Changes To Pricing Plans

Moving forward with the changes we announced in the January newsletter, last night we released a number of updates to our pricing plans. As we discussed in the newsletter, we really struggled with this decision but, given the current economic conditions and general softness in the online advertising environment, feel it is necessary to ensure that we remain a viable service for our existing and future customers. With that said, we want to reassure you that we aren't going anywhere! These are preemptive changes we are making to ensure we will be able to weather this economic storm.

Last night we also released stronger moderation features for the Community News  and Events  modules as well as increased control over resident email notifications. Community administrators and content moderators now have complete control and final approval of news and events that are published to their HOA website. They also now have greater control over when residents receive email notifications.

Below are the new pricing plans as of 02/02/2008. The most significant changes were to the Free plan. If you are affected by these changes, we welcome you to continue to use the free service and have provided a special coupon code - UPGHOA01 - to save 50% off the first month should you choose to upgrade. However, if you feel that our service isn't a good fit for your community right now we certainly understand and hope you will keep us in mind if your needs change.

HOA Website Pricing Plans

*All paid pricing plans include content moderation and email notification features.

Ultimate Plan

• Unlimited Residents
• Unlimited Groups
• 2GB Document Storage

Premium Plan

• Up to 500 Residents
• 10 Groups
• 1GB Document Storage

Standard Plan

• Up to 250 Residents
• 5 Groups
• 500MB Document Storage

Basic Plan

• Up to 100 Residents
• 3 Groups
• 250MB Document Storage

We also still have the Free plan with up to 25 residents and 1 group but no document storage, email notifications or content moderation.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding these changes please feel free to contact me personally at mitch.rupp@rdcweb.com or by phone at 913.710.8103.

Thank you for your time and we truly appreciate your business.

Greater Control And Flexibility

Last night we released a number of changes that greatly increase the content moderation capabilities of our HOA websites.  Additionally these changes also provide community administrators and content moderators greater control over when residents are sent email notifications.

New Moderation Features

First let's look at the new moderation features. In the past, residents were able to post news and events directly to their HOA website. This was great because it removed barriers to getting them involved and helped to engage the community.

Unfortunately, it also enabled residents to email every other resident in the neighborhood without a filter. Needless to say, this made some HOA board members and property management companies nervous. 

Now residents are still able to add news and events but they are first routed though the community administrators  and moderators for approval. When residents post new items an email will be sent to administrators and content moderators notifying them that an item is pending their approval.

After following the link provided in the email notification, administrators and content moderators now have the opportunity to preview and edit news posts and community events prior to publishing them to the site. Once approved or "published" the items will then appear on the live HOA website. 

Optional Email Notifications

As administrators or moderators are approving the item they also have the opportunity to optionally notify residents of the news or events via email. Prior to yesterday this was the default behavior and there was no way to prevent the email notifications from being sent. We made these changes for two reasons.

First, not all news or events are important enough to interrupt the residents. Too much communication and residents become annoyed and start to tune it out. Not enough communication and residents are not engaged and participation declines.  Every community is different and we now enable you to find the right balance for your HOA website.

Secondly, these changes now allow administrators and content moderators to send residents email notifications when news or events are significantly edited. Previously, if a change was significant enough to warrant a new email notification the item would need to be deleted and the edited version re-posted as a new item.

We hope you enjoy the greater control you now have over resident email notifications and the content published on your HOA website. Both of these enhancements came directly from our feedback forum so please keep the ideas and votes coming. We are listening to you!

Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

January 2009 Newsletter

Table of Contents

1. Spread The Word
2. You Have A Voice
3. Life Just Got A Little Richer
4. New Groups & Committees
5. Site Sponsors
6. Calendar Archives
7. Upcoming Changes

Spread The Word

As a small, self-funded internet start-up we don’t have much of an advertising budget so we truly rely on our customers to help get the word out. If you find HOAInTouch.com useful please tell a friend (or ten!). They will appreciate being more connected to their neighborhood and we will love you for it! If you have a blog please consider giving us a quick shout out or if you are into Twitter toss us a tweet.

Speaking of blogs and Twitter, if you want to stay up to date on what we have going on you can subscribe to our product blog via email or RSS updates or follow us on twitter at @hoaintouch.

You Have A Voice

We are very excited to let you know that we have partnered with UserVoice, a company providing a new twist on user feedback, to provide a forum for our customers to request new features, submit bug reports and help control the overall direction of the service. To get started simply click the blue feedback button aligned vertically on the left side of the window.

To get the ball rolling we have seeded the feedback forum with some of our most requested features. Feel free to vote up the ones you would most like to see or to add entirely new ones. We hope you enjoy this new feature and we look forward to hearing from you!

[Read More]

Life Just Got A Little Richer

One of our most requested features has been the ability for users to richly format the content posted to their community. In December we released enhancements to our Community News and Community Events modules that allows residents to format the content of these items and their comments.

The new rich text/html editor enables content authors to change the font face, size and color of the text as well as providing the ability to make the text bold, italic or underlined. The new editor also allows for the creation of ordered and unordered list and hyperlinks.

As we have all heard at least a few times, a picture is worth a thousand words so check out our product blog for some screenshots showcasing the new feature using the Community News module.

[Read More]

Groups and Committees

I must confess that I have never been super happy with the Groups & Committee feature, so we decided to throw it out and rebuild it - nearly from the ground up. I am very pleased to let you know that earlier this month we released a new Groups and Committees module of HOAInTouch.

This release contains several new features – namely public groups and group member titles - as well as enhancing existing features by improving ease of administration and usability.

[Read More]

Site Sponsors

The mission of HOAInTouch has always been to improve the level and quality of communication in your homeowner association. To that end, we are constantly striving to find ways to improve and create a better experience for your residents.

Based on a combination of customer feedback and an evaluation of the current and future market conditions for local online advertising we have greatly reduced the amount of advertising present on each page. This makes for a much cleaner design with dramatically less “noise” and the site loads much faster. Certainly a better experience for our customers.

[Read More]

Calendar Archives

In December we also released a small update to the Community Events module that allows residents to browse prior community events.

On each Community Events page there is a new Archives tile on the right of the page that provides links for each Month / Year and indicates the number of events for that month - i.e. December 2008 (2). Clicking the link will display all of the events that occurred in the given month.

[Read More]

Upcoming Changes

We are extremely excited about a number of changes we have coming in February. We will be providing enhanced moderation for our Community News and Events modules as well as greater control over system notifications. We have also started work on a new classified ads module that will provide residents with a great place to advertise their goods and services.

Lastly, due to the current economics conditions and general softness in the online advertising environment we are going to be making a handful of changes to our Free plan. Namely, we will be removing the document library feature and email notifications of news posts and calendar events. Additionally, a number of upcoming features will only be available to paid subscriptions.

We really struggled with this decision but feel it is necessary in order to ensure that we remain a viable service for our existing and future customers. If you are affected by this change, you are more than welcome to continue to use the free service. We have also provided a special coupon code below to save 50% off the first month should you choose to upgrade. However, if you feel that our service isn't a good fit for your community right now we certainly understand and hope you will keep us in mind if your needs change.

Upgrade and Save

Use coupon code UPGHOA01 to save 50% off your first month of any upgrade!  This code is good through the end of February 2009.

Thanks for your business and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Coupon Codes

We pushed out an update to our subscription payment process today that enables us to accept coupon codes. Customers can enter a coupon code when creating a new community or upgrading their existing free subscription by entering the coupon code on the Subscription Payment Setup screen.

Enter code JAN200901 to receive 20% your first month! This offer is good through the end of January 2009.

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Groups and Committees

I have a confession to make. I have never been too overly excited about our Groups and Committees feature of HOAInTouch.  I mean, it worked but it just felt a little “off”. The interface always seemed a little clunky and inefficient - kind of like it was bolted on instead of being a first class feature of the application.

I must admit it was my least favorite part of the application and, while we haven’t received any specific feedback on it, the usage statistics appear to confirm that our customers agreed.

So we decided to throw it out and rebuild it - nearly from the ground up. I am very pleased to let you know that tonight we released a new Groups and Committees module of HOAInTouch.

This release contains several new features – namely public groups and group member titles - as well as improving on existing features by improving ease of administration and usability. Let’s take a look at the improvements to existing functionality and then we will present the new features.

Group Details Page

One of the biggest annoyances with the original design was that the group details and group members were on separate pages. This never really made sense and required residents make an extra, unnecessary mouse click to view basic group information.

To help illustrate the issue, below are screenshots of the group details and members pages before the update.

(Group Details Page)

(Group Members Page)

As you can see, the group details page was pretty thin in terms of content. Frankly, there was no new information presented that wasn’t already available on the groups homepage. Additionally the group members page wasn’t much better. We were consuming quite a bit of space to communicate a small amount of information. Yuck.

So the first thing we set out to improve was the presentation of the group members. We wanted a way to provide more information in less space. After tossing around a few design ideas we settled on a tabular grid format. Not only does this design provide a concise means of displaying the data, it also allows residents to sort the data thereby greatly improving usability for groups with many members.

With the new design taking up so much less space we decided to merge the group details and group members pages - thus eliminating the extra click to get to the member information. Yes, it is a small change but I feel strongly that small details like this really matter and are what separates a good application from a great one. Below is a screenshot of the new group details page. I am really happy with how it turned out and I hope you agree!

(New Group Details Page)

Group Administration

In the original design we allowed anyone to update the group description and add or remove group members. With the new ability to create public groups (more on this later) we thought it was best to move all of the group administration functions into the Administration section.

This move not only makes it much easier and quicker to manage groups but also ensures that community administrators maintain appropriate control over group details and members.

Below is a screenshot of what the Add Group Member widget looked like in the original design.

(Add Group Member)

And this is the new design for editing group information and group members respectively.

(Edit Group Details)

(Manage Group Members)

Much cleaner, much nicer, much better.

Public Groups

One area of the Groups and Committees module that we have received quite a bit of feedback on is the lack of visibility of groups for guests/visitors and neighborhood residents not signed in to the HOA website.

For example, several communities requested the ability to allow any visitors of the website to view their Board of Directors committee so that potential homeowners could contact them with any questions they might have.

I am pleased to announce that Groups and Committees can now be marked as public which will allow visitors and residents not signed in to view the group details and members. See the new  Edit Group Details screenshot above to see how to enable this feature.

Group Member Titles

Lastly, we added the ability for community administrators to add a title or role description to each group member. This will greatly assist residents in understanding how each group member fits into the larger group/committee and who they might need to contact with issues or questions. Refer to the new Edit Group Members screenshot above to see this new feature.

Overall this was a pretty significant release – one of the largest since we initially launched in November of 2006. I dramatically better about our Groups feature and can now consider it a first class feature of the system. I hope you agree but either way let us know what you think! Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Site Sponsors

The mission of HOAInTouch has always been to improve the level and quality of communication in your homeowner association communities. To that end, we are constantly striving to find ways to improve and create a better experience for your residents.

As we have previously discussed, our business model has always been to partially subsidize the cost of our subscription plans via advertising. Today that changes somewhat.

Based on a combination of customer feedback and an evaluation of the current and future market conditions for local online advertising we have greatly reduced the amount of advertising present on each page.

Previously we had three large ad sections, a horizontal section across the top just below the menu tabs, a vertical section to the right below any tiles and a second horizontal section at the footer of the page. We would fill this inventory from a variety of sources including Google and other national ad networks, as well as local advertising and in house ads.

As of tonight all three of these sections have been removed. In their place we have added a small, text only Site Sponsors section in the lower right corner of the page (screenshot below). This makes for a much cleaner design with dramatically less “noise” and the site loads much faster. Certainly a better experience for our customers.

(Site Sponsors)

This change in direction is also a win for our advertisers. Moving forward we will no longer be utilizing Google - or  any other ad networks - and will only be displaying our own local advertising.  We are also limiting the number of sponsors per community to four and will only be displaying two ads per page. This decrease in inventory and competing advertisers will translate into increased page views and prominence for our local advertisers.

HOAInTouch is a tremendous opportunity for local businesses to advertise online and know that they are reaching their target market. If you are a real estate agent, lawn care provider, roofer, plumber, handyman, etc. please contact us so we can get your business in front of local homeowners. For only $25 per month you can reach homeowners in the neighborhood of your choice while they are already thinking about their homes.

Thanks and, as always, let us know what you think! We will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Calendar Archives

We released a small update to the Community Events module tonight that allows residents to browse prior community events.

On each Community Events page there is a new Archives tile on the right of the page that provides links for each Month / Year and indicates the number of events for that month - i.e. December 2008 (2). Clicking the link will display all of the events that occurred in the given month. Below is a screenshot to better illustrate.



Hope this helps! Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

Life Just Got A Little Richer

One of our most requested features has been the ability for users to richly format the content posted to thier community. Tonight we released enhancements to our Community News and Community Events modules that allows users to format the content of these items and their comments.

The new rich text/html editor enables content authors to change the font face, size and color of the text as well as providing the ability to make the text bold, italic or underlined. The new editor also allows for the creation of ordered and unordered list and hyperlinks.

As we have all heard at least a few times, a picture is worth a thousand words so below are some screenshots showcasing the new feature using the Community News module.

The first screenshot is a news post that was created before the new editor was available.

The second screenshot is a shot of the news post in the new edit screen.

Lastly, a screenshot of the updated news post with the richly formated content.



As you can see, the resulting news post is formatted much cleaner and is more aesthetically pleasing. It also more easily conveys the critical pieces of information such as the web address, due date and contact information.

Hope you enjoy this new feature and please keep the feedback coming! Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

You Have A Voice

Tonight we pushed out an update that I am very excited about. We have partnered with UserVoice, a company providing a new twist on user feedback, to provide a forum for our customers to request new features, submit bug reports and help control the overall direction of the site.

To get started simply click the blue feedback button aligned vertically on the left side of the window.


This will open the feedback window which allows quick access to the forum and provides the ability to quickly submit a bug.


To get the ball rolling we have seeded the feedback forum with some of our most requested features. Feel free to vote up the ones you would most like to see or to add entirely new ones. We hope you enjoy this new feature and we look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

Safari Compatibility

Tonight we pushed out a few updates to resolve some funkiness we were seeing with the Safari browser. As a reminder, HOAInTouch supports all of the major browsers including:

• Internet Explorer 6+
• FireFox 1.5+
  
• Safari 3+
• Opera 9+

Hope this helps and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

Still Here

Just a quick post to let you know we are still alive and well. You might not have heard from us in a while but we have been busy continuing to improve HOAInTouch and providing homeowner associations with a great website and communication tool for their residents.

Earlier this week we pushed out an update to improve the performance of the site as well as improving compatibility with Firefox 3. This was a significant update that took quite a bit of time to implement and touched literally every page of the site. Since it was more of an infrastructure enhancement you really shouldn't notice any visible difference - other than the site loading faster of course - but we feel it was worth it and will allow us to leverage some pretty cool stuff moving forward.

Stay tuned as we plan to make several other enhancements to the site before the end of the year and are excited to get your feedback. As always, feel free to drop us a line and let us know what you think!

Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

Local Advertising

Our business model has always been to partially subsidize the cost of subscriptions via advertising. To date we have used national ad networks such as Google to fill our ad inventory. However, as of last week we are now able to host and publish our own ads.

This means your community can now have local advertising that is inherently more relevant and useful to your residents. HOAInTouch.com is a great place to advertise for realtors, lawn care, painters, banks, restaurants, etc. Really any business that wants to attract local customers is a great candidate.

So why is this good for you? Starting May 1st, any community that refers two or more advertisers will be automatically upgraded to the Ultimate plan absolutely free! Contact us at sales@hoaintouch.com for more details or if you have any questions.

Unlimited Users For All Communities

At the beginning of the month we alluded to some major changes in the works that would make HOAInTouch.com an even more compelling choice for communities looking to (re)connect with their neighbors.

We are very, very excited to announce that we have removed the user limits on all plans! Now all communities – even those on the FREE plan – can add unlimited users and contacts to their community. It has never been easier to improve communication and participation in your neighborhood!

To make getting your entire community registered quick and easy, earlier this month we released the new Bulk User Import feature. It is a super, super simple two step process. Just complete a spreadsheet with three required fields (first name, last name and email address) and upload it in your administration section. We will take care of the rest. For more information check out a previous blog post on the feature.

Hope you are as excited about this change as we are! Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Entering Phone Numbers

Since we launched in November of 2007 we have always required that phone numbers be entered in the traditional (555)555-5555 format. While a common format it is really a pain to enter phone numbers this way. It just doesn’t “flow” very well.

I am *really* excited to announce that as of today you can now enter phone numbers in a variety of formats. In addition to (555)555-5555, you can now use (555) 555-5555 (note the space after the closing parenthesis), 555-555-5555 or 555.555.5555.

Yeah, I realize this isn’t really that big of a deal but has been a personal pet peeve of mine - drove me absolutely nuts! I am happy now and I hope you can appreciate it even half as much as me. :)

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

User Import Feature

Today we released a great new feature for HOAInTouch.com community administrators. Administrators are now able to easily import all or a subset of the residents in their neighborhood – and true to form it is super, super simple.

We will do a full post with screenshots on this feature at some point as well as create a video tutorial but essentially here is the process.

1. Download a very simple spreadsheet from inside the administration section of your homeowners association website. Currently the only required fields are first name, last name and email address. Optionally you can also specify the user’s password, home phone number and home address.
2. Upload the spreadsheet.

Yep, that’s it. Two steps. I told you it was super simple!

Once the spreadsheet is uploaded we automatically check the data for any errors, create the user accounts and display the results. We also send an email to each new user welcoming them to your homeowners association website and providing them their user name and password. With this new user import feature +90% adoption is easily feasible – and possible without your residents having to do anything! How great is that!

This is been a frequently requested feature and we worked hard to make it as simple and painless as possible. We are really excited with how it turned out and think you will be too. Try it out and let us know what you think! If you don’t have a HOAInTouch.com community yet then create your homeowners association website today and create those neighborhood connections!

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Invite a Neighbor!

We had (another) small release last night in which we pushed out a new feature to the marketing site. You can now easily invite a friend, neighbor or board member to take a look at HOAInTouch.com.

Just click on the new Invite a Neighbor tab, enter their email address and click the Send button. Super simple. If desired you can also customize the message by modifying the text in the Message box.



This would also be a great way to invite your neighbors to sign up for HOAInTouch.com if your community is already setup!

Hope you find Invite a Neighbor useful! Thanks for stopping by and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

Community Search Update

We had a small release last night fixing a couple minor annoyances and a small but important change to the Community Search results page.

Previously the only navigation option available on the results page was the Join Now! button. This was intentional and designed to streamline the sign up process.

Given the wide range of technical ability of our user base, we continually strive for maximum simplicity throughout HOAInTouch.com. Unless we absolutely have to provide multiple choices and/or navigation paths we choose not to in order to provide a more simple and intuitive interface.

For this reason we made the decision not to provide a link to the community website on the search results page. We feared that members of our communities that are less technically adept might be thrown off by this and have difficulty completing the registration process.

With that said, we have had a surprising number of requests to allow users to preview their community website before registering so we changed the name of the community into a link to their website. This link opens in a new browser window so that users can easily complete the signup process when finished with the preview. A screenshot of the change is provided below.



This change will also allow users already registered that have forgotten or lost the web address to their community to easily view their community website without signing in.

We strove to provide a balance between simplicity/intuitiveness and usability. I think we succeeded and hope you agree. Let us know what you think and keep the feedback coming – we are listening!

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

New Email Templates

Over the last few weeks you may have noticed a change in the emails recieved from HOAInTouch.com. Earlier this month we made quite a few updates to the templates we were using. The new templates are much, much cleaner and do a better job of drawing the focus where it needs to be - on the information about your community.

With the new templates we also provide more information. For example, the news and events notifications now include links to view the content in your browser or add comments. Also, the event notification now includes the date and location of the event as well as a link to add the event to your calendar.

Finally, we also updated the forgot password template. Previously this email created confusion for some users because the period ending the sentence occurred immediately after the new password. While gramatically correct, this caused some users to be unsure if the period was to be included as a part of the password or not. Now, the password is clearly set apart and should be much easier to use.

We worked hard to improve the usability of the emails and hope you like the new templates. Feel free to drop us a note and let us know what you think. Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

New Comment Notifications

Last night we released a new feature for HOAInTouch.com - new comment notifications. Now when a new comment is added to a news post or community event the author and any users that have added comments will receive an email notifying them that a new comment has been added.

Previously users had to remember to continually check the site to see if anyone had added comments which was a royal pain and not really conducive to facilitating communication. Hopefully these changes will provide a better means to engage the community. Let us know what you think!

Thanks and we will see you 'round the neighborhood!

More For Less

When we launched HOAInTouch.com a little over two months ago we started with an admittedly limited scope of understanding in terms of the varying sizes and types of homeowners associations. HOAInTouch.com really grew out of the recognition of problems our HOA - and similar HOAs in our area - were experiencing coupled with the lack of a viable solution in the market. We knew that if HOAs in our area were experiencing these issues then maybe we had an opportunity to help others around the country.

Two months later and nearly 50 communities strong we have come to recognize that, while there are literally tens of thousands of associations actively looking for a solution to these shared issues, unfortunately our pricing structure put help out of reach for a number of these communities.

Several of the associations we have talked to have expressed that they absolutely love the product and believe it could be of great benefit to their community but that it was either too expense or the limitations too constraining (i.e. not enough users without upgrading to the Unlimited plan) to be a viable option.

After careful consideration we are extremely pleased and excited to announce that starting today HOAInTouch.com will provide much more for much, much less. Below are our new pricing plans and as you can see we have drastically reduced the monthly subscription rates while increasing the number of users and contacts. Please visit our pricing page for more information on each of these plans.

Free – Yep, still free.
· 25 Users
· 25 Contacts
· 1 Group/Committee
· 50 MB Document Storage

Basic - $19.99/month
· 50 Users
· 60 Contacts
· 3 Group/Committee
· 250 MB Document Storage

Standard - $29.99/month
· 100 Users
· 120 Contacts
· 5 Group/Committee
· 250 MB Document Storage

Premium - $39.99/month
· 200 Users
· 250 Contacts
· 10 Group/Committee
· 1 GB Document Storage

Unlimited - $49.99/month
· Unlimited Users
· Unlimited Contacts
· Unlimited Group/Committee
· 2 GB Document Storage

Our hope is that these changes will make HOAInTouch.com even more accessible to the communities that need it most. Of course, all of our existing communities will be migrated to the new pricing structure and will see the reduced rates on next month’s statement.

We sincerely appreciate your support and welcome your feedback. Feel free to let us know what you think of the new plans or what you think of HOAInTouch.com in general. We value your thoughts and enjoy getting the opportunity to know our users a bit better..

Thanks and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!