Corbica vs AppFolio
Corbica vs AppFolio: what if your portfolio is under 50 units?
AppFolio is a powerful platform for professional management companies — and its own pricing page states a 50-unit minimum on the entry plan, with no prices published at all. Corbica delivers the piece smaller operators actually miss from enterprise software — true general-ledger accounting — with a free tier and per-unit pricing that works from the very first door.
AppFolio is a comprehensive, publicly traded property management platform built for professional management companies with larger portfolios.
This comparison is unusual because one side of it cannot be compared on price. AppFolio publishes no rates: every plan says “Get a Quote”, and the Core plan carries the note “Minimum spend and 50 unit minimum apply.” That is not a criticism — enterprise software is often sold this way — but it decides the comparison for a large group of readers before any feature is discussed.
If you manage fewer than 50 units, AppFolio's entry plan is not available to you at its stated minimum, and no amount of feature comparison changes that. If you manage more, you are in a different evaluation: AppFolio against other enterprise platforms, where its depth, its integration marketplace and its read/write API are serious advantages that Corbica does not match.
So this page splits in two. The first half is for the landlord or small manager AppFolio's minimum excludes. The second half is an honest account of what you would be giving up if you chose Corbica over AppFolio at a size where both are options.
Corbica vs AppFolio at a glance
| Corbica | AppFolio | |
|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | Every price is on /pricing, including per-unit overage and the transaction fees. | None. All three plans say “Get a Quote”, with “Minimum spend and 50 unit minimum apply” on Core. |
| Portfolio size | Any size — one unit up. The free plan covers your first 5 units. | The Core plan states a 50-unit minimum plus a minimum spend; Plus and Max state “Minimum spend and units apply”. |
| Accounting | Full double-entry general ledger with a real chart of accounts — every report (owner statements, P&L, balance sheet, Schedule E) is GL-sourced, not derived from a payments table. | “Property Accounting & Reports” on Core, with “Advanced Budgeting & Accounting” and “Advanced Data Analysis” on the Plus plan. |
| Pricing model | Corbica starts free for up to 5 units, then Starter is $59/mo including 60 units ($2/unit after), Professional is $149/mo including 100 units ($1.50/unit after), and Business is $299/mo including 300 units ($0.75/unit after). No per-door minimum, no onboarding fee, and no setup charge per bank account. | Quote-based, with a “Customize Your Plan” layer of value-added services whose prices are also not published. |
| Free tier | Corbica's free plan covers 5 units and includes online rent collection, tenant and owner portals (owners see their statements there), and maintenance requests. The general ledger, the report catalogue, tenant screening and e-signing start on paid plans — the free tier is a working system, not the whole product. | No free tier; no trial advertised on the pricing page. |
| API | None for customers — no public API and no Zapier app. | “AppFolio API (read only)” on Plus and “AppFolio API (read/write)” on Max. |
| Specialised housing types | Section 8 / HCVP workflows are built in and not plan-gated. Commercial lease accounting (CAM, percentage rent, escalations) is a paid add-on above the Professional plan. | “Affordable Housing Capabilities” and “Student Housing Capabilities” are listed on the Plus plan. |
| Best fit | Independent landlords and small-to-mid managers who want pro-grade books without an enterprise minimum. | Management companies above 50 units that can use an enterprise platform's breadth, its integration marketplace and its API. |
What AppFolio publishes about pricing
Quoted from AppFolio’s pricing page as of 2026-08-25. Vendors change pricing; check the source before deciding. Where AppFolio doesn’t publish a figure we say so rather than estimating one.
Plans
- Entry plan
- Core — price not published; quote required
- Core, in their words
- “An out of the box solution giving you one powerful platform to run any property management business.”
- Plus
- No price published — “Get a Quote”. Described as “A configurable solution for growing businesses with complex portfolios looking to standardize processes.”
- Max
- No price published — “Get a Quote”. Described as “An enterprise solution for large operators that are focused on customization, data insights, and driving revenue.”
Minimums and caps
- Minimum portfolio size
- 50 unit minimum
- Minimums, verbatim (Core)
- “*Minimum spend and 50 unit minimum apply. Contact us for details.”
- Minimums (Plus and Max)
- “*Minimum spend and units apply. Contact us for details.”
- Per-unit rate
- Not published for any plan or property type.
- Onboarding fee
- Not published on the pricing page.
Per-transaction fees
- eSignature
- Not stated on the pricing page. The page advertises a “Customize Your Plan” layer of value-added services without listing their prices.
- ACH / EFT
- Not stated on the pricing page.
- Credit card
- Not stated on the pricing page.
- Tenant screening
- Not stated on the pricing page.
Every figure above is “not published” because AppFolio publishes none. That is a real, checkable comparison point rather than an accusation: you cannot compute your AppFolio cost without a sales conversation, and you can compute your Corbica cost from a public page in two minutes.
Because no numbers exist to compare, this page carries no cost worked-example. Inventing one would be exactly the thing the rest of this page is arguing against.
And for Corbica, at the same resolution
Corbica starts free for up to 5 units, then Starter is $59/mo including 60 units ($2/unit after), Professional is $149/mo including 100 units ($1.50/unit after), and Business is $299/mo including 300 units ($0.75/unit after). No per-door minimum, no onboarding fee, and no setup charge per bank account.
Corbica takes a platform fee out of ACH rent rather than charging a flat per-transaction fee: 2.9% capped at $10 per payment on Free, 2.5% capped at $8 per payment on Starter, 1% capped at $5 per payment on Professional, and no platform fee on Business. Card rent carries a 3.25% convenience fee (minimum $5) added to the tenant's total, which is how card processing is covered without taking it out of the landlord's rent. There is no charge per e-signature inside the plan allowance — Professional includes 30 envelopes a month and Business includes 100, with additional envelopes at $1.50 — but e-signing is a Professional-and-above feature, so Free and Starter do not have it at all.
Where the accounting actually differs
AppFolio's accounting is not the weak point — the entry bar is
AppFolio lists property accounting and reports on its entry plan and advanced budgeting and accounting on Plus. There is no honest version of this page where a small operator picks Corbica because AppFolio's books are thin. They pick Corbica because AppFolio's entry plan starts at 50 units and a minimum spend, and theirs is a 9-unit portfolio.
What you get at nine units, which is the actual question
On Corbica Starter at $59/month a nine-unit landlord gets a double-entry general ledger, a real chart of accounts, a balance sheet, a P&L, a trial balance, owner statements, bank reconciliation and a Schedule E export — the same class of books an enterprise platform provides, at a size no enterprise platform sells to.
Click a number, see the entries behind it
Every figure on a Corbica report is a sum of journal-entry lines, and you can open the line to see the entry, the account it hit, and the property it was allocated to. That is the difference between a report you can defend to an owner and a number you have to re-derive in a spreadsheet.
Owner reporting that holds up
Owner statements come out of the ledger with per-line property allocation, so a shared invoice split across three properties reports correctly on each one. Owners get their own portal to read them in, on every plan including the free one — which is the part small managers most often end up doing by email and spreadsheet.
Who should actually pick AppFolio
You manage more than 50 units and want an enterprise platform
This is the straightforward case. AppFolio is built for management companies of exactly this profile, it has the market presence to prove it, and the depth of an enterprise product — purchase orders and inventory tracking, maintenance scheduling with automated billing, a leasing CRM on Max — is not something Corbica claims to match.
You need affordable-housing or student-housing workflows at scale
AppFolio lists both as Plus-plan capabilities. Corbica has Section 8 / HCVP support built in and not plan-gated, which covers a lot of affordable-housing operators, but it is not the same as a purpose-built affordable-housing compliance module and we would rather you knew that before signing.
You need an API to integrate with your own systems
AppFolio sells read-only API access on Plus and read/write on Max. Corbica has no public API for customers and no Zapier app. If your business runs on data flowing between systems, that is a hard requirement we do not meet today.
Who Corbica is right for
Your portfolio is below AppFolio's stated minimum
A 50-unit minimum plus a minimum spend excludes most independent landlords and a lot of small management companies. Corbica has no minimum: the free plan covers five units, and the paid ladder starts at $59/month.
You want to see the price before you talk to anyone
Corbica's plan prices, per-unit overage rates, ACH platform fee and e-sign allowances are all published. AppFolio's are not — including the value-added services layer. Neither approach is wrong, but if you are evaluating on a Sunday afternoon only one of them can be evaluated.
You want enterprise-grade books without enterprise onboarding
Sign up, import, and look at a balance sheet the same day. The books are on Starter; Plaid bank feeds and the Tax Center are on Professional; three-way trust reconciliation is on Business. Nothing requires a scoping call, and the guided Buildium migration is available when you want it rather than mandatory.
Where Corbica is behind AppFolio
Every comparison page claims to be honest. Here is ours, in the form that costs us something to publish.
- No public API — AppFolio sells read-only on Plus and read/write on Max.
- No purpose-built affordable-housing or student-housing compliance modules.
- No leasing CRM and no dedicated customer success management.
- No integration marketplace comparable to AppFolio Stack.
- No native iOS or Android store app; Corbica is an installable mobile web app with push notifications.
- No live phone support at any tier — support is email and in-app ticketing.
- AppFolio is a large public company with the implementation resources and long-term stability that comes with it. Corbica is a small product; if vendor scale is part of your risk assessment, weigh it honestly.
What moving from AppFolio looks like
Corbica has an AppFolio importer that reads AppFolio's Reports API and brings across properties, units, tenants, leases, owners, chart of accounts, bills and payments. It is available on request rather than as a self-serve wizard today — the Buildium path is the one that has been driven end to end with real customers.
If you are moving off AppFolio, talk to us before you cancel anything. We would rather scope the reconciliation with you than have you discover a gap after your last billing period closes.
Choose Corbica if…
- Your portfolio is under (or nowhere near) 50 units.
- You want published prices you can evaluate without a sales call.
- You want GL-grade accounting and owner statements from day one, starting free.
- You would rather grow into per-unit pricing than commit to a minimum spend.
Consider AppFolio if…
- You manage more than 50 units and can use an enterprise platform's full breadth.
- You need an API, an integration marketplace, or a leasing CRM.
- You need dedicated affordable-housing or student-housing compliance capabilities.
- Vendor scale and public-company stability are part of your decision.
Frequently asked questions
Is Corbica an AppFolio alternative for small landlords?
Yes, and for many small portfolios it is the only one of the two available: AppFolio's Core plan states a 50-unit minimum. Corbica covers rent collection, leasing, screening, maintenance, inspections and full general-ledger accounting with tenant and owner portals, at any portfolio size, starting free for up to 5 units with no minimum spend.
What does AppFolio cost?
AppFolio does not publish prices. As of 25 August 2026 its pricing page lists three plans — Core, Plus and Max — each with a “Get a Quote” button, and notes “*Minimum spend and 50 unit minimum apply. Contact us for details.” on Core and “*Minimum spend and units apply.” on Plus and Max. Per-unit rates, onboarding fees and value-added service prices are also not published, so any specific AppFolio price you read on a comparison site did not come from AppFolio.
What if my portfolio is too small for AppFolio?
That is the situation this page is written for. Corbica is built for the other end of the market: independent landlords and small-to-mid property managers who still want professional-grade, GL-sourced books. There is no minimum unit count and no minimum spend.
Does Corbica do real accounting like AppFolio?
Yes. Corbica runs a double-entry general ledger with a full chart of accounts, so owner statements, P&L, balance sheet, trial balance and Schedule E all reconcile to the books, and you can click any figure to see the journal entries behind it. Accounting is on the Starter plan; the Tax Center and 1099 preparation are on Professional.
Where is AppFolio genuinely better than Corbica?
Several places, and it is worth being specific: a read/write API, an integration marketplace, purpose-built affordable-housing and student-housing capabilities, a leasing CRM, dedicated customer success management, and the implementation resources of a large public company. If any of those are requirements, AppFolio is the better answer.
Does Corbica have a public API?
No. There is no customer-facing API and no Zapier app today. AppFolio sells read-only API access on its Plus plan and read/write on Max. If integration with your own systems is a requirement, this is a real gap on our side.
Can I move my data from AppFolio to Corbica?
There is an AppFolio importer that reads AppFolio's Reports API and brings across properties, units, tenants, leases, owners, chart of accounts, bills and payments. It runs as an assisted migration rather than a self-serve wizard, so get in touch and we will scope it against your portfolio first.
Does Corbica handle Section 8 or affordable housing?
Section 8 / HCVP workflows are built in and not plan-gated, which covers a lot of what a small affordable-housing operator needs. It is not a full affordable-housing compliance suite of the kind AppFolio lists on its Plus plan, and if that is what you need you should choose accordingly.
Compare Corbica with others: