Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions about Room Choice student housing software, pricing, features, and security.
Pricing & Plans
How is pricing calculated?
Room Choice charges operators no subscription, setup, or per-bed fee. A booking fee is charged for each lease and is paid by the resident when they reserve or sign, unless you choose to absorb it. The amount is set in your agreement with Room Choice.
What's the typical contract length?
There's no minimum term, and you can stop using Room Choice with 30 days' notice.
Are there onboarding fees?
No. There are zero setup fees, onboarding fees, or hidden costs. The only charges to an operator are a booking fee you choose to absorb and a fee for a payment that is disputed and lost, in the amount set in your agreement. Data migration, training, and onboarding are all included at no charge. Most operators go live in about two weeks.
What if my volume increases?
Nothing changes automatically. There are no volume tiers: the booking fee is the amount set in your agreement with Room Choice, and processing fees are paid by the person making the payment and shown before the payer confirms a payment.
What's included for every operator?
Everything. All features, unlimited users, unlimited properties, data migration support, training, and ongoing support are included. There are no add-on fees or feature gates for any operator.
Features & Product
How does automated late fee assessment work?
Set your late fee rules once—first-day fees, daily fees, minimum balances—and Room Choice applies them automatically. No manual calculations, no missed assessments. The system tracks everything and applies fees consistently across all residents.
Can I offer flexible payment plans to residents?
Yes. Room Choice lets you offer installment payment options. Residents choose plans that work for them, and you maintain predictable revenue with automated payment collection.
How does the multi-property dashboard work?
View all your properties at once or drill down into individual locations. Get real-time occupancy, revenue, and operational metrics across your entire portfolio. Compare performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions from a single screen.
What self-service features do residents get?
Residents can view balances, make payments, submit maintenance requests, and access documents 24/7 through the resident portal.
Does Room Choice support e-signatures for leases?
Yes. Send leases and contracts for electronic signature, track signing status, send automated reminders, and store signed documents automatically. Signing runs through Dropbox Sign.
Security & Compliance
How is my data encrypted in Room Choice?
Traffic is served over HTTPS, with HTTP redirected at the edge, and an HTTP Strict Transport Security header is set on application responses — it is not currently set on error responses. We are not quoting a minimum TLS version, because we have not verified the one our load balancer is actually configured with. On encryption at rest: we use managed AWS services for storage and would expect their defaults to apply, but we do not currently hold a configuration record we could show you, so we are not making that claim until we have verified it. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes, and application secrets are held in a managed secret store rather than in source code. Our trust page sets out what exists and what does not.
How does Room Choice control who can access my data?
Room Choice uses role-based access control, so each manager sees only the properties and functions their role grants. Sessions run on short-lived server-side tokens that are re-issued automatically while the app is open, and signing in again is required at least every 30 days. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes, never in plain text.
How is data isolated between properties and organizations?
Data is separated per organization at the row level, so one customer's records are not reachable from another's session. Role-based access control determines what each member of staff can see and do. No independent party has tested this separation; everything here is our own assessment of our own system. Our trust page sets out what exists and what does not.
What compliance certifications does Room Choice have?
Room Choice does not hold any security certification. We have not completed a SOC 2 audit, a PCI DSS assessment, or a HECVAT, and no third party has audited or penetration-tested the platform. What we do have is concrete and verifiable: card details are entered directly into payment fields hosted by Stripe and never pass through or rest on Room Choice servers; access is role-based and data is isolated per organization at the row level; the codebase and its dependencies are scanned automatically on every change; and infrastructure runs in a single United States region with automated backups and point-in-time recovery. Our trust page sets out what exists and what does not.
How are backups handled in Room Choice?
Room Choice performs automated backups with point-in-time recovery, and the database has deletion protection enabled. The database runs across multiple availability zones within a single United States region — that is availability-zone redundancy, not geographic distribution, and there is no European or other regional option. A restore was last rehearsed on 1 June 2026; that drill confirmed the database could be rebuilt, and did not include a row-level data integrity check.
Do I need to sign a long-term contract?
No. There's no minimum term, and you can stop using Room Choice with 30 days' notice.
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