Gather Commons vs BaseHOA
BaseHOA targets HOA operations and management. Gather Commons is built for communities that lead with events and shared amenities — swim & tennis clubs, neighborhoods, and engagement-driven HOAs.
Start free trialWho this comparison is for
You are comparing general HOA management tools and finding them all roughly interchangeable — a directory, some documents, a payment button. What none of them seem to take seriously is that your community is defined by its pool, its courts, and the fifteen things happening on the calendar between May and September.
Choose BaseHOA if…
- You want broad HOA operations coverage — violations, architectural requests, compliance workflows.
- Governance and enforcement are the board's main workload.
- Shared amenities are a minor part of community life.
Choose Gather Commons if…
- Your amenities are the reason people joined and the reason they stay.
- Your season has a rhythm — opening day, swim meets, socials — that software should understand.
- You want volunteer sign-ups, potlucks, and contests treated as real features, not a generic calendar.
- You measure success by participation rather than compliance.
How the two are positioned
Differences in what each product is built around — not a feature scorecard.
| BaseHOA | Gather Commons | |
|---|---|---|
| Framing of the community | An entity to be administered | A group of people to be brought together |
| Amenities | One module among many | The center of the product |
| Success measured by | Operations handled, compliance maintained | Attendance, bookings, participation |
| Best fit | Governance-heavy HOAs | Swim & tennis clubs and amenity-driven neighborhoods |
BaseHOA is a HOA management softwareproduct and may well be the right fit for communities whose main problem lives in that domain. Gather Commons is for communities that lead with engagement. We describe positioning rather than feature lists, because feature claims about other people's software go out of date the week they ship something.
What switching actually involves
If your board genuinely needs violation tracking and architectural review workflows, keep a tool that does those and add Gather Commons for the member-facing side. If those modules were bought but never really used — a common story — the migration is a roster import, a document upload, and a domain change.
Common questions
Does Gather Commons handle violations or architectural requests?
Not as dedicated workflows. Gather Commons focuses on engagement — events, amenities, directory, communications, payments, and your public site. Governance-heavy communities often keep a separate tool for compliance and use Gather Commons for everything members touch.
We are a swim and tennis club rather than an HOA. Does that work?
That is the community the product was originally built for. Seasonal memberships, court and pool reservations, swim meets, socials, and volunteer sign-ups are all first-class rather than adapted from HOA workflows.
Can we use Gather Commons alongside BaseHOA?
Yes, and plenty of communities do. Gather Commons handles the community side — events, reservations, the directory, announcements, and a public site — while you keep whatever you already use for bookkeeping or property operations. Nothing about our setup requires you to rip out an existing system.
How long does it take to get set up?
Most communities have a working site and their first event live within an afternoon. Importing a member roster is a spreadsheet upload, branding is colors and a logo, and a custom domain can be connected once DNS propagates.
What does it cost?
Plans start at $149/month with a free trial, billed monthly or annually, and you can cancel yourself from inside the platform at any time. Court and facility reservations and online payments are both included in the base plan — see the pricing page for the full breakdown.
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