Terrible missteps, you guys take away balance sheet report away from free tiers? Come on, that’s not cool. And you still did not fix importing problems that have been ongoing for a long time.
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Hooray, good timing, rug pull during tax season!!
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I also am frustrated with these changes. It is one thing to make a decision to create a new paid tier of membership - it is, after all, a business. I don’t think anyone is bothered by the need for you guys to make a profit.
It is, however, quite another thing to create a new paid tier, move previously free features into the paid tier, and do all of this with no advance warning.
A more customer-friendly approach would have been to give at least 3-6 months advance notice, with a longer transition period during which all previous features were made available to both free and paid tier memberships. New features introduced at launch time for paid-tier, with a clear timeline for transition of previously free features to paid-tier only.
The removal of pro-forma analysis and the balance sheet report from the free-tier was particularly glaring, in my opinion.
As others have stated, I would considering paying for a paid-tier that had clear value-added features, but not one which merely restores basic features that were removed from a now-crippled free tier. The increased in interest rate, custom portfolios, and accelerated rent payments, along with some of the advanced reports are reasonable features to have in a paid-tier, but I hope that Stessa will strongly consider restoring some of the other features back to the free tier in a gesture of good will.
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While companies routinely change pricing, it’s rare to take away features from existing clients unless it was a previously known “freemium” model or free trial period. The fact that Stessa chose to roll out features to it’s existing users and then change to a paid subscription for those features in the new year is awful.
I had already been using several features that were switched over to “pro” and now my tracking methods will be messed up unless I upgrade.
Stessa was looking like a great service and was slowly adding things that were going to have me switching away from alternatives like RentRedi, Avail or Hemlane. Unfortunately, if you can’t trust the company to be loyal to its existing customers or transparent about its actions then it makes little sense to build your business with them.
I will give Stessa a few weeks to see if there is enough fall out from this bone headed move to reverse some of it for their current customer base, but after that I will be moving on and continuing to other services.
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Devin,
Are you able to shed light on the future roadmap of the Pro option? Coming from Quickbooks where I was paying four times the cost, Stessa Pro is a great value provided the suite of services in continually updated. In particulare, there is a tremendous need for bill pay within Cash Management. Is this on the horizon? Thanks.
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Very disappointing. I knew Stessa would monetize at some point but $20 per month is excessive for small investors. Features that I have relied on are now behind a pay wall. The free version is not going to cut it–even for small investors. Now I am in the awkward position of looking for a new bookkeeping solution. I have used Wave Accounting in the past. It’s free and works well, but its not customized for real estate.
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Making something “Pro” when it was free to begin with is a horrible way to do business. And timing this with tax season is a way to handcuff your loyal customers.
“Pro” added 1 new feature while making existing free features now a paid feature. $20/month is also a bit much when all of my data is available and can be marketed for.
The insurance quotes were not even close to market comparisons and the “Pro” paid program with no future roadmap released, warning, or added value shows that there is a lack of leadership and customer service.
My last customer service communication around accounts not synching to one of the largest banks in the USA… I was told that I could reach out to my bank and have them switch their connection… or I could go with Stessa’s checking accounts for integration. Why would I pay for a service when I allow for my data to be mined + store my money?
Things that would satisfy me:
- Release a roadmap for what Pro is actually going to add
- Fix banking connections
- Find vendors that can actually compete with markets (insurance, mortgages)
- HELOCs
- Portfolio loans
- Option that if I pay, my data cannot be sold
- Make this a full service property and portfolio management tool
Not all would need to be satisfied, but anything is more than what’s been communicated.
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Add me to the list of upset customers. I think everyone here has good points. I was actually expecting you guys to monetize this at some point, but right now I can’t even set an expense transaction to my Portfolio, I have to choose an individual property. This seems pretty basic and I was surprised to see that this now requires a Pro license. I guess I can create a fake property and assign those expense to that, but it seems like a messy work around…
I agree that it would have been much better to get some kind of heads up for existing users. It wouldn’t have been necessary if you were just adding new features that were now being charged for, but taking away previous features for existing users just doesn’t feel great. Even if you set it up the way you have it for NEW users would have been fine. But you took away stuff from those of us who depend on this software to run our business. I do not have a large portfolio and haven’t been doing this for too long, so I don’t have a lot of extra time or money to quickly figure out an alternative.
I feel like no one thought of the users when these decisions were made. I hope management can see this conversation and reconsider these decisions.
I sincerely appreciate your time and consideration.
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Perhaps it would have been a better approach to bundle those new features into the improved Pro platform, rather than to deprecate features from the current platform?
The lack of communication is also disconcerting. I was literally using some of the legacy reports the day before and lost them while working on a project with someone. Truly frustrating.
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Agree with the masses here, AT TAX TIME? Can something be done to allow us to get portfolio level tax reports and then charge? This really adds to tax time frustrations - I’ve been declining my accountants suggestion to change for years - may be the tipping point.
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The sudden and uncommunicated nature of the change is disappointing. I fully expected Stessa to be monetized, but some of these changes are heavy-handed behind a steep paywall. There’s value to what Stessa has built and I’d consider paying for it (probably no more than ~$8/mo, though, to be clear), but I agree with others that taking away features to lock them behind a steep paywall feels unnecessarily punitive. Can’t apply a charge to my “Portfolio” (which is just the entity that owns properties) or print a simple Balance Sheet or SREO? These are very basic functions that have me scratching my head and saying “really?”.
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For $20 per month maybe more functions needs to be added. For now TBH I would consider upgrading if it was something like $7.99/month…
Do you consider offering a free trial like other software do? Also, maybe try to give “Pro” user one “free” Stessa Rent Estimates per quarter to add more value to the subscription.
Thanks all for the quick feedback and creative suggestions. We are of course listening to and absorbing all comments related to the Stessa Pro launch, both on the forum and through other support channels. With hundreds of thousands of investors now using Stessa, there is understandably a wide diversity of opinions on this (and many other) topics.
If the paid tier launch had a significant and unexpected impact on your operations this week, that was certainly not our intention. Please open a 1:1 support ticket to explain the situation and we’ll get back to you quickly.
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@justin6 I agree with you. Why are we now having to pay for features that we used to be able to use for free? I think all current users should be grandfathered-in and not forced to pay for services we used to be able to use for free.
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can’t believe they introduced Pro without a true tax output (see my request: Tax preparation (TFX) files)
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I’m not able to get to my lnc rentals account. Do I have to pay 16.00 a month to view that now?
I’d like to get my info out of there and move on but it seems you made me hostage to your platform and I need to pay the ransom to get my info out of there. Not cool! Lloyd from Canada,
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Hey Devin, I know you work hard to make STESSA a good product. I remember you use to tell earlier that Stessa will be free but after Rooftop came in the business model took a different direction. I am not happy to see all the required features are marked as Pro!! which was free earlier. It is a very short sighted approach. You have many other ways to generate revenue apart from charging Pro fee.
I think many users will look for other options or compare to value based subscription which result in loosing your existing users because there is no add features on Pro expect for schedule E.
You need to have an innovative business model when other software in the same segments provide free platform and generating income from screening and bank transactions.Then how you can justify the paid version. Btw my mortgage bank stop syn since more than a year.
I don’t want to be negative because STESSA was a good product to manage my rental property. But I don’t want the management to kill it with short sight approach. Think over it and please come back with a solutions!! Thank you!
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I’m having the same issue. In Stessa’s ad for the pro level it says you can have 1 portfolio for free, but the 1 I did have is now behind a pay wall.
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I have reached out via the message icon in the bottom right corner and sent 2 messages via the “contact us” link on the main page and have yet to receive a response. I’m sure they are getting a bunch of messages with similar complaints, so getting back to everyone individually will likely take time, but that should tell them something if they’re even having to deal with that. No notice is not acceptable.
Pro forma budgeting for those of us with only one property seems like a non-pro feature to me. Same with basic history charting. With only one or two properties the return on the investment for a pro tier doesn’t seem worthwhile. What about tiering features/pricing by # of properties?
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