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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Just adding in my $.02 as well. Only a few properties and was fine with the free version for now and would have looked at additional feature value to determine if a “Pro” upgrade added enough value to justify especially as I add more properties. Like others, I have continually had syncing issues with my bank and transactions are not posted or missing. Generally the free product was a good start and “good enough” for starting out, and as an investor gets bigger a set of “Pro” features could add value to the investor. But to take existing away such that the product doesn’t do what it had done without upgrading, especially at tax time as you are counting on that data to be there to utilize, is just bad business. I am a software technical consultant and if I proposed and/or did this with any of my customers, the industry would eat us alive and we would lose our customers and the media would kill us. Obviously there is alot of angst around the change and lack of communication, and we would all like to see the pre-existing abilities brought back to where they were.
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Transactions which hasn’t been assigned to an individual property will stay in the property group above it. To see which transactions that haven’t assigned to require upgrade version and this makes the software absolutely less useful with free version. Hope Stessa reconsiders their plan to give us more time to evaluate the software to see it is worth keeping.
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We wouldn’t be here if the product wasn’t good. I think the roll out could have been better communicated and have even more features. One nice to have for a pro feature would be a receipt store. Usually takes a few days for your transaction to sync into stessa causing us users to hold on to the receipt and risk losing it (guilty). Would be nice to take a picture right away and store it (I do this with my work Concur system) and import it into the transaction once the expense syncs. Might be willing to pay for convivence like that as that warrants space storage. Not a big fan of paying to get my capital expenses but no worries We all can shell out $20 once per year to do taxes.
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Started looking for an alternative. Part of a veteran RE group that has 60k on FB…anyone have any options they like?
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If you are a BiggerPockets Pro member you get a free account with RentReadi, I am looking at that as an option… I also am not happy with the sudden decrease in features as I am starting to work on my taxes. like you I am military assigned overseas with rentals in the US and do not have time for these games.
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When it comes to your ability to export your transactions data out of Stessa, nothing has changed with the launch of the Pro option. Just visit your Transactions page, filter transactions as desired, and click the “Export” button to download a CSV.
You can then convert your transactions to Excel or manipulate offline however you prefer.
While a respectful sharing of opinion is encouraged, we do have clear guidelines for the forum. Per the guidelines, posts that criticize people, use excessive capitalization, contain factual inaccuracies, or run counter to other specified discussion criteria will be removed. Thank you for keeping the forum civil.
I couldn’t agree more with everyone about the lack of communication on the change. I thought that using my data was enough payment for the features I used. The insurance ads and banking ads were good money making opportunities too. Please find a way to keep our free features we’ve come to love or at least lower the price to a level that small property owners can absorb. I feel pretty bad telling everyone about your great services and now you surprise them with this…
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Baselane is nearly identical to Stessa Pro (for free) including cash management accounts at 3.3% with the ability to deposit cash at ATMs, no wire fees, good communication about “PRO” features that will be added in the future for a price.
The only downside is that they don’t automatically communicate with mortgage companies to pull data, but with Stessa, that’s been broken for months for me anyway.
I agree. As a loyal user of Stessa and a big fan, it would have been nice to have a free trial period or discount for loyal users.