Property management software used to be a fairly boring purchase. You needed something to store landlord details, keep an eye on rent, log repairs and hopefully remind somebody when a gas certificate was due.

That is not the market letting agents are operating in anymore.

The Renters’ Rights Act has changed the tenancy framework in England, compliance expectations are higher, landlords over the Making Tax Digital threshold are now keeping digital property records and sending quarterly updates, and tenants increasingly expect maintenance, documents and communication to work through an app rather than a chain of emails.

That makes the software sitting behind a letting agency much more important than it was even 3 or 4 years ago.

I came across a sponsored Letting Agent Today comparison of Alto, Reapit and Street. It was produced by Alto and unsurprisingly concluded Alto was the strongest overall option. That does not make the comparison useless, but it does mean the conclusions need to be treated like marketing rather than independent research.

The best property management software is not the one with the longest feature list. It is the one that removes the most expensive admin from the type of agency you actually run.

So I checked what all 3 platforms currently say they offer, what has changed in 2026 and where the differences are actually meaningful.

Those numbers are vendor claims rather than independently audited market-share data, but they show that none of these products should be dismissed as a niche experiment. All 3 are operating at meaningful scale.

Alto: the broad all-rounder

Alto’s biggest advantage is breadth. Its current property-management product covers maintenance, compliance, client accounting, tenancy management and reporting inside the same system, and Alto also supports block management.

For an agency already doing sales and lettings, that matters because the alternative is often a stack of separate systems stitched together with integrations. Every additional platform creates another login, another data sync and another point where somebody can update one system but forget the other.

Alto’s property-management dashboard gives managers a central view of upcoming and overdue events including inspections, insurance, compliance checks and safety certificates. Its lettings CRM also includes maintenance reporting, contractor tracking, rent collection, deposit tracking and reconciliations.

The platform is also leaning heavily into automation and AI. Alto promotes tools such as Alto IQ and automated compliance functions, although some of the headline time-saving claims on its marketing pages come from Alto’s own customer data rather than independent benchmarking.

Reapit: built for scale and complexity

Reapit has been around the agency software market for years and its strongest argument is scale.

Reapit says more than 420,000 properties are managed on its platform. Its property-management tools cover tenancy records, rent reviews, inspections, renewals, works orders, arrears and compliance certificates. Lettings teams can manage pre-tenancy processes, property matching and wider client records from the same platform.

Where Reapit tends to make more sense is in larger organisations that have complex reporting structures, multiple offices or brands and internal people who are comfortable with a more involved rollout. Reapit itself says migration time can vary from around 5 to 12 weeks depending on the complexity of the conversion.

That is not necessarily a weakness. A multi-branch group moving years of tenancy, landlord, accounting and compliance data should probably be suspicious of anybody promising a painless overnight migration.

The trade-off is that enterprise flexibility can feel like overkill if you run one branch and manage a relatively straightforward portfolio.

Street: strongest modern user experience

Street is the newer-feeling product in this comparison, and its strongest features are the ones that directly remove communication-heavy admin.

Tenants can report maintenance through the app, landlords can approve work from their phone and contractors can be assigned inside the same workflow. Street says its AI self-service process resolves around 1 in 5 maintenance jobs before an agent becomes involved.

Street also tracks Gas Safety, EICR, EPC and contractor certificates, stores documents and flags expiry dates. Its AI document reader can extract details from certificates and invoices, while recurring inspections can be scheduled automatically.

Client accounting is now a substantial part of Street too, including landlord statements, payment timing alerts, deposit management, non-resident landlord tax handling and exports to Xero and QuickBooks.

One thing I would push back on from the sponsored comparison is the suggestion that Street is basically suitable only for agencies just starting to take on managed stock. Street now says more than 275,000 properties are managed through the platform, which suggests it has moved beyond being simply an early-stage CRM.

Why the 2026 compliance changes matter

The reason this comparison matters more in 2026 is that the operational cost of missing something has increased.

Most landlords and letting agents in England had to provide existing tenants with the government’s Renters’ Rights Act Information Sheet by 31 May 2026. GOV.UK states that failing to provide it could lead to a fine of up to £7,000.

That is exactly the type of obligation that should not live in somebody’s memory or an Excel spreadsheet. Whether you choose Alto, Reapit, Street or something else, the system should make it obvious what needs action, who owns the task and whether it was completed.

Making Tax Digital adds another layer. Since 6 April 2026, individual landlords and sole traders with qualifying self-employment and property income above £50,000 have had to keep digital records and send quarterly updates to HMRC through compatible software. The first threshold falls to £30,000 in April 2027 and £20,000 in April 2028.

A letting agency’s CRM is not automatically the landlord’s MTD submission software, but better accounting records and cleaner digital data make the wider reporting process much easier.

In 2026, property-management software is becoming part CRM, part compliance system, part accounting platform and part customer-service layer.

What about pricing?

This is one of the frustrating parts of comparing agency software.

None of these platforms is as easy to compare as buying Netflix. Pricing can depend on users, branches, stock levels, modules and implementation. Reapit explicitly says its platform is charged on a per-user basis and depends on the parts of the platform required. Alto says property-management pricing depends on portfolio size and features. Street’s commercial structure also depends on the package and scale being used.

That means any article declaring one platform definitely cheaper than another without a real quote for the same agency is probably oversimplifying.

The more useful calculation is total cost. If software costs an extra £500 a month but removes enough manual work to avoid another full-time hire, it may be the cheaper system. If you pay for dozens of advanced features your 3-person agency never uses, the opposite is true.

So which one would I choose?

For a traditional UK independent or multi-branch letting agency that wants a single mature platform covering a lot of ground, Alto looks like the safest all-round choice. The block-management capability is a genuine differentiator if that forms part of the business.

For a large group with complex reporting, established internal processes and the resource to manage a bigger implementation, Reapit still deserves serious consideration. It has depth and scale that should not be written off just because a sponsored competitor comparison prefers Alto.

If user experience, automation, tenant self-service and mobile workflows are the priority, Street is probably the most interesting product of the three. Its current property-management feature set is materially deeper than the sponsored article’s description suggests.

If I were researching this purchase now, I would also ask each vendor how its workflows specifically handle the Renters’ Rights Act changes rather than accepting a generic “compliance ready” label. Ask to see the audit trail, certificate workflow, rent-review process and how changes are rolled out when legislation moves again.

I would also test data export before signing anything. CRM relationships can last for years, and the ease of leaving a platform is almost as important as the ease of joining one.

I cover property, investing and the changing UK rental market on The Anxious Investor on YouTube and TikTok.

Learn more →

Written by Aren Deu | The Anxious Investor