OpenRent and Tenarize
I found my tenant through OpenRent. What happens for the next two years?
These two do not compete. OpenRent is an online letting agent: it lists your property, puts it on Zoopla and Rightmove, references applicants, drafts the contract and gets the deposit registered and the first rent paid. Tenarize starts roughly where that finishes.
Most people searching for an OpenRent alternative are not unhappy with OpenRent. They have a tenant in, the listing has done its job, and the next two years of certificates, rent, repairs and paperwork have no home.
Everything below was read off OpenRent's own website on 15 September 2026. Prices change — check theirs before deciding. England only — Scotland and Wales are different regimes.
What OpenRent does that Tenarize does not, at all
None of this is a setup for a counter-argument. If these are the things that matter most to you, the rest of this page will not change your mind, and it should not.
It finds you a tenant. Tenarize does not.
Listing on OpenRent is free, and £29 including VAT puts the property on Zoopla and 100-plus partner sites, with Rightmove a £70 upgrade. Tenarize does no marketing and no advertising whatsoever, and there is no plan on which it starts.
Somebody will do the viewings
Accompanied viewings from £49, professional photography from £79, inventory and check-in from £95, mid-tenancy inspection from £82. These are people turning up at the property, which no software does. If that is the part you cannot cover, it is worth more than any feature list.
Pay per use, with no subscription
Nothing recurring unless you choose it. A landlord re-letting once every three years pays on the occasions they let, where Tenarize is £15 a month whether or not anything is happening.
Certificates arranged, not just tracked
Gas safety from £55, EPC from £69, electrical from £95, booked through them. Tenarize tells you a certificate is expiring and helps you contact a trade, but nobody at Tenarize arranges the visit.
Tenarize and OpenRent, as published
What each company says on its own website. Not a verdict, and not a feature count — a record of two price lists and two sets of claims on one date.
| Tenarize | OpenRent | |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising and portals | None, at any price | Free on OpenRent; £29 inc VAT for Zoopla and partners; Rightmove +£70 |
| Accompanied viewings | No | From £49 |
| Tenant referencing | Vetting checklist — landlord runs the checks | £30 per reference |
| Getting the tenancy started | Generated agreement, e-signed by both sides | Advertising + Rent Now, £58 inc VAT |
| Ongoing cost | £15/month, 1–5 properties, no VAT added | None unless you add rent collection at £10/month |
| Rent collection after move-in | Bacs Direct Debit, no commission, to your own Stripe account | £10/month subscription |
| Compliance checklist and expiry reminders | Yes — gas, EICR, EPC, alarms, deposit, RRA information sheet | Not advertised — certificates sold as one-off services |
| Tenant portal | Yes | Not advertised |
| Inventory and inspection reports | Room by room, photos, signed both sides | From £95, carried out by a third party |
| Maintenance request tracking | Yes | Management Plus, £19/month |
| Supplier list | Real local tradespeople, filtered and mapped | Not advertised — they sell the services directly |
| Audit trail | Export per tenancy, for a dispute or tribunal | Not advertised |
On Tenarize not having a free tier
There is no free tier, and that is deliberate. All three plans are the same product — the same compliance tracking, the same tenant portal, the same inventories, the same e-signed agreements, the same audit trail, the same support. The only thing the price changes is how many properties it covers.
A free tier is a smaller version of a product, and a landlord with one property would be on the smaller version permanently. Tenarize is built for one to twenty properties, so one property is the size it was designed around rather than the size it tolerates. What replaces a free tier here is a month free and a full refund inside three months if no tenancy is active.
What happens after move-in
Read off openrent.co.uk on 15 September 2026. Where it says not advertised, that is what their public pages did or did not claim.
The certificates come round again
OpenRent will sell you a gas safety certificate for £55 when you need one. What is not on their pages is anything that tells you, twelve months later, that it is about to lapse — and letting with an expired one is a criminal offence rather than an oversight.
Tenarize holds every certificate with its expiry date, reminds you before it lapses, and from sixty days out offers to book the renewal from the reminder using your own supplier list.
The deposit has two duties, and they both have a deadline
Rent Now registers the deposit, which discharges the first duty. The second — giving the tenant the scheme's prescribed information — runs to the same deadline, counted from the day the money was received, and carries its own penalty.
Tenarize tracks both limbs against one deadline, names whichever is outstanding, reports one done late as the breach it is, and warns you when an outstanding duty would block a possession order.
Nothing accumulates
A pay-per-use service ends when the transaction ends. Two years later, when a deduction is disputed or a notice has to be served, the record of what was done and when is wherever you happened to put it.
One tenancy record: documents with their dates, inventories signed at both ends, maintenance jobs with their invoices, rent history, and an audit trail you can export for a dispute or tribunal.
The tenant has nowhere to go but you
After move-in there is no advertised portal. Every request for a copy of a certificate, every question about what was paid in March, comes to you by email.
Tenants get their own login — documents, payment history, e-signing, maintenance reporting — and see the same rent position the landlord sees.
When OpenRent is all you need
There is a version of this page that leaves this section out. It would be a worse page, and you would find all of it out later anyway.
You are letting, not managing
If the job in front of you is finding a tenant, OpenRent does it and Tenarize cannot. Buy the thing that solves the problem you have this month.
One property, one long tenancy, and you are on top of it
Pay-per-use genuinely costs less than a subscription if nothing much happens. £15 a month against £0 between lettings is a real difference.
You need somebody physically there
Viewings, photography, check-in, inspections. Tenarize does none of these and never will — it is software, and the person at the property is the part software does not cover.
You want the certificates arranged for you
OpenRent will book the engineer. Tenarize will tell you it is due, name the trade and draft the email, but you make the appointment.
Answers, in plain terms
Do I have to choose?
No, and most landlords in this position should not. They cover different stages: OpenRent advertises, references and moves the tenant in; Tenarize runs the certificates, the deposit duties, the rent, the repairs and the record for as long as the tenancy lasts. Using OpenRent to let and Tenarize to manage is the arrangement this page exists to describe.
Does OpenRent manage the tenancy afterwards?
Partly, and as paid add-ons. Rent collection is £10 a month and Management Plus is £19 a month for emergency repairs cover. What their pages do not describe is ongoing compliance tracking, certificate expiry reminders, a tenant portal or an audit trail.
Does Tenarize advertise my property?
No. No listings, no portals, no viewings, no photography. It is not a feature that is coming — finding a tenant is a different job, and a letting agent's fee covers real work that software does not replace.
I used Rent Now. Is my deposit sorted?
Half of it, probably. Registering the deposit with a scheme is one statutory duty; giving the tenant the scheme's prescribed information is a separate one, with the same deadline and its own penalty, and protecting the money without sending the information is a complete breach rather than a partial one. You can check your own date on the free deadline calculator without an account.
A month free, and your existing tenancies come with you
"Import existing tenancy" skips the vetting you already did years ago and keeps the certificates, which are the part worth carrying across. £15 a month for one to five properties, no commission on rent, and a full refund inside three months if no tenancy is active.