Side by side
| Rentmark | Spreadsheet | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $19.99/mo or $199.90/yr, flat | Free |
| Full control of the format | Fixed structure | Total |
| Rent schedule created for you each month | Automatic, per active lease | You type it |
| PDF receipt to the tenant | One click | Not possible |
| Late-payment reminder sent | Automatic | You remember, or you don't |
| Tenant portal | Each tenant has their own | Not possible |
| Maintenance request with photos and a thread | Included | Lives in your text messages |
| Dated, co-signed condition evidence | Move-in and move-out with photos | Not possible |
| State deposit cap and deadline applied to the lease | Automatic per state | You research it |
| Survives being on one person's laptop | Yes | Depends entirely on your backups |
What a spreadsheet costs
Free, and genuinely good at what it does. The cost of a spreadsheet is never the licence — it is the hours, and the evidence you did not create at the time.
Rentmark, for comparison, is $19.99 a month or $199.90 a year — one plan, every feature, unlimited properties, no per-document or per-account fees. The full pricing page lists exactly what is free and what the subscription turns on.
When a spreadsheet is the better choice
Genuinely, and we would rather you read this before subscribing than after:
- You own one unit, rented to someone you trust, and nothing has ever gone wrong
- You genuinely enjoy the spreadsheet and it is current — a maintained sheet beats an abandoned account
- Your accountant already has a template they want you to use
When Rentmark is the better choice
- You have missed a rent due date, or discovered one late
- You have ever tried to reconstruct a year of payments from bank statements
- You are holding a deposit and have no dated photographs of the unit at move-in
- Your tenants reach you across three different messaging apps
- You own more than two units, where the admin stops being a rounding error
What switching actually involves
The part people expect to be painful is free: you can create a Rentmark account and enter every property, unit, tenant and lease you have without paying anything. Nothing is metered at that stage, so you can rebuild your portfolio in full, look at it, and decide afterwards.
The subscription starts when you want Rentmark to do things — generate the monthly rent schedule, issue receipts, chase late payments, open the tenant portal, run inspections and keep the accounts. Export is always available as CSV, in both directions of the decision.