'm also curious as to the technology behind the site.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  We use the Symfony framework and jQuery.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mikeleeorg 16y ago
Several years ago, I had an apartment that used a similar online rent payment system, though I can't remember the name of it (payyourrent.com? rentpayment.com? hmm). As a tenant, one of the features I loved most about them was the ability to pay by credit card - so I could earn points through my rent. I didn't see a mention of being able to accept credit card payments, so if that's not in this version yet, here's a vote for having it in the next version. Good luck with the property owner sales end of this business too. As a tenant, I love systems like this, so I hope to see it in use someday.
- gavinbaker 16y ago
  Something that makes it easier to be a property owner is great. I see this not going after the current market but people like me who want to make renting easier.
GavinB 16y ago
I found the pricing page confusing at first. At a casual glance it looks like most of the plans are exactly the same. Something about the design made me ignore the number of units listed at the top. It also doesn't state if there are transaction fees, which you mentioned in another comment.
- ttol 16y ago
  Found it confusing too. Easy fix would be to add a new row in the table with the numbers so it appears in both the table and the graphic.
  - oojacoboo 16y ago
    We'll review this, thanks for the input!
    - biot 16y ago
      Also check out how it looks on the iPad or simulate this by resizing your browser width so that it's at the smallest possible size without having a horizontal scrollbar. The content is right up against the browser edge with no space. You should add some padding on each side to avoid this.
      - oojacoboo 16y ago
        ouch, I knew about this, forgot to put in a fix... thanks for reminding me!
DanBlake 16y ago
I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!" - Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that. - Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going to work. We have a option for people to pay rent via CC, but most people opt to do it in cash/check. Since only a fraction would use this, I would have to add to my work load to manually enter their transactions in here to have data integrity. - organize work orders- Definitely dont want this. If they need something done, they just go the manager and ask. Taking away that element will just create unneeded work orders. We already have a internal system for tracking needed work. I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things. - ...tasks, contacts and more! I guess this is cool, but we never really have a need for this. You already have to file their rental application and other work anyways, so its not like you wont have this. - I guess I just dont see the appeal. Its cool to have a nice online interface for this, but I know we wouldnt use it and even my friend who runs a 400 unit complex hates moving stuff to tech. Unfortunately, they always add more work then they solve. The last thing ANY land lord needs, is /MORE/ paper trail :) - If you get anything from this, get this- I am a technical, HN user that owns a apartment building. I am (what you would assume) your absolute ideal customer. And with that, I wouldnt use your product without significant changes. ~fin
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  If you want to take your business seriously and stay organized and stay on top of things, aside from rolling out your own system, there is no other way. You can't keep up with it all. I'd address each of these things but I am tied down at the moment. Basically, it sounds like it isn't for you, and it won't be for everyone.
  - lrm242 16y ago
    What about the way he's currently doing it? Status-quo is a viable, and often the toughest, competitor.
- 16y ago
jedschmidt 16y ago
Very well designed! One thing: out of context in a tab, your favicon could seem inadvertently religious†. †: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_cross http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_cross
- araneae 16y ago
  I had the same reaction. I personally would change the tab.
- three14 16y ago
  I found that it reminded me of a cemetery.
dennyferra 16y ago
Great looking site, love the idea. Forwarded your site off to a few friends who could use this. Best of luck to you!
- theoreticalee 16y ago
  :) you're the best!
eekfuh 16y ago
How is this different than propertysolutions.com?
- sursani 16y ago
  That's a good question. I don't know myself. Do you have other competitors in this space?
  - mwhaling 16y ago
    It's an incredibly fragmented market. There's plenty of competition, but the biggest players in property management software (http://www.realpage.com http://www.realpage.com and http://www.yardi.com http://www.yardi.com) have less than 10% of the market.
dustineichler 16y ago
Can you talk about what you did, the process from day 0 to now. I'd be interested in what you learned if anything. This looks so awesome, but I'm not your market. I'll post this on my buildings HOA board.
nickmolnar2 16y ago
Does this process payments from Canadian banks?
- theoreticalee 16y ago
  Hey! We are currently working with our merchant provider and our dev team to support Canada. I can let you know ASAP of any updates. Just give us your email via rentpost.com/contact form. thanks for the input :)
solutionyogi 16y ago
Website looks great but the copy needs some serious work. The main phrase: Start Simplifying Rent™ in the RentPost Cloud If you make the lady at my leasing office read this, she will be like 'What????' Connect with tenants effortlessly I don't think the landlord wants to connect with the tenant. He is interested in collecting rent. "We're just getting warmed up; get on the bandwagon." Why should I care that you are warming up? You don't want to invest in yesterday's technology. I don't care about technology, I care about how you can solve my problems. We want to work with you to continue to build RentPost to best fit your needs; we listen! So you are suggesting that RentPost may not fit my needs. I think you are in the same market as this software: http://www.landlordmax.com/ http://www.landlordmax.com/ Look at their website. It's not pretty like yours, but the website copy is all about the customer's needs/problems. E.g. Find out who's late paying your rents in seconds. Over 100 reports at your fingertips for you to analyze how your properties are doing within seconds. Good luck.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  we are targeting a more technical audience right now while we get our feet in the door. We feel this is the best audience to help us get going. If we start to see issues with traction (it's been great so far), we will pivot as needed.
  - webwright 16y ago
    Huh? Having a great headline for normal people generally means it's a crappy headline for tech people. Regardless, tech people have non-technical friends/relatives that they might send this to. Regardless of your opinion (and mine) you should A/B test your headline to maximize the traffic/attention you are getting.
  - solutionyogi 16y ago
    By technical audience, do you mean technical people who are also property owners? If yes, then the headline is great. Though my guess would be that majority of your customers will be non technical. If the technical audience refers your website to non-technical people, you want your page understandable to them.
millerc 16y ago
Beautiful, technically and visually. The only reason for (business) failure would be if you released it 20 years too soon. I sincerely hope you're the one to make the tipping point.
tbgvi 16y ago
Love the site, unfortunately I'm definitely not in your target market :) One quick & easily implemented suggestion for you: put your phone number in a more prominent place. My company targets business owners as well, and at first I buried our phone number on the contact or about page. After talking with some customers I decided to not only make it more prominent, but to put it at the top of every page. Best change I ever made, the conversion rate of people who call us is astronomical. Business owners, especially ones in 'offline' industries, often want to hear your voice before they decide to work with you. Anyways thats just my 2 cents, congrats on the launch!
dave1619 16y ago
Will online payment collection work with all U.S banks?
- theoreticalee 16y ago
  It should for all banks that operate on the ACH network, which from my understanding, is all banks in the US.
elvirs 16y ago
I love the 'Unlimited Units' plan for $249 which is there just to make 'Unlimited Units' plan for $69 look like a good deal.
pitdesi 16y ago
This is a great start... it would also be useful to have a system that automatically created listings to post on craigslist and any other sites
mtalantikite 16y ago
Are you guys aware of http://www.rentjuice.com/ http://www.rentjuice.com/ ? How to you compare to them?
notJim 16y ago
> You will not find anything that is more user friendly, period And yet, no hover states on your buttons :P.
- theoreticalee 16y ago
  Heh, input received. +1 for you :P
markdunkley 16y ago
Disappointed how similar the sign up pages are (https://www.shopify.com/services/signup https://www.shopify.com/services/signup vs. https://rentpost.com/pricing https://rentpost.com/pricing)
- mbesto 16y ago
  Disappointed? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
orijing 16y ago
You might want to go through all your pages and do a spelling/grammar check. For example, take a look at this: http://rentpost.com/tenants http://rentpost.com/tenants "Your rental property now comes standard with it's very own web dashboard" When I see an error like that, I lose a great deal of respect for the company. Either it means it's worked by people who lack understanding of grammar, or lack the motivation to proofread their work. Neither is a great signal for me. The website is BEAUTIFUL though.
LiveTheDream 16y ago
The page took over a minute to load for me. After hitting reload -> 4.5 seconds for the main rentpost.com/ to load, 12s for combine.php, 20s for typekit javascript (which seemed to block anything from loading until it was done, including resources from rentpost.com domain and jquery from the google ajax api). After these resources are in my browser cache, the load time is normal (400ms) but the first load and after a reload...ouch!
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  server was getting hit HARD there for a bit.
kleinsch 16y ago
I see that you offer a 14 day free trial. How does someone go about doing a trial of software that transforms the entire process of running an apartment building? You get all your tenants to sign up with this system, then change your mind and make them sign up with a new system again? It might be more useful to have a live demo system people can log into both as a tenant and landlord to see how it works.
kin 16y ago
So since you're way ahead of the game. I would like to suggest this. The ideas behind rentpost.com have been on my mind for a few years now. I've never done anything to pursue it so congrats, the site looks great. Please, grow and hire people so that this saturates the market. Then, when large enough, please provide a clean interface for prospective tenants to view apartment listings. Searching for apartments have got to be one of the biggest pains to deal with. If you have a central database of awesome tech-savvy apartments with your website as a portal for great customer service, I don't see why you can't make your customers more happy by providing listings.
bryanh 16y ago
I'm currently managing approx 50 (?) units and I thought I'd drop my opinion: Make me understand the pain I am in. Real estate is painful, but as you have undoubtedly noticed, people think the pain is a natural part of the package and they can't separate the two. How about automatic late notices? Projected vacancy and turnover assistance? I mean, those are really painful and annoying processes (at least to me), present me with a punch-by-punch pain tour and offer the solution. Additionally, for heaven's sake, drop the buzzwords and market talk. I feel like you designed the site first and tried to shoehorn some content in there. Property managers care little about the "cloud" or "we're easy to use!". They want to get paid on time, how are you helping them? Best of luck! I think there is massive potential here but I tend to think you are going about it the wrong way in your presentation. As rwhitman has said, it seems like you are trying to solve tenants' problems, not the landlords'. Noble indeed, but not the best strategy.
jokull 16y ago
Please make it obvious if this is available for international customers or US only. I dug around but not any closer to knowing if this service is available at all to me.
mbesto 16y ago
Who did your design? In house? It's AMAZING.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  yours truly ;)
aces 16y ago
i like the idea.I've thought about doing something like this before and wish every place would take credit card for rent. It would be great to be able to get credit card points for my largest monthly expense and also not have to worry about cutting a check every month. Its a great product from the tenants perspective.
AlekseyKorzun 16y ago
Great idea but you should market it to commercial property owners, not to tenants.
middus 16y ago
37signals want their design back. Edit: Come on, the site design is a rip off of the product site of i.a. http://backpackit.com/ http://backpackit.com/
- theoreticalee 16y ago
  Heh, I think I see what you are trying to get at. We used a very popular design philosophy right now. Same reason why all tires are round :P http://clockspot.com/ http://clockspot.com/ http://www.postbox-inc.com/ http://www.postbox-inc.com/ http://www.skyledger.com/ http://www.skyledger.com/ http://www.kindlingapp.com/ http://www.kindlingapp.com/ http://www.roninapp.com/ http://www.roninapp.com/ http://www.mailchimp.com/ http://www.mailchimp.com/ This is a really cool resource to see the hottest, freshest websites weekly: http://abduzeedo.com/tags/sites-week http://abduzeedo.com/tags/sites-week Thanks for the input, we love to hear from both sides of the fence.
stevenp 16y ago
I'd like to get more of a sense of why it took you 2 years... is anyone using it yet? A blog post on your process would be great. 2 years seems like a long time (assuming you don't have a bunch of customers already using it).
dhyasama 16y ago
Why do I need a website to connect with my tenants? They have my phone number and email. Assuming I signed up because they would prefer to contact me through this service, then if I were the type to ignore them by phone and email, I'd probably ignore them through this as well.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  Well, if that's the case, this probably isn't for you.
georgieporgie 16y ago
Totally dumb pedantry, but: > You will not find anything that is more user friendly, period If you write 'period' does that mean you don't need a period? It's the only sentence in the list that doesn't end with punctuation.
AndyIngram 16y ago
Congratulations on the launch. I like the look of the product and wished my landlord would use it. Looking at the comments you may want to adjust the pitch a bit to show that it makes the day to day management of units more efficient. If your tool can identify bad tenants quickly a landlord can address them before it forces other renters to leave. Also easy reporting of problems, however minor, prevents small issues from becoming large ones. For instance a leaking tap is much less costly to repair then a tap and a water damaged ceiling and floor. Other efficiencies could be the tech itself removing the lags of phone and voice-mail communications, using template replies instead of having to write fresh emails or make long phone calls for all situations, rapid forwarding to contracted service providers for repairs, and tracking of expenses for similar items and services. One of the big complaints of property managers is that they mostly get calls for bad things or when tenants and strata owners are mad. If you could make communications more formal with a tool like this you could minimize the time managers have to sit on the phone and be yelled at which could make for a happier workforce and cut some of the BS out of the workday. Oh and look into Strata managers also
timcederman 16y ago
An odd nitpick, but your logo looks like a religious artifact.
eurohacker 16y ago
what technology you use - php, ruby ? and why
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  We use php b/c of previous experience, availability to scripts, compatibility with existing technology, and we like its licensing.
prawn 16y ago
Haven't read all 220+ comments so sorry if someone has already suggested this, but what if you tried to convince landlords by sheer weight of numbers. Allow tenants to enter their landlord and 'vote' for them to adopt this system, as well as encourage other tenants to do the same.
nedwin 16y ago
I think execution on this is really great, even if the copy needs work. I worked on vaguely similar concept about 12 months ago and it is definitely an interesting space. Our angle was to try to remove the need for a real estate agent by empowering landlords. My advice for your system is to get out there and sell, sell, sell. You'll only get better by direct sales, you'll only get traction via direct sales. They won't come to you, you'll need to bust your ass convincing them to get on board. If you do that then the copy doesn't mean a thing.
aptguy1963 16y ago
I find one HUGE error. In today's world, you call the people that rent from you "residents" -- not "tenants". When I see or hear the word tenant it make me cringe. Might as well draw your fingernails across a chalkboard. Tenants rent office, industrial and retail buildings. Residents rent apartment units. I have a million other comments as well, some favorable and others negative, but I hate to type and am too busy to bother going into this at length. Good luck going forward. Lots of other competitors out there -- but your pricing does seem reasonable. Oh and BTW, I would NEVER rent a building from DanBlake. He's the type of person who gives the industry a black eye, as well as ensuring that the indutry stays at least 10 years behind the tech curve. That is all.
imsky 16y ago
hey jacob, great to see you finally got this off the ground. good luck, it looks great!

179 points by oojacoboo 16y ago

After our team has spent the last 2 years in development, working countless hours, we have been able to FINALLY push out our service to the public! We welcome your feedback and thoughts. Cheers.

murry537 16y ago

This looks sweet! I wish my landlord used it.

btucker 16y ago
I think with tools like this, that's a very common reaction. My suggestion to the founders would be to work to leverage that sentiment to get RentPost in front of landlords. A couple ideas: * Allow roommates to collectively pay their rent online without the landlord being a customer of RentPost. You then turn around and cut a cheque which is mailed to the landlord. Included with the cheque is the upsell to subscribe to the service. * Allow tenants to submit maintenance requests, etc, turn these into an email to the landlord. The property manager could simply reply to the email, but you could also give them the option to manage the "ticket" online & you could ease them into your service. On a different note, hit up the Property Management trade shows!
- theoreticalee 16y ago
  Awesome suggestions! We haven't thought of the 2nd concept at all. I'll have to bring this one up to the guys. thanks :)

granto 16y ago

can you describe what took two years? It looks nice, but just trying to understand where the time went. Thanks!

oojacoboo 16y ago
day here, day there, all adds up, the application has thousands of files... these things just take time.
- sahillavingia 16y ago
  Sorry to be pedantic, but that's not really the definition of full-time.

vaksel 16y ago

the problem is that most property owners aren't tech savvy. Most of them don't even have a webpage. And I'm not talking about the 1-2 unit owners...I'm talking about multi building companies with $600K in yearly revenue who haven't even bothered to setup a 1 page site with their phone # and hours of operation. If you are going to take on this market, you are going to need a direct on the ground sales team.

oojacoboo 16y ago
you would think this is the case, and yes, an on the ground sales team will be helpful in addition to our affiliate program and partnerships, but these days are starting to phase out. These people are starting to realize they can't operate their companies the same way they did 10 years ago, and as the younger generation steps up the ladder in these companies, it's getting more attention.
- earle 16y ago
  Additionally, since the aforementioned demographics on property owners and management companies is accurate, you should consider alternative tactics. What about modifying the initial workflow from the Tenants perspective and allow Tenants to make rent payments to Landloards who are not yet even on this site? Seems like the easiest way to address your potential market (landlords) since there is certainly a huge demographic of renters who would like to use this service from the payment perspective. Changing the focus on the landing page to be directed at the Tenant -- as in PAY YOUR RENT NOW, and focusing on the benefits to the tenant as part of your conversion process.
  - oojacoboo 16y ago
    YES, but there are SERIOUS issues to doing this with regards to payments. You essentially have to be a registered bank or approved status in order to aggregate payments in order to support this. It's very complicated, expensive, and there is tons of red tape. This is where we wanted to go from the start before addressing many of these concerns.

amirmc 16y ago

What's with the '$get_social()' on the bottom right of the page? I'm guessing it's not meant to be like that.

dannytatom 16y ago
I think it's just a clever way to show their Twitter, Facebook, etc.
- amirmc 16y ago
  I found the dollar sign and underscore confusing. As though there was something wrong with the markup.
oojacoboo 16y ago
the change is going to be made... I thought it was cheeky... but people don't get it, it's a FAIL, I realize ;)
rradu 16y ago
I think it is a silly way to present the social networking links, but not exactly appropriate given the audience. I'd take that off.

il 16y ago

If I were you I would strongly reconsider your pricing....you're underpricing by quite a lot. The last place I was in, the company my landlord used for online rent collection charged 1.50 per transaction...to the tenant. That's in addition to whatever fixed monthly fee the landlord was paying.

oojacoboo 16y ago
We charge $1 per transaction, and have thought about 1.50, but we like the solid $1 number. We'll play that out and see how it works for a while. As per the pricing for the software, we know it's cheap and will be considering price hikes in the near future. We wanted to come out of the gate swinging and get some traction.
Joeri 16y ago
The danger with underpricing is that it can make it harder to sell. If you're priced too cheap, there must be a catch, so potential customers will be less likely to buy.
studiofellow 16y ago
I agree the pricing seems low. I was shocked at the low monthly price considering how much money changes hands for an average rent check. Does the target market behave more like consumers than businesses?

marknutter 16y ago

The design is sick. Wonderfully balance color scheme, beautiful call-to action buttons (I clicked "see pricing" a few times just because I was compelled to), and I love that it's iPad and iPhone compatible out of the gate. These are my initial impressions, I didn't dive too much into the content. But looks great on the surface!

darwinGod 16y ago
"The design is sick" - think there may be a typo there, reading your comment- "slick"? :P
- simonista 16y ago
  "sick" can be slang for great or cool. see http://onlineslangdictionary.com/definition+of/sick http://onlineslangdictionary.com/definition+of/sick
  - shod 16y ago
    and to shake one's booty means to wiggle one's butt. allow me to demonstrate.
- adamzochowski 16y ago
  I think sick is the new wicked/cool/insane.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Given the rest of the comment, yes, that's a typo.

lpolovets 16y ago

This looks great! Do you have any thoughts on lower tiers? I have 1 rental unit. On the one hand, $9/month is pretty low; on the other hand, paying the same as someone with 15 units is psychologically painful =). If it was like $20/unit/year for 1-4 units, that'd be pretty cool.

oojacoboo 16y ago
We've considered a very small free plan, and will think more on that. As per the rent collection for these accounts, it doesn't become profitable for us at these smaller numbers, so this is why the $9 plan exists.
- roel_v 16y ago
  Are you thinking of making this internationally available? The whole concept of 'rent collecting' and 'checks' or 'paying rent is cash' doesn't exist in Europe. Rents are paid by bank transfer, usually automated (with rental contracts stipulating that the tenant needs to set up this automatic transfer or otherwise there will be a rent hike). Re: pricing, I agree that a smaller or freemium plan would be nice, but for people who don't need anything from you to do automatic collections (i.e., everybody outside of the US ;) ), it would be quite hard to see how you could make money off them.
theoreticalee 16y ago
Hah, good point. Probably should add a plan w/o the online payments to cut down on the internal cost so we can push out a cheaper plan.. Heck even a freemium plan

pjleonhardt 16y ago

I've thought about doing something like this for a long while. Finally I had an apartment complex a couple years ago that allowed you to pay online (e-checks only), so maybe the industry is finally ready for this. Expect a lot of resistance to landlords letting tenants pay with anything but e-checks, though. Think about adding something like automatically sending out emails to tenants to remind them to pay the rent (opt-in on first payment)? Oh, and I think you might be underpricing yourself.

oojacoboo 16y ago
thanks for this, yea, we are connected with the ACH network for check processing, and we do send notices to tenants. We realize that the pricing is a bit low.

thecoffman 16y ago

This looks absolutely incredible - I would love it if you could get landlords to use it. Unfortunately both of my previous two lacked even an email address. My job has a contact email for employment verification and I had to get a special phone number from HR for my landlord because they didn't use email. This company probably has two dozen properties around town (each with multiple units) and doesn't even have email. Sometimes its amazing when we step out of our tech field and see how normal people live and work. That being said - if you could convince landlords to give you 20 minutes for a demo, I bet you could sell a lot of them on it. You would probably need a sales team for that though.

oojacoboo 16y ago
for the large operations with massive numbers of properties that where people are old school that make the decisions, this is absolutely the case. There are a large number of 200 and less companies and owners that are quite tech savvy and absolutely willing to adopt, at least from everything we have seen so far.
- thecoffman 16y ago
  That's awesome, I'd love to see a new generation of landlords that use stuff like this. When I get my utility bill - he calls and leaves me a voice mail with the total and then I combine it with my rent on a single check and send it in. That's not efficient by anyone's standards. Best of luck to you guys, maybe my next landlord will be using RentPost!

javan 16y ago

I would change the "Few Goodies" wording on the Take the Tour page; it feels like there's very few goodies. "Highlights" or even "A Few Goodies" works better.

oojacoboo 16y ago
wow yea, I thought for sure that said "A Few Goodies" :/ I dont' like that section all together though... needs redoing.
- mgw 16y ago
  There's also a typo on the tour page in the 'Few Goodies' section. You wrote 'Fuly' instead of 'Fully'. Other feedback: I am overwhelmed how great your design is.

faitswulff 16y ago

RentMonitor beat you to the punch. What would you say the advantages of choosing RentPost over RentMonitor are?

oojacoboo 16y ago
wow, this is the first time I've seen them... I will have to check out their offering more. There are others too... http://appfolio.com http://appfolio.com http://buildium.com http://buildium.com http://propertyware.com http://propertyware.com http://tenantfile.com http://tenantfile.com and others. This isn't a new idea, people have been using property management software for years. We have just taken a slightly different approach to implementation with automation and communication between the two parties, landlord/tenant.
theoreticalee 16y ago
Good question. We are hitting 2 different markets. Our ability to automate a lot of the managers monthly activity sets us appart. Rentmonitor currently only does 'after the fact' accounting, meaning tenants still have to bring in a check or pay an e-bill. Our system allows tenants to pay electronically through their site and submit work orders. So the time savings w/ our software can be huge. As well as payments getting 'lost' or not recorded doesn't become an issue anymore.
nedwin 16y ago
There are a whole heap of competitors in this space. I would say the way to get ahead is via a direct sales force.

bowmande 16y ago

This looks great. I think you have a great looking and useful product here. It could take awhile to catch on, but I think you have something.

oojacoboo 16y ago
it's not a blow-up-over-night groupon or zynga business, we know. Our goal is to create a sustainable business with healthy growth. Thanks for your kind words.

mattlanger 16y ago

Amazing! I run a coworking space for entrepreneurs in Brooklyn, which means every month I'm running around gathering up a dozen or so checks from tenants--so this the most exciting tool I've seen in a long time. Thanks, oojacoboo. You're a lifesaver!

oojacoboo 16y ago
that makes me :)
- delano 16y ago
  Congrats on the launch! A few people here aren't sold on the concept but that's fine. There are obviously others that are.
  - maukdaddy 16y ago
    Don't mistake constructive criticism for not being sold on the concept.
    - oojacoboo 16y ago
      Couldn't agree more, I appreciate the input on things! I am a very harsh critic myself ;)

rwhitman 16y ago

I think this is great. I've been dreaming of a day when I can do online billing with a landlord. I once had a landlord where I was doing online bill pay from BofA, and they would mail the landlord physical checks, but the landlord wouldn't accept them. Apparently they periodically would think the bank's automated check was junk mail and would toss them in the trash and persisted to accuse me of not paying rent. So I will never mail a rent check again without a physical check in a handwritten envelope.

gruseom 16y ago

I wouldn't use the term "cloud" in the main slogan. A lot of people don't know what it means.

deleted 16y ago
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DevX101 16y ago

Who did your design? I'm looking for one.

tsalfie 16y ago

As a current Buildium user, I really like the look of this. I'm a small property manager and although I love the convenience of having software like this available I'm curious how your online payments are processed. My biggest complaint with my current program is that it takes 5-7 days for rents to hit my account and then another 5-7 for them to hit the owners' accounts. I think a great market for a product like this would be real estate agents that do some property management (10-25 units).

stefanobernardi 16y ago

I'm really hoping you actually become mainstream and the only way to manage rents and payments. I've had this idea a couple hundred times while looking for a place and then while having to deal with payments etc. Goog luck guys, keep us posted.

AHorihuela 16y ago

oojacoboo this looks awesome man - congrats! What did you develop it with?

uxp 16y ago
I'm also curious as to the technology behind the site.
oojacoboo 16y ago
We use the Symfony framework and jQuery.

deleted 16y ago

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mikeleeorg 16y ago

Several years ago, I had an apartment that used a similar online rent payment system, though I can't remember the name of it (payyourrent.com? rentpayment.com? hmm). As a tenant, one of the features I loved most about them was the ability to pay by credit card - so I could earn points through my rent. I didn't see a mention of being able to accept credit card payments, so if that's not in this version yet, here's a vote for having it in the next version. Good luck with the property owner sales end of this business too. As a tenant, I love systems like this, so I hope to see it in use someday.

gavinbaker 16y ago
Something that makes it easier to be a property owner is great. I see this not going after the current market but people like me who want to make renting easier.

GavinB 16y ago

I found the pricing page confusing at first. At a casual glance it looks like most of the plans are exactly the same. Something about the design made me ignore the number of units listed at the top. It also doesn't state if there are transaction fees, which you mentioned in another comment.

ttol 16y ago
Found it confusing too. Easy fix would be to add a new row in the table with the numbers so it appears in both the table and the graphic.
- oojacoboo 16y ago
  We'll review this, thanks for the input!
  - biot 16y ago
    Also check out how it looks on the iPad or simulate this by resizing your browser width so that it's at the smallest possible size without having a horizontal scrollbar. The content is right up against the browser edge with no space. You should add some padding on each side to avoid this.
    - oojacoboo 16y ago
      ouch, I knew about this, forgot to put in a fix... thanks for reminding me!

DanBlake 16y ago

I own with my father a 30 unit building. With that, let me just address the tagline: "Connect with tenants effortlessly, automate rent with online rent collection, organize work orders, and much more!" - Connect with tenants effortlessly - Not a good thing, Usually leads to excess work orders, more "asks" and petty squabbles about this and that. - Automate rent with online rent collection - Not sure how this is going to work. We have a option for people to pay rent via CC, but most people opt to do it in cash/check. Since only a fraction would use this, I would have to add to my work load to manually enter their transactions in here to have data integrity. - organize work orders- Definitely dont want this. If they need something done, they just go the manager and ask. Taking away that element will just create unneeded work orders. We already have a internal system for tracking needed work. I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things. - ...tasks, contacts and more! I guess this is cool, but we never really have a need for this. You already have to file their rental application and other work anyways, so its not like you wont have this. - I guess I just dont see the appeal. Its cool to have a nice online interface for this, but I know we wouldnt use it and even my friend who runs a 400 unit complex hates moving stuff to tech. Unfortunately, they always add more work then they solve. The last thing ANY land lord needs, is /MORE/ paper trail :) - If you get anything from this, get this- I am a technical, HN user that owns a apartment building. I am (what you would assume) your absolute ideal customer. And with that, I wouldnt use your product without significant changes. ~fin

oojacoboo 16y ago
If you want to take your business seriously and stay organized and stay on top of things, aside from rolling out your own system, there is no other way. You can't keep up with it all. I'd address each of these things but I am tied down at the moment. Basically, it sounds like it isn't for you, and it won't be for everyone.
- lrm242 16y ago
  What about the way he's currently doing it? Status-quo is a viable, and often the toughest, competitor.
16y ago

jedschmidt 16y ago

Very well designed! One thing: out of context in a tab, your favicon could seem inadvertently religious†. †: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_cross http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_cross

araneae 16y ago
I had the same reaction. I personally would change the tab.
three14 16y ago
I found that it reminded me of a cemetery.

dennyferra 16y ago

Great looking site, love the idea. Forwarded your site off to a few friends who could use this. Best of luck to you!

theoreticalee 16y ago
:) you're the best!

eekfuh 16y ago

How is this different than propertysolutions.com?

sursani 16y ago
That's a good question. I don't know myself. Do you have other competitors in this space?
- mwhaling 16y ago
  It's an incredibly fragmented market. There's plenty of competition, but the biggest players in property management software (http://www.realpage.com http://www.realpage.com and http://www.yardi.com http://www.yardi.com) have less than 10% of the market.

dustineichler 16y ago

Can you talk about what you did, the process from day 0 to now. I'd be interested in what you learned if anything. This looks so awesome, but I'm not your market. I'll post this on my buildings HOA board.

nickmolnar2 16y ago

Does this process payments from Canadian banks?

theoreticalee 16y ago
Hey! We are currently working with our merchant provider and our dev team to support Canada. I can let you know ASAP of any updates. Just give us your email via rentpost.com/contact form. thanks for the input :)

solutionyogi 16y ago

Website looks great but the copy needs some serious work. The main phrase: Start Simplifying Rent™ in the RentPost Cloud If you make the lady at my leasing office read this, she will be like 'What????' Connect with tenants effortlessly I don't think the landlord wants to connect with the tenant. He is interested in collecting rent. "We're just getting warmed up; get on the bandwagon." Why should I care that you are warming up? You don't want to invest in yesterday's technology. I don't care about technology, I care about how you can solve my problems. We want to work with you to continue to build RentPost to best fit your needs; we listen! So you are suggesting that RentPost may not fit my needs. I think you are in the same market as this software: http://www.landlordmax.com/ http://www.landlordmax.com/ Look at their website. It's not pretty like yours, but the website copy is all about the customer's needs/problems. E.g. Find out who's late paying your rents in seconds. Over 100 reports at your fingertips for you to analyze how your properties are doing within seconds. Good luck.

oojacoboo 16y ago
we are targeting a more technical audience right now while we get our feet in the door. We feel this is the best audience to help us get going. If we start to see issues with traction (it's been great so far), we will pivot as needed.
- webwright 16y ago
  Huh? Having a great headline for normal people generally means it's a crappy headline for tech people. Regardless, tech people have non-technical friends/relatives that they might send this to. Regardless of your opinion (and mine) you should A/B test your headline to maximize the traffic/attention you are getting.
- solutionyogi 16y ago
  By technical audience, do you mean technical people who are also property owners? If yes, then the headline is great. Though my guess would be that majority of your customers will be non technical. If the technical audience refers your website to non-technical people, you want your page understandable to them.

millerc 16y ago

Beautiful, technically and visually. The only reason for (business) failure would be if you released it 20 years too soon. I sincerely hope you're the one to make the tipping point.

tbgvi 16y ago

Love the site, unfortunately I'm definitely not in your target market :) One quick & easily implemented suggestion for you: put your phone number in a more prominent place. My company targets business owners as well, and at first I buried our phone number on the contact or about page. After talking with some customers I decided to not only make it more prominent, but to put it at the top of every page. Best change I ever made, the conversion rate of people who call us is astronomical. Business owners, especially ones in 'offline' industries, often want to hear your voice before they decide to work with you. Anyways thats just my 2 cents, congrats on the launch!

dave1619 16y ago

Will online payment collection work with all U.S banks?

theoreticalee 16y ago
It should for all banks that operate on the ACH network, which from my understanding, is all banks in the US.

elvirs 16y ago

I love the 'Unlimited Units' plan for $249 which is there just to make 'Unlimited Units' plan for $69 look like a good deal.

pitdesi 16y ago

This is a great start... it would also be useful to have a system that automatically created listings to post on craigslist and any other sites

mtalantikite 16y ago

Are you guys aware of http://www.rentjuice.com/ http://www.rentjuice.com/ ? How to you compare to them?

notJim 16y ago

> You will not find anything that is more user friendly, period And yet, no hover states on your buttons :P.

theoreticalee 16y ago
Heh, input received. +1 for you :P

markdunkley 16y ago

Disappointed how similar the sign up pages are (https://www.shopify.com/services/signup https://www.shopify.com/services/signup vs. https://rentpost.com/pricing https://rentpost.com/pricing)

mbesto 16y ago
Disappointed? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

orijing 16y ago

You might want to go through all your pages and do a spelling/grammar check. For example, take a look at this: http://rentpost.com/tenants http://rentpost.com/tenants "Your rental property now comes standard with it's very own web dashboard" When I see an error like that, I lose a great deal of respect for the company. Either it means it's worked by people who lack understanding of grammar, or lack the motivation to proofread their work. Neither is a great signal for me. The website is BEAUTIFUL though.

LiveTheDream 16y ago

The page took over a minute to load for me. After hitting reload -> 4.5 seconds for the main rentpost.com/ to load, 12s for combine.php, 20s for typekit javascript (which seemed to block anything from loading until it was done, including resources from rentpost.com domain and jquery from the google ajax api). After these resources are in my browser cache, the load time is normal (400ms) but the first load and after a reload...ouch!

oojacoboo 16y ago
server was getting hit HARD there for a bit.

kleinsch 16y ago

I see that you offer a 14 day free trial. How does someone go about doing a trial of software that transforms the entire process of running an apartment building? You get all your tenants to sign up with this system, then change your mind and make them sign up with a new system again? It might be more useful to have a live demo system people can log into both as a tenant and landlord to see how it works.

kin 16y ago

So since you're way ahead of the game. I would like to suggest this. The ideas behind rentpost.com have been on my mind for a few years now. I've never done anything to pursue it so congrats, the site looks great. Please, grow and hire people so that this saturates the market. Then, when large enough, please provide a clean interface for prospective tenants to view apartment listings. Searching for apartments have got to be one of the biggest pains to deal with. If you have a central database of awesome tech-savvy apartments with your website as a portal for great customer service, I don't see why you can't make your customers more happy by providing listings.

bryanh 16y ago

I'm currently managing approx 50 (?) units and I thought I'd drop my opinion: Make me understand the pain I am in. Real estate is painful, but as you have undoubtedly noticed, people think the pain is a natural part of the package and they can't separate the two. How about automatic late notices? Projected vacancy and turnover assistance? I mean, those are really painful and annoying processes (at least to me), present me with a punch-by-punch pain tour and offer the solution. Additionally, for heaven's sake, drop the buzzwords and market talk. I feel like you designed the site first and tried to shoehorn some content in there. Property managers care little about the "cloud" or "we're easy to use!". They want to get paid on time, how are you helping them? Best of luck! I think there is massive potential here but I tend to think you are going about it the wrong way in your presentation. As rwhitman has said, it seems like you are trying to solve tenants' problems, not the landlords'. Noble indeed, but not the best strategy.

jokull 16y ago

Please make it obvious if this is available for international customers or US only. I dug around but not any closer to knowing if this service is available at all to me.

mbesto 16y ago

Who did your design? In house? It's AMAZING.

oojacoboo 16y ago
yours truly ;)

aces 16y ago

i like the idea.I've thought about doing something like this before and wish every place would take credit card for rent. It would be great to be able to get credit card points for my largest monthly expense and also not have to worry about cutting a check every month. Its a great product from the tenants perspective.

AlekseyKorzun 16y ago

Great idea but you should market it to commercial property owners, not to tenants.

middus 16y ago

37signals want their design back. Edit: Come on, the site design is a rip off of the product site of i.a. http://backpackit.com/ http://backpackit.com/

theoreticalee 16y ago
Heh, I think I see what you are trying to get at. We used a very popular design philosophy right now. Same reason why all tires are round :P http://clockspot.com/ http://clockspot.com/ http://www.postbox-inc.com/ http://www.postbox-inc.com/ http://www.skyledger.com/ http://www.skyledger.com/ http://www.kindlingapp.com/ http://www.kindlingapp.com/ http://www.roninapp.com/ http://www.roninapp.com/ http://www.mailchimp.com/ http://www.mailchimp.com/ This is a really cool resource to see the hottest, freshest websites weekly: http://abduzeedo.com/tags/sites-week http://abduzeedo.com/tags/sites-week Thanks for the input, we love to hear from both sides of the fence.

stevenp 16y ago

I'd like to get more of a sense of why it took you 2 years... is anyone using it yet? A blog post on your process would be great. 2 years seems like a long time (assuming you don't have a bunch of customers already using it).

dhyasama 16y ago

Why do I need a website to connect with my tenants? They have my phone number and email. Assuming I signed up because they would prefer to contact me through this service, then if I were the type to ignore them by phone and email, I'd probably ignore them through this as well.

oojacoboo 16y ago
Well, if that's the case, this probably isn't for you.

georgieporgie 16y ago

Totally dumb pedantry, but: > You will not find anything that is more user friendly, period If you write 'period' does that mean you don't need a period? It's the only sentence in the list that doesn't end with punctuation.

AndyIngram 16y ago

Congratulations on the launch. I like the look of the product and wished my landlord would use it. Looking at the comments you may want to adjust the pitch a bit to show that it makes the day to day management of units more efficient. If your tool can identify bad tenants quickly a landlord can address them before it forces other renters to leave. Also easy reporting of problems, however minor, prevents small issues from becoming large ones. For instance a leaking tap is much less costly to repair then a tap and a water damaged ceiling and floor. Other efficiencies could be the tech itself removing the lags of phone and voice-mail communications, using template replies instead of having to write fresh emails or make long phone calls for all situations, rapid forwarding to contracted service providers for repairs, and tracking of expenses for similar items and services. One of the big complaints of property managers is that they mostly get calls for bad things or when tenants and strata owners are mad. If you could make communications more formal with a tool like this you could minimize the time managers have to sit on the phone and be yelled at which could make for a happier workforce and cut some of the BS out of the workday. Oh and look into Strata managers also

timcederman 16y ago

An odd nitpick, but your logo looks like a religious artifact.

eurohacker 16y ago

what technology you use - php, ruby ? and why

oojacoboo 16y ago
We use php b/c of previous experience, availability to scripts, compatibility with existing technology, and we like its licensing.

prawn 16y ago

Haven't read all 220+ comments so sorry if someone has already suggested this, but what if you tried to convince landlords by sheer weight of numbers. Allow tenants to enter their landlord and 'vote' for them to adopt this system, as well as encourage other tenants to do the same.

nedwin 16y ago

I think execution on this is really great, even if the copy needs work. I worked on vaguely similar concept about 12 months ago and it is definitely an interesting space. Our angle was to try to remove the need for a real estate agent by empowering landlords. My advice for your system is to get out there and sell, sell, sell. You'll only get better by direct sales, you'll only get traction via direct sales. They won't come to you, you'll need to bust your ass convincing them to get on board. If you do that then the copy doesn't mean a thing.

aptguy1963 16y ago

I find one HUGE error. In today's world, you call the people that rent from you "residents" -- not "tenants". When I see or hear the word tenant it make me cringe. Might as well draw your fingernails across a chalkboard. Tenants rent office, industrial and retail buildings. Residents rent apartment units. I have a million other comments as well, some favorable and others negative, but I hate to type and am too busy to bother going into this at length. Good luck going forward. Lots of other competitors out there -- but your pricing does seem reasonable. Oh and BTW, I would NEVER rent a building from DanBlake. He's the type of person who gives the industry a black eye, as well as ensuring that the indutry stays at least 10 years behind the tech curve. That is all.

imsky 16y ago

hey jacob, great to see you finally got this off the ground. good luck, it looks great!