HOA & Condo Management

The HOA / condo / co-op resident's experience: dues, board emails, amenity reservations, violations, work-orders, voting. Most residents inherit whatever vendor the board picked; the goal of this page is to know what's out there and what self-host alternatives exist. For the family-calendar overlap (community events) see Family Calendars; for vital-document storage of CC&Rs / bylaws see Insurance & Vital Documents; for utility / shared-service tracking see Utility Tracking.

Resident-facing portals (vendor-side, as inherited)

• TownSq (Associa) — paid (HOA-paid); free for residents; the largest single platform for US HOAs. Dues auto-pay, work orders, violations, board comms.
• AssociaPro — Associa's sibling brand.
• AppFolio Property Manager / Resident Center — paid (PM-paid); rentals + condos.
• Buildium — paid; PM-flavored; medium HOAs.
• HOA-Express — paid; per-HOA pricing; mid-tier feature set.
• CINC, FrontSteps, Smartwebs — paid; pro PM tools.
• HOAStart, Hoa.io — paid + free trial; small HOAs.
• Condo Control — paid; Canadian-flavored.

Self-managed HOAs (no PM company)

• ★ Discourse — free OSS forum; the surprisingly good "board + residents" forum. Categories for board-only, all-residents, classifieds. See Self-Hosted Chat & Comms.
• ★ Google Workspace / Microsoft 365 nonprofit — free / cheap; shared drive for CC&Rs + bylaws + minutes; Group calendar; mailing list.
• Mailgun / SendGrid + a Mailman list — for board emails.
• Trello / Asana / Notion — board project mgmt.
• Cal.com (self-hosted) — amenity reservations (clubhouse, pool); see Self-Hosted Personal Apps and Calendars.
• Stripe + a one-page site — dues collection; cheaper than HOA-specific platforms for a small community.
• Election platforms — ElectionBuddy, Helios Voting (free OSS), or paper for board votes.

Document archive

• CC&Rs, bylaws, articles of incorporation, recent minutes, current budget, reserve study, insurance certs — these should all be findable by every owner.
• Self-host: Nextcloud or a public Google Drive folder.
• Vendor-managed: the resident portal usually has a "Documents" tab.

Resident-side personal tracking

• Apple Reminders / Calendar for HOA dues, board meetings, amenity reservations.
• A folder in your vital-documents archive for CC&Rs, recent assessments, special assessments, your unit's history.
• A "what I'm allowed to do" cheat-sheet in Family Wiki / runbook — paint colors, fence rules, parking rules, holiday-decoration rules. The ones that bite people.

Common HOA frictions (worth knowing)

• Special assessments — read them carefully; they're often legally binding and time-bounded.
• Reserve fund health — every HOA should have a reserve study; condo owners particularly should know it (Surfside-Champlain-Towers post-2021 awareness).
• Insurance master policy — your HO-6 (condo policy) wraps around the master; check the gap.
• Architectural committee — get changes approved in writing before spending money.
• Election manipulation — proxy voting + low turnout is how HOAs go off the rails. Vote.

License / pricing

• TownSq, Associa, AppFolio, Buildium, HOA-Express, CINC: paid pro tools; free for residents.
• Discourse, Mailman, Helios Voting: OSS, free.
• Google Workspace nonprofit, Microsoft 365 nonprofit: free / cheap for HOA legal nonprofits.
• Stripe, Cal.com, Nextcloud: free or freemium.

Pick this if…

• You inherited TownSq: use it; suggest improvements via your board.
• Self-managed small HOA (~50 homes), tech-comfortable board: Discourse + Google Workspace + Stripe + Cal.com.
• Self-managed mid HOA (~200 homes): HOA-Express or HoaStart for dues + comms; Discourse for the forum.
• Resident-only side: Apple Reminders / Calendar for dates + a vital-docs folder for the CC&Rs.
• Condo, special-assessment paranoia: request the reserve study + insurance master policy annually.