Why We Built a "Base + Per-Door Buffer" Model (And Killed the 2% Rent Skim)
An inside look at Plinth's transparent pricing architecture, designed to scale smoothly with portfolio growth without tier cliffs or percentage cuts.
Edward Whitehead
Edward Whitehead is the Registered Information Officer for Plinth-Cloud (Pty) Ltd, registered with the South African Information Regulator under POPIA. He writes about property management, rental law compliance, and open banking for South African landlords.
Why should a software provider take a percentage cut of your gross rental collections?
If a tenant’s monthly rent increases from R10,000 to R12,000, did the software do 20% more work to process the payment entry? No. Yet traditional agency platforms continue to charge 1.25% to 2% of collected rents—taking tens of thousands of Rands straight out of landlord net yields every year.
On the other hand, rigid subscription software often presents a "Tier Cliff": if you hold 15 units on a Starter plan and buy your 16th property, you are forced into an enterprise bracket that doubles or triples your monthly bill overnight.
When designing Plinth, we built a pricing model that respects landlord margins and scales logically.
1.** Zero Percentage Skim**
Plinth operates on a predictable, value-tiered model. We never skim a percentage off your rental receipts. You earned your equity; software should simply be a low-cost operational utility.
- Base Plan + Per-Door Scaling
Instead of rigid tier cliffs, Plinth combines a stable base plan with a gentle per-door overage buffer:
| Plan Tier | Base Monthly Fee | Included Units | Extra Unit Overage | Key Capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | R0 | Up to 10 | - | Manual ledger tracking, tenant portal, basic compliance. |
| Starter | R399.99 | Up to 15 | +R29.99 / door / mo | Open-banking auto-match, 1 bank feed, automated alerts. |
| Growth | R899.99 | Up to 40 | +R24.99 / door / mo | Multi-bank feeds, WhatsApp reminders, Xero/Sage exports. |
| Agency | R1999.99 | Up to 100 | +R14.99 / door / mo | Landlord payout statements, multi-owner profiles, priority support. |
| Enterprise | R3499.99 | Up to 300+ | +R9.99 / door / mo | Full API webhooks, dedicated account management, custom SLAs. |
If you own 16 doors on Starter, you don't jump to the Growth plan immediately—you simply pay the base R399.99 plus a single +R29.99 overage for the 16th door. As your portfolio approaches the next tier, our billing engine automatically caps and transitions your account to the most cost-effective tier.
- Isolated Credit Token Wallet for Variable Third-Party Data
To keep baseline subscription fees low, heavy third-party data requests are strictly pay-per-use via your in-app Credit Wallet:
- truID Tenant Vetting Report (R99): 3-month transaction history & verified income.
- Statement OCR Parsing (R15): High-accuracy PDF statement data extraction.
- Tenant Bank Account (AVS) Check (R15): Real-time account ownership verification.
- CPA-Compliant Lease Generator (R150): Watertight, customizable legal agreements.
This structure ensures you only pay for heavy data calls when you actually run them.