Property Management System Explained: A Complete Buyer’s Guide
Choosing the right property management system can make or break your operations. This guide breaks down PMS types, must-have features, and leading software options so you can confidently pick the best solution for your business.
Key Takeaways
- Property management systems help businesses run their day-to-day operations more smoothly.
- PMS software has different use cases across industries and serves short-term rental hosts, landlords, investors, property managers, and hotel operators.
- We’ve listed the most important features to consider when selecting a property management system.
- Read our list of leading property management systems for short-term rental hosts, landlords, and hotels.
Not all property management systems are built the same, so their features will vary.
In the hospitality industry, hotels typically use robust systems combined with revenue management. Landlords need solutions focused on lease management and tenant screening.
Vacation rental managers need a tool that helps manage guest turnover and integrates directly with platforms like Airbnb.
Discover different use cases and learn how to compare and choose the best property management system for your business.
What is a Property Management System?
A Property Management System (PMS) is a digital platform that automates and simplifies tasks related to the management and operation of properties, particularly within the hospitality and short-term vacation rental industries.
Property management systems help businesses run their day-to-day operations more smoothly.
The term started in the hotel industry. That's where "Hotel Property Management System" came from. Hotels use these systems to handle front desk operations, reservations, bookings from different channels, pricing, housekeeping, and pretty much everything else that keeps a hotel running.
Now, these systems aren't just for hotels anymore. You'll find them managing residential buildings, commercial properties, vacation rentals, and short-term stays.
People often call property management systems "property management software." It's basically the same thing. The software helps property managers and owners keep track of everything—tenants, leases, finances, maintenance requests, and even marketing.
Types of Property Management Systems
Modern Property Management Systems are cloud-based PMS, meaning they are hosted on the internet and can be accessed from anywhere, anytime. This enables users to manage their properties remotely.
There are a few different types, depending on what industry you're in.
Vacation Rental PMS
Vacation rental businesses have a workflow centered on guest turnover, so their property management systems require a feature set distinct from hotels or long-term rentals. Tools like iGMS integrate with major short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo, coordinate tasks with cleaners based on your calendar, and automate manual tasks.
Hotel PMS
A hotel property management system serves a wide range of hotels, from large hotel chains and luxury brands to boutique and independent hotels. For example, enterprise systems like Oracle OPERA are built for large chains with multi-property management and advanced reporting.
Residential PMS
Residential PMS like Innago, Buildium, and Appfolio serve landlords and property managers of residential properties. These tools help landlords manage the full lease lifecycle, from tenant screening and digital leases to rent collection and maintenance. Some are well-suited for small landlords, while others focus exclusively on scale, such as AppFolio.
Commercial PMS
Some solutions, such as MRI Property Management, are geared more toward commercial properties. Commercial PMS platforms are built to handle longer, more complex lease structures. This includes multi-year agreements, percentage rent for retail tenants, common area maintenance reconciliations, and detailed escalation clauses.
HOA/Community PMS
Solutions such as PayHOA and Condo Control are designed specifically for condos and HOAs. They typically focus on dues collection, violation tracking, architectural requests, resident communication, and board management rather than lease or guest management.
Hybrid PMS
Most often, residential, HOA, commercial, and student housing properties are covered by a hybrid solution. Software like Buildium or Appfolio can manage any of these assets. These platforms are designed to manage mixed portfolios. Property managers centralize accounting, maintenance, and communication across property types in a single system.
Who Needs a Property Management System?
STR Hosts
If you’re running a short-term rental business on Airbnb or Vrbo, or you drive direct bookings, a PMS is basically your right-hand helper. It keeps track of bookings, communicates with guests automatically, and makes sure turnovers happen smoothly, so you’re not buried in messages and cleaning schedules all the time.
Independent landlords
Even if you just own a handful of rental units, a PMS can save you a ton of headaches. It helps with rent collection, tenant screening, lease tracking, and maintenance requests. All in one place instead of scattered across spreadsheets and emails.
Property management companies
Managing multiple properties for different owners? Without a PMS, things can get messy fast. These systems help keep all your tenants, leases, maintenance tasks, and finances organized, and even automate reminders and reporting for your owners.
Real estate investors
Investors often juggle lots of properties, often in different cities or states. A PMS gives a clear view of cash flow, occupancy rates, and performance across your portfolio, so you can make smarter decisions. And it automates a major part of your busienss, so it works for remote management too.
Hotels
Hotels have been using a hotel management system for decades. Today, modern cloud-based hotel PMS solutions handle both front-office tasks like bookings and check-ins and back-office hotel operations like accounting and reporting. Hotels can effectively manage room rates and allocate rooms across various distribution channels, with the main goal of increasing RevPAR and ADR.
What Are the Most Common Use Cases Of a Property Management System
1. For short-term rentals
Short-term rental operators use PMS such as iGMS to manage listings. Key use cases include:
- Channel manager: Sync calendars and rates across platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com. You can view all online reservations in one place.
- Automated guest communication: Send booking confirmations, check-in instructions, and follow-ups. Automate reviews.
- Cleaning and turnover scheduling: Coordinate staff and track maintenance between stays.
- Secure payments: Process guest payments and manage invoices using an integrated payment gateway.
- Online booking engine: Direct booking website to increase direct bookings for rental properties.
2. For residential buildings
For residential property managers, property management solutions simplify lease and tenant management. Common use cases include:
- Tenant onboarding and screening: Process applications, background checks, and lease agreements digitally.
- Listing syndication: Automatic distribution of your property listing to rental websites for advertising.
- Lease tracking and renewals: Monitor lease expirations and automate reminders.
- Automated rent collection: Accept online payments and track late fees.
- Maintenance and work order management: Receive requests, assign vendors, and track completion.
- Owner reporting and financial management: Generate income statements, cash flow reports, and portfolio dashboards.
3. For hotels
PMS allows hotel managers and hotel staff to manage day-to-day operations at scale. Common use cases include:
- Reservation system: Website booking engine and tracking room availability, rates, and bookings in real time.
- Occupancy management and inventory management: The hotel business must track room inventory across distribution channels to optimize occupancy levels.
- Channel manager: Hotel management software needs to coordinate all booking channels from the hotel website to third-party platforms.
- Front-desk operations: Streamline check-in and check-out workflows for a smooth guest experience.
- Housekeeping management and maintenance management: Coordinate cleaning and room maintenance efficiently.
- Billing and payment processing: Integrate POS systems for on-site charges like rooms, dining, and spa services, and use a payment gateway to securely handle online payments, deposits, and card authorizations.
- Guest profile management: Track preferences, loyalty programs, and service history based on guest data to personalize the guest experience.
- Revenue management: The revenue management system focuses specifically on pricing strategy and revenue performance.
What Features Does PMS Software Usually Have
When you buy a software tool, you're suddenly dealing with tons of complex features. To make it simple, we've listed the most important features to evaluate when selecting good property management software.
These are the most common PMS features and functionalities stripped down.
Reservation management system
- The reservation system consists of a booking engine for direct website bookings.
- Centralizes all bookings in one dashboard
- Prevents double bookings with real-time availability updates.
- Eliminates manual errors
- Ability to adjust prices across all channels from one place.
Payment collection
- Automates deposits, payments, and refunds.
- Secures transactions through integrated payment gateways.
- Improves cash flow visibility.
Automated communication and messaging
- Sends booking confirmations, reminders, and check-in instructions automatically.
- Automates answers to repetitive guest inquiries.
- Keeps communication consistent and professional.
- Supports multi-channel messaging.
Team management and maintenance
- Assigns tasks like housekeeping tasks.
- Improves accountability and internal communication.
- Keeps vendors and technicians organized.
- Tracks maintenance requests.
Integrations
- Connects with OTAs (Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo), accounting tools, smart locks, CRM systems.
- Syncs availability and rates across channels.
- For long-term leasing, syndicates listings on platforms such as Relator, Redfin, etc.
Revenue management
- Hotel property management systems monitor competitor rates.
- Optimizes ADR and RevPAR.
- Helps avoid underpricing or unnecessary discounting.
Reporting and analytics
- Tracks KPIs like ADR, RevPAR, average occupancy rate and performance trends.
- Identifies underperforming properties or units.
- Helps owners and investors make data-driven decisions.
Accounting
- Automates rent invoicing and owner payouts for residential or commercial properties.
- Tracks expenses, income, and profitability.
- Simplifies tax reporting.
How to Choose a Property Management System
When selecting a PMS, start from the use case and industry. Then narrow down to compare features and pricing.
The best property management systems offer an intuitive user experience, seamless integrations with other software, robust reporting and analytics, and efficient reservation management.
Carefully chosen software helps property owners and managers maximize profitability.
Leading Property Management Systems on the Market
iGMS
Since we're the ones writing this article, we thought we'd start with ourselves. iGMS is a property management system designed for short-term rental hosts and property managers. We understand that short-term rental hosts have specific needs.
Managing guest turnover is quite demanding, so in addition to the desktop version, we created a user-friendly mobile app to stay on top of your busienss from anywhere.
Direct integration with major booking platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com allows instant calendar updates that prevent double bookings.
iGMS automates routine tasks, making daily management a breeze. Moreover, systems like iGMS make remote management possible.
Key features
- Channel manager for automatic calendar updates across platforms.
- AI message automation with ready-to-use templates.
- Team management and task scheduling based on your calendar.
- Easy creation of a direct booking website.
- Automatically optimize your nightly rates through integration with dynamic pricing tools.
- Reporting analyze financial data across multiple properties.
What users like about this PMS
Users appreciate that iGMS makes property management truly "hands-off" without needing extra staff. They highlight the easy setup. One user noted they "were able to connect to my Airbnb host account, connect all my properties, and give the software a test run within minutes."
The software is praised for its "gentle learning curve," "fair pricing," and "immediate ROI." The software is praised as an excellent "co-host" that saves significant time for short-term rental managers.
Buildium
Buildium is a property management system designed for residential landlords and property management companies handling long-term rentals.
Known for its comprehensive set of features covering every aspect of property management, from leasing and accounting to operations and maintenance.
Buildium offers strong accounting tools, automated rent collection, and a tenant portal that keeps communication organized. Its cloud-based system allows managers to oversee operations from anywhere.
Buildium isn't the most affordable residential and commercial property management software on the market, but it supports portfolio scaling.
Key features
- Online rent collection and automated late fees.
- Tenant screening (credit, background, eviction reports).
- Full accounting system with owner reporting.
- Maintenance request tracking and vendor management.
- Lease management and document storage.
- Tenant and owner portals for communication and payments.
- Financial reporting and performance tracking.
What user like about this PMS
Users call Buildium “very user-friendly” and “easy to navigate,” highlighting how intuitive the system feels from day one. The audit report stands out as a favorite feature for managers who need to “constantly oversee staff performance.”
Many also appreciate that it works just as well for owners and managers as it does for team members handling tasks, with the mobile app making it easy to stay productive while on the road.
Innago
Innago is a free property management system designed for independent landlords and small to mid-sized property managers.
Known for its simplicity and affordability (no subscription), Innago's key functions focus on the core tools landlords actually use, like rent collection, tenant screening, lease management, and maintenance tracking.
One of Innago’s biggest advantages is its pricing structure. It’s often considered one of the more budget-friendly options on the market; it charges per-transaction fees to tenants.
Key features
- Online rent collection and automated payment reminders.
- Tenant screening (credit, criminal, and eviction reports).
- Digital lease creation and e-signatures.
- Maintenance request tracking.
- Basic accounting and expense tracking.
- Tenant communication tools and document storage.
What users like about this PMS
Users are "beyond impressed" with Innago's ease of use and organization. The standout feature is the "fillable lease agreement and e-signatures." They praise how "super easy" it is to set up, add tenants, accept payments, and submit invoices for rent and utilities.
Users highlight that Innago has made "rental payment collection and tracking easier than ever" and "all things lease management simple and easy."
Appfolio
AppFolio is a cloud‑based property management system designed for landlords, property management companies and investors. It's a solution for managers and investors overseeing large portfolios.
You need at least 50 units for their basic plans. AppFolio positions itself less as a traditional PMS and more as a “performance platform” that tightly fuses property management, investment management, and native AI into one stack.
For that purpose, Realm‑X is AppFolio’s native AI and workflow engine, built directly into the platform.
Key Features
- Online rent collection with automatic reminders and late fee processing.
- Built-in tenant screening and applicant tracking.
- Digital lease creation with e-signatures.
- Maintenance request tracking with automated task assignment and vendor scheduling.
- Full accounting suite with owner reporting and expense tracking.
- AI-powered workflows (Realm‑X) for task automation, process standardization, and workflow guidance.
What users like about this PMS
Users love how Appfolio is a breeze for daily work, with powerful search functionality: "I can just type an amount or word in the search engine, and it will pull up everything."
The Help option provides answers in seconds, according to a G2 reviewer. Reporting is "amazing" with downloadable PDFs or Excel files and customizable formats. Bulk features like printing "50 checks" or handling "journal entry batch with 100s of lines" make large tasks effortless.
PayHOA
PayHOA is a property management system designed specifically for homeowners associations (HOAs), condo associations, and small community associations. They currently manage over 576,000 units.
Known for its simplicity and HOA-focused functionality, PayHOA centers on dues collection, owner communication, architectural request tracking, and violation management.
One of PayHOA’s biggest advantages is its transparent pricing structure. It’s typically priced per unit per month, making it predictable and accessible for homeowners' associations.
Key Features
- Online dues collection and automated payment reminders.
- Owner portal for payments, documents, and communication.
- Violation tracking and enforcement management.
- Architectural request submission and approval workflows.
- Event calendar and community announcements.
What users like about this PMS
Users praise PayHOA as a "very straightforward tool" with a "simple UI with all the features." The reporting feature makes submitting "quick monthly data" easy, and the platform maintains historical data for each unit.
Users recommend it especially for "small communities that want to manage HOA themself," highlighting that it's "pretty cheap compared to other software."
MRI Property Management
MRI Property Management is a robust property management and financials platform built for large and complex real estate portfolios, residential, and especially commercial, retail, industrial, and mixed-use properties.
They serve multinational portfolios and large enterprises worldwide. It’s designed to centralize data, streamline operations, and support both front-office and back-office workflows across multiple asset types and geographies.
One of MRI’s biggest advantages is its configurability. Users can tailor reports, dashboards, and processes to match their business needs.
Key Features
- Centralized lease, tenant, and operational data across asset types.
- Advanced accounting and financial management tools.
- AI-powered portfolio insights and data analytics.
- Tenant/resident portals for self-service engagement.
- Budgeting, forecasting, and performance reporting.
What users like about this PMS
Users appreciate MRI's "intuitive user interface with straightforward navigation." They highlight key features like the ability to "upload invoices and generate property-specific reports."
The platform is described as "user-friendly" and "a good all-around tool for Property Management accounting."
Cloudbeds
Cloudbeds is a cloud-based hospitality property management system built for hotels, hostels, B&Bs, resorts, vacation rentals, and other accommodation businesses.
It combines PMS, channel manager, booking engine, and integrated payments in one system, reducing the need for multiple standalone tools and saving time on administrative tasks.
Most Cloudbeds customers tend to be small to medium-sized and independent hospitality brands. They serve hospitality business in more than 150 countries.
Key features
- Unified reservation and front desk management.
- Integrated channel manager that syncs rates, inventory, and bookings.
- Built-in direct booking engine to increase direct revenue.
- Housekeeping and task management tools.
- Guest communication tools, including automated messaging.
What users like about this PMS
The Cloudbeds platform is praised for its "very clean and well thought-out user interface" with an "ever-present search bar" that's a "constant best friend."
Users highlight how incredibly easy it is to learn. One online reviewer says, " It took less than 5 minutes to teach my employee everything they need." They appreciate the thoughtful organization, ability to switch languages easily, great graphic design, and the calendar view.
Oracle OPERA
A full-service cloud PMS with a strong focus on the hotel industry, popular among larger hotel chains.
It’s known for its enterprise-grade scalability and comprehensive support for hotel operations. Oracle OPERA PMS is used by major hotel brands and large hospitality groups worldwide.
The software can be expensive, especially for small hotels and independent properties. It’s considered a highly reliable solution with a long track record in the hospitality industry. Oracle has modernized significantly in recent years, and now it is available as cloud-based software.
Key Features
- Enterprise-level reservation and front desk management.
- Detailed guest profiles and loyalty integration for personalized service.
- Integrated operations with POS and kitchen systems for seamless billing.
- Revenue and rate management tools supporting pricing decisions.
- Global compliance (legal, tax, currency, language) for international portfolios..
- Open APIs and integration platform to connect third-party services.
What users like about this PMS
Users praise Opera as "very efficient and professional," with features that "cover all the hospitality requirements" from initial customer contact through "post stay experience." The customizable reports "meet all operational and back office requirements."
They note it's a "better detail-intensive property management system as compared to other systems available." Users also appreciate how it helps "maximise the facilities to their fullest capacity."
Benefits of Using a Property Management System for Vacation Rentals
Managing properties with the help of a good property management system like iGMS brings significant automation benefits to Airbnb hosts and vacation rental property managers:
No more juggling tabs
View and manage all reservations in one dashboard instead of logging into Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com separately. Real-time calendar syncing removes the risk of double bookings and manual errors.
Autopilot for guest communication
Automatically send booking confirmations, check-in instructions, Wi-Fi details, and post-stay review requests. Use any template you create based on triggers you define. Access all guest communication from the unified inbox at any time.
Cleaners know your calendar better than you do
Automatically notify cleaners when a guest checks out, assign tasks based on the property, and track job completion. Reduces last-minute turnovers and missed cleanings.
A guest experience that feels personal
Overall, the guest experience improves with effective management. Personalized messages, fast response time to common questions.
Maximize nightly rates and occupancy
Adjust nightly rates based on seasonality, local demand, events, and occupancy levels to maximize revenue per available night.
Your trusty sidekick while scaling your portfolio
Replace spreadsheets and manual processes with automated workflows. Manage many doors without proportionally increasing the administrative workload.
Explore iGMS, your one-stop solution for vacation rental management. With easy-to-use tools for guest communication, booking coordination, and team management, it simplifies your workload.
It's time-saving, efficient, and designed for everyone, from independent hosts to large companies.
FAQ
Are on-premises property management systems still in use?
Yes, on‑premises property management systems are still in use, but they’re now the minority compared to cloud PMS. On-premise property management systems mean you'll need either an in-house IT team or someone from outside to manage the system.
Are there free trials for property management systems?
Yes, a lot of PMS providers offer free trials or demos so you can make sure the software actually handles all your tasks. For example, vacation rental hosts can try out iGMS for free, test out all the features, and see how it works for you and your team.
