If you manage a handful of rentals yourself, you have probably run into Avail while searching for landlord software. It shows up in every "best property management app" list, it is backed by Realtor.com, and it does a lot of things well. The question most solo landlords are actually asking is narrower: do I need a full online platform with a monthly per-unit fee, or do I need a fast, private place to track my units, tenants, leases, and expenses? This comparison walks through both honestly — including the places where Avail is the better tool.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | KeyLoft | Avail |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — no subscription, no upsell tier | Free tier available; Unlimited Plus at $7 per unit per month |
| Works Offline | Yes — 100% offline, every feature | No — requires an internet connection |
| Account Required | No account, no email, no password | Yes — email account required for landlord and tenants |
| Best For | Solo landlords and small portfolios who want fast private records | Landlords who want online rent collection, listings, and tenant applications |
| Platform | iPhone and iPad (App Store) | Web browser plus mobile apps |
| Key Features | Units, tenants, leases, rent tracking, expenses, maintenance logs, documents | Rent payments, listing syndication, tenant screening, online applications, state-specific leases, maintenance tracking |
| Data Privacy | Data stays on your device; nothing uploaded | Data stored on company servers under a corporate privacy policy |
Pricing
Avail's pricing is genuinely reasonable for what it delivers. The free tier covers unlimited units with core features: listings, applications, leases, rent collection, and maintenance tracking. The paid tier, Unlimited Plus, runs about $7 per unit per month and adds next-day rent payments, custom lease clauses, waived ACH fees for tenants, rent price analysis, and priority support. Tenant screening reports are charged separately per applicant, typically around $55–$70 depending on the package and who pays.
The thing to watch is the per-unit structure. At two units, the paid tier is $14 a month and barely registers. At twelve units, it is $84 a month, or roughly $1,008 a year — real money for a small operator. And the cost scales with exactly the thing you are trying to grow. Many landlords stay on Avail's free tier permanently and that works fine; just be aware the features you probably want most (faster payouts, custom clauses) sit behind the paid line.
KeyLoft has no pricing tiers to explain. It is free, there is no premium unlock, and there is no per-unit meter. Here is what that difference looks like over time for a landlord with five units on Avail's paid plan:
| Cost Period | KeyLoft | Avail (Free Tier) | Avail Unlimited Plus (5 units) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 | $0 | $35 |
| 1 Year | $0 | $0 | $420 |
| 3 Years | $0 | $0 | $1,260 |
| 3 Years (12 units) | $0 | $0 | $3,024 |
To be fair: if Avail's paid features save you a single bad tenant placement or two weeks of vacancy, that $420 pays for itself several times over. Cost alone is not the argument. It matters most when you are paying for capabilities you do not actually use.
Save money. Try KeyLoft free today. Download KeyLoft for Free — no account needed, works 100% offline.
Features
Avail and KeyLoft are built around different assumptions, and understanding that makes the comparison much clearer.
Avail is a transaction platform. Its core value is moving things between you and your tenants over the internet. You list a vacancy and it syndicates to Realtor.com, Zillow, Zumper and others. Applicants fill out a standardized online application. You order a credit and background report through TransUnion. You generate a state-specific lease, send it for e-signature, and collect rent by ACH or card on a recurring schedule. Tenants submit maintenance requests through their own portal. That end-to-end chain is genuinely useful, and building it yourself would be miserable. Avail's lease templates in particular are worth noting — they are attorney-reviewed and updated for state law, which is not something a general-purpose app can match.
KeyLoft is a record-keeping tool. Its core value is knowing, instantly and without a login, what is going on across your portfolio. You track units and their details, tenants and their contact info, lease terms and renewal dates, rent received and outstanding, expenses by property and category, maintenance history, and important documents. It is built for the landlord who is standing in a driveway, opening the app, and answering "when does this lease end and did they pay me for July?" in under ten seconds.
The honest gap runs in both directions. KeyLoft does not collect rent, syndicate listings, or pull screening reports — those things require servers and third-party integrations by definition. Avail, meanwhile, is heavier for daily use: it is browser-first, requires a connection, and asks your tenants to create accounts and adopt a portal, which is a real friction point when you have long-term tenants who prefer to text you.
KeyLoft is also part of a small family of tools built on the same offline-first philosophy, which matters if your rental income is not your only income. If you also freelance or run a side business, Stintly handles time tracking, invoicing, and small business finance the same way. If you do your own renovation work or contract it out, TrestleBook covers construction project management, contractor billing, and job costing — useful when a unit turn becomes a real project with a real budget.
Want to try KeyLoft for free? Download KeyLoft for Free — no subscription required.
Offline & Privacy
This is the clearest structural difference between the two, and it is not a marketing point — it changes what you can do on a given Tuesday.
Avail is a cloud platform. Everything you do requires a working connection. That is fine at your kitchen table and frustrating in a concrete basement, a rural property with bad reception, a parking garage, or on a plane. Landlords who do their own inspections and repairs run into this constantly: you are in the exact place where you need to log something, and the app will not load.
KeyLoft works entirely offline. Not "offline with limited functionality" — every feature works with airplane mode on, because there is no server round-trip to make. You can walk a vacant unit in a dead zone, log five maintenance items and a repair cost, and close the app. Nothing syncs later because nothing needed to sync.
The privacy consequence follows from the same design. Your tenants' names, phone numbers, lease terms, and payment history are sensitive information that you have a duty to handle carefully. With any cloud platform, that data sits on someone else's infrastructure under a privacy policy that can be revised, and Avail is owned by Realtor.com, which is part of a much larger real estate data business. There is no accusation here — Avail's stated policies are ordinary for the industry — but corporate ownership means your portfolio data lives inside a company whose broader business is real estate data. Some landlords do not care. Some care a lot.
KeyLoft has nothing to reason about. There is no account, no email address on file, and no upload. Your data is on your device, backed up wherever you already back up your phone. No breach of a KeyLoft server can expose your tenants, because there is no KeyLoft server holding them.
The practical test: if the vendor disappeared tomorrow, would you still have your records? With a local-first app, yes. With a cloud platform, you have an export window and a deadline.
Who Should Use Avail
Avail is the better choice, and you should not talk yourself out of it, if:
- You want online rent collection. Automated ACH with reminders and late-fee handling genuinely reduces friction. If you are chasing checks every month, this alone justifies the platform.
- You turn units regularly. Listing syndication to Realtor.com, Zillow, and Zumper from one form saves hours per vacancy.
- You screen a lot of applicants. Integrated TransUnion credit, criminal, and eviction reports with a standardized application is far better than assembling that yourself.
- You need state-specific, attorney-reviewed leases. This is real legal value and a general app cannot replicate it.
- Your tenants want a portal. Younger tenants often prefer paying and submitting requests online rather than texting.
- You work across devices and locations. Cloud access from any browser matters if you manage remotely or have a partner or bookkeeper who needs the same view.
Who Should Use KeyLoft
KeyLoft fits when your bottleneck is organization, not transactions:
- You own one to fifteen units and manage them yourself. The per-unit math never bites, and you do not need a portal for four tenants you already know by name.
- Your tenants pay by Zelle, Venmo, check, or bank transfer. Plenty of long-term tenants have a payment method that works. You need to record it, not replace it.
- You spend time in places with no signal. Basements, crawlspaces, rural properties, storage areas — offline is not a nice-to-have there.
- You do not want your tenant data on a corporate server. Either on principle or because you would rather not manage that exposure.
- You want to stop paying for software. Especially if you are on a paid tier now and honestly use two of its features.
- You value speed. Open, tap, answer. No login, no loading spinner, no password reset at 8 p.m. when a tenant calls.
- You need clean records at tax time. Expenses tagged by property and category all year is the difference between an afternoon and a lost weekend.
The Bottom Line
Avail is a solid product and the free tier is a legitimately good deal. If you need rent collection, listing syndication, and tenant screening in one place, use it — that is what it is built for, and it does it well. Nothing in this comparison suggests otherwise.
But a lot of landlords sign up for a full platform when what they actually needed was a good notebook. If your rent already arrives reliably, your units rarely turn over, and your real problem is that lease dates live in your head and receipts live in a shoebox, a per-unit subscription is solving a problem you do not have. KeyLoft is built for exactly that landlord: free, instant, offline, private, and focused on the records you actually reference week to week.
There is also no reason to treat this as either-or. Some landlords keep Avail's free tier for the once-a-year vacancy listing and screening run, and use KeyLoft as the daily record of everything else. That combination costs nothing and covers both jobs properly.
Since KeyLoft is free and requires no account, testing it costs you nothing but the download. Enter your units and current leases, see whether it fits how you actually work, and decide from there.
Ready to switch? Download KeyLoft for Free — it takes 30 seconds and costs nothing.