RentGuard vs Stessa: Which Is Better for Small Landlords?

I get asked about Stessa a lot. It makes sense. It's free, it's popular, and every landlord forum recommends it. But Stessa and RentGuard solve completely different problems, and picking the wrong one means you're still stuck with the problem you started with.

Here's an honest breakdown of both tools from someone who's used them.

What Stessa Does Well

Stessa is a financial tracking platform for real estate investors. And it's genuinely excellent at what it does.

The free Essentials plan gives you unlimited properties, automatic bank feeds that pull in transactions, basic financial reports, and even online rent collection. That's a lot for $0.

Their Manage plan at $15/month adds maintenance tracking, one e-signature per month, a Schedule E report, and 60+ legal templates. The Pro plan at $35/month unlocks unlimited portfolios, all advanced reports, budgeting tools, unlimited receipt scanning, and priority phone support.

Where Stessa really shines is the portfolio dashboard. You can see your total income, expenses, cash flow, and net operating income across all properties in one view. During tax season, you export the accountant tax package and hand it to your CPA. That alone saves hours.

What Stessa Doesn't Do

Stessa is built for financial visibility. It answers the question "how is my portfolio performing?" It does not answer the question "which tenant is late on rent right now and how do I catch it on day 1?"

Stessa doesn't monitor your spreadsheet. It doesn't send you an alert the morning after a grace period ends. It doesn't watch your maintenance tracker and ping you when a high-priority request has been sitting for 3 days.

If you collect rent through Stessa's platform, you can see payment status inside their dashboard. But you have to log in and check. There's no proactive "hey, Unit 4B didn't pay" alert hitting your inbox at 7am.

And if you collect rent through Venmo, Zelle, or check (like most small landlords I know), Stessa has no way to know whether a specific tenant has paid.

What RentGuard Does

RentGuard is a monitoring layer for your existing spreadsheet. It solves one specific problem: you have data in a Google Sheet and you need something to watch it and tell you when something's wrong.

You connect your rent roll spreadsheet. RentGuard reads it every day. The morning after your grace period ends, if a tenant hasn't paid, you get an email and optional text. You can also connect your maintenance tracker, and RentGuard alerts you when requests are aging past their priority thresholds.

That's it. No financial reports. No bank feeds. No tax prep. Just monitoring and alerts.

$15/month flat. No per-unit pricing. Works whether you have 3 units or 30.

Feature Comparison

Financial tracking. Stessa wins. Automatic bank feeds, expense categorization, portfolio dashboard, cash flow analysis. RentGuard doesn't do any of this. If you need financial visibility, use Stessa.

Overdue rent detection. RentGuard wins. It monitors your spreadsheet daily and sends proactive alerts the moment rent is overdue. Stessa shows payment status if you collect through their platform, but you have to go look. I wrote about what a 2-week missed payment actually costs if you need a reminder of why this matters.

Maintenance monitoring. RentGuard wins. It watches your maintenance spreadsheet and alerts you when requests are aging. Stessa added maintenance tracking in their Manage plan ($15/mo), but it's more of a log than an active monitoring system.

Tax prep. Stessa wins. Schedule E reports, accountant tax packages, expense categorization. RentGuard doesn't touch taxes.

Spreadsheet compatibility. RentGuard wins. It works on top of your existing Google Sheet. You don't migrate anything. Stessa is its own platform with its own data entry.

Pricing. Stessa's free tier is hard to beat. If you only need financial tracking, Stessa at $0 is the clear winner. RentGuard is $15/month, but it's solving a different problem that Stessa's free tier doesn't address.

Who Is Stessa Best For?

Stessa is best for landlords whose primary pain is financial visibility and tax prep. If you're spending hours every quarter pulling together income and expense numbers, or your accountant is charging you extra because your records are messy, Stessa will save you real time and money.

It's also great for investors who want to see portfolio-level performance. Cap rate, cash-on-cash return, NOI across properties. That bird's-eye view helps you make investment decisions.

Who Is RentGuard Best For?

RentGuard is best for landlords whose primary pain is operational. You're missing late payments because you don't check your spreadsheet every day. Maintenance requests are aging because you forget to follow up. You already have a system that works for tracking data, but it fails at alerting you.

If you already use a Google Sheet for your rent roll and you've had at least one moment where you caught a late payment way too late, RentGuard solves that specific problem. I detail my own $1,400 story in how to stop missing late rent payments.

Can You Use Both?

Yes. And honestly, that's what I'd recommend if budget allows. Use Stessa for the financial side. Use your Google Sheet for day-to-day rent and maintenance tracking. Use RentGuard to monitor that sheet and send alerts.

Stessa tells you how your portfolio is doing. RentGuard tells you what needs your attention today. Those are complementary, not competing.

The Honest Take

If I had to pick just one and my main problem was "I don't know if my properties are making money," I'd pick Stessa. It's free and it answers that question beautifully.

If my main problem was "I keep missing late payments and maintenance requests because I forget to check my spreadsheet," I'd pick RentGuard. Stessa doesn't solve that.

Most landlords I talk to have both problems. The good news is you don't have to choose. But if budget is tight, figure out which problem is costing you more money right now and solve that one first.

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