Innago: Close the Tab If Your Mortgage Clears on the First

Close the tab if the first of the month is already spoken for

If your mortgage auto-drafts on the first and the checking account that feeds it has no buffer, do not move live rent onto Innago this week. I mean that as a kindness, not a scolding. The first time a tenant pays from a new bank, the deposit can sit for three business days while someone runs a fraud check. Three business days. On a first payment. If that first also falls on a Saturday, processing waits until Monday, and it does not run after five Eastern. I rechecked that calendar language on 27 September 2026 on the public help pages. A same-week cash promise was unpublished. If you need rent the afternoon a tenant taps pay, this rail will make you angry about float, not about the login.

Skip it too if the building is not in the United States. All fifty states, yes. A flat in another country, no. I did not find a waitlist or a quietly published overseas mode on 27 September 2026. Skip it if you need trust accounting for investors, owner draws that look like a fund, or a ledger that can swallow coin laundry without a second tool. Skip it if residents will treat any checkout fee as an insult and you already refuse to absorb a two-dollar bank transfer. That fight lands in your inbox, not on a marketing tile.

Rewind to the Sunday night with the paper checks

Here is where I rewind. I keep picturing a landlord at a kitchen table on a Sunday night, envelopes on the left, a spreadsheet with one formula blinking error, and a hallway so packed with leftover paint cans that a tenant would have to sidestep them to slide a check under the door. That is the person this Cincinnati shop is built for. Not a regional manager with five thousand doors and a controller on salary. Someone who still collects rent by paper, by a private transfer app, or by a reminder text nobody can later produce in housing court.

Innago started in 2017 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The public pitch is almost rude in its simplicity: no monthly landlord fee, no setup fee, no contract, and no credit card to open an account. Features paid suites hide behind a per-door bill — online rent, applications, screening, e-signed leases, a tenant portal, maintenance tickets, a basic income-and-expense trail — sit behind the same free login. Free for the owner. Tenants still see transaction and screening charges unless you flip a setting and eat them. That split is the whole business.

I am warm toward a landlord seat that does not invoice you every first. I am skeptical of anyone who says “free” and then stops talking. Money still moves. Someone still pays the rails. The honest read is that Innago sells convenience to the owner and charges the person already writing the rent check, unless you decide otherwise. Fair trade, or a hallway argument you did not budget time for.

How you buy a product that never asks for your card

Buying here is not a carton and not a twelve-month term. You open an account, add an address, and invite the people who live there. No card is required to start. There is no minimum unit count. If banking verification cooperates, you can see a live rent screen the same afternoon, which is either a relief or a reason to slow down, depending on whether the fee rules are already in the lease. Onboarding demos exist if you ask. Support sits on weekday Eastern hours by phone, email, and live chat, plus a help center. A mobile app exists for owners and tenants. Plan on a browser bookmark anyway.

Tenants cannot wander in from a store listing and attach themselves to you. Access starts with your invitation. That keeps the resident list under the owner’s control, and it means you cannot tell someone to “just download it” unless you have already added the unit and the person. If you manage a parking pad, a storage locker, or a salon chair that invoices like a rental, the same model still applies. Recurring occupancy money is the job. A full commercial accounting stack is not, and the site does not honestly claim that it is.

Leaving is as unstructured as arriving. No cancellation fee is published. If you stop logging in, you have stopped using it. That sounds generous until a forgotten password sits on top of an executed lease you never downloaded. Export on a boring Tuesday. Do not wait for the week you are already irritated about a hold.

Skip Innago if every door you own sits outside the United States — the help pages do not offer a second country
Skip it if the mortgage drafts on the first and you have no cash buffer for a three-business-day first-payment hold
Skip it if you need investor-grade trust accounting, owner draws, or a ledger that can swallow odd income without a second tool
Skip it if tenants will revolt at any checkout fee and you have already refused to absorb a two-dollar bank transfer
Skip it if a property manager already runs your books in a paid suite and you only wanted a cheaper rent button
Skip it if you need same-afternoon cash every month, including weekends and United States holidays, because processing does not run then

The fee toggle is the real checkout

Tenants can pay by bank transfer, by card, or by cash and check that you log by hand. Autopay lives in their portal. On 27 September 2026 the public FAQ still described a two-dollar fee on bank transfers and a two-point-nine-nine percent fee on cards, charged to the tenant unless you flip a setting and absorb them. That toggle is the purchase decision. Passing two dollars is cheap next to a lost envelope. Passing almost three percent on a large month’s rent is not cheap, and people notice on the same screen where they are already unhappy about rent.

Screening is the other line item. Reports are described as thirty to thirty-five dollars to the applicant by default, covering credit, a criminal-history check, and eviction records, with income verification adding about ten dollars. Listing a vacancy and collecting applications is stated as free for the landlord. If a city page had a temporary waiver, it was unpublished on the day I looked. Default applicant-paid pricing does not make a screening policy legal. Local rules still decide what you may ask and what you may use.

Write the fee rule before you send the first invitation. Surprise card percentages look, to a tenant, like you hid a charge in the last step of a form. If you will absorb bank transfers and refuse cards, say that in the lease and in the portal on the same afternoon. If you will pass the two dollars, say that too, in words a tired person can read on a phone.

Landlord seat: no monthly subscription, no setup fee, no contract, and no card required to open an account, according to the public FAQ I reread on 27 September 2026
Bank-transfer rent: two dollars to the tenant by default; you can absorb that two dollars in settings
Card rent: two point nine nine percent to the tenant by default; same absorb toggle, much larger dollars on a big payment
Applicant screening: about thirty to thirty-five dollars to the applicant for the usual credit, criminal-history, and eviction packet
Income verification: about ten dollars more, still on the applicant unless you choose otherwise
Listings and applications: stated as free for the owner; paid competitor suites are the ones Innago contrasts with a fifty-to-three-hundred-dollar monthly landlord bill

Open the free Innago login and look at the fee toggle first Create the account without a card, add one address, and inspect payout holds and the absorb setting before you invite anyone who already lives there.

The hold feels like freight you did not order

Deposit timing is where a free login stops feeling abstract. Innago says most payouts arrive in one to two business days, with processing Monday through Friday, nine to five Eastern, excluding weekends and United States holidays. First-time payments, or the first use of a new bank or card, are held for three business days. A failed payment resets that hold. Expected deposit dates show on each payment, which is the part I actually like. You can argue with a date on a screen. You cannot argue with a shrug. Some owners still report longer waits than that baseline. I cannot audit those inboxes, and I will not invent a percentage.

This is the feeling I will let through once. The hold irritates me the way a freight delay irritates someone who already paid for the sofa. Nobody stole the money. The calendar just does not care that your own draft is already queued. If a tenant pays after five Eastern, the clock starts the next business day. If they pay Friday night, you are looking at the following week before the fraud hold even begins to count. There is an optional faster-access path through a partner. That is a separate product, not the default bank rail, and I did not run a timed test on 27 September 2026. Keep a rent float until your own payout history is boring.

A leak photo in a packed hallway is the other half of the job

Rent collection is the headline. The rest of the week is a photo of a stain on a ceiling, sent from a phone, while you stand in that packed hallway deciding whether it is a tenant problem or a plumber problem. Maintenance tickets let residents submit pictures and a description from the portal. You get a notification, you can assign the work, log the vendor cost, and keep a history on the unit instead of in a text thread that dies with the phone. Automatic late fees can follow a grace period and a flat or percentage rule. Those rules have to match the lease and the state. A setting harsher than the paper will not save you in court.

Digital leases can start from on-platform templates or from a file you upload, then collect e-signatures the company treats as binding under United States electronic-signature law. The free education hub next to the product publishes extra templates. That is homework, not a lawyer. Landlord-tenant statutes differ sharply, and a generic PDF will not rescue you in a housing court that expects local addenda. Screening is sold as the three data points most owners actually read: credit, criminal background, and eviction history. Reports usually come back in minutes through a third-party bureau. You can turn components off where a city restricts those records. Keep written criteria identical for every applicant. Store the report with the application. Ask a local attorney if your block has extra rules.

Invoices can cover rent, utilities, or a one-off charge. Listing syndication can push a vacancy out to the usual apartment boards. Accounting exports exist if you outgrow the built-in ledger. Team logins let a co-owner or a part-time manager in with limited access. Tenants can opt in to report on-time rent to the three national credit bureaus. I am stopping there. This is not a catalog of tiles. The tiles change. The float and the fee toggle do not.

> Free landlord software is never free in the cash-flow sense. Innago is clear about tenant fees and first-payment holds. You still have to decide whether those mechanics are livable for the people in the building and for the morning your own mortgage drafts. > > — Sophie Winters

Limits the homepage will not argue about

The ledger is fine for rent in and repairs out. It gets thinner if you need a true profit-and-loss with odd income. That is why an accounting partner exists, and why I would not tell a thirty-door investor to fire their bookkeeper. Security language on the public pages includes bank-level encryption, card-processing compliance, a data-center audit stamp, and multi-factor options. Those are the right labels for a payments product. They do not shorten a three-day hold. They do not put money in your account on a Sunday.

Property types on the official FAQ run wider than a single-family rental: multifamily, commercial, student housing, self-storage, marinas, mobile homes, parking, mixed portfolios. Useful if you invoice an occupant. Not a claim that one login replaces a commercial stack. I will not invent a user count or a star rating. What I can say from the published material, checked on 27 September 2026, is that the landlord seat is still priced at zero, the tenant-side fees are still the engine, and a same-day default rail is still unpublished.

Questions people ask before they send the first invite

Do I need a credit card to open the landlord account?

No. The public FAQ I reread on 27 September 2026 still says there is no landlord subscription, no setup cost, no contract, and no card required to start. The company earns money from tenant-side payment fees and from screening reports. You may absorb those fees, which is a cost you choose, not a surprise invoice from Cincinnati. Free still does not mean you skip bookkeeping or a lawyer for a state-specific lease. It means the login itself does not bill the owner.

Who actually pays the two-dollar bank fee?

The tenant, unless you flip the absorb setting. Cards are steeper: two point nine nine percent, same default, same toggle. If you pass card fees on a fifteen-hundred-dollar rent, the resident sees a charge that looks like a convenience tax at the last screen. If you absorb bank transfers and leave cards as a last resort, write that down where both of you can find it.

When does the first rent actually land in my bank?

Most later payments are described as one to two business days. The first payment from a tenant, or the first use of a new funding source, sits in a three-business-day hold. A failed payment starts that hold over. Processing runs weekdays, nine to five Eastern, and does not run on weekends or United States holidays. Each payment shows an expected deposit date. Faster access through a partner is optional and separate. If someone pays Friday after five, you are not looking at Monday morning money.

Not if you are not on the platform. They cannot open an account and attach it to a landlord who never invited them. You add the unit, you add the person, then they get in. A flyer that says “pay us in the app” is useless until you have done that setup. If you are still deciding, do it on one door, not on the whole list.

I own a rental outside the United States. Can I still use this?

No. The FAQ is explicit: United States market only, all fifty states, not international. I looked for a carve-out on 27 September 2026 and did not find one. If the building is abroad, look at tools that actually clear in that country.

Does a screening report tell me who to accept?

No. A credit, criminal-history, and eviction packet is a data input. Fair housing rules, source-of-income ordinances, and city limits on how old records may be used still apply. Innago lets you disable modules where the law requires it. Income verification is an add-on, not a substitute for matching numbers to documents you asked for. Keep the same written criteria for every applicant. A paid PDF does not make a decision legal.

What happens to leases and ledgers if I walk away?

The company says the data is yours and that you can export before you close the account. Download executed leases, payment history, and financial reports on a schedule. E-signed files should live on your own drive as well as in the portal. If you add team users, decide who may export. There is no lock-in contract, which is a feature, and a reason to keep offline copies so a forgotten password does not become a missing lease.

Walk one property through Innago before you move the whole list Use the free landlord seat to test rent settings, screening, and the first payout on a single address. Watch the hold. Then decide whether the rest of the portfolio should follow.

After you have sat with the float

Innago is a serious option for a do-it-yourself owner in the United States who wants rent, applications, and a paper trail without a monthly software bill. The trade is not hidden: tenants or you pay for the rails and the screening, first payouts can sit in a fraud hold, and the ledger will not match a dedicated real-estate general ledger. If that trade is acceptable, try it on one property. Watch three payouts. Export a lease. Then migrate the rest, or do not. If you need same-day cash without fail, or you operate outside the United States, the zero subscription will not fix the fit. Close the tab. The kitchen-table Sunday will still be there, and at least you will know why the first of the month felt tight.