Managing an HOA or Condo association is hard work. Using a condo or HOA app can make life easier. Whether you’re on the board, a member of a committee, or a CAM manager, there is a ton to be done. Much like a business, there are hundreds of moving pieces that need to be addressed, whether its managing communication, monitoring the relentless stream of maintenance, or tracking projects, it’s hard to keep it all together.

You aren’t alone in this endeavor for improved productivity and there are many Condo and HOA apps that can be used for free to help. The Vinteum team uses many of these applications on a regular basis. 

Project and Task Management Tools

The first section of our apps is project and task management tools. So if you chair a committee or track maintenance requests a task management tools are very helpful. They aren’t made for HOAs or condos but they can be used for any kind of project. Check out these free tools to track progress:

• Asana 
  • Cost: Free
  • Asana gives you visibility into the project, with timelines, milestones, links, documents, deadlines, and who is responsible for each task. You can involve Condo or HOA committee members, as you can invite up to 15 people for free with additional functionality available for a paid plan. 
• Trello
  • Cost: Free
  • A Trello board is a list of lists, filled with cards, used by you and your HOA. It’s a lot more than that, though. Trello has everything you need to organize projects of any size. Trello is a very easy way for HOA and Condo board members to collaborate on individual projects as they can easily drag and drop cards based on completion.

Website Builders

Are you trying to expand your community’s web presence? Condo and HOA websites are a great way for residents to stay up-to-date with the community’s recent happenings while allowing for friends, family, and prospective guests to learn more about your community association. Here are a few we’ve heard good things about. 

• Wix
  • Cost: Free version
  • Wix.com is a leading cloud-based development platform with millions of users worldwide. They make it easy for HOA and Condos to create a beautiful, web presence. The Wix website builder has everything you need to create a fully personalized, high-quality free website.

• Squarespace
  • Cost: Starting at $12/mon
  • Squarespace is a design-focused website provider. You can choose from an unrivaled set of best-in-class website templates, ensuring your Community is well represented. Customize the design to fit your personal style and professional needs.

• WordPress
  • Cost: Free
  • WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) in the world. It hosts everything from small blogs to huge companies. The best part about WordPress is the flexibility to use various plugins to power your website to offer more specialized functions. This flexibility is also what scares Condo and HOA board members, as volunteers it can be difficult to spend hours learning how to design a website from scratch. 

Email Management

Are you still sending carrier pigeons to notify community residents of current events? Well, there are a ton of free email management options that will allow you to communicate with HOA residents much more quickly and easily. 

• MailChimp
  • Cost: Free for up to 2,000 contacts
  • MailChimp has been a staple in the email communication space for quite a while. They offer a ton of integrations, such as collecting email subscribers directly from various websites. They allow you to create your own email templates so that your emails to residents are personal and professional.

• Constant Contact
  • Cost : $20/mon
  • They offer Community Associations awe-inspiring templates. Their editor is Easy-to-use and they have powerful list-building tools. They provide you with expert advice and live support. Constant Contact delivers everything you need to connect with residents easily.

Resident Contact Management

In a sales environment, this would be called a CRM, and as a community association, you can use this type of solution to track all of your residents, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and more. 

• HubSpot
  • Cost: Free
  • Do you manage resident contact information with piles of paper? Messy spreadsheets? Rolodex? Stop managing your relationships in silos. HubSpot CRM takes minutes to learn and makes it easy to track every detail of your community relationships — all in one place.

Documents

Community Associations come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and management styles. They are in the midst of a change, where many still rely on filing cabinets filed with years of community documents. Now there are options to the transition from physical to digital much easier. 

• Dropbox
  • Cost: 2GB for free
  • Perhaps the most well known digital storage company, they allow community associations to start accessing and sharing photos, documents, and other files from any device. Easily store and share meeting minutes, HOA Declarations, Condo Bylaws, and much more!
• CamScanner
  • Cost: Free
  • Farewell to tedious operations of scanners. Just snap a picture of the HOA bylaws, and digitize them with your mobile phone. Capture your documents by phone, remove busy background, and generate high-resolution JPEG or PDF files. CamScanner allows you to easily convert images to text files.

• Evernote
  • Cost: Free
  • Take notes directly from your phone or tablet, while allowing others to view the document. This is a great tool for taking live meeting minutes to be shared with residents who couldn’t attend the meeting.

Social Networks

Building a community within a building or neighborhood is beyond important. Communities want to connect with one another

• NextDoor 
  • Cost: Free
  • Nextdoor is massive with over 204,000 neighborhoods included as of writing this article. While not specific to your HOA, it does connect you with communities within a close geographical distance to you. Nextdoor is the best way to stay informed about what’s going on in your neighborhood—whether it’s finding a last-minute babysitter, planning a local event, or sharing safety tips.  Nextdoor is a very popular condo and HOA app.

• Neighbors by Ring
  • Cost: Free
  • A mix between a neighborhood watch app and a private social network, Ring, the video doorbell maker, has created an app designed to allow neighborhoods to share real-time crime updates. 

Voice Conference

HOA and Condo residents want to attend a meeting, even if they aren’t present. They want to video stream and record meetings to be viewed by residents who weren’t able to attend, but who still, want to stay up to date on the changes occurring in the community. 

• Whereby
  • Cost: Free
  • Whereby doesn’t require any downloads, login, or username and password, you can simply join a call directly within your browser. This allows residents to easily stay in touch, although the free plan only includes 4 participants.

All in One Condo and HOA App

• Neigbrs by Vinteum
  • Cost: From $25 per month
  • Neigbrs by Vinteum is the only communication-focused software designed for HOAs. Make communication and management efficient with our simple software. Streamline your tools, automate day-to-day tasks, communicate with the whole community, and create a modern website in a few clicks. Our iOS and Android apps allow you to stay in touch with residents on the go, and residents can always be in the loop, even if they’re away. Experience a true partnership with our award-winning support.
  • Neigbrs by Vinteum includes a website, chats, emails, calls, texts, document storage, social network, virtual meetings and much much more!