- TownSq is
- A full community-engagement + management suite (payments, dues, communications, portal)
- HOA Library is
- A focused records archive: OCR, full-text search, member Q&A, meeting-recording transcription
- TownSq price
- $90 - $435/mo, size-banded (published rates, July 2026)
- HOA Library price
- $29 - $99/mo flat, same rate at 100 homes or 1,000
- Do they compete?
- Not really - most HOA Library customers keep TownSq for payments/portal and add HOA Library as the records layer
What TownSq actually does well
TownSq is a genuinely full-featured platform: assessment payments and accounting, violation tracking, architectural-request workflows, community announcements, a resident portal, e-voting, and a document library as one module among many. If your management company runs on TownSq, it's almost certainly handling real operational work you don't want to duplicate - we're not pitching HOA Library as a TownSq replacement, and we don't do payments, dues, or violation tracking at all.
Where boards run into friction on the records side
Document storage is one module in a much bigger platform, not the point of the product. In practice that shows up a few ways: an old scanned meeting-minutes PDF sits in the library but isn't actually searchable by its text, a member records request means someone digging through folders by hand, and if your association ever changes management companies, your governing documents' long-term home is tied to whichever platform that company happens to use. None of that is a knock on TownSq - it's simply not what a management-and-payments platform is built to solve. What boards actually want is a permanent, independent copy of their own records that isn't tied to any one vendor relationship - something they own outright, searchable on day one and still there years later regardless of who's managing the community.
Why boards run both together
The two products solve different problems, so most HOA Library customers don't choose one over the other:
- Keep TownSq for what it's actually good at - payments, dues, violations, communications, the resident portal.
- Add HOA Library as the permanent records archive: every document (including old scanned paper) becomes full-text searchable, members can ask a plain-English question and get an answer with a cited source instead of filing a formal request, and the archive is owned by the HOA itself - independent of any one management company or software vendor.
Side-by-side
| Product | What it is | Published price (2026) | Records: OCR + search + AI? |
|---|---|---|---|
| HOA Library | Focused HOA-owned records archive: OCR, full-text search, member records + governance, AI Ask, transcription | $29 - $99 / moflat per HOA - the same $99 at 100, 250, 500, or 1,000+ homes | Yes - OCR of scans into full-text search, cited AI Ask, transcription |
| TownSq | Full community-engagement + management suite (run by the HOA management company) | $90 - $435 / mo3 published size bands: <300 / 301-900 / 900+ units | Document library module - no automatic OCR-of-scans into full-text search, no AI Ask advertised |
At a small community TownSq's entry tier can be close to HOA Library's price; by a few hundred homes its size-banded pricing runs well past HOA Library's flat $99, and by 1,000 homes several times higher. See the full sourced comparison (including PayHOA, BoardSpace, and generic storage) on our pricing page.
Keep TownSq. Add a permanent, searchable home for your records.
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