Managing an association is about more than just managing a board and the homeowners they represent. It’s about managing personalities.
Successfully navigating the often chaotic world of community associations successfully takes airtight operations and reliable technology.
Simply put, if you’re second-guessing the tools you use to get work done, you won’t be able to deliver the level of service needed to win and keep clients.
To help you move forward with more time, efficiency, and confidence, we’ve put together this guide to the best community association management software on the market. Whether you manage an HOA, condo, co-op, or other association, there’s software out there that can help, and you’ll find some of the most effective options below.
Or, check out our video.
What Is Community Association Management Software?
One of the toughest parts of managing an association is prioritization. When you’re dealing with homeowners, board members, renters, vendors, inspectors, and—of course—the properties themselves, maintaining a suitable environment for everyone involved becomes a job that’s more than the sum of its parts.
The best community association management software can streamline nearly every task, taking work off your plate and putting revenue in your pocket in the process. Often in the form of a stand-alone platform, this software can also connect to other technology you already use or may be interested in adopting, so that you can complete almost every management task with a familiar set of tools.
Key Features of Community Association Management Software
Your community association management software should allow you to do more with less, ultimately leading to a greater return on your investment.
General software (think spreadsheets and messaging apps) can only take you so far, especially when dealing with the unique quirks and complexities of a community association. Instead, look for software that has these specific features below.
Maintenance Requests and Tracking System
Keeping all the different parts of your community in tip-top shape takes impeccable organization and timing. When even the smallest repair job slips through the cracks, residents will be the first to let you know.
Community association management software often includes vendor and maintenance management features to automate much of the work you would otherwise be stuck with. The best software out there will let you store contact information for all the vendors you work with alongside work history for each property and unit, making your job both faster and easier.
You’ll also want to look for a reliable ticketing system, so homeowners and your team can request repairs, send out automatic updates for scheduled maintenance, and handle invoicing, all using the same technology. Mobile compatibility is equally important if you want to be able to inspect units or shared spaces on the go.
Online Payments & Credit Card Processing
The need for intuitive invoice management tools highlights another core feature of management software: online payments.
Having a streamlined epayment system in place—complete with automated reminders when a payment is due—makes it easier for homeowners to pay fees on time and easier for you to track any delinquencies or other red flags. That way, you’ll be able to handle any persistent issues before they become too costly.
Financial Reports and Budgeting Tools
Speaking of financial documents, the best community association management software includes specific features dedicated to accounting and reporting. These features can give you specialized templates, fields and reports that are tailored for the industry.
You can complete bookkeeping tasks much more efficiently than with generic accounting software and even start filing 1099s early, so you’re not scrambling when tax season arrives.
Industry-specific tools make it easier to create budgets and performance reports in more detail, as well. You can then share these documents with your team or clients, giving them access to all the relevant details, without any unnecessary complexity.
Resident Communication & Event Management
If you’re looking for an easier way to keep homeowners updated on important news, events, or changes related to the community, an online communication portal built into your software is a must-have. The portal should be easy to navigate and flexible, so you can use it for different types of communication, everything from keeping residents aware of security concerns to promoting a community picnic.
A go-to point of contact makes it easier to ensure everyone gets the information they need and can even encourage more resident involvement in the community. They’ll know the details about events they want to take part in and how to get a hold of you.
You can even use the platform to send out surveys and request feedback. More engagement and fewer missed messages adds up to happier residents and an easier to manage association.
Document Management and Storage
You should be able to use association management software to simplify the back end of your business, as well. The software you choose should let you save and sort all the files for both your company and the associations you manage.
Those can include board documents you can look up quickly and share with board members as needed, as well as contracts and financial details that you can safely keep via a digital record. Just be sure the software you choose prioritizes strong security measures.
Architectural Requests
Reviewing architectural requests takes a careful eye and deep knowledge of both an association’s bylaws and relevant compliance standards and regulations. Software can help focus your attention by removing unnecessary complexity.
The best community association management software provides a centralized platform and clear process for submitting requests digitally. This makes it easier for both the homeowners when they submit a request and for your team, since they can access and review each request in one place.
Some platforms even let you send out update notifications automatically and track the progress of each request. Whether you choose to approve or deny the request, you’ll have all the details saved in a historical record you can access anytime.
Benefits of Using Management Software for HOAs and Community Associations
At this point, the convenience and time saving benefits of using community association management software should be clear.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the more specific benefits you can expect once you have the software in place.
Streamlined Communication and Automated Payments
Regularly keeping track of your team’s conversations and relationships is where a communication portal really shines. If the software you use has an easy-to-navigate design, residents, board members, and anyone else you’re in regular contact with will be more than willing to use the platform to meet all their communication needs.
Having every conversation easily accessible and searchable can save hours for your team, shorten response times, and reduce lost or forgotten requests. Your staff’s bandwidth and your professional reputation can benefit from such a simplified system.
Likewise, automatic payments are a convenience for both you and for association members, and can have similar advantages for your business, saving time while reducing human error in the process. Software that combines both these capabilities in one platform is ideal, leading to faster onboarding and a more consistent, straightforward experience for your residents and clients.
Increased Efficiency and Reduced Expenses
The best community association management software is comprehensive. It should give you the tools you need to be more efficient in all aspects of your business. We’ve touched on many of these areas already, including maintenance, accounting, managing requests, and keeping documents in order.
The value of each tool comes down to the time and expenses it can save your team. That’s one of the reasons why automation is an important capability to look for whether you’re balancing your books or sending out repair work reminders. Once you select a software solution, you can measure its success by how much more you are able to accomplish during a work day, but by how much more you can accomplish and how much money, staff time, and resources you save while still hitting your benchmarks.
You can devote the staff hours and resources you save toward planning business growth, expanding to additional associations, and strengthening your brand’s reputation. The efficiency and reporting capabilities that management software provides can help you do this.
Improved Inspection, Violation Tracking, and Rule Enforcement
Of course, community association management is also about expecting the unexpected, and the right software can help on this front, too. You should be able to use your platform to keep detailed digital records automatically, supported by customizable, industry-specific fields and reports. When a violation occurs, you’ll have the specific rules, past communication, and agreed upon protocols at hand to resolve the situation fairly and quickly.
Secure, accessible records can also help you keep board members, your team, and any projects you lead for an association compliant with local regulations and consistent with the rules of the community. This is helpful for larger changes, such as introducing a new service or amenity, or for smaller tasks like conducting regular inspections.
The right tools at your disposal make it easy to become a trusted partner for the boards you work with, an unbiased arbiter during any disputes, and an all-around efficient association manager.
The Best Community Association Management Software in 2024
Now that you know what features and benefits to look out for, let’s jump into 11 of the best community association management software options to improve efficiency, and what sets them apart.
1. Buildium: Best Comprehensive Community Association Management Software
Buildium’s® industry-leading platform is purpose-built for the industry, and can streamline almost every aspect of community association management, whether your portfolio contains exclusively HOAs, COAs, or a mixture of both.
Features
With Buildium, community managers can access a full suite of community association management technology that helps you get more done, faster, including an array of accounting features with online bill payments, epayments for vendors, bank reconciliation, and automated late fee charges with reminders.
Buildium’s Resident Center is a central hub for residents to make payments online, reach out to staff, access important notifications, and submit maintenance requests.
You’ll also have access to financial reports, board meeting minutes, association by-laws, and other management documents.
In Buildium’s chart of accounts, you can log and track and bill for violations, noting any recurring delinquencies. Team members can also start preparing their 1099s before the IRS opens filing, and then submit forms digitally.
With the Buildium Marketplace, you’ll be able to access an ever-growing ecosystem of apps to help you handle a variety of management tasks more efficiently.
Pricing
Buildium offers three pricing tiers, all of which include:
- Accounting
- Maintenance Task Management
- Violations
- Online Portals
- Resident & Board Member Communications
Each of the three tiers is designed to meet community association managers’ needs at different growth phases:
Essential: Starts at $55/month and includes Buildium’s core features, including accounting and task management tools.
Growth: Starts at $174/month and includes reduced incoming ACH fees, unlimited eSignatures, and actionable insights in Analytics Hub.
Premium: Starts at $375/month for property managers who want to automate their workflows. It includes everything in Growth, unlimited incoming ACH (fees waived), plus access to Buildium’s Open API and Priority Support.
2. HomeWiseDocs: Versatile Association Documentation Software
Association documentation can be one of the most difficult parts of the job to manage effectively. HomeWiseDocs® aims to make that easier with a dedicated documentation solution for associations that streamlines the sale and resale process and works well with other association management software.
HomeWiseDocs specifically focuses on association documentation and allows management companies to order and track important documents related to the refinance or sale of condos or other properties within a community. This cuts back on the paperwork and resources needed to organize and disclose important details during a sale or refinance of a property.
Features
HomeWiseDocs’s document management platform lets users:
- Process payments
- Answer requestor questions in a timely manner
- Fulfill order requests and guarantee deadlines
- Coordinate order delivery
- Identify orders with missing or expired documents
- Monitor document expiration timing
- Utilize an analytics dashboard to track performance and find new revenue sources
Pricing
Community association managers, themselves, are not charged for HomeWiseDocs’s software. Fees are instead added to whatever price you choose to charge for your services.
3. PayHOA: Helpful Software for Starting Out
If you’re just getting your association management business off the ground, PayHOA® has several standard features that cater to both COAs and HOAs. Its cloud-based software is best suited for smaller businesses.
Features
PayHOA’s features are built around a central dashboard,where you can manage maintenance requests, payments, violations, and other common tasks.
Accounting tools to track payments, income, and expenses, and the status of bills and invoices are useful for community association budgeting. Managers can also communicate with boards and residents. You can use this tracking to guide growth and business decisions.
If you run a large operation, however, this software may not be for you. PayHOA’s pricing only covers community association management companies with 500 doors or less.
Pricing
PayHOA has a unit-based pricing structure. In addition to the starting costs below, there is a 3.25% plus 50 cents charge to process credit card transactions and a $1.95 per check charge for eChecks:
- Under 50 units starts at $49/month
- 26-50 units starts at $59/month
- 51–100 units start at $99/month
- 101–150 units start at $129/month
- 151–200 units start at $169/month
- 201–300 units start at $199/month
- 301–400 units start at $229/month
- And 401–500 units start at $249/month
4. Condo Control: Useful Software for Board Meetings and Management
Condo Control’s® services extend beyond community association managers to encompass residents, boards, and developers. Because of this broader approach to its user base it can be a viable option for managing board-related tasks and relationships.
Features
A Condo Control subscription grants you access to several features, including:
- Proxy voting an e-voting for board meetings
- Status certificate management
- Asset management
- Violations and maintenance ticketing
- Online payments
- Amenity bookings
Pricing
As part of its tiered pricing plan, Condo Control groups its features into Core and Premium packages. Their site has a detailed breakdown of what each plan includes, although you’ll have to reach out to them directly for pricing.
The Core plan include essential features to get a new association management business off the ground, but more advanced features—such as architectural requests, invoice management, payments, violation tracking, and work order management—are included only in the Premium plan.
5. eUnify: Established Association Management Software for HOAs
eUnify® is software that is specifically focused on HOAs and has been in the business since 2001. Its platform includes simplified management tools that can be adapted to meet the needs of different HOAs and HOA management companies.
Features
eUnify includes the standard features you’d expect, plus some options for customization. These include a straightforward accounting system for your general ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. You can use their accounting tools to automate bank reconciliation and recurring payments.
The software also includes three portals for homeowners, boards, and owners. Accessing each lets you handle architectural requests, resident messages, work orders, and violations from within the platform. You can also send out eblasts, push notifications, and custom letters.
Finally, you can set up eVoting in eUnify that cuts the cost of holding in-person elections.
Pricing
Like many of the other options on this list, eUnify does not lay out pricing details on their site clearly. You’ll need to reach out directly to get a quote.
6. FRONTSTEPS: Specialized Software for Managing Payments and Cashflow
If you’re looking to get a handle on association payments without other management features, FRONTSTEPS® could be an effective option. The software places an emphasis on financial management designed for association accounting.
The goal of the software is to reduce the time it takes to make and track payments, manage vendor invoices, and organize your books.
Features
FRONTSTEPS’ suite of financial management features include:
- A vendor management portal
- Several bank integrations
- Automated payment options
- Auto-lock processing
- Automated account reconciliation
- The ability to set and override workflow approvals
- The ability to post payments in real time to the homeowner ledger
- A mobile app to manage operations on the go
In addition to these features you can make use of FRONTSEPS’ community portal, mass email communication and guest check-in tools.
Pricing
You’ll need to contact FRONTSTEPS directly to learn specific pricing details and set up a demo.
7. CINC Systems: A Mobile-First Option for On-the-Go Association Management
CINC Systems® brings together many of the essential association management capabilities into their mobile app experience. The software aims to simplify daily workflows while still giving you the important details you need to manage HOAs, COAs, and their boards.
Having these details in one place on your phone is convenient, but can also come at the cost of a wider range of more advanced features to help set your business apart. Let’s look at what the software offers.
Features
From its mobile app, CINC Systems lets you:
- Automate task with pre-built workflows
- Send automated alerts to associations when the monthly board package and financial documents are ready
- Use the central platform to track violations, fines, and work order
- Auto-lock processing
- Automate account reconciliation
- Share account details directly with homeowners through a web portal
- Enable and request online payments
Pricing
CINC Systems only offer a custom pricing option based on doors managed, desired integrations, payment offerings, and several other factors. Reach out to them on their site for a quote.
8. HOALife: Tools for Day-to-Day Operations
HOALife® can be a solid choice if you need a handful of basic tools to keep your association management operations running smoothly while putting your best foot forward when reaching out to clients and board members.
The platform is intended for both HOA management companies and self-managed HOAs, so it comes with a level of simplicity that’s accessible for users with various levels of management experience.
Features
HOALife includes the usual set of features in association management software, including:
- Violation tracking
- Mass emails and custom email templates
- Work order and maintenance coordination tools
- Owner portals that cut down on back-and-forth communication
- Architectural requests
- A mobile app
If you’re looking for accounting tools, however, HOALife may not be the right software for you. They do not offer any accounting features within their platform.
Pricing
HOALife’s tiered pricing comes in the form of three plans:
- The Self-Managed Plan costs $995 per year and is intended for a single associations. This includes a property limit of 500.
- The Professional Plan is the most viable option for most association management companies. The plan costs $195 per month for the first 500 units with additional units costing $0.35 each. There’s no limit to the number of associations or properties you can add.
9. Condo Manager: Customizable Software for COA Management Companies
Designed by property managers, Condo Manager® offers a practical toolkit that caters to condo operations. It aims to simplify the management process with a handful of key features that emphasize ease of use.
You can also customize certain modules, document templates, written procedures, and service requests to meet your company’s specific needs.
Features
Condo Manager’s main features allow you to:
- Set up esigning and epayments
- Automate recurring transactions
- Manage receivables and payment invoices
- Track delinquencies
- Enable bank reconciliation
- Keep records of past communication with owners, residents, and vendors
- Use the platform’s website building service
- Send out statements automatically to owners
- Count election votes online and track meeting minutes
- Generate financial reports and other statements
- Manage maintenance and repair work
Pricing
For pricing details, you’ll need to reach out to Condo Manager and schedule a demo. They currently don’t list specific pricing on their site.
10. Empowered HOA: Software to Guide Your Association Management Company’s Growth
As a relatively lesser-known software, Empowered HOA® doesn’t have as many integrated features as some of the items higher up on this list, but does include many of the tools you need to monitor business performance and market yourself to prospective boards.
Features
Empowered HOA has some standard association management features, including:
- A Communication Tool with action items for your team
- Vendor management that lets you reach out to vendors through your phone, tablet or desktop
- A custom website creation tool
- Basic accounting features, such as bill approval and processing
- A community calendar and amenity reservation system
Beyond these tools, Empowered HOA focuses on monitoring the health of your business. It does this through at-a-glance company metrics you can use to track the productivity of your managers and other staff members in real time, along with interactions your team has with the community.
While these details can help you plan your initial growth strategy, you may want to look elsewhere for a broader suite of tools that can help you act on that strategy and take your services to the next level.
Pricing
Empowered HOA does not have readily available pricing details. You’ll have to contact them directly, either via phone or email.
11. Omnify: A Platform for Managing Access to Amenities
Slightly more niche than other solutions on this list, Omnify® is a membership management platform you can use to more effectively schedule access to an association’s amenities.
Omnfiy is not specifically designed for community associations, but it does include an easy-to-use interface that, when implemented correctly, can boost resident engagement and satisfaction. Keep in mind, however, that the software focuses on a very specific function, so it may not be able to help you handle the same breadth of tasks as other solutions mentioned earlier.
Features
Omnify lets you customize access to different amenities based on your association’s rules, the type of amenity, and your approach to membership. On the platform, you can:
- Create tiered membership pricing
- Implement QR code check-ins
- Set up auto-recurring memberships
- Include benefits and incentives such as discounted pricing
- Set up one-time and recurring booking options for facilities
- Track all member data from the dashboard
- Send out notifications for payment due dates and renewals
Pricing
Omnify offers four tiered pricing plans:
- The Free Plan includes up to two team members, a 5% fee on transactions, unlimited bookings, class and appointment setup features, and integrations with leading payment systems such as Stripe and PayPal.
- The Growth Plan is $79 per month and includes the features of the Free Plan but with 2% transaction fees and up to five team members, plus the ability to set up advanced discounts, more than 3,000 Zapier integrations, and a lead capture form and Google Tag Manager embeds.
- The Accelerate Plan is $199 per month and lets you add up to 10 team members along with an even lower 1% transaction fees. In addition to the features of the previous plans you’ll also have access to an onboarding specialist, custom domain, advanced booking restrictions, and custom invoices.
- The Scale Plan starts at $499 and scales up depending on the number of members you add. It includes all the features mentioned above along with 0.5% transaction fees, custom reports, a dedicated account manager, and physical access management.
What Is the Best Community Association Management Software?
Choosing the best community association management software really comes down to the features that matter most to you and what areas of your business you want to make more efficient.
If there’s just one or two specific tasks you need help with—say amenity bookings or a payment portal—then some of the more specialized options above might be the best fit for you. If you want to run your entire management business more efficiently, however, a more comprehensive solution is the way to go.
The journey into the best community association management software doesn’t stop with this post. You should always try out software if possible before making a commitment.
With transparent pricing and a free 14-day trial (no credit card required) we recommend giving Buildium’s community association management features a try. It’s risk-free and can give you a sense of what’s possible when you’ve got the right, purpose-built tools for the job.
