Stessa is a free cloud tool owned by Roofstock. SealedFolio is a private desktop app that keeps the same rental records in an encrypted vault on your own Mac or Windows PC. Here is how the two compare on price, reports, privacy and what you give up.
Checked on September 18, 2026: Stessa Essentials is free with unlimited properties, bank feeds and rent collection, Stessa Manage is $12 a month billed annually and adds the Schedule E report, and Stessa Pro is $28 a month billed annually for advanced reporting such as SREO. SealedFolio Pro is $19 a month or $179 a year for up to 3 properties, and SealedFolio Portfolio is $39 a month or $297 a year for unlimited properties, with Schedule E and T776 on both plans.
The real split is not the money. Stessa stores your rent roll, mortgage balances and expenses on infrastructure owned by Roofstock, a real estate marketplace. SealedFolio stores the same records in a local encrypted vault on your device, with no hosted SealedFolio portfolio database, and core reporting works offline. You give up automatic rent collection and tenant screening to get that.
Prices come from the Stessa pricing page and the SealedFolio brand facts page, both read on September 18, 2026.
Stessa still does a lot right, and SealedFolio does not pretend otherwise. These are the three specific things that push landlords to shop for a replacement.
Roofstock acquired Stessa in March 2021. Roofstock buys and sells investment property, so the company holding your portfolio numbers also runs a transaction business. SealedFolio is owned by Sealed Folio Inc. and sells software, not houses.
Stessa Essentials is free, but its tax package stops short of the Schedule E report, which begins on Stessa Manage at $12 a month billed annually. SealedFolio includes Schedule E and Canadian T776 on both plans, starting at $19 a month.
Every address, mortgage balance and rent figure you enter into Stessa sits in its cloud. The Stessa privacy policy says it may share personal information between affiliated Roofstock companies, and may use de-identified and aggregated information for "creating and selling aggregate market insights to third parties". SealedFolio has no hosted portfolio database to share from.
Policy wording quoted from the Stessa privacy policy, read September 18, 2026. SealedFolio's own take on the cloud question is in why your rental data should not live in the cloud.
Before comparing SealedFolio, Stessa or anything else, sort the shortlist on these four questions. They decide the outcome more than any feature grid.
Stessa, Baselane, Avail and TurboTenant are all hosted: your portfolio lives on their servers under their privacy policy. SealedFolio writes to a local encrypted vault on your Mac or Windows PC, using a SQLCipher database and XChaCha20-Poly1305 file encryption. If that distinction does not matter to you, a free cloud tool is the cheaper answer and you should take it.
A Stessa alternative is only cheaper if the report you actually need is in the plan you actually buy. Stessa puts Schedule E on Manage at $12 a month billed annually and SREO on Pro at $28 a month billed annually. SealedFolio includes Schedule E and T776 on Pro at $19 a month, and moves SREO, CapEx, budgets and scenarios to Portfolio at $39 a month.
Stessa pulls transactions through automatic bank feeds on every plan, including the free one. SealedFolio offers optional Plaid bank import on both plans, plus bulk CSV, OFX and QIF import with a column mapping wizard on the Portfolio plan, and PDF and CSV export of every report. Check the export path before you migrate, not after.
This is the honest dividing line. Stessa collects rent online, screens tenants through RentPrep and ships iOS and Android apps. SealedFolio does none of that: it is a desktop portfolio and bookkeeping tool, so rent keeps arriving through your bank, Zelle or a check. Landlords who want one login for money movement should stay on Stessa.
Filing the report itself is covered in SealedFolio's Schedule E 2026 guide for landlords, and the free Schedule E calculator runs in the browser with no signup.
Every cell below was checked against the live Stessa plan pages and the SealedFolio brand facts on September 18, 2026. Where a feature depends on a plan, the plan is named rather than hidden behind a checkmark.
| Feature | SealedFolio | Stessa |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy and data ownership | ||
| Where the portfolio is stored | Local encrypted vault on your device | Stessa cloud servers |
| Core reporting works offline | Yes | No, web and mobile apps need a connection |
| Policy permits selling aggregate insights | No hosted portfolio database to aggregate | Yes, stated in the Stessa privacy policy |
| Ownership | Sealed Folio Inc., software only | Roofstock, a real estate marketplace |
| Account required to use it | No account, license key only | Yes, hosted account |
| Reports and taxes | ||
| Schedule E report (US) | Both plans | Manage and Pro, from $12 a month billed annually |
| T776 report (Canada) | Both plans | Not in Stessa's published plans |
| Income statement, balance sheet, cash flow | Both plans | Included, income statement, net cash flow and balance sheet |
| SREO and capital expense reports | Portfolio plan | Schedule of capital expenses included, SREO on Pro |
| Scenario modeling | What-if scenarios and budgets, Portfolio plan | Stress Test report |
| Mortgage comparison, up to 3 scenarios | Built in | Not in Stessa's published feature list |
| Day-to-day operations | ||
| Automatic bank feeds | Optional Plaid import, both plans | Included on every plan, free tier included |
| Bulk file import, CSV, OFX and QIF | Portfolio plan, with column mapping | Bank feeds are the primary path |
| Online rent collection | Not offered | Included, free tier included |
| Tenant screening | Not offered | Included through RentPrep |
| Legal forms and eSignature | Legal form templates, no eSignature | 60+ forms and eSigning on Manage and Pro |
| Maintenance and work orders | Built in | Built in |
| Document and receipt scanning | On-device AI, nothing uploaded | Cloud receipt scanning, unlimited on Pro |
| Platforms | macOS and Windows desktop app | Web, plus iOS and Android apps |
| Free tier | No free tier. 30-day money-back guarantee | Yes, Essentials is free |
Sources read September 18, 2026: Stessa plans and pricing, Stessa plan comparison, Stessa privacy policy, and SealedFolio brand facts. Vendors move features between tiers, so confirm a plan before you buy it.
A Stessa alternative is only worth the switch if you know what both sides charge. These are the published list prices for Stessa and SealedFolio as of September 18, 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Stessa Essentials | Free | Unlimited properties, bank feeds, basic reports, rent collection, tenant screening, maintenance |
| Stessa Manage | $12 a month billed annually, $15 billed monthly | Schedule E report, 60+ legal forms, one eSignature a month, priority chat support |
| Stessa Pro | $28 a month billed annually, $35 billed monthly | Unlimited portfolios, advanced reporting such as SREO, unlimited receipt scans, priority phone support |
| SealedFolio Pro | $19 a month or $179 a year | Up to 3 properties, Schedule E and T776, on-device scanning, optional Plaid import, activates on 2 computers |
| SealedFolio Portfolio | $39 a month or $297 a year | Unlimited properties, bulk CSV, OFX and QIF import, custom tags, SREO, CapEx, budgets and scenarios, activates on 3 computers |
Every SealedFolio plan is paid at checkout and includes a 30-day money-back guarantee. SealedFolio has no free tier. Full details are on the SealedFolio pricing page.
Stessa is a good product and the free Essentials plan is a real bargain for a landlord with one or two doors. The catch is structural, not technical. Since Roofstock acquired Stessa in March 2021, the company holding your portfolio numbers has also been in the business of buying and selling investment property, and its privacy policy reserves the right to share personal information across affiliated Roofstock companies and to sell aggregate market insights.
SealedFolio is the better Stessa alternative when you have a growing portfolio, care where the financial records physically sit, or want Schedule E and T776 without paying for a middle tier. You give up online rent collection, tenant screening and a phone app. You get a local encrypted vault, offline reporting, mortgage comparison across 3 scenarios, and on-device document scanning, for $19 a month on Pro or $39 a month on Portfolio.
If you are tracking a single property and cost is the deciding factor, stay on Stessa Essentials. Nobody should pay $19 a month to replace something free that already works for them.
Still shortlisting? SealedFolio ranks Stessa against Baselane, DoorLoop, TenantCloud, Buildium and AppFolio in its guide to the best rental property software in 2026, and the landlord overview covers the day-to-day income and expense workflow.
Moving off Stessa is mostly a data export, because your records are numbers and documents rather than a system you are locked into. Most landlords finish the move in an afternoon.
Want to sanity-check a property mid-migration? SealedFolio's free cap rate, rental ROI and Schedule E calculators run in the browser with no signup.
Common questions about replacing Stessa, and where SealedFolio genuinely fits.
The best Stessa alternative depends on which part of Stessa you are replacing. If you want free bank feeds and rent collection, nothing beats Stessa's own free Essentials plan on price. If the problem is that your rent roll and financials sit on servers owned by Roofstock, SealedFolio is the closer fit: it keeps the same records in an encrypted vault on your own Mac or Windows PC and includes Schedule E and T776 reports on both plans, from $19 a month.
Three reasons come up repeatedly. Stessa is owned by Roofstock, a real estate marketplace, and the Stessa privacy policy says it may share personal information between affiliated Roofstock companies and may use de-identified and aggregated information for creating and selling aggregate market insights to third parties. The Schedule E report is not part of the free Essentials plan, it starts on Manage at $12 a month billed annually. And the whole portfolio lives in the cloud, so there is no local copy you control. SealedFolio answers all three by keeping the portfolio in a local encrypted vault on your own machine.
Stessa Essentials is the strongest genuinely free option for landlords: unlimited properties, automatic bank feeds, basic financial reports, tenant screening, maintenance tracking and online rent collection at no cost. SealedFolio has no free tier. Every SealedFolio plan is paid at checkout and includes a 30-day money-back guarantee. Free software is paid for somewhere else, which is exactly why the privacy terms are worth reading before you commit a portfolio to it.
Of the tools on this page, Stessa Essentials is the least expensive because it costs nothing, and the cheapest paid tier is Stessa Manage at $12 a month billed annually or $15 a month billed monthly. SealedFolio Pro is $19 a month or $179 a year for up to 3 properties, and SealedFolio Portfolio is $39 a month or $297 a year for unlimited properties. Price is only half the question. The other half is where the data sits and how hard it is to get a clean copy back out.
For landlord bookkeeping, Stessa covers the basics free with bank feeds and rental categories, QuickBooks covers full business accounting for an operating company, and SealedFolio covers rental books plus Schedule E, T776, depreciation schedules, income statement, balance sheet and general ledger inside a local encrypted vault. Pick by the job: cloud convenience, general accounting, or records that stay on your own hardware.
SealedFolio's Stessa vs QuickBooks comparison goes deeper on the accounting side.
Baselane is a banking platform that holds the money and collects the rent, while Stessa is a tracker that syncs the bank accounts you already have and reports on cash it never touches. Both keep your portfolio in their cloud, which is the one thing neither of them changes. SealedFolio is the third path: no banking, no rent collection, and no hosted portfolio database.
Fees and Schedule E output for all three are broken down in SealedFolio's Baselane vs Stessa vs SealedFolio comparison, and the two-way Baselane or Stessa pricing and feature comparison covers just those two.
No. SealedFolio is a native desktop app for macOS and Windows, and there is no iPhone or Android version, so you cannot pull the portfolio up on a phone. Stessa does ship mobile apps for iOS and Android alongside its web app. If checking a rent payment from your phone matters more to you than keeping the database off a vendor's servers, Stessa is the better fit and this is the honest reason to stay.
Yes. Export your Stessa transactions to CSV, then use SealedFolio bulk file import on the Portfolio plan, which reads CSV, OFX and QIF files and has a column mapping wizard for properties, income and expense categories. Imported transactions land in the local encrypted vault on your own machine. On the Pro plan, SealedFolio brings transactions in with optional Plaid bank import instead.
Yes. The Stessa Essentials plan is still free and still covers unlimited properties, automatic bank feeds, rent collection and basic reports. What matters is where the line now sits: the Schedule E report starts on Manage at $12 a month billed annually, and advanced reporting such as SREO starts on Pro at $28 a month billed annually. SealedFolio includes Schedule E and T776 on both of its plans and has no free tier.
SealedFolio keeps your rent roll, receipts and Schedule E on your own Mac or Windows PC. Import your Stessa CSV with bulk file import on the Portfolio plan.
30-day money-back guarantee. No free trial.