HOA management software is the easy part
Start with the honest part: MicroHOA isn't software. Software gives a volunteer board better tools for work the board still has to do. For a small association the tools were rarely the problem — the problem is that nobody has an evening free to use them.
What a tool won't do for a small board
HOA software is good at what it claims. It gives a board somewhere to record dues, generate a statement, store the governing documents, and message owners without using a personal email account. Boards that adopt it usually stop losing things, and that is a real improvement.
What it doesn't change is who does the work. The software doesn't reconcile the account, chase the delinquency, prepare the filing, or answer the owner email — it records those things once somebody has done them. It waits. On a small board, the somebody is one volunteer with a job, and the software waits on them the same way the spreadsheet did.
So the question isn't which tool. It's whether your association needs better tools or needs the work done.
- The treasurer exports to a spreadsheet anyway
- Nobody logs in between meetings
- Owner emails still land on a personal phone
- The filing deadline is in the calendar, but nobody prepared the filing
How MicroHOA solves it
If the gap is hours rather than software, this is the arrangement that closes it: we do the recurring work, and your board keeps every decision that belongs to it. The dedicated association portal comes with the service, so owners still get one place for statements, payments, and documents.
Software answered the question it was built for. It gave your board better tools for work your board still has to do — a cleaner ledger to maintain, a tidier place to file, a reminder for the deadline somebody still has to meet.
The hybrid model moves the work instead. We do the bookkeeping, the filings, the follow-up on what's late, and the first response when an owner has a question. Your board keeps the decisions that are yours to make: the budget, the rules, the enforcement calls, the contracts. Nothing about governance moves.
That's the whole arrangement — one scope, published pricing, no menu to assemble, and no part of it that quietly turns into governance.
What software does, and what we do
Six moments in an association's month, described honestly from both arrangements. The last two are the ones a board should read twice: the work moves, the decisions don't.
- One system of record, from day one
- Owner self-service — statements, payments, documents
- Cheaper than management, if someone will do the work
- Every entry still needs somebody to make it
- A reminder isn't a filing, and a report isn't a reconciliation
- The volunteer who quits takes the routine with them
If somebody on your board wants that work, software is the right purchase and we'll tell you so. If nobody does, a better tool isn't the thing that's missing.
If the work is the gap rather than the tool, that's the conversation to have.
What else changes
Three parts of the year that stop being anybody's problem — the ones the table above doesn't cover.
Reports show up without anyone running them
Prepared and reviewed before they reach your board, on a schedule.
Closings stop waiting on paperwork
Resale and refinance requests handled end to end, on a workday.
The 11pm search stops being the answer
Templates, meeting materials, and somebody to ask instead.
If what your board is stuck on isn't on this list, ask anyway — some of it we handle, some is an add-on, and some we'll point you to the right person for. If you'd rather read it as a service rather than an alternative, HOA management is the same model described from the other direction.
What it costs, before you ask anyone
Three tiers by community size. The same essentials at every tier.
5 homes & under
6–20 homes
21+ homes
What boards push back on
“We already pay for HOA software.”
Then don't cancel anything yet — but you probably won't need it for long. A dedicated association portal is part of the service: owner accounts, payments, statements, and the document library all move there during onboarding. Once they have, there isn't much left for a second system to hold, and you stop paying for one.
“A management service costs more than a subscription.”
Per month, it does. The comparison worth making isn't against the subscription — it's against what the work costs in volunteer hours, and against what one missed filing or one bad set of books costs. Pricing is published either way, so you can do that arithmetic before you talk to anyone.
“We'd rather keep self-managing, just better organized.”
Fair enough — and if that's the plan, software is the right purchase for it. If your board wants to self-manage well, our board resources are worth reading before you talk to us.
Questions boards ask
Tell us about your association
We'll walk through what we'd handle, what your board would keep, and what it would cost. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.