PayHOA and Buildium both publish full price lists — tiers, transaction fees, and add-ons. That is unusual in this market and it means you can actually settle this comparison with arithmetic rather than sales calls. The catch is that the two price completely differently, so the arithmetic has to use your own numbers.
The other real difference is who each one is built around. PayHOA publishes a self-managed association price list as its primary offer. Buildium is a property management platform with an association product attached, and its own published guidance points self-managed associations at the entry tier. Sources read in August 2026.
We make Effortless HOA, which is HOA management software. That means we compete with both products on this page, and you should read what follows with that in mind.
We have not used PayHOA or Buildium. Nothing here is a review, a rating, or a test result. Every statement is drawn from what each vendor publishes on its own website — pricing pages, product pages, FAQs — read in August 2026, with the source links printed at the bottom of this page. Where a vendor does not publish something, this page says “not published” rather than guessing.
Vendors change pages and prices without notice. Verify anything that matters against the source links before you sign.
HOA management software with a published self-managed price list by unit band, plus a separate per-unit plan for management companies and optional bookkeeping and tax filing services.
Built for: Self-managed associations as the headline offer, with a management company plan published separately at $0.55 per unit per month and a $275 monthly minimum.
Buildium (RealPage)
A property management platform with a published association management product, sold in three feature tiers with per-transaction fees published separately.
Built for: Buildium publishes Essential as "perfect for small management companies or self-managed associations, 150 units and under," with Growth and Premium above that.
PayHOA publishes nine unit bands from 0-25 homes up to 500+, so a 180-home association pays $169/mo and a 40-home association pays $59/mo, with the same product. Buildium publishes three feature tiers, so a 40-home association that needs an open API pays the same $400 as a 4,000-unit portfolio. For a single association of a knowable size, PayHOA's model is easier to budget and easier to defend at a board meeting. For a management company that will grow, Buildium's model stops charging you for growth once you are on a tier.
PayHOA publishes incoming ACH at $2.45 and cards at 3.5% plus $0.50. Buildium publishes incoming EFT at $2.35 on Essential and cards at 2.99%. On ACH the two are within a dime; on cards Buildium's published rate is lower. But Buildium's EFT fee drops to $1.35 on Growth and $0.60 on Premium, while PayHOA's published ACH fee does not vary by tier. For a 200-home association collecting monthly by ACH, that is roughly $490 a month either way at the entry tiers — several times the subscription. Whoever absorbs that fee, the association or the homeowner, is the more important question than which platform is $13 cheaper.
PayHOA's price list includes bookkeeping from $199/mo, 1120-H tax filing from $399 per filing, and 1099 filing at $15 each. For a volunteer treasurer, that is a genuinely different proposition from software alone — the association can buy the labour as well as the tool, at a published price. Buildium publishes 1099 e-filing ($50 per batch plus $4.50 per form) but not bookkeeping or association tax preparation. If your board's real problem is that nobody wants to be treasurer, that published services menu is the material difference between these two.
PayHOA publishes USPS first class at $1.25 per letter, standard at $1.05, and mailed checks at $2 each. Buildium publishes multi-channel communications including mail as a feature of the association product but does not publish a per-piece rate. For associations that send statutory notices — violation letters, assessment notices, annual meeting packets — the published PayHOA number is directly usable in a budget and Buildium's is a question for the sales call.
0-25 units, billed yearly
Essential tier, published
Each cell records what the vendor states on its own pages. A blank in one column usually means the vendor does not publish that detail — not that the capability is missing. Treat it as a question for the demo, not a verdict.
Entry price
Pricing logic
100-home association
300-home association
Incoming ACH/EFT
Credit cards
USPS mail
Bookkeeping
Association tax filing
Free trial
Annual discount
Architectural requests
Rentals in the same system
Open API
Neither is better in the abstract. These are the conditions under which each vendor’s published strengths line up with a real situation.
These are the gaps in the public record. Anyone who fills them in for you without a quote in hand is guessing.
Questions that close the gaps above, in the order they usually matter.
We make Effortless HOA, so we are not a neutral party and this section is the part of the page where that matters. We built it for self-managed communities — volunteer boards running one association without a management company. That is a narrower job than either platform above is solving, and it is the only situation where we would suggest looking at us instead.
If you are a management company with a portfolio, or you need multi-entity portfolio operations, the platforms on this page are built for that and we are not. If you are a board of five volunteers trying to collect dues, track violations, and close the books without hiring anybody, our pricing is published in full and you can work out your number in about a minute.
Vendor-published pages, read August 2026. Last verified 2026-08-09.
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