PayHOA for a Florida condo board — the honest review

PayHOA reviews on G2, Capterra, and r/HOA are abundant. Most are written by an HOA somewhere in the United States — Texas, Colorado, Missouri, California. None of those reviews are written for a Florida condo board sitting under Chapter 718, HB 913 (effective July 2025), and HB 1021 (effective July 2024). This post is.

The position we are reviewing from

We are HOA Rocket, a Florida-only condo and HOA compliance platform. PayHOA is, by their own marketing, "the #1 software trusted by 5000+ communities" — a national payments-and-accounting platform for self-managed associations. Florida boards routinely ask us whether they should adopt PayHOA, drop PayHOA, or layer the two. This is the answer we give, in long form, with the public PayHOA pages and the Florida statutes as the source material.

What PayHOA is genuinely good at

We will start with the parts that work. A review that only lists complaints is not useful to a board trying to make a decision.

Online dues collection

PayHOA's payments stack is mature. Invoicing with autopay, ACH at $2.45 per transaction, credit cards at 3.5% + $0.50, and a lockbox at $2.50 per payment. The owner portal handles payment history and statements. For a Florida board collecting monthly dues from 50–200 units, this is the most efficient piece of the stack — PayHOA replaces a paper-check-and-spreadsheet workflow with a real online platform.

GL accounting

A double-entry general ledger with chart of accounts, bank reconciliation, vendor payables, and the standard financial reports. Boards that previously ran on QuickBooks can move to PayHOA's GL without re-learning fundamentals. The bookkeeping-services add-on is a credible option for boards that do not want to operate the ledger themselves.

Mass communication

Bulk text, email, and voice broadcast. USPS print-and-mail at $1.05–$1.25 per letter for boards that still need physical notices. The mass-communication module is, in practice, where boards spend the most operational time on PayHOA.

The owner portal

A single place where owners log in to see their account, pay their assessment, and access documents. The portal is competent and well-engineered.

These four pieces — dues, GL, communication, owner portal — are the spine of PayHOA. They are also where the product is undeniably good.

Where the cracks show for a Florida board

Now the part the standard reviews miss. The features above are not enough for a Florida condo association in 2026.

The §718.111(12)(c) 10-working-day records-request clock

§718.111(12)(c) requires a written response to a records request within 10 working days, with Florida state holidays under §110.117(1) excluded. A denial must cite the specific statutory exception.

PayHOA has document storage. PayHOA does not have a records-request workflow that runs the 10-working-day clock with holiday math, generates the statutory response cover letter, or surfaces the denial-reason exemption picker. A board running PayHOA can file the request in PayHOA's storage; the board still owes the timed response by hand.

This is the gap Florida condo boards most often describe to us in PayHOA-related conversations. It is not that the request is ignored — it is that the response goes out without the statutory citation block, or it goes out late because nobody was counting working days correctly.

The §718.111(12)(g) statutory website

HB 1021 hardened this obligation with a January 2026 deadline. A 25+ unit condo association must maintain an independent statutory website with versioned governing documents, financial reports, meeting minutes, bid summaries, contracts, the Q&A sheet, and certification statements — with a member-only login layer for the protected fields.

PayHOA ships a community website builder. The website builder is a marketing surface, not a statutory disclosure surface. Versioning, access logs, member-only access for protected documents, and the certification layer that §718.111(12)(g) calls for are not what PayHOA's website builder ships.

The §718.112 board-notice timing

A regular condo board meeting requires a 48-continuous-hour notice posted on the condominium property under §718.112(2)(c)1. The budget meeting requires a 14-day notice with an officer-signed affidavit of compliance under §718.112(2)(e). PayHOA's mass communication can send the notice but does not generate the affidavit, does not enforce the 48-continuous-hour posting, and does not bind the agenda to the notice timestamp.

The §720.305 fining committee

A Florida fining committee under §720.305(2)(b) — also applied to condos via §718.303(3)(b) — must have three or more members, none of whom is an officer, director, employee, or the parent, spouse, child, brother, or sister of any officer, director, or employee. The committee must give the homeowner 14 days' notice before the hearing.

PayHOA's violations module is a national workflow. It does not validate Florida fining-committee composition at creation time, does not detect related-party violations, and does not run the 14-day clock with the affidavit. A Florida board running fines through PayHOA still has to maintain a parallel record demonstrating proper composition.

HB 913 milestone inspections and SIRS

The 2026 milestone-inspection cohort is one of the largest condo-safety operational pushes Florida has run. §553.899 and HB 913 govern Phase 1 / Phase 2 triggers, engineer-of-record retention, and the SIRS budget reconciliation. PayHOA does not ship milestone-inspection records, SIRS tabs, or the 2026 cohort calendar. The phrase "milestone inspection" does not appear on PayHOA's feature pages.

HB 1021 director education

§720.3033 requires newly elected or appointed directors to complete a written certification or approved course within 90 days. PayHOA's Florida-laws page mentions the requirement. PayHOA does not track per-director completion against the 90-day clock or surface director status in the board roster.

Cost — what PayHOA actually adds up to

The subscription pricing is published and clear:

• 0–25 units: $49/mo annual, $54/mo monthly
• 26–50 units: $59/mo annual, $65/mo monthly
• 51–100 units: $99/mo annual, $109/mo monthly
• 101–150 units: $129/mo annual, $142/mo monthly
• 401–500 units: $249/mo annual, $275/mo monthly
• 500+ units: $0.55/unit/month

Transaction fees ride on top: $2.45 per incoming ACH, 3.5% + $0.50 per card, $2.50 per lockbox payment. USPS mailings at $1.05–$1.25 per letter, $2 per check. A typical 100-unit condo association collecting half its dues via ACH and half via credit card pays approximately $200–$350 in transaction fees per month on top of subscription.

There is a 30-day free trial. There is no permanent free plan.

The honest verdict for a Florida condo board

PayHOA is a competent national platform. For the dues-collection and accounting layer, it is a credible choice. For the §718 statutory layer — records-request clocks, statutory websites, board-notice affidavits, fining-committee composition, milestone-inspection records, director-training tracking — it does not address the obligations on its public pages.

The three honest paths for a Florida board:

1. PayHOA + a Florida compliance tool. Keep PayHOA for dues. Add a Florida-statute-native compliance layer (we make one, or read the 8-tool roundup) for the §718 obligations. Total monthly cost: PayHOA tier + $79–$199 + PayHOA per-transaction fees.

2. QuickBooks + a Florida compliance tool. Drop PayHOA, run accounting in QuickBooks or with a CPA. Often roughly half the subscription cost of the PayHOA stack, and the §718 layer is covered.

3. PayHOA alone. Defensible for an out-of-state HOA. For a Florida condo board in 2026, this leaves the §718 statute layer on the board.

We wrote the longer alternative guide and the side-by-side comparison for boards that want the analysis with the matrix.

Written by HOA Rocket editorial. We disclose our position — we operate a competing Florida-statute compliance tool — on the comparison page. The PayHOA features and pricing referenced in this post are from PayHOA's public pages as of 2026-05-18. Statute citations link to flsenate.gov via /florida/statutes.