# Pony Express HQ — Full Content > SMS-first community hub for small homeowners associations (HOAs). Built for volunteer boards and small property managers, not enterprise management companies. Self-serve from $19/month. This file consolidates the public marketing content of Pony Express HQ for LLM ingestion. For the curated index, see /llms.txt. --- ## What Pony Express HQ is Pony Express HQ is a SaaS platform serving small-to-mid-size homeowners associations (10 to 500 units). It consolidates the tools a volunteer board typically juggles — spreadsheets, email, a WordPress site, a bolt-on SMS tool, a maintenance-request inbox — into a single platform whose primary communication channel is native SMS. The product is positioned against competitors that either skip SMS entirely or bolt it on as an add-on. Every other HOA platform treats SMS as a feature in a broader bundle. Pony Express HQ was built as an SMS platform with an HOA management layer on top. That ordering shows up everywhere: voting happens by text, maintenance tickets can be opened by text, violation notices deliver by text with delivery receipts, payment reminders escalate by text on a schedule. Target buyer: the president or treasurer of a self-managed HOA, or a small property manager serving a handful of communities. Not enterprise management companies with 10,000+ units; those buy Vantaca or AppFolio. ## Pricing Three flat-fee monthly tiers. No setup fee. No credit card required to start. Cancel and export any time. ### Starter — $19/month, $228/year Up to 50 units. 500 SMS messages included per month. Includes: member directory and groups, CSV import and assisted onboarding, public community page, SMS and email announcements, two-way messaging, basic polls and surveys, TCPA consent tracking, dedicated US phone number. ### Growth — $49/month, $588/year (most popular) Up to 200 units. 2,000 SMS messages included per month. Includes everything in Starter, plus: maintenance ticketing (with SMS submission), document storage and sharing, customizable resident portal, violation tracking and notices. Dues and online payments are planned; payment reminders via SMS are planned. ### Pro — $99/month, $1,188/year Up to 500 units. 10,000 SMS messages included per month. Includes everything in Growth, plus: AI auto-responder for SMS, board meeting workflow, ARC (architectural review) workflow, community calendar with RSVP and reminders. Vendor management and advanced financial reports are planned. ### Add-ons (any tier) - Extra SMS pack: $10 per 1,000 messages. Rolls over 30 days. - Digital vote event: $29 per election. Quorum-verified ballots with unique per-member links and audit trail. - White-glove migration: $199 one-time. We map spreadsheets and legacy exports into the directory for you. - Custom domain: $9 per month. Point your own domain at the resident portal and public page. ### Pricing comparison at 50 units (as of April 2026) - Pony Express HQ: $19 monthly, $228 annual, native SMS, two-way SMS, SMS voting — all included. - RunHOA: $33 monthly equivalent, $399 annual, no SMS capabilities. - PayHOA: $49 monthly, $529 annual, SMS available as an add-on; no two-way SMS; no SMS voting. - Buildium: $58 monthly, $696 annual, no native SMS. - HOALife: $199 monthly, $2,388 annual, no native SMS. --- ## The nine SMS-native capabilities Nine concrete capabilities that Pony Express HQ offers and no other researched competitor does: 1. Two-way SMS messaging. Residents reply to any outbound message; replies appear in a threaded board inbox attributed to the member record. 2. SMS voting. Residents reply 1 for YES or 2 for NO to formal motions. No app, no portal login. One vote per member, enforced by phone number. 3. Emergency alerts with escalation. Alert, follow-up, and all-clear as a single workflow rather than three manual broadcasts. 4. SMS maintenance requests. A resident texts a photo and a sentence; the platform creates a ticket with the photo attached and routes it to the right vendor. 5. Automated payment reminders. Configurable schedule with an escalating tone. Delivery receipts captured in the audit log. 6. Violation notices via SMS with delivery proof. Notices deliver by SMS with Twilio's carrier-level delivery receipt as evidence. Changes the defense calculus in disputes. 7. Ticket status notifications. Residents get texted the moment their request is triaged, scheduled, in-progress, or closed. 8. TCPA consent and audit log. Opt-in and opt-out captured, timestamped, and exportable. STOP and START handled natively by the carrier. 9. AI auto-responder via SMS. Residents text a question; the AI answers from the community's CC&Rs and posted documents. Pro tier. --- ## Features Every feature has its own page with a problem statement, the capabilities included, a step-by-step setup walkthrough, real HOA use cases, and an FAQ. ### Communications — All tiers The inbox problem: email averages a 20 percent open rate; SMS averages 98 percent. For time-sensitive updates — boil-water advisories, closures, meeting reminders — email is the wrong channel. Bolt-on SMS tools leave boards chasing consent, managing a second login, and stitching replies back to the right resident by hand. Capabilities: broadcasts and blasts (HOA-wide or targeted by group or segment), two-way conversations (residents reply from their phone; staff see messages in one inbox), TCPA-aware consent tracking, dedicated US phone number (your community gets its own line). Setup: provision your dedicated number after A2P 10DLC approval; import members and capture consent via portal, SMS reply, or paper form; send broadcasts, targeted messages, or two-way threads; residents reply and replies thread into the board inbox. ### Portals and website — All tiers Most small HOAs juggle a rarely-updated WordPress site, a shared-drive folder for documents, and a board email alias residents do not trust. A portal that covers public presence and resident workflows removes the tax. Capabilities: customizable pages (hero, tagline, CTAs — no HTML required), subdomain or path URL routing, resident sign-in scoped to the community, brand consistency from marketing site to logged-in experience. ### Directory and data — All tiers Spreadsheets drift. The treasurer keeps one roster for billing. The secretary maintains another for mailings. The president has a third for emergency contacts. Ownership changes, nobody syncs, and by year-end nobody trusts any of the three. Capabilities: property and unit records, roles and groups (management, resident, worker, vendor — each with granular roles), search and segment, directory views scoped to roles. ### Import and export — All tiers Every HOA has a messier roster than they admit — three spreadsheets, a Word doc with phone numbers, a vendor list in someone's inbox. The typical just-import-a-CSV flow works for 30 percent of communities and abandons the rest. Capabilities: CSV import for clean spreadsheets, assisted migration for messy data (white-glove add-on at $199 one-time), document uploads, full data export (directory, consent log, message history, documents) for backups, audits, or transitions. ### Maintenance and requests — Growth and Pro Requests die in silos. Residents call the board president, text the property manager's personal number, message on Nextdoor, slip notes under the clubhouse door. No shared ticket queue, no paper trail. Capabilities: online intake (portal, email, or SMS with photo), assignment and ownership (staff or vendor, scoped views), status notifications by SMS, operational clarity (fewer what's-the-status calls). ### Violations and enforcement — Growth and Pro Enforcement breaks at the paper trail. Board members log violations in a shared Google Doc. Notices print from a Word template. Proof of delivery depends on a screenshot of an email send. When a homeowner disputes a fine, the trail is gaps and guesswork — and the board waives the notice to avoid a fight. Capabilities: photo evidence (timestamped), flexible violation types (parking, noise, maintenance, landscaping, or custom), status lifecycle (open to notice-sent to in-progress to resolved or escalated), resident transparency (owners see their own violations and can respond), activity audit trail, priority and due dates. ### Documents — Growth and Pro Governing documents live in five places. CC&Rs in a Dropbox. Bylaws in someone's Gmail. Last month's minutes in a Google Doc nobody remembered to publish. When a resident asks for the pet policy, three board members search three places and one gives the wrong answer. Capabilities: central library (tag by type: governing, meeting, policy, vendor), role-based access (public, resident, board), minutes and policies, portal delivery (link from announcements). ### Polls, surveys, and e-voting — All tiers; SMS voting on Growth and Pro Quorum is the silent killer. Small-HOA votes fail not because residents disagree, but because the board cannot get enough of them to respond. Paper ballots need mailing and counting. Meeting attendance is low. Email-only polls hit 20 percent open rates and single-digit response. Boards punt decisions residents wanted made. Capabilities: three poll types (yes/no motions, single-choice, multi-select), anonymous or open, real-time results, audience targeting, portal and email reach, results visibility controls. ### Community calendar — Pro tier Event emails get lost. Board meetings get missed because the reminder went to spam. The monthly BBQ over-books because nobody tracked RSVPs. Capabilities: event visibility, SMS and email reminders, RSVP paths, iCal feed for residents. ### Security and access — All tiers Permissions collapse into two extremes. Either everyone on the board has admin on everything — which means a former treasurer retains access months after their term — or nobody has access to anything, and residents cannot get documents they are entitled to. Capabilities: role-based access with four member types and granular roles, separate management versus resident views, vendor and worker modes with limited surface area, session scoping per community. --- ## Trust and compliance - Data: stored in managed Postgres via Supabase. Encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest (AES-256). - Auth: Supabase Auth as the sole provider. 2FA available; recommended for management roles. - SMS: Twilio as primary provider via a pluggable SMS service. STOP and START handled at the carrier level. - TCPA: every SMS consent or opt-out is logged in an append-ony consent log with method, timestamp, and recorded-by. - Data portability: full export at any time (directory, consent log, messages, documents). 30-day purge on cancellation unless in audit hold. - Retention: financial records retained for 7 years (IRS). Consent log retained 5 years minimum. Other member data retained while the account is active. - SOC 2: we inherit the compliance posture of our managed providers (Supabase, Twilio, Stripe). An independent audit is on the roadmap. --- ## Primary calls-to-action - Sign up free at /signup. No credit card, no setup fee. Setup typically takes minutes. - Contact sales or migration help at /contact. - Full product tour at /features/tour — one-page linear walkthrough. - See pricing at /pricing.