Proplio vs Arthur Online for Letting Agent Compliance: An Honest 2026 Comparison

The short version

Arthur Online and Proplio look adjacent but solve different problems. Arthur is a full property management platform — tenancies, rent collection, accounting, repairs, inspections, tasks — with compliance surfaced as one module among many. Proplio is a compliance platform that does not do rent collection, accounting, or tenancy management.

If the operational pain point is running the day-to-day mechanics of a managed-lettings business — issuing rent statements, reconciling client account, raising work orders, keeping a tenancy ledger — Arthur wins outright. Proplio does not compete in that lane. If the pain point is compliance oversight — the EICR you are not sure has been done, the HMO renewal you might have missed, the council inspector turning up next week — Proplio is the deeper tool and is materially cheaper.

A lot of agencies run both. The combined monthly cost is usually lower than upgrading Arthur's tier to deepen the compliance module, and you get a stronger compliance tool either way. This is the honest 1:1 comparison. We make Proplio, so we are biased — we have tried to be fair about where Arthur wins.

What each product is actually for

Arthur Online was built as a property management operating system. The portfolio sits at the centre; tenancies hang off properties; rent collection, accounting, tasks, repairs, inspections, and document storage all flow through the same tenancy. The compliance module records certificates, sets expiry dates, and surfaces what is due — it rides alongside the rest of the platform. It is competent. It is not the part of Arthur the company is shaped around.

Proplio was built around the compliance lifecycle and nothing else. A property has a list of compliance items. Each item has an expiry date. As that date approaches, reminders fire at 90, 60, 30, 14, and 7 days. When an inspector or landlord asks for evidence, you generate a one-click PDF compliance pack. The portfolio dashboard tells you which properties are red, amber, or green. There is no rent collection, no accounting, no tenancy ledger, no repairs ticketing, no AST generation.

Choose based on which spine fits your operational reality. If your team spends more time on the operational backbone of running a managed-lettings business than on compliance follow-up, Arthur. If it is the other way around, Proplio. If both are real, run both — that is the most common ending.

Compliance, head to head

Both tools surface gas safety, EICR, and EPC status with expiry alerts. The differences show up at the edges, which is where compliance actually bites you. See the full compliance checklist for the obligations any tracker has to cover.

Compliance type coverage. Proplio ships with twelve UK compliance types as defaults — Gas Safety, EICR, EPC, Legionella, Smoke and CO, Right to Rent, HMO Licence, Selective Licence, PAT Testing, Fire Safety, PRS Database, and PRS Ombudsman — plus the ability to define custom types per agency for anything else you track. Arthur covers the core certificates well, but agents commonly report having to track selective licensing conditions, PAT renewals, legionella reviews, and PRS Database / PRS Ombudsman registrations outside the platform. Both tools evolve their coverage; check current Arthur coverage against your specific portfolio mix when evaluating.

Portfolio-wide dashboard. Proplio's home screen is the entire portfolio in one view, every property colour-coded by RAG status. You see at a glance which properties are red (overdue), amber (expiring within 60 days), green (compliant), or grey (not applicable). Arthur's home dashboard is built around tenancies, tasks, and rent — compliance is reachable in a couple of clicks but it is not the thing the dashboard is shaped around. For an agency where compliance is the operational risk, the difference is whether the most-watched screen of the working day surfaces it or hides it.

Reminder ladder. Proplio's reminder ladder is 90, 60, 30, 14, and 7 days before expiry, configurable per agency in settings. The 90-day lead time is the one that matters most — it gives you time to book a Gas Safe engineer or an EPC assessor before there is any pressure on the date. Arthur sends compliance reminders too; the configurability and the early-warning lead time are the part to compare on a demo.

Audit-ready PDF report. Proplio generates a single PDF compliance pack per property in one click — every certificate bundled, full audit trail of who did what and when, unique verification ID. That is a defensible artefact you can hand straight to a council enforcement officer, a trading standards inspector, or attach to an insurance renewal. Arthur stores documents and gives you per-property visibility, but assembling a one-click verifiable audit pack typically means downloading certificates and combining them. For agents whose council relationship matters, the one-click PDF is the practical difference.

Landlord-facing visibility. Proplio offers a read-only share link per landlord — they see their own properties' compliance status without needing a login. No more emailing PDFs every quarter. Arthur has a landlord portal that covers a broader set of operational updates — statements, tenancy details, repairs — and compliance status sits inside it. The two solve different versions of the same problem; the Proplio version is narrower and faster to set up.

Contractor management. Proplio's contractor module is specifically for compliance contractors — gas engineers, electricians, EPC assessors, legionella assessors — with one-click renewal emails carrying property details pre-filled. Arthur's contractor management is broader because it covers all maintenance contractors and the repair workflow as well, with work orders and dispatch on top.

Property management

Arthur wins. Proplio does not compete here.

If your team's biggest daily friction is running the operational backbone of a managed-lettings business — keeping a clean tenancy ledger, reconciling client account, issuing rent statements, raising and tracking work orders, scheduling inspections — you need a property management platform. Arthur's tenancy, rent, and accounting modules are the part of the product the company has been refining for years. There is no honest version of this comparison where Proplio is the answer for property management.

This is why "Proplio vs Arthur Online" is rarely the right question. The right question is "what tool runs which part of my operation, and what does the combined cost look like".

Pricing

Proplio: £29/month flat, unlimited properties, unlimited team, monthly or annual. No per-unit pricing, no feature tiers, no charges for adding users or properties.

Arthur Online: per-property tiered pricing. Public bands exist on Arthur's website but the realised cost depends on tier and bolt-ons. Agencies running 100 lettings units commonly report £150–£350/month for Arthur depending on which modules (accounting, inspections, repairs, plus per-tenant or per-landlord portal access) are bundled. The figure scales with portfolio.

The realistic monthly cost picture at three portfolio sizes:

Two honest caveats. First, you are not buying the same product — Arthur's price covers a full property management platform plus a set of optional modules, Proplio's covers compliance only. The straight per-pound comparison is misleading. Second, Arthur prices vary heavily with module mix and contract length; the bands above are typical reports, not quotes — get one sized to your portfolio and your module needs.

Where the price comparison genuinely matters is when an agent is carrying a higher Arthur tier mostly to get the compliance module rather than the property management core. In that scenario, the maths is straightforward: a leaner Arthur tier plus a dedicated compliance tool at £29/month is materially cheaper than paying up for compliance you do not really get.

Switching from Arthur's compliance view to Proplio

An afternoon for most agencies. The flow:

1. 1Export your compliance register from Arthur as CSV — property address, compliance type, last done date, expiry date, contractor.
2. 2Map the columns to Proplio's import template.
3. 3Upload. The full portfolio loads in minutes.
4. 4Upload the existing certificate PDFs against each compliance item. Optional but worth doing for the audit pack.
5. 5Reminders start firing automatically. No manual setup of individual deadlines.

The two systems do not need to integrate. Compliance lives in Proplio from that point onwards; if you are keeping Arthur for property management, Arthur continues to run operations without touching the compliance system of record. The same handover pattern applies if you are switching agents and a portfolio is moving with you — see the compliance handover guide for the wider workflow.

Side-by-side

Which to choose

Choose Proplio if:

• Compliance oversight is the operational risk that keeps you up at night
• You want a flat monthly cost that does not grow with your portfolio
• You need the audit-ready PDF pack for council inspections, trading standards visits, or insurance renewals
• You already have a property management solution (or do not need one)
• You want twelve UK compliance types covered out of the box, not just the headline three

Choose Arthur Online if:

• Running the day-to-day operational backbone — tenancies, rent, accounting, repairs — is your biggest daily friction
• You want a single platform spanning operations, finance, and tenant-/landlord-facing portals
• You need a tenancy ledger, client account reconciliation, and statement generation in one tool
• You are willing to accept "good enough" compliance as part of a property management-led platform

Run both if:

• Operations and compliance are both real pain points (this is most agencies above 50 units)
• You are currently carrying Arthur's higher tier mostly to access compliance — a leaner Arthur tier plus Proplio is often the better economics
• A council inspection or insurance renewal is on the horizon and you need a defensible one-click audit pack now, without re-platforming your operations

For the broader landscape and how this fits against spreadsheets and full property-management platforms, see the compliance software comparison. For the head-to-head with the other major tenancy-onboarding platform, see Proplio vs Goodlord, and against the dominant repairs platform, Proplio vs Fixflo. For the breakpoint where any tool starts paying for itself versus a spreadsheet, see the spreadsheet-to-software switch guide.

Running both

The combined stack looks like this:

• Arthur Online for the operational backbone — tenancies, rent collection, client accounting, repairs, inspections, tasks, landlord and tenant portals
• Proplio for the compliance system of record — every certificate, every expiry, every audit trail, every landlord share link, the one-click PDF pack for council inspectors

The two do not need to integrate. Tenancy and financial data lives in Arthur. Compliance data lives in Proplio. The agency-side workflows touch each tool for the part it owns. The combined monthly cost at most portfolio sizes is lower than upgrading Arthur's tier to deepen the compliance module — and you get a better compliance tool at the same time.

The objection here is "another tab open". That is real. The counter is that the cost of a missed compliance deadline — up to £30,000 for an EICR breach, up to £30,000 per unlicensed HMO, up to £20,000 per Right to Rent failure — makes the cognitive cost of a second tab cheap. See the full landlord fines guide for the penalty regime in 2026.

Key takeaways

• Arthur Online is a property management platform with compliance as a module. Proplio is a compliance platform that does not do property management. They overlap on one module, not on the whole product.
• For tenancies, rent collection, accounting, and repairs, Arthur wins outright. For compliance depth — twelve UK types, configurable reminder ladder, one-click audit PDF, portfolio-wide RAG dashboard, landlord share links — Proplio wins.
• Pricing diverges with portfolio size. Proplio is £29/month flat; Arthur scales per property and per module and is meaningfully more at 100+ units.
• Most agencies above 50 units end up running both. The combined cost is usually lower than upgrading Arthur's tier to expand the compliance module, and you get a stronger compliance tool either way.
• The right question is not "Proplio or Arthur Online". It is "which tool runs which workflow, and what is the combined cost".

This article reflects our honest read of the Proplio vs Arthur Online comparison as of May 2026. Proplio is our product. Pricing figures for Arthur Online are typical bands reported by agencies — always get a quote sized to your portfolio and module mix.