5 Signs that Your HOA Website Software Provider Really Cares About Your Online Success

As you quickly discover when you start researching HOA website software providers, not all of them are created equal—especially not when it comes to the care they take to ensure your online success. Some providers seem more intent on signing you up as a customer than on actually helping you create a productive, useful, attractive website that your board and residents will use and appreciate. Others seem stuck in the past, with features and functions that lag behind your expectations. While you’re looking for the ideal provider for your homeowners association, keep these five essentials in mind to help you determine which site-building option to choose.

A robust help system

Website capabilities only benefit you and your community when they’re as easy to use as they are productive. If you spend hours in a state of bewildered confusion, trying to make sense of complex, unintuitive, undocumented features, your HOA website software provider simply isn’t doing a good job of helping you move ahead.

At HOAStart, we’ve built a robust online help system that documents virtually every aspect of every feature we provide. This step-by-step sets of instructions clearly spell out what to expect, what to do, and how to accomplish results. You don’t have to guess or deal with vague, frustrating instructions, because everything is spelled out so you can understand it.

A video support system

Not everyone learns through the same learning style. Some people prefer detailed, point-by-point verbal instructions. Others would rather see videos that show each process rather than just describing it in words. If your homeowners association website software provider doesn’t offer various types of assistance, they’re not accommodating a full range of learning styles—and if the help they offer doesn’t match up with your needs, you’re out of luck.

At HOAStart, we accompany our online help system with tutorial videos that give you step-by-step instructions for using features and making the most of your website. We want everyone to have the learning materials that best suit their individual requirements.

Illustrated reference resources

Some HOA administrators would rather learn through a combination of verbal instructions and visual illustrations. In addition to more traditional verbal help resources and video guides, these administrators want quick-to-read reference material that illustrates onscreen processes and procedures. If your HOA website software provider doesn’t offer this type of resource, your learning curve may not be as smooth as it could be.

In addition to our complete set of online documentation and our constantly growing library of tutorial videos, we also offer you a third on-demand resource. Our Quick Resource Guides (QRGs) combine verbal instructions with onscreen illustrations to explain steps and features while they provide you with the visual context for these steps. Available to view online or to download to your computer, these QRGs provide you with another way to learn and grow as a software user.

Expert support

Sometimes, specific questions require equally specific answers. In those situations, it can be difficult to find the assistance you need through prebuilt support resources. If your homeowners association website software provider doesn’t give you access to technical support representatives, you may not be able to ask your questions directly and receive direct answers.

Every HOAStart website includes access to our support experts. Whether you’re a new user who needs onboarding assistance to get started – either through our free trial or once you sign up – or even if you’ve been a customer for quite some time, you need the right technical resources to answer your questions and support your efforts. Not only do we offer you e-mail access to support, but our representatives are just a phone call away whenever you want to clarify something, pose a question, or talk through the approach to a specific function.

Modern features

Even the most fully featured homeowners association website doesn’t offer you all the benefits you need if it doesn’t present your community in an attractive, professional manner. You don’t want a website that looks 10 years old on the first day it goes live on the Internet. Instead, you want to showcase your community on a website that takes full advantage of modern site design features. Some homeowners association website software providers don’t invest the time and effort to add new features, modernize existing ones—and above all, to listen to their customers and discover what matters most to them.

At HOAStart, we’re committed to offering website software that can support community marketing efforts, manage HOA outreach and communications about association business, and tackle all manners and sorts of association activities, including event scheduling, invoicing of dues and fees, online payments, and much more. We know that our customers expect more than static, difficult-to-update sites that don’t really do what they want them to do. We draw on long experience in dealing with HOAs to create software that meets your real day-to-day needs, anticipates your expectations, and is built upon a modern, productive platform.

Does your current HOA website software provider offer you all five of these essential features? If you haven’t yet signed up with a provider, are the companies you’re researching able to offer you these must-haves? If the answer is anything other than a resounding yes, then we suggest that your provider may not offer you all the things you really want, and that perhaps you ought to keep looking just a little bit longer.

With our 30-day free trial and easy-to-use, powerful software, you can sign up with HOAStart without having to provide any payment details, try out our world-class platform, and discover for yourself why HOAStart is the ideal solution to your homeowners association website software needs. Once you’re with us, you’ll quickly discover that not only do we put our customers first in terms of the quality of our product, but our support is second to none—and our online assistance resources expand upon the help our technical representatives offer to provide you with a complete package.