Maintenance requests lost in personal Gmail inboxes for 200+ unit portfolios

Small-to-mid property managers handling 200+ units often use personal Gmail or a shared inbox to receive maintenance requests, with no ticketing, no SLA tracking, and no audit trail. Tenants submit requests via text, email, phone, and hallway conversations, and the manager mentally tracks priority. The result is that non-urgent requests (leaky faucet, broken cabinet hinge) sit unacknowledged for days or weeks, breeding tenant resentment that snowballs into negative reviews, early lease breaks, and 2-3 months of vacancy cost per unit turnover. This persists because purpose-built maintenance platforms like AppFolio charge per-unit monthly fees that feel expensive to owners netting thin margins, and switching means migrating years of tenant data and retraining staff who are already overwhelmed.