Cozy was much different when I started this project, so I just checked it out again - the issue for me (and no one solution will fit all of course), is your tenant must pay through their site to track payments. That's what put me off it.
It just means making a product that is very similar to existing products. Typically there would be a dominant player already and a new entrant may think they could be successful by capturing just a small piece of the action.
Like dropbox for file sync. Google drive, amazon cloud drive, and microsoft onedrive could be the me-too's. They are mostly differentiating on prices and platforms, but fundamentally the same.
Or taken to a further extreme, opening a gas station at the same intersection as an existing gas station. The only differentiation is which side of the street you are on. Of course this does happen, and they must be profitable enough to continue operating, but can never be wildly profitable.
Not impossible to make a business out of a "me too", but harder. Catering to a niche could work. Competing only on price typically doesn't work. Better quality and better user experience are good opportunities, but take a lot of work to reach and demonstrate.
Thank you! Checking out NoAppFee.com and thinking of how I can incorporate this into the platform.
The site should be mobile/tablet friendly, was it not working for you?
This is great, thank you. I know more needs to be added to make this ideal for every use case - but I was never going to get there without introducing it to other people. Thank you for your feedback, I'll certainly be implementing most it!
I'm not sure this would replace a management company entirely, but this was born from necessity. Mainly because taxes were such a pain at the end of the year, and wanting to know if I was profitable or not.
You're right it's inexpensive, but that's because it's new, and I'm still figuring out what needs to be there for $50/month.
Thanks for the feedback!
In terms of taxes and accounting... You are going to have a hard time. If your solution isn't complete, then users will end up having to maintain their alternative solutions. And if they do that, then they will just stop bothering to enter that data in your app. Maybe there is some balance where a person with a property management role could enter daily expenses and another user with a bookkeeping role could export or link that data into the actual accounting program?
Things that a first time casual landlord may not have dealt with yet:
- Depreciation schedules
- handling bounced payments
- recording capital improvements
- asset accounts in general
- splits for expenses
- bank and credit card reconciliations
- handling other charges(pet fees, utilities)
- security deposit accounts
- billing expenses back to tenants
Or maybe focus on the CRM stuff instead of the accounting stuff. Like I mentioned, I use sugarcrm, but it is way more than a casual landlord needs. And by default it is tuned to a sales organization. However, keeping all my tenants, prospective tenants, and properties as "accounts" and being able to log calls, meetings, create cases etc are invaluable.
Nice observation! While I was trying to make this easy enough for my Grandmother to use, I tried to keep some of these items to a minimum, of course I am ready to expand the platform to meet the needs of users. Great feedback, thank you.
