What HOA portal software actually costs a 120-home board

How HOA software is priced

Almost every vendor prices one of four ways, and the brochure rarely says which until you ask for a quote.

• Per unit per month. The most common. $1 to $4 per door, billed annually, often with a minimum (50 or 100 units) so a 30-home association pays for 50.
• Tiered flat fee. A “basic” plan for up to 100 units, “standard” to 250, and so on. A 120-home board lands one tier above the cheapest.
• “Free” with payment fees. The software is free; the vendor earns a per-transaction fee on dues paid through it, often a flat $2 to $3 per ACH payment or 3 percent on cards, which the homeowner or the association pays.
• Bundled with management. If a management company runs your association, the portal is inside their fee, and so is the lock-in.

On top of the base: a one-time setup or onboarding fee ($250 to $1,500 is common), a separate “website” add-on if you want a public page as well as the owner portal, and payment processing passed through at cost or marked up.

The 120-home worked example

Assumptions: 120 units, quarterly dues, 70 percent of owners paying online, half of those by ACH and half by card, a public website wanted. Year-one totals, rounded.

Option	Base	Setup	Website add-on	Processing (association’s share)	Year one	Year two on
Per-unit vendor, $1.50/unit/mo	$2,160	$500	$300	$0 (passed to owners)	$2,960	$2,460
Per-unit vendor, $3/unit/mo	$4,320	$1,000	$600	$0 (passed to owners)	$5,920	$4,920
“Free” software, $2.50 per ACH, 3% on cards	$0	$0	$300	$420 ACH + $1,260 card*	$1,980	$1,980
Own WordPress site + portal plugin	$299 licence	$0	included	Stripe at cost, ~$420 ACH + $1,260 card*	$299 + hosting	$299 + hosting

*Card processing on $100,000 of annual dues at 3 percent is $3,000; the table assumes the association absorbs it on the 40 percent of online payers who use cards and passes ACH fees through. Your mix will differ; the point is that processing is roughly the same in every option and is not where the money is.

Hosting for a small WordPress site runs $120 to $300 a year; a domain about $15. So the self-hosted line is roughly $450 to $600 a year, every year, against $2,000 to $5,000 for the hosted options. Over a five-year board term that is $10,000 to $22,000 kept in the reserve fund.

What you are paying for in the higher numbers

Be fair to the vendors: the per-unit price buys a support desk that answers the phone, a product that works on day one with no volunteer touching a server, accounting integrations, and in the pricier tiers a mobile app with push notifications. For an association that has no one willing to own a website, that support desk is worth real money. The question for a 120-home board is whether you are buying $2,000 to $5,000 of support every year or $2,000 to $5,000 of not-having-to-decide.

The costs that are not on the invoice

Volunteer time

Whatever you choose, someone on the board sets up the units, invites the owners and answers “I can’t log in” for the first month. Vendors with onboarding teams cut that from perhaps 20 hours to 8. A well-designed self-hosted portal with one-click invitations and a CSV import of units is closer to 10. Over the years, the time goes into the same places on every platform: posting documents, approving architectural requests, running the annual meeting.

The exit

Ask every vendor two questions before signing: “How do I export all my data, including documents, ledgers and request history?” and “What happens to the portal if we stop paying?” The honest answers range from “a full export in a standard format” to “a CSV of owners and a PDF of the ledger”. With a portal in the association’s own database, the exit is a backup file the treasurer already has.

Ownership of records

Architectural decisions, maintenance history, meeting minutes and the owner ledger are the association’s legal records. On a hosted platform they live under someone else’s terms of service. On your own site they live in your database, under your backups, with a privacy setting you control. For a self-managed board this is often the deciding factor, more than the price.

Seven questions for the vendor call

Quotes only become comparable once you ask the same questions of everyone. Put these in the email before the demo, so the answers are in writing.

1. What is the all-in price for 120 units in year one and in year two, including setup, the public website and any mobile app?
2. Which payment fees does the association pay and which does the homeowner pay, per ACH payment and per card payment?
3. What is the minimum contract term, and what is the price increase cap at renewal?
4. How do we export every record, including documents, the owner ledger, architectural decisions and request history, and in what format?
5. If we stop paying, how long do owners keep read access to their statements and documents?
6. Who on your side answers a homeowner who cannot log in: a support desk, or the board?
7. Can the board run it without a management company, and is the price different if we do?

Question four separates the vendors quickly. “A full export in CSV and PDF, any time, self-service” is the right answer. “Contact your account manager” means budget for a consultant on the way out.

What the first ninety days look like

Whichever option you choose, the board’s calendar for the launch is the same, and it is where the real cost lives.

• Weeks 1 to 2: load the units and owners from the roster the treasurer already keeps (a spreadsheet with lot, address, owner name and email is enough), upload the governing documents, set the dues schedule.
• Weeks 3 to 4: invite owners. One-click links beat “create an account” by a wide margin; expect two thirds of owners in the first month with links and a reminder, and a slow tail of the rest. Put a flyer in the next mailing for the owners who do not do email.
• Weeks 5 to 8: the first dues cycle online. This is when the treasurer finds out whether the ledger is right. Reconcile against the bank statement line by line the first time; after that, it is a monthly glance.
• Weeks 9 to 12: move the architectural request form and the maintenance request form off email and onto the portal, so decisions are recorded where the next board can find them.

A vendor with an onboarding team will do weeks 1 to 2 for you and coach weeks 3 to 4. That is most of what the setup fee buys, and for a board with no volunteer time it is worth paying. For a board that has the roster in a spreadsheet already, it is a CSV import and an afternoon.

A decision rule

• If no one on the board will own a website and the budget is comfortable, pay the per-unit vendor and buy the support. Negotiate the setup fee to zero; they usually will.
• If the association already has a WordPress site, or a board member or local web person who can keep one updated, run the portal there. The licence is a rounding error against the per-unit quote, and the records stay yours.
• If you are choosing between two hosted vendors, compare year-two cost and the export answer, not the feature list. The feature lists are the same.

Running it on your own site

HOAdesk is the resident portal for the second case: a WordPress plugin that adds units and people, one-click owner invitations, a resident portal block, documents by audience, maintenance requests, architectural requests with decision letters, meetings, announcements and a calendar, all free. Pro adds dues and assessments with schedules, late fees, an owner ledger, numbered receipts and PDF statements, and card or ACH payments through Stripe Checkout straight into the association’s account, for $299 a year for any number of units. For a 120-home board, that is the $299 line in the table.