5 Reasons to Look Beyond Management Portals for Your HOA’s Ideal Online Experience

If your homeowners association uses a management company’s portal to provide administrative and resident access to the essential functions of HOA business, chances are that you’re not getting all the benefits of a full-featured online experience. That’s a polite way of saying that you’re probably short changing your ability to manage your HOA efficiently and provide your residents with optimally convenient ways to comply with HOA rules. Instead of limiting yourself to what a portal can offer, take a look at what real homeowners association website software can contribute to your community’s convenience and the smooth administration of HOA affairs.

Better, easier logins and navigation

When you log in to an online retailer’s or financial institution’s website, you expect to be greeted by name and provided with easy-to-use navigation. Some companies customize your online experience so much that it’s as if they’ve built a special version of their site just for you. On a typical HOA management portal, however, you’re greeted with a much-different—and far less welcoming—landscape.

First, you’re logging in to a generic-looking site that doesn’t have any obvious connection to your specific community. Instead of your logo, you’ll see—at most—the management company’s identity, and unless you know that it’s the company your community uses, you’ll have every reason to feel more than a bit unsure of whether you’re in the right place, or even on a legitimate site. For that matter, you may need to load the management company’s website, follow another link, and load another page just to find where you’re supposed to log in.

Wouldn’t you rather access a website that’s clearly built for your community, log in from its home page, and use easy-to-follow navigation to find the information you want or the invoice you need to pay?

Simple, logical access to information and tasks

As a homeowners association administrator, you know how you want to organize your community’s information and present it for optimal resident convenience. You also know that a considerable amount of the information involved in administering your HOA should be tucked away out of sight on an administrative dashboard.

But portals aren’t set up to pay any attention to the specific needs of individual HOAs and administrators. They’re generic access points configured only for the convenience of a management company. Nothing’s organized to make it logical from the standpoint of your specific community. Instead, you’re expected to fit in with the way the portal is set up.

Wouldn’t you prefer a solution that you can configure to match the unique profile of your community and its specific needs?

Thorough customization and branding

The generic look of HOA management portals leaves everything to be desired from the standpoint of communicating anything about your community itself, let alone giving you ways to communicate with members. These portals clearly reflect the fact that they’re the property of a management company.

If you’re going to represent your community online, doesn’t it make sense to showcase your unique features and not simply provide a bland, anonymous place for residents to pay bills? After all, community-centered marketing and messaging is as important as any other aspect of HOA administration. You want an online destination that helps build neighborhood spirit, not a gloomy, anonymous equivalent of an ATM.

Resident- and administrator-friendly information and content

Most HOA management portals leave community residents scratching their heads, wondering where they are and what they’re supposed to do now that they’re here. In fact, instead of making life easier for you, they actually increase the number of calls and messages you receive. Now you to have to spend more time on administrative duties, not less, fielding a constant stream of questions from residents who simply can’t figure out how to use the portal effectively.

And isn’t it just a little bit shallow and even cold to provide an online destination for homeowners association residents that doesn’t implement the slightest trace of welcoming content? If all residents ever do on your portal is pay bills and check for violations, that’s not a particularly friendly venue, or one that anyone in your community enjoys visiting.

Online independence from management firms

Perhaps the biggest drawback of homeowners association management firm portals is the fact that they tie you to a specific HOA manager. What are you supposed to do if you decide to go in a different direction, end the relationship with one management company, and enter into a new relationship with a different firm? Obviously, you can’t keep using the portal for Management Firm A after you begin working with Management Firm B—and how are you supposed to migrate all your data from one portal to another?

Most HOA management portals are as short on transitional convenience as they are on almost everything else. Again, they’re set up for the convenience of one party to the relationship between a management firm and a homeowners association—and guess which party that is?

Choose the community-friendly alternative instead

If you thought your online alternatives were limited to one HOA management firm portal or another, it’s time to broaden your perspective. With the right homeowners association website software provider, you can create a site that’s as unique and full featured as your community itself, one that combines administrative convenience and control with resident confidence and ease. Regardless of how you manage your community, you can take care of your affairs the way you want to handle them, without compromising your role as an administrator or shortchanging your residents on a full-featured website experience.

At HOAStart, we’ve built our homeowners association website software on a full understanding of the needs of communities like yours. We’ve poured years of experience into offering you the best platform for HOA website development. Our features and functionality anticipate what you need to accomplish, and provide answers and solutions at every turn.

But you don’t need to take our word for that. Sign up for a completely free 15-day trial, and evaluate every aspect of our software for yourself. See how we not only meet but exceed your needs, and experience the difference that a real homeowners association website can provide your community.