RentSpree is a rental transaction platform that supports the rental process from finding and filling a property through lease signing and beyond. Because a single transaction can involve landlords, tenants, and other participants, communication needs to happen alongside the transaction rather than in a separate application.
As RentSpree expanded its messaging capabilities, it wanted a communication layer that could support its marketplace model, integrate with its existing web application, and give the team room to introduce AI into rental conversations.
Connecting everyone involved in a rental transaction
A rental transaction does not always involve just two people.
Depending on the stage of the transaction, communication can happen between landlords, tenants, and other parties involved in getting a property leased and managing what happens afterward.
RentSpree wanted to bring those conversations into its platform so users could communicate without leaving the rental workflow.
The team also had a longer-term vision for messaging. Some conversations could eventually include an AI agent that helps answer questions or retrieve information on behalf of users.
That meant RentSpree needed more than basic one-to-one chat. It needed messaging infrastructure that could support multi-tenant conversations, notifications, integrations, and AI participation.
Keeping conversations separate across properties
RentSpree operates as a marketplace, where communication needs to remain connected to the relevant rental relationship.
The team explored CometChat's multi-tenancy capabilities to keep conversations logically separated across different customer environments. This allows each tenant or customer environment to operate within its own isolated chat space, preventing users in one environment from communicating with users in another.
For a rental platform, that separation provides an important foundation for keeping landlord and tenant conversations tied to the right property and transaction.
RentSpree can also create and manage users and conversations programmatically, allowing its own platform logic to determine who should be able to communicate with whom.
Bringing chat into the existing web experience
RentSpree's platform is web-based and built with React. The team wanted chat to fit into its existing design system rather than introduce a completely separate interface.
CometChat's React UI Kit gives the team individual components that can be selected, themed, styled, and customized. Where the standard components do not fit the product experience, RentSpree can replace individual UI elements with its own components.
The team is initially focused on messaging, keeping voice and video outside the scope of the first implementation.
Extending conversations beyond the chat window
RentSpree also needed communication to work across channels.
If a user is not actively inside the platform, the team wants to be able to notify them about a new message through email or SMS and, importantly, allow them to reply back through that notification and have the response appear in the original conversation.
CometChat's email reply functionality supports this workflow through its email integration, while webhooks provide flexibility for connecting notifications to RentSpree's own systems and providers.
This means a conversation does not have to stop simply because a participant has left the application.
Building toward AI-assisted rental conversations
RentSpree also sees an opportunity for AI to participate directly in conversations.
A landlord and tenant might be discussing a property or asking questions about a rental transaction, with an AI agent brought into the conversation to help answer questions or retrieve information.
CometChat supports this model by allowing a bot to become a member of a group conversation. Messages can be forwarded to RentSpree's own AI system, processed there, and returned to the conversation as a bot response.
This gives RentSpree a path from simple user-to-user messaging toward human + AI collaboration inside the same rental conversation.
Migrating existing conversations without starting over
Because RentSpree was moving from an existing messaging solution, preserving historical conversations was another important part of the implementation.
The migration approach allows RentSpree to bulk import existing users, groups, and messages through CometChat's APIs. Historical messages can be imported while the existing platform remains live, with new messages synchronized during the transition to avoid creating a gap in conversation history.
This gives the team a way to transition its messaging infrastructure without requiring a large platform-wide shutdown.
The result
RentSpree is building a communication layer that sits directly inside its rental transaction platform.
Rental-specific conversations: Landlords, tenants, and other participants can communicate within the context of a rental transaction.
Multi-tenant architecture: Conversations can remain logically separated across different customer environments.
Customizable React experience: RentSpree can adapt CometChat's UI Kit to its existing product and design system.
Cross-channel notifications: Email and webhook capabilities provide a path for users to receive and respond to messages outside the application.
AI-ready conversations: Bots can participate in group conversations and respond using RentSpree's own AI systems.
Historical message migration: Existing users, groups, and conversations can be migrated into the new messaging infrastructure.
By bringing messaging into the rental workflow and building a foundation for AI-assisted conversations, RentSpree is turning communication from a separate utility into part of the rental transaction itself.
