Scott Brady is co-owner and principal of Progressive Association Management, a CACM-member HOA management company serving 228 communities and nearly 15,000 homeowners throughout Southern California. Since founding the association management division in 2020, Scott has grown the company into the fastest organically growing association management firm in California by limiting manager workloads, providing full back-office support, and holding every team member accountable to documented daily service standards. |
Any legitimate management company will provide software to manage operations, communicate with the community, and interface with owners and the board. Good software facilitates the management process and reflects the quality of the company behind it. Why tolerate a bad software system when, for approximately the same cost, you can use something more user-friendly and robust?
Our company started with Appfolio because we use it for our residential portfolio, then switched to Village Management Software (VMS), a “legacy” software company, and then upon the recommendation of others in the industry, changed to Cinc Systems.
Just as management companies have consolidated due to private equity firms encouraging the large companies to grow larger, the same has happened in the management software sector. Where there were once many niche companies, or management companies built their own in-house software to avoid paying for third-party solutions, the industry is now dominated by two companies: Cinc Systems and Vantaca, which have raised over $400 million between them in recent years to scale to their current size.
Why is private equity facilitating the growth of these two companies at the expense of legacy and smaller players? The overall market is expected to grow at 10% annually, driven by the fact that every new residential construction project is now formed as an HOA. Due to the increasing complexity of serving on a board, fewer communities are self-managing. It is also a steady subscription business with monthly recurring revenue, and it is an incredibly “sticky” one. Management companies are reluctant to change software providers. Moving 15,000 owners from one platform to another is a massive undertaking, and every owner I know approaches it with great trepidation.
Three Categories of HOA Software
Software providers generally fall into three categories: those designed specifically for association management, those built for companies managing both residential properties and associations, and software geared toward associations that self-manage.
Software for Association Management Only
Association management software is a unique animal. Unlike residential property management, which is primarily focused on trust law compliance and financial transactions, associations have far more to cover, including fines, violations, collections, demands, transfers, and a high volume of vendor payments. In residential management, there may be no bills to pay in a given month. One rent payment comes in, the management company takes their fee, and the balance goes to the owner. In association management, we may collect hundreds of assessments and pay 5 to 10 vendors every month, all while producing financials for the board and tracking delinquencies. That complexity is why this software is in a category of its own.
Here are the three industry leaders.
Cinc Systems
Cinc was founded in 2005 and was the first cloud-based association management software at a time when most platforms lived on local servers or individual desktops. They made headlines in 2020 when they raised over $100 million from investment firm Spectrum Equity, officially kicking off the management software arms race. Cinc now manages over 55,000 HOAs and works with 1,000 companies, skewing toward smaller management companies with an average HOA size of around 100 owners. They have 250 employees and have self-funded the development of their artificial intelligence component called Cephai. Because Cinc was founded by a banker, the financials portion of their software was considered the industry best when they launched. Their annual revenue is estimated at $40 million.
Vantaca
Vantaca was founded in 2015 by industry insiders and a technology specialist, so from the start their focus was on software functionality, particularly for larger associations. Their platform is used by 40,000 HOAs, with an average of 75 or more communities under management and 6.5 million owners, which works out to roughly 150 owners per HOA on average. In 2025 they raised over $300 million and were valued at $1.25 billion. They have partnered with HOAi, an existing industry AI company, to bring AI functionality to market quickly. Their annual revenue is estimated at $50 million.
Frontsteps
Formerly known as Caliber, which launched in 2013, Frontsteps merged several industry niche companies and rebranded in 2017. They have annual revenue of approximately $15 million and recently raised $40 million to remain competitive with Cinc and Vantaca.
First Service Residential Connect and TownSq
It is difficult to comment in depth on two of the largest management software systems in the country because both First Service (First Service Residential Connect) and Associa (TownSq), the two largest management companies in the country, use their own proprietary software. For Associa, which manages over 7 million owners, building their own platform at a cost of approximately $10 million has proven more cost-effective than paying a third-party provider.
Mixed Portfolio Software
We manage approximately 1,100 residential properties and still use Appfolio for that side of our business because it is user-friendly and easy to navigate. Like many residential management companies, we have had associations, particularly smaller ones, request our association management services. Over 95% of residential companies choose not to take on association management, but 5% do, and those using Appfolio or Buildium will typically use that same software to manage associations. It works, but it does not work particularly well.
Appfolio considered making a serious push into the association management space, given that they are publicly traded with a current market value of approximately $8 billion. Ultimately they determined the market was too difficult to crack and the addressable customer base too small, so they stayed in their residential management lane and are not currently investing in improving the association management side of their software.
Software for Self-Managing HOAs
Only 15 years ago, over 40% of all associations chose to self-manage. That percentage has dropped to around 25%, but that still represents a significant number of communities looking for basic, easy-to-use software that meets their needs without the cost of full management.
PayHOA
There will always be a need for software designed for self-managing associations. Our minimum management fee is $495 per month. For a community with just 10 owners, that works out to $50 per owner per month for management and software combined. For boards that want to save money and are comfortable handling all aspects of their community themselves, PayHOA is a far more cost-effective option. Launched in 2018, PayHOA charges as little as $49 per month. In just a few years, they have grown to serve 6,000 associations representing 576,000 units and recently raised $27 million to fund continued growth.
Have questions about how software factors into choosing the right management company for your community? We are here to help.
