The honest EliseAI and Funnel alternative for landlords under 2,000 units

If you have been shopping for an AI leasing assistant and came away feeling like every demo was aimed at somebody much bigger than you, that is not your imagination. It is the market's actual shape, and the vendors say so themselves.

This is an honest look at the two names you have probably heard — EliseAI and Funnel Leasing — what they genuinely do well, and why neither will sell to a landlord with 8 units or a manager with 200. I build a competing product, so read this with that in mind. Everything factual below is sourced, and where a number is a third-party report rather than a vendor's own statement, I say so.

The quiet part: both have a floor, and you are under it

Funnel's own contact page carries this line, word for word:

“We currently only accept property managers and owners with a minimum of 2k conventional units in their portfolios.”

That is not a pricing tier or a suggestion. It is the intake rule, published by the vendor. Under 2,000 units you are not a small customer to Funnel, you are not a customer at all.

EliseAI is less explicit and lands in the same place. No published price anywhere on their site, no self-serve signup, no trial. Independent reviewers who went looking for a path for a small owner concluded there isn't one — one summed it up as “no self-serve tier, no published price, and no path for a 10-door owner to buy it.” Figures of roughly $3 to $6 per unit per month with a $25,000 annual minimum circulate in the market, but those are competitor-sourced estimates, not EliseAI's own numbers, and I will not present them as fact. The practical entry point is widely reported as several hundred units and up.

None of that makes them bad products. It makes them enterprise products, sold by salespeople to portfolios with thousands of doors. That is a real business and they are winning it.

Credit where it is due

I would rather tell you this here than have you find it out after buying from me.

EliseAI is the category leader by a wide margin. They say their platform powers roughly one in six U.S. apartments, more than two million units, and they passed $200 million in annual recurring revenue in 2026. In September 2026 they raised $350 million at a $4 billion valuation. If you run a national portfolio on Yardi, RealPage or Entrata and want leasing, maintenance, renewals and collections automated by one vendor with a dedicated implementation team, they are a serious product and they have earned that position.

Funnel has been at this since 2010 and has around two million units on the platform, including nine of the sixteen largest operators. Their CRM, online leasing and resident app come from one vendor with a long-standing two-way sync into Yardi, RealPage and Entrata. They also commissioned a blind study of 169 renters in June 2026 in which their AI was preferred over the self-described category leader's. That finding is about Funnel, not about me — but it is worth knowing, because of why renters picked it.

What that study found, and why it matters to you

The renters did not choose on features. They chose on warmth and straight answers. They described the losing assistant as “abrupt,” “formal,” and “the audio version of a brochure.” The reasons they gave for preferring the winner were conversational warmth, and answering fee and pet questions inside the conversation instead of sending a link.

I find that vindicating, because it is the entire design principle behind the assistant I built. Pace is constrained to text like a person: under 25 words, one question at a time, contractions, no corporate filler, and a straight answer about pet rent or a fee rather than a link. Not because it tests well, but because it is what I wanted back when I was the one answering texts at 11pm.

Honest comparison

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Sources: each vendor's own site for minimums, channels and scope; third-party reviews for deployment times and removed list prices, labeled as reported. Checked 6–10 October 2026.

What LeasePace does today, and what is still coming

Straight answer, because you should buy on what exists rather than a roadmap:

• Shipped today: Pace replies over SMS, WhatsApp and email, qualifies the renter and hands them to your team to set the tour. The application, screening, lease and e-signature happen in the same place. Pace also answers the phone when your team cannot get to it, speaks with the caller, and writes the call down with a follow-up task for a human.
• Deliberately narrower on the phone: a spoken sentence cannot be recalled, so Pace on a call answers from our own unit data and takes down what the caller wants. Anything touching money owed, approval, screening, criminal history, assistance animals or a complaint goes to a human. That is the design, not a gap.
• Being built: maintenance, renewals and collections. Right now Pace is a leasing assistant. The bigger platforms cover the whole resident lifecycle today.
• Not there yet: deep two-way syncs with Yardi, RealPage and Entrata. Theirs are years old. If you will not move off one of those, that is a real constraint on working with us.

Nothing on that list is hidden on a pricing page or discovered after signing. If a gap matters to you, say so on the call and I will tell you honestly whether it is weeks away or not on the roadmap.

Where I think I am the better buy

Under a few hundred units the enterprise products are not expensive, they are unavailable. That changes the question from “which is best” to “which will actually sell to me,” and the shortlist gets short fast.

LeasePace is $97 a month plus usage. The AI replies and texts are billed as you use them, so a quiet month costs you less. No unit floor, no annual commitment, no implementation project — we set it up on a 15-minute call, on your number, with your units and your rules.

And it does the parts that actually close a lease, not just the texting: the application, screening, the lease, e-signature. One login, lead to signed lease.

How Pace behaves, specifically

Three rules it will not break, because small landlords get burned by all three:

• It never confirms a tour itself. It qualifies the renter, notes the time they want, and hands off to you to lock in. No AI telling someone they are booked when your Saturday is already full.
• It offers the application before the tour. The moment one unit is in focus it asks whether they would rather apply now or see it first, so you are not driving across town for someone who will not qualify.
• It will not characterize a neighborhood, promise an approval, or invent an answer about a unit. Fair-housing-sensitive topics go to a human.

Written by Reuven Praver, founder of LeasePace and an active residential leasing agent in Newark, NJ. I build a product that competes with the two above, so weigh this accordingly — and tell me if anything here is out of date and I will correct it.

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