Buildium Review and Buildium Reviews From Property Managers on Cost, Fees and Support

Buildium reviews are unusually consistent. Capterra shows 4.5 out of 5 from more than 2,200 reviews, and Trustpilot, where unhappy customers usually drag a score down, shows 4.4 from about 820. The complaints that do show up are about the same three things: hold times, the learning curve, and fees that were not in the number the buyer had in mind. This review works from Buildium's own price list and fee schedule, then reads the pattern in what managers write once they are live. We sell rental listings, not management software, so we have no stake in which suite you pick.

If what brought you here is an empty unit rather than the books, you can list the vacancy on RentPlace for $39 a month while you compare suites, or score the ad you already have in the Listing Grader first.

The short verdict

Buildium is a solid, well-supported system for a management company with roughly 30 to 500 doors that needs trust accounting, owner statements and a resident portal, and it is one of the few in that tier that still prints its prices. It is overbuilt and overpriced for a landlord with a handful of units. Its weak spot is the payment fee schedule, which on the entry plan can cost more each month than the subscription itself. Pick the plan by counting your bank-transfer payments, not by the starting price.

How much does Buildium cost?

Buildium costs $62 a month on Essential, $192 on Growth and $400 on Premium at the smallest unit counts, billed monthly, with about 10% off for paying a year up front. Essential rises with every block of units and is sold up to 150. Growth is flat to 50 units and Premium flat to 150, then both climb.

Two costs sit outside the table. Every new Growth and Premium customer has to buy Buildium's onboarding service, a data import and training plan, and the pricing page does not say what it costs, so get that figure in writing before the trial ends. Essential skips onboarding but gets ticket support only, with no phone line. The 14-day trial runs on sample data and needs no card. Our Buildium pricing page has every rung of the ladder from 1 to 5,000 units with the annual invoice beside each one.

If the records you are moving still live in scanned leases and paper ledgers, the onboarding import goes faster when you first pull the fields out of those documents automatically rather than retyping tenant names, rents and deposit amounts by hand.

Buildium pricing changes

Buildium raised all three starting prices in late 2025. Its pricing page listed Essential at $58, Growth at $183 and Premium at $375 a month through October 2025, and by December 2025 it showed $62, $192 and $400. That is a rise of about 7% on Essential, 5% on Growth and 7% on Premium, and the new prices still stood in October 2026.

The fee line moved more than the plan line. On Essential an incoming EFT payment went from $1.99 to $2.35, an 18% rise, so a 40-unit owner collecting every rent by EFT pays about $173 more a year in fees, while the Essential starting price rose $48 a year. If you signed before the change, check your renewal notice for the new rate rather than assuming the old one carries over. The figures come from Buildium's own pricing page as archived on each date.

The payment fees that change the bill

Buildium charges per payment, and the rate depends on the plan. Incoming rent by bank transfer costs $2.35 on Essential, $1.35 on Growth and $0.60 on Premium, free for Premium's first 12 months. Cards are 2.99% on every plan. Paying owners and vendors electronically is $0.99 each. Extra bank accounts are $99 apiece beyond the 10 Growth includes and the 100 on Premium, and Essential pays for every one.

That is the single most useful thing to know before signing. On Essential the EFT fees pass the subscription at 100 units, and from about 81 units Growth is the cheaper plan once the $1 per payment it saves is counted, before you add the phone support and inspections Growth includes. When reviewers describe fees adding 30 to 50% to the advertised price, this is the arithmetic behind it: Essential, with most tenants paying by bank.

Does Buildium charge tenants?

Not by default. Buildium bills its payment fees to the manager, and the manager decides whether to recover them from residents as a convenience fee, within state rules. Screening works the same way: $17 a report if you pay it, $35 if you pass it to the applicant, and $20 for enhanced screening on Growth and Premium. That makes Buildium easier to explain to residents than suites that set the resident fee themselves, and it puts the decision, and the bill, on your side of the table.

Buildium against AppFolio, DoorLoop, Rentec Direct and Yardi Breeze

At 100 units Buildium Growth sits in the middle of the market on subscription and toward the top once payment fees are counted.

Buildium wins on transparency against AppFolio, whose price you only see in a quote, and on support depth against the cheaper tools. It loses on raw price to Yardi Breeze and, once EFT fees are in, to Rentec Direct. The detail is on our AppFolio pricing, DoorLoop pricing and Rentec Direct pricing pages (DoorLoop and Buildium are set side by side, payment fees included, in DoorLoop vs Buildium pricing), and if Rentvine is on your list too, we priced it against Buildium in Rentvine vs Buildium pricing.

What Buildium reviews praise

Three themes repeat across Capterra and Trustpilot. First, the support staff: reviewers describe patient, knowledgeable people who walk them through trust accounting and year-end, and Capterra scores customer service 4.4. Second, having leases, accounting, maintenance requests, resident communication and payments in one system instead of four. Third, the resident portal and app, which managers say cut the number of "did you get my rent" calls. Owner statements and the court-ready tenant ledger come up often from managers who handle evictions.

What Buildium reviews complain about

About 13% of Trustpilot reviews are one star, and they cluster. Support response times are the first complaint, often from the same customers who praise the staff once they reach someone, which usually points to Essential's ticket-only queue. The learning curve is the second: too many clicks to reach a report, rigid workflows, and late-fee rules that take setup. The third is banking: delays verifying bank accounts and setting up trust accounts, which matter because rent cannot flow until they clear. Accounting-heavy reviewers also note there is no live QuickBooks sync, since Buildium is meant to replace it, and that reconciliation and journal entries feel limited next to dedicated accounting software.

Is Buildium worth it?

For a management company with 50 to 500 doors that manages for owners, Buildium is worth it on Growth, at $2.52 a door a month at 100 units, as long as you price the EFT fees and the onboarding service in from day one. For a self-managing landlord with fewer than about 20 units it usually is not: Essential is $671 a year prepaid plus $2.35 per rent payment, where landlord apps charge $144 to $240 a year and many collect rent for less.

Who Buildium fits and who it does not

Buy Buildium if you manage residential units for owners, need trust accounting, 1099s and owner statements, and want a vendor that publishes its prices. Take Growth from about 80 doors. Take Premium if your tenants pay by bank and the first-year EFT holiday and 100 bank accounts are worth the extra $148 a month at 100 units.

Look elsewhere if you own your units and keep your own books. Our Stessa pricing and RentRedi pricing pages cover the flat-priced apps built for you. Look elsewhere too if your portfolio is mostly commercial, where reviewers say Buildium is thinner.

None of these suites fixes the part before the lease. Buildium will list a vacancy and syndicate it, and then the inquiries arrive as unsorted email. On RentPlace a renter answers your move-in date, income band, occupants, pets and lease length before the message can send, and each unit sits on a vacancy board with its days empty beside it. For a management team the plans for property managers run $99 a month for up to 25 listings and $299 for up to 150, and a landlord with a single vacancy can list it for $39 a month and stop paying once it is rented.