Methodology guide
Property Management Software · Utility Management
Utility Management for Property Managers
Short answer
- Utility management is four products under one name. RUBS billing, submetering, utility expense management and move-in concierge share the label and little else.
- Property type decides which one you need. Master-metered multifamily recovers the bill from residents. Single-family managers need tenants to put utilities in their own names.
- Ask about the rules and the recovery target first. RUBS rules change by city and state, and recovering the full bill from residents generates more disputes than recovering most of it.
- RealPage owns three of the names. RealPage Utility Management, SimpleBills and American Utility Management share an owner, so a RealPage shop is choosing among RealPage products.
Utility management is what a property manager buys when the water bill is the second largest line on the operating statement and none of it is coming back from residents. The category covers four products that share a name and not much else. Resident billing, usually called RUBS or ratio utility billing, splits the community’s master-metered bill across residents by a formula and puts the charge on the ledger.
Submetering puts a meter on each unit and bills for actual use, which means hardware, installation and monthly reads. Utility expense management sits on the owner’s side, auditing the invoices from the utility companies, paying them and benchmarking the property against its peers.
Move-in concierge is the odd one out, a service that reminds a new tenant to put the utilities in their own name and pays the manager for the referral. Conservice’s expense recovery page calls billing residents the most labor-intensive part of utility management, and that sentence explains why the category exists.
This guide covers who buys each of the four, how to evaluate them, and what pricing looks like where anyone will say. It also covers which property management systems each vendor connects to, and how RealPage’s ownership of two of the names changes the vendor list.
Who buys utility management?
Two different buyers use the same phrase, and the property type decides which one you are.
Master-metered multifamily
The first is a multifamily owner or operator with master-metered or bulk-billed communities. The property pays the water, sewer, trash and sometimes gas or electric bill, and the question is how much of it to recover and by what method.
Most vendors in our database tag institutional multifamily. The exceptions are Utility Profit and Livable, which sell to smaller owners, and YES Energy Management, UtilityPro and Vitality, which tag student, HOA, affordable or commercial property instead.
Student housing is tagged by Conservice, SimpleBills, Minol USA, Guardian Water & Power, Zego, YES Energy Management, UtilityPro, Vitality and National Exemption Service. The student segment has its own wrinkle, since a four-bedroom unit with four leases needs four bills.
Guardian, Submeter Solutions, Zego, YES Energy Management, UtilityPro, Vitality, National Exemption Service and Think Utility Services are among the vendors tagging HOA communities. There the association pays the master bill, and the owners are the ones being allocated to. Minol, YES Energy Management and Vitality tag affordable housing.
Conservice, Minol, Guardian, Submeter Solutions, UtilityPro, Vitality, National Exemption Service and Think Utility Services are among those tagging commercial facilities. Submetering a retail bay or an office suite is the same problem with a different tenant.
Portfolio decisions and the PMS
At this buyer’s scale the decision is a portfolio one, usually made by an asset manager or a VP of operations rather than a site team. The vendor shortlist follows the PMS. A RealPage shop will hear about RealPage Utility Management, SimpleBills and American Utility Management, since RealPage owns all three.
A Yardi, Entrata or Rent Manager shop has Guardian’s integration list to start from.
Conservice, Minol and Anchor Utility say they integrate with whatever you run and name nothing, so the integration is a demo question, not a filter.
Single-family and small managers
The second buyer is a single-family or small multifamily manager whose residents already pay utilities directly. There is no master bill to allocate. The problem is the two weeks after move-in when the tenant has not transferred service, the property absorbs the bill, and someone in the office chases it.
Zego’s utility page names residents who have not transferred utilities into their names as the reason for its vacant cost recovery product. Anchor Utility sells vacant cost recovery for the same reason.
Utility Profit approaches the same gap from the front, by getting the tenant to activate service before the keys change hands. Its integration list, AppFolio, Buildium, Rentvine, Rent Manager, Entrata and Propertyware, is the single-family PMS stack.
Livable sits between the two. It sells RUBS and cost recovery to smaller owners, tags small multifamily and single-family rental, and says it has no unit minimums. It is a certified AppFolio Stack partner.
A 40-unit owner on AppFolio paying the water bill for a master-metered building is the buyer it built for.
How do you evaluate a utility management vendor?
The forums that usually supply buyer language for these guides were not reachable for this category, so the questions below come from the vendors’ own product pages and FAQs. They are vendor-framed, and they are still the right questions, because a vendor’s FAQ answers what its prospects keep asking.
Method: measure or allocate
Start with the method. Minol’s utility billing page asks it plainly: do you want to measure individual usage or allocate expenses across the community? Measuring means submeters, an install, and a monthly read.
Allocating means RUBS, a formula, and no hardware. Ask each vendor which it sells, whether it sells both, and what it recommends for your building’s plumbing. A garden community with one water riser per building is a RUBS candidate.
New construction can be submetered at a fraction of a retrofit cost, which is why Guardian tags new construction as a segment.
The rules
Minol’s second question is what is allowed within city and state regulatory guidelines, and the answer changes by jurisdiction. Guardian advertises in-house counsel.
Livable sells compliance as a feature. Ask each vendor who monitors the rules in your states, and what happens when a city restricts RUBS. Ask whether the vendor or you carry the liability for a charge that turns out to be unlawful.
The recovery target
Minol’s third question is what your expense recovery goal is, and it is a better question than it sounds. A vendor that recovers 100 percent of the bill from residents will generate disputes that a vendor recovering 80 percent will not.
Ask what share of the master bill each vendor expects to recover on your property type, what it does with common-area usage, and how it handles vacancy. Guardian’s own site claims a 92 percent collection rate, which is the vendor’s figure and a useful baseline to ask others to beat or explain.
Who bills and who collects
Guardian names its service levels by exactly this distinction: read only, read and calculate, read and bill, or read, bill and collect. SimpleBills goes further, keeping the utilities in the property’s name and invoicing each resident directly for their share. The property never prefunds the bill and, in SimpleBills’s words, never ties up operating cash.
Zego puts the utility charge on an itemized rent-plus-utility statement with click-to-pay. Livable pushes the charge to the AppFolio ledger for approval. Decide whether you want the charge on your ledger, on the vendor’s invoice, or on a resident-facing statement, because each answer changes who the resident calls when they disagree.
Disputes
Guardian’s billing page talks about eliminating confusion and promoting trust, which is a vendor’s way of saying residents argue about allocated charges. Ask what the resident sees, whether there is a portal, how a dispute is logged, and who answers the phone.
A RUBS charge with no usage behind it is harder to defend than a metered one, and the vendor should say so.
Move-in and move-out
SimpleBills issues estimated final bills at move-out. Zego prorates at move-out.
Livable monitors utilities through turnover. Ask how a mid-month move-in is billed, how the final bill is estimated when the utility has not issued one yet, and what happens to a balance left behind. For single-family managers, ask Utility Profit’s version of the question from its own FAQ.
Will the account confirmations be communicated to us, and how will the payments to the partner work?
The owner’s side
Conservice, American Utility Management, Anchor Utility, Zego and Livable each sell some form of invoice processing, audit or benchmarking. Ask whether the vendor pays the utility company on your behalf, and what the float looks like. Ask how a late fee caused by the vendor is handled, and what the benchmark compares you against.
AUM sells its benchmark under the name AUM SCORE; ask what goes into it.
Hardware, if you are metering
Submeter Solutions sells design, installation by your own crew, a contractor or a licensed installer, and an equipment store. Guardian installs wireless submeters.
Minol installs and services meters. Ask who owns the meters at the end of the term, who replaces a dead transmitter, and what the read fee is once the install is paid for. The glossary covers RUBS, convergent billing and the other terms that come up here.
The built-in module
If you run RealPage or Yardi, ask what the PMS’s own utility module does before paying a second vendor. Ask the outside vendor to name what it does that the module does not.
How is utility management priced?
A few vendors in our database say something about price. Livable’s AppFolio Stack listing says no minimums or long-term commitments, with no figure. Utility Profit is free to the property manager and to the tenant.
It pays the manager a referral share per move-in where the renter buys a paid service, averaging about $50, paid quarterly.
Its FAQ answers the question of how the payments to the partner work, which tells you the buyer asks it.
- Utility Connect is free to the partner and the resident and is paid by the service providers it connects customers with.
- Citizen Home Solutions offers its move-in setup options free. It charges $4.99, $7.99 or $9.99 for Activate by Citizen, which transfers utilities back to the manager at move-out.
- UtilityPro is free to owners and managers and bills residents $5 per unit for Pro and $7 for Pro+. Enterprise pricing is custom at 2,000 units and up, with no implementation fee, annual fee or long-term agreement.
- Vitality prices its software from $0.50 per unit per month, with all-in pricing starting at $2.00 per unit and reaching $1.00 per unit at 30,000 units.
Quote-only vendors
Everyone else asks for a demo first. Conservice, SimpleBills, Guardian Water & Power, American Utility Management, Submeter Solutions, Anchor Utility and Zego do not publish pricing in our database. Submeter Solutions says custom quote.
Zego says request pricing. Utility Management Solutions says custom quote, and National Exemption Service describes a flat per-unit rate, not a percentage of recovery, without publishing it. Minol USA publishes no owner pricing, but its resident FAQ says each statement carries a billing administration fee and new accounts a one-time activation fee.
It gives no amounts, so ask what residents will see on the first bill.
YES Energy Management’s terms likewise allow a monthly service charge and an account setup fee on resident bills, without amounts. Think Utility Services does not publish owner pricing but discloses resident convenience fees of $3.95 for an online card payment, $4.95 by phone up to $150 and $2.95 for ACH.
The shapes
The shapes you will meet:
- A per-unit monthly fee for billing software.
- A per-statement or per-bill fee for a vendor that issues the invoices.
- A capital cost for meters and installation, followed by a monthly read fee.
- A service fee that may be passed to the resident on the statement.
- For expense management, a fee tied to invoice volume or a share of what the audit recovers.
The move-in concierge inverts the model and pays you.
When a vendor does not publish pricing, ask for five numbers in writing. The per-unit monthly fee, the per-statement fee if any, the resident-facing fee if any, the meter and install cost per unit where hardware is involved, and the contract term. Then compute the annual cost against the dollars you expect to recover, at your current occupancy and at the recovery share the vendor said it expects.
A billing vendor is paid whether or not residents pay, so the recovery number is the one that decides whether the contract makes money.
Which PMS platforms do utility vendors integrate with?
The property management system narrows the list before any demo, so here is what the database records. Every integration claim below carries a source URL and a last-verified date in the vendor record.
AppFolio is listed by Livable, Guardian Water & Power, Utility Profit, UtilityPro, National Exemption Service and Citizen Home Solutions. Yardi is listed by Guardian, Zego, UtilityPro, Vitality, National Exemption Service and Think Utility Services. RealPage is listed by Guardian, which names OneSite, and by Zego, UtilityPro, Vitality, National Exemption Service and Think Utility Services.
Entrata is listed by Guardian, Utility Profit, Zego, UtilityPro, Vitality and National Exemption Service, among others. Rent Manager is listed by Guardian, Utility Profit, Zego, UtilityPro, Vitality, National Exemption Service and Citizen Home Solutions. Rent Manager’s own marketplace files Utility Profit under business operations and maintenance rather than utilities, which is worth knowing when you search for it.
Buildium and Rentvine are listed by Utility Profit, UtilityPro and Citizen Home Solutions, and Propertyware by Utility Profit and Citizen Home Solutions. MRI is listed by Zego, National Exemption Service and Think Utility Services, among others, and ResMan by Zego, UtilityPro, Vitality and National Exemption Service, among others. Zego’s Utility page says it works with all major property management software; the six systems above are the ones its record names.
Vendors that name no PMS
Conservice says it integrates with your own property management software and names none. Minol says it will integrate with your existing rent software and names none. SimpleBills, American Utility Management, Submeter Solutions and Anchor Utility name no PMS in the database.
For those six, ask what the resident sync looks like, and whether charges post to the ledger or arrive as a file. If it is a file, ask who keys them in.
The AppFolio integrations page, the Yardi integrations page and the Rent Manager integrations page list every category on this site that connects to each system. That helps when the utility decision is one of several in the same budget.
The module inside the PMS
The alternative to the outside vendors is the module inside the PMS. RealPage Utility Management covers utility expense management, submetering, resident utility billing and sustainability services, says it integrates with property management systems, and publishes no pricing. RealPage also owns SimpleBills and American Utility Management, so a RealPage customer is choosing among three RealPage products before considering anyone else.
Yardi markets utility billing as a module, but its product page could not be fetched for this research. Nothing about it is verified here, so a Yardi customer should ask the rep what it covers. Neither AppFolio nor Buildium ships a utility billing module in our research, which is why Livable and Utility Profit built their integrations there.
Who are the utility management vendors?
The table below is generated from the vendor database and shows each vendor’s description, pricing model where published, PMS integrations and segments, each with its source and last-verified date. Buyers replacing Conservice can start with the field set against Conservice.
Read the list as four shapes, and expect several vendors to appear in more than one.
The full-service billing and expense management firms:
- Conservice calls its product managed utilities and covers expense recovery, meter management, analytics and ESG.
- American Utility Management is a RealPage company selling resident billing, invoice processing and benchmarking.
- Anchor Utility, formerly Banyan Utility, sells submetering, RUBS, vacant cost recovery and expense management from San Diego.
The resident-direct billing option is SimpleBills, also part of RealPage, which invoices each resident for their share and keeps the property out of the collections business.
Submetering, small-owner and move-in vendors
The submetering-led firms:
- Minol USA is part of the Minol-ZENNER Group.
- Guardian Water & Power has installed wireless submeters since 1983 and bills at four service levels.
- Submeter Solutions is a Seattle installer with an equipment store, acquired by Pioneer Energy Management in February 2025.
The small-owner billing platform is Livable, on AppFolio.
The payments-side entry is Zego, whose utility product puts RUBS and submeter charges on the same statement as rent. The move-in concierge is Utility Profit, which is not a billing product at all.
Newer records add more billing and submetering firms, among them UtilityPro, Vitality, National Exemption Service and Think Utility Services. They also add two more move-in services, Utility Connect and Citizen Home Solutions. The Conservice alternatives page sorts them by problem.
The full list of utility vendors compares every vendor side by side.
Two ownership notes
Two ownership notes before you shortlist. SimpleBills and American Utility Management are both RealPage companies, and RealPage sells its own utility management product, so three of the names a buyer will hear share an owner. Anchor Utility was Banyan Utility, and the old multifamilyutility.com address redirects to it, so a manager who was quoted by Banyan is looking at the same company.
Neither fact changes what the service does. Both change who is on the other side of the table at renewal.
What does the AI Shortlist Index show for this category?
The snapshot above shows the current edition; these figures are from 2026-09. That edition holds 25 ChatGPT runs for this category, one per prompt, captured from the ChatGPT app on 3 October 2026.
Conservice was named in 83% of runs, Zego in 52% and Guardian Water & Power in 39%; Anchor Utility followed at 28% and Minol USA at 27%. ChatGPT named 20 vendors across the 25 runs, and 11 of them appeared in 12% of runs or fewer. Submeter Solutions was not named in any run.
Conservice came first on 5 of the 7 “best” prompts. The two exceptions were small-portfolio questions. For a manager of 250 single-family rentals, ChatGPT named Utility Profit first, and for an owner of 90 units on AppFolio, it named Livable first.
Of the 217 citations in the category, conservice.com drew the most with 27, followed by realpage.com with 22 and rentmanager.com with 20.
Our reading is that the engine treats Conservice as the default answer for multifamily billing. A prompt describing a small portfolio is what most often puts a smaller vendor at the top. This is one run per prompt from one engine, so treat it as a first reading.
Which vendors does this page include?
The criteria block above states which vendors qualify. A vendor is listed if it sells resident utility billing, submetering, utility expense management or move-in utility setup to property managers. It also needs a verifiable source for its description and integrations.
If you sell into this category and want to know where you stand in the next edition, AI visibility for proptech companies explains the monthly prompt runs. It also covers why the source map matters more than the inline citations, and what the work costs.
Where to go next
If the utility charge is going to land on the same resident statement as rent, filters and insurance, read the resident benefits platforms guide next. Zego appears in both categories, and the bundle question is the same one. If you want every vendor on one screen with their sources, the vendor list linked above is the page to open.
The rest of the stack a property management company buys is on the property management software hub, one category at a time.
| Vendor | What it is | Pricing model | PMS integrations | Segments | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zego | Resident app, payments, and credit-reporting incentive marketed as a resident benefits package. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Yardi, MRI Software, Rent Manager, ResMan, Entrata, RealPage source | Institutional Multifamily, HOA Communities, Student Housing | 2026-09-02 |
| Conservice | Full-service managed utilities: utility expense management, expense recovery (RUBS, submetered, direct, convergent, vacant-unit billing), meter management, analytics and ESG for multifamily and other property types. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published source | Institutional Multifamily, Student Housing, Single-Family Rental, Commercial Facilities | 2026-09-04 |
| Livable | Utility billing and cost-recovery software (RUBS and submetered allocation by occupancy, square footage or usage) with AI bill ingestion and a resident portal; charges sync to the AppFolio ledger. source | Not published; AppFolio Stack listing states no minimums or long-term commitments source | AppFolio source | Small Multifamily, Single-Family Rental | 2026-09-04 |
| SimpleBills | RealPage-owned resident-direct utility billing: utilities stay in the property's name, SimpleBills invoices residents for their share and collects, with no property prefunding; student and conventional multifamily. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Student Housing, Institutional Multifamily | 2026-09-04 |
| Minol USA | Submeter installation and service, utility expense management, resident utility billing program and conservation services; part of the Minol-ZENNER Group, headquartered in Addison, TX. source | Resident-paid fees on the utility statement: a monthly billing administration fee and a one-time account activation fee; amounts not published source | Not published | Institutional Multifamily, Student Housing, Affordable Housing, Commercial Facilities | 2026-10-05 |
| Guardian Water & Power | Wireless submetering installation plus tiered resident utility billing (read-only through read, bill and collect) and RUBS for unmetered properties; founded 1983, 4,900+ clients in 46 states. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Yardi, RealPage, AppFolio, Entrata, Rent Manager source | Institutional Multifamily, Small Multifamily, HOA Communities, Student Housing, Commercial Facilities | 2026-09-04 |
| American Utility Management | Resident utility billing and cost recovery, vendor invoice processing and payment, energy management and AUM SCORE benchmarking for multifamily; part of RealPage. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Institutional Multifamily | 2026-09-04 |
| Utility Profit | Move-in utility setup service: syncs with the PMS, reminds tenants by text and email to activate utilities on a PM-branded portal, and pays the PM a referral share on qualifying activations. source | Free to PM and tenant; PM receives a payout per move-in where the renter buys a paid service, averaging about $50, paid quarterly source | AppFolio, Buildium, Rentvine, Rent Manager, Entrata, Propertyware source | Single-Family Rental, Small Multifamily | 2026-09-04 |
| Submeter Solutions | Seattle-based electric, gas and water submeter design, installation and equipment sales with monthly read-and-bill and RUBS services; 2,000+ properties; acquired by Pioneer Energy Management in February 2025. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Small Multifamily, Institutional Multifamily, Commercial Facilities, HOA Communities | 2026-09-04 |
| Anchor Utility | San Diego-based multifamily submetering (billing, installation, maintenance), RUBS, vacant cost recovery and utility expense management (invoice auditing, rate analysis, benchmarking); serves 48 states. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Institutional Multifamily | 2026-09-04 |
| Utility Connect | Free branded relocation concierge that property managers offer to residents to arrange utility and home service connections at move-in, through a private-label microsite, a dedicated phone line and API, CSV, FTP or email lead handoff. source | Free to the partner and the resident; Utility Connect is paid by the service providers it connects customers with source | Not published | – | 2026-10-05 |
| Utility Management Solutions | Eden Prairie, Minnesota utility billing company that bills residents from submeter reads or RUBS, either collecting payments itself or posting charges by API to the PMS ledger, and installs wireless water, gas and electric submeters; serves 100,000+ units in the 48 contiguous states. source | Not published; custom quote source | Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, AppFolio, Rent Manager source | – | 2026-10-05 |
| YES Energy Management | Colorado Springs utility billing provider that calculates and sends monthly resident utility bills and installs, maintains and repairs water, gas and electric submeters for conventional, affordable, student, military and condo/HOA properties. source | Not published; resident bills may carry a monthly service charge, account setup fee, late payment charges and other service charges set out in the U.S. services terms source | Not published | Affordable Housing, Student Housing, HOA Communities | 2026-10-05 |
| UtilityPro | Utility billing service that reads submeters, bills residents by submeter or RUBS, recovers vacant-unit costs, processes provider invoices and posts charges and journal entries to the PMS, for multifamily, student housing, HOA, manufactured housing and commercial properties. source | Free to owners and managers; residential Pro $5 per unit and Pro+ $7 per unit, billed to the resident; Enterprise (2,000+ units) custom; no implementation or annual fee, no long-term agreement source | AppFolio, Buildium, Entrata, RealPage, Rent Manager, Rentvine, ResMan, Yardi source | Student Housing, HOA Communities, Commercial Facilities | 2026-10-05 |
| Vitality | Utility billing software from Murray, Utah that lets an operator's own team generate, validate and send resident utility bills in-house, with live meter analytics, emissions and Energy Star reporting, a portfolio dashboard and meter installation. source | Software from $0.50 per unit per month; all-in pricing starts at $2.00 per unit and reaches $1.00 per unit at 30,000 units source | Entrata, RealPage, Rent Manager, ResMan, Yardi source | Student Housing, Single-Family Rental, Affordable Housing, Commercial Facilities, HOA Communities | 2026-10-05 |
| Synergy Utility Billing | Read, bill and collect firm offering submetering, RUBS billing, submeter installation through licensed partners, billing and collection, analytics and system design for multifamily properties, HOAs, mobile home parks, water districts and military housing. source | Not published; custom quote source | ResMan, Entrata, MRI Software source | HOA Communities, Small Multifamily, Institutional Multifamily, Commercial Facilities | 2026-10-05 |
| National Exemption Service | Water, gas and electric submetering installation with daily reads, RUBS allocation and resident utility billing, collections and dispute handling, run by its own employees since 1968 across 43+ states. source | Flat per-unit rate, not a percentage of recovery, with volume pricing at scale; rates not published, custom proposal source | Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, AppFolio, MRI Software, ResMan, Rent Manager source | Institutional Multifamily, Student Housing, HOA Communities, Commercial Facilities | 2026-10-05 |
| Citizen Home Solutions | Utility and home-service setup service that property managers offer residents at move-in (water, gas, power, internet, TV, security), free to the manager and resident, with commission revenue to the manager. source | Move-in setup options (CompleteConnect, DigitalConnect, RevenueConnect) are free; Activate by Citizen, which transfers utilities back to the manager at move-out, is a paid add-on at $4.99, $7.99 or $9.99 depending on the option used source | AppFolio, Buildium, Propertyware, Rentvine, Rent Manager source | – | 2026-10-05 |
| Think Utility Services | Seminole, Florida submetering and utility billing provider for apartments, condominiums, mobile home and RV parks, resorts and commercial centers, covering meter installation and repair, resident billing and collections; grew out of Midway Utility Services. source | Owner pricing not published; residents pay a billing fee shown on each invoice plus disclosed convenience fees ($3.95 online card, $4.95 by phone up to $150, $2.95 ACH) source | Yardi, MRI Software, RealPage source | Institutional Multifamily, HOA Communities, Commercial Facilities | 2026-10-05 |
| Reliance Utility Services | Utility billing and submetering company that installs and maintains submeters, reads meters, bills and collects from residents, offers RUBS allocation and convergent resident statements, and provides manager and resident portals with property management software integration. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Institutional Multifamily, HOA Communities, Commercial Facilities, Student Housing | 2026-10-31 |
| Studebaker Submetering | Utility submetering and billing company that bills residents and tenants by RUBS, read-bill-collect or convergent billing, and also supplies and installs water, gas, electric and BTU meters, handles utility bill payment and runs cost recovery and conservation programs. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Institutional Multifamily, HOA Communities, Commercial Facilities, Student Housing | 2026-10-31 |
| Billee | Managed utility billing service for multifamily owners and operators that pairs its platform with a dedicated account team to run RUBS, submetered or hybrid resident billing, vacant cost recovery, utility vendor and invoice management, meter monitoring and ESG reporting, with native Yardi, RealPage and Entrata integrations. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Institutional Multifamily, Student Housing, Affordable Housing | 2026-10-31 |
| Utility Ranger | Self-service RUBS utility billing software that owners and property managers run in-house, allocating utilities by square footage, occupancy or both onto one resident statement with admin fees and payment from the invoice, priced per unit per month with a 60-day free trial. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Small Multifamily, Institutional Multifamily | 2026-10-31 |
| UB West | Utility billing company offering RUBS billing and expense recovery, utility audits, utility bill pay and benchmarking for conventional and affordable multifamily, student housing, HOA, single-family rental, military and senior living portfolios. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Institutional Multifamily, Affordable Housing, Student Housing, HOA Communities, Single-Family Rental | 2026-10-31 |
| American Submetering | Utility submetering and billing company specializing in water submetering that also reads electric and gas submeters, bills sewer and trash on one resident statement and collects payments for landlords and HOAs, with CAM billing for commercial and mixed-use properties; serves California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Colorado. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Small Multifamily, Institutional Multifamily, HOA Communities, Commercial Facilities | 2026-10-31 |
| Move Concierge | Home-service setup concierge that arranges electricity, internet, TV, security and home warranty for movers, with a property management partner program that gets water and electricity set up in the tenant's name at move-in. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | – | 2026-10-31 |
| MeterNet | Utility submetering company that installs, reads and bills water, gas and electric submeters for builders, property managers and HOAs, with leak detection, meter changeout and recertification, a resident app and a manager dashboard. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Institutional Multifamily, HOA Communities, Student Housing | 2026-10-31 |
| Hocutt | Dallas-based utility submetering and billing company serving properties nationwide that installs and reads water, gas and electric submeters and offers full-service, bill-only and convergent billing, vacant cost recovery and utility expense management, working with Yardi, MRI, RealPage, ResMan and Rent Manager. source | Not published; ask for the per-unit figure and the minimum. | Not published | Institutional Multifamily, HOA Communities, Commercial Facilities | 2026-10-31 |
Which vendors do AI answers name most in this category?
In the October 2026 edition, across 50 recorded runs, the engines named Conservice (70%), Zego (50%) and Anchor Utility (42%).
The live ranking, source map and every vendor row: Utility Management in the AI Shortlist Index.
Inclusion criteria for this list
A vendor is listed when it sells utility management to property managers in the United States, has a public website, and has at least one sourced fact in the shared vendor database (description, pricing model, or PMS integrations, each with a source URL and the date it was checked). Listing is free and never affects Index placement. Missing a vendor? Tell us, with a source. 28 vendors are listed today.
Questions about Utility Management
What is the difference between RUBS and submetering?
RUBS, ratio utility billing, splits a master-metered utility bill across residents by a formula such as occupancy or square footage. Submetering installs a meter on each unit and bills residents for what they used. Minol's buyer page frames the choice as whether you want to measure individual usage or allocate expenses across the community. Submetering costs hardware up front and is more defensible in a dispute; RUBS costs nothing to install and depends on what city and state rules allow.
What does utility billing cost for a property management company?
Few vendors in this category publish a price. Livable's AppFolio Stack listing says no minimums or long-term commitments but gives no figure. Utility Profit is free to the property manager and the tenant and pays the manager a referral share, averaging about $50 per move-in where the renter buys a paid service, paid quarterly. Utility Connect and Citizen Home Solutions are free to the manager and the resident. UtilityPro is free to owners and managers and bills residents $5 or $7 per unit, and Vitality's software starts at $0.50 per unit per month. Conservice, SimpleBills, Minol USA, Guardian Water & Power, American Utility Management, Submeter Solutions, Anchor Utility and Zego do not publish pricing; ask each for the per-unit monthly fee, the per-statement fee, the meter and install cost where hardware is involved, and the contract term.
Which utility billing vendors integrate with AppFolio?
In our vendor database, Livable is a certified AppFolio Stack partner that pushes charges to the AppFolio ledger for approval, Guardian Water & Power lists AppFolio alongside Yardi, RealPage, Entrata and Rent Manager, and Utility Profit lists AppFolio with Buildium, Rentvine, Rent Manager, Entrata and Propertyware. UtilityPro, National Exemption Service and Citizen Home Solutions also list AppFolio. Conservice and Minol say they integrate with your existing software without naming one. Each integration claim carries a source URL and a last-verified date.
Do I need a utility vendor if my PMS already has a utility module?
RealPage sells its own utility stack, RealPage Utility Management, covering expense management, submetering, resident billing and sustainability, and it owns two of the vendors in this category, SimpleBills and American Utility Management. Yardi markets utility billing as a module too. If you run either system, ask your rep what the built-in module bills, who reads the meters, and who handles the resident disputes, then ask the outside vendor what it does that the module does not.
What is a move-in utility concierge, and is it a billing product?
No. A move-in concierge such as Utility Profit reminds a new tenant to put water, power and internet in their own name, on a portal branded to the property manager, and tracks whether they did. It is aimed at single-family and small multifamily managers whose residents pay utilities directly, and it earns from referral fees rather than a subscription. Billing, RUBS and submetering vendors serve master-metered communities where the property pays the bill first and recovers it from residents.
Which utility management vendors are owned by RealPage?
Two in our database. SimpleBills describes itself as part of RealPage, and American Utility Management's site says it is now part of the RealPage family. Both are listed separately because they are sold under their own names, but a buyer on RealPage's OneSite should expect them to be pitched alongside RealPage Utility Management, and a buyer on another PMS should ask how each connects to it.
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