Most UK landlords should buy off-the-shelf landlord software: it is £10–£40 a month, it handles Making Tax Digital, and it will beat a spreadsheet from your first property. A system of your own only starts to make sense when per-unit pricing outgrows it, or when what you manage does not fit the shape the software expects.
Worth knowing who is telling you this. Almost every "best landlord software" list on page one is published by one of the software companies on it. We are not one of them — we build bespoke systems and sell a property product — and our answer is still that for most landlords, the off-the-shelf tool wins.
The three options, honestly
| Spreadsheet | Landlord software | A system of your own | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | £10–£40/month, or roughly £2–£8 per property per month | From £7,000 to build, then £100/month |
| Live in | Today | An afternoon | Weeks |
| Making Tax Digital | You do the work | Built in on most platforms | Built to your accountant's format |
| Fit | Whatever you make it | The shape the vendor chose | The shape your portfolio actually is |
| Scales by | Your patience | Price per unit | Nothing — the cost is flat |
| Risk | Errors and one key person | Low. Cancel and leave | Real. A bad build is money gone |
Why the spreadsheet loses in 2026, even though it is free
A spreadsheet is genuinely fine for one or two properties. Past that it stops being free, for three specific reasons rather than a general sense that software is nicer.
Making Tax Digital. Quarterly digital submissions mean your records have to be kept in software that can file them. A spreadsheet needs bridging software bolted on; most landlord platforms simply do it, and some offer HMRC-recognised filing from free to about £10 a month.
The errors are already there. A 2024 study of business spreadsheets used in decision-making found critical errors in 94% of them. On a rent schedule, an error is a missed arrear or a wrong tax figure.
Dates do not chase themselves. Gas safety, EICR, EPC, deposit protection, right to rent, tenancy ends. A spreadsheet holds those dates perfectly well and will never once tell you about them. That is the whole difference between a record and a system.
We wrote the general version of this argument in spreadsheet to a system; for landlords specifically, the compliance dates are what usually force the decision.
Where off-the-shelf software wins, and it usually does
Published pricing sits at roughly £10–£40 a month, or £2–£8 per property per month. Free tiers commonly cover one to three properties. Individual platforms advertise anywhere from free for a single unit, to around £5–£12 a month for a small portfolio, to about £99 a year for the accounting-led tools. At those prices, against a spreadsheet, it is not a close call.
Buy off-the-shelf when your portfolio looks like the one the software was designed for: residential units, assured shorthold tenancies, rent in and expenses out, one owner or a simple company. That describes most UK landlords, and if it describes you, stop reading and go and pick one.
The four points where it stops fitting
This is the part the vendor listicles cannot write, because the honest answer is "our software is the wrong shape for you".
1. Per-unit pricing overtakes a flat fee. At £8 per property per month, thirteen units costs more each month than running a system of your own. The build still has to be earned back — but the direction of travel is fixed: their cost rises with your portfolio, a system of your own does not.
2. What you manage is not a tenancy. Landlord software assumes a residential unit and an AST. It has nowhere sensible to put a commercial lease with a break clause, a rent review, a service-charge apportionment or a schedule of condition. People end up recording the most valuable dates in the notes field, which is the same as not recording them.
3. The structure is not one landlord. Several companies, a mix of personal and limited-company holdings, joint ownership, or an SPV per building. Most platforms model one owner well and anything else awkwardly.
4. Somebody else needs to see it. An accountant, a co-owner, a lender, a board. Per-seat pricing punishes portfolios where ten people need to look and two need to edit — and read-only access to exactly the right slice is usually the whole requirement.
If two or more of those describe you, a system of your own is worth pricing. If none do, it is not.
What a system of your own actually costs
Ours is £7,000 to build and £100 a month to run, scoped in writing before anything is paid: your properties, tenancies or leases, the money, the documents and the reminders in one place, your branding, your own domain, as many users as you need, and your spreadsheets loaded for you. The detail is on the Proprietary Database page.
For comparison, the managed lettings platforms aimed at agencies start around £49 a month plus a percentage of processing volume, with setup fees quoted between about £600 and £2,000. So "custom" is not automatically the expensive end of this market — it is a different shape of cost, flat rather than scaling.
And if your portfolio is commercial property specifically, do not commission a build at all. TenureBook is already that system — every occupier, lease, key date and figure in one book, from £295 a month, live the day you sign up. It exists because we built exactly this for a UK commercial-property firm first, and then turned the lessons into a product so the next firm would not need the build.
How to decide, in about ten minutes
- Count your units and multiply by £8. If that is comfortably under £100 a month, off-the-shelf software is your answer.
- Write down the five things you track that are not "rent in, expense out". If the list is empty, off-the-shelf is your answer.
- Ask where a break clause, a rent review or a service charge would live in the software you are considering. If the honest answer is "the notes field", it does not fit.
- Count who needs to see it and who needs to change it. If those numbers are very different, per-seat pricing will hurt.
Three of those four end with "buy the software", which is the point. If you want a second opinion from somebody who sells the third option and will still tell you to buy the second one, book a short call or tell us what you manage.