If you run AppFolio, you already know this. You've probably worked around it. Maybe there's a separate marketing site somewhere, or a link out to the portal. Maybe your leasing team sends prospects the AppFolio URL directly, because it's the only place the availability is right. Most managers we talk to assume that's a fixed cost of being on the platform.
It isn't. All of our property management clients run AppFolio, and we've written two pieces of software against it. This page is what came out of that.
Pages on the site
What you're actually being given
AppFolio is a system of record, the one place your unit data lives, that also renders a website. Those are different jobs, and it's very good at the first one.
The system of record
The unit records, the rents, the availability dates, the amenities, the photos, the applications. All of it lives there, all of it is current, and your leasing team works inside it every day. Nobody sensible wants a website that makes them keep a second copy of that by hand.
The website half is where the trade lands
You get a working listing block in a fixed layout. The apply button looks like AppFolio's apply button. It sits on a page that looks like a piece of software, inside a site that's supposed to look like your company.
Not a criticism of AppFolio as property management software
It's a description of what a software vendor's bundled website is for. Its job is to make sure a customer who has no site at all gets one.
Property management clients
- Pacific Crest Real EstateAppFolio
- Olympic Multi-Family ManagementAppFolio
- KEO ManagementAppFolio
- Red Roof RentalsAppFolio
Your listings aren't pages, and that's the expensive part
Here's the piece most property managers don't find out until they're a year into wondering why nothing ranks.
One URL with a box on it
The standard listing display puts your open units inside a widget on one URL. A prospect filtering by bedrooms, neighborhood or price changes what's inside that box. They aren't moving between pages. However many units you have listed, there's one page.
Count what that costs
Every building you manage has a name, an address, a neighborhood, floor plans, a pet policy and a price band. Every one of those is something a person types into Google. If none of those buildings is a page, Google has nothing to rank for them. A five page site gives Google five pages to rank.
Somebody else has those pages
Usually a listing portal. The feed you send out becomes pages Google can index on their domain, while it stays a widget on yours. You supply the data. They rank on it. Then they sell you back the lead.
Every AppFolio manager we've met has already picked one of two ways to live with that, usually without calling it a choice.
Keep the widget: accurate and invisible
Availability is accurate to the minute, and your leasing team trusts it. But the site is invisible in search beyond your own company name.
Hand-build pages: visible and wrong
Now you have real pages and an upkeep problem. A unit leases on Tuesday. The page still shows it on Friday. A prospect fills out the form. Your leasing agent calls back to say the unit is gone, and the prospect goes to the portal that had it right. Meanwhile the page has taught Google that what it promises isn't what a searcher finds. This one is worse, because it burns your leasing team's time as well as your rankings.
Accurate and invisible. Or visible and wrong. The way out is to stop treating the listing display as the place AppFolio meets your site. Treat the data as that place instead. Pull unit and availability data through the API. Write it into pages that live on your domain, with your URL structure.
Refresh them against the source. You get a real page per property, and each page is current because it reads the same records your leasing team reads. Both at once. That's the whole argument of this page, and it's why we ended up writing software instead of picking a theme.
Accurate and invisible. Or visible and wrong.
What we built against the platform
Two pieces of software, written for two different visitors to the same site.
AppFolio Listings Pro
What it does
AppFolio's listing output arrives in a basic format. Listings Pro reads it on the server and redraws it as part of your own site. So you can actually control the buttons, styles and CSS. The apply button sits and looks the way you want it. The listing card matches your brand instead of the platform's.
Where the CSS lives
CSS is the code that sets how your pages look. It lives in your own site, where you or anyone you hire can work on it.
What it doesn't do
It doesn't replace AppFolio. WordPress keeps only a short-lived cached copy of the listings, and AppFolio stays the source of record. The plugin owns the layer between AppFolio's output and what a visitor sees.
A chat leasing tool on the AppFolio API
A different visitor
A page per property is exactly right for someone searching a building by name. It does nothing for the larger group who want a one bedroom in a certain neighborhood at a certain price. They don't care what the building is called. That renter isn't going to read forty property pages.
What it returns
It pulls neighborhoods, pricing, cities and areas, and returns real, active listings with full detail, direct from AppFolio. Someone describes what they're after in ordinary words and gets back units that are open now. Real is the word that matters. It isn't a scripted bot that collects a name and an email and promises a callback. It queries live listing data.
A different discipline
The plugin problem was about how listings look. This one was about getting the data out and asking it the right questions. That meant working against the API, not the front end. And that's where you find out what AppFolio's v1 API will and won't hand you.
Pacific Crest Real Estate, in short
Pacific Crest Real Estate is a property management company that came to us with a five page AppFolio site. Here's what the rebuild covered, going from five pages to 250 or more.
A page per managed property
Each carries that property's live availability listing, with amenities, features and photos. Not a screenshot of what happened to be open the day the page was written. The current listing.
Calls to action and lead capture rebuilt
Across the site, rather than left as a default application link.
The community sites too
We also assisted on zephyrseattle.com, streamdexios.com, stream403.com, rejuvenateapartments.com and calabriatownhomes.com.
You supply the data. They rank on it. Then they sell you back the lead.
What the architecture looks like when somebody measures it
Searching a building by name is the entire case for a page per property. It's also the traffic an AppFolio widget can't collect for you, because there's no page for the name to land on.
At portfolio scale
The same logic holds across a portfolio, with a separate website for each community on its own domain. The Listings Pro plugin runs on community websites too.
One page per real thing a searcher might look for
That's the logic underneath. So when you measure it, watch the searches for building names. That's the traffic a page per property is built to catch.
The difference with AppFolio is that you're not writing 250 pages by hand. The records already exist. You're giving them somewhere to live.
The unglamorous half: reporting and the v1 API
Not every AppFolio engagement is about the listings. Sometimes the job is backlinks and social posts on a site we didn't build, which is ordinary agency work. The part worth writing about is the advisory side. A good share of the value lands in helping a manager get more out of software they already pay for.
The listing marketing
We go through it inside AppFolio. It's the writing that does the most work in the whole business, and the writing nobody ever edits. It gets typed once, at speed, on the day a unit goes vacant.
The reporting
"Why did that unit sit for six weeks" is not a report. It's several reports and some arithmetic. You learn which ones by asking the question wrong a few times first. The documentation won't close the gap, because whoever wrote it was describing the report, not the question.
The v1 API
Before you plan anything on top of v1, you need to know where its edges are. What comes out through the API? What exists only in the interface? What arrives in a shape you have to rebuild before it's useful? Get that line wrong at the planning stage and you pay for it in a rebuild.
We knew where that line sat because we'd already spent the time, mostly the hard way, building the two tools above. If you're trying to work out what v1 will and won't hand you, talk to us before you commit to a build.
Three audiences who share a property manager
Some AppFolio work never touches the build. It's search and social on the site a manager already has.
Search cleanup
Duplicate meta descriptions cleaned up across the site. A meta description is the short summary Google shows under a page title. Blogs published. Backlinks built.
Social split three ways
Owners, residents and vendors want very different things from the same company. No single post serves all three, so each gets its own.
Across this AppFolio work, we've built the Listings Pro plugin and a leasing tool on the AppFolio API. We've improved listing marketing, and given reporting and v1 API guidance. There's demand behind this, and not much serving it. About 590 people a month in the US search for help with their AppFolio website. Advertisers pay real money to be in front of them. Most of what those searchers find is web design from people who have never opened AppFolio.
What an engagement usually covers
Not every AppFolio job is a rebuild. When it is one, though, the shape is fairly consistent.
A page per managed property
Each carrying live AppFolio availability, with amenities, features and photos.
Listings Pro installed
So listing buttons, styles and CSS match your brand rather than the platform's.
The chat leasing tool on the API
Where search by neighborhood, price and area would earn its place.
Calls to action and lead capture forms rebuilt
So the default application link isn't doing all the work.
Separate community sites
Where the portfolio warrants their own domains.
Which of those you need is the conversation, not a given.
What we'd look at first on your setup
If you're on AppFolio and something about your site bothers you but you can't name it, these are the questions we start with.
How many of your managed properties have their own URL on your domain? How many live inside a listing widget?
Do your available units show up in Google when you search their address? Which domain shows up instead?
What happens to a property page when the last unit in that building leases?
Does your apply flow start on your site, or hand the visitor to a page that doesn't look like it?
Which questions does your leasing team answer by opening AppFolio and reading it out loud?
What reporting are you paying for and not reading?
The questions your leasing team answers out loud are usually the ones the website should have answered. None of this needs a rebuild to answer. Two of the six are usually enough to tell whether your problem is how the site looks or how it's built. Those are very different projects.
How this fits the wider field is on our property management marketing page. The search side of the work is on property management SEO.
Questions property managers ask about AppFolio websites
What is a property management website?
A property management website is a management company's public site, the place owners, residents and vendors check before they call. On AppFolio, the built-in product gives you listings and applications in a fixed layout. A stronger site adds a page per property, live availability pulled from the platform, and content written for owners.
How do you create a property management website on AppFolio?
Create a property management website on AppFolio by treating the data, not the widget, as the link. Pull unit and availability data through the API. Write it into pages on your own domain, one per property. Refresh those pages against AppFolio. Property management website design then covers the brand, the calls to action and the lead forms.
How does AppFolio work with a website?
AppFolio works as the system of record: unit records, rents, availability dates, photos and applications all live there. AppFolio also renders a basic website with a fixed listing block. The AppFolio website editor leaves the listing buttons, styles and CSS mostly out of your hands. That gap is why we wrote AppFolio Listings Pro.
How much does a custom property management website cost?
A custom property management website costs what its scope needs, so there's no set figure. The biggest drivers are how many properties need a page, whether you add Listings Pro or the chat leasing tool, and how many community sites there are. Our pricing page explains what moves the cost, and a free marketing audit is the first step.
Talk to us about your AppFolio site
We're rated 5.0 on Google. Property management and multifamily is the field where we've done the most first-hand work.
Tell us how many properties you manage and what your current site does. We'll tell you what a rebuild would involve, or whether you need one at all. Not every engagement is a rebuild. Sometimes search and social is the right job instead.
Phone (425) 954-3452. Email info@kihanmarketing.com. Or start with a marketing audit, and we'll look at the AppFolio side specifically.
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