Many things, but four in particular:

• Our ease of use. Association Website administrators change over time and they vary tremendously in their computer experience. We design our Websites to be so easy to use, virtually anyone can play the administrator role.

• Our unique two-page layout. Once you login to a CondoSites Website, you’re only one click away from any current content you care to view. There’s no complicated navigation system, no drilling down several layers to find what you want. Every link you need is right in front of you.

• Our HOA/Condo association expertise. In addition to his expertise as a Website designer, our founder, Jason King, has been a condo association board president, a board secretary, and a supporting board member in three communities in two states, and has property management experience, as well. Our customers feel instantly at home with our Websites because we build them from the user’s perspective.

• Unlimited free support. Phone us or e-mail us as often as you like for any reason. We never have and never will charge for personal support.

Absolutely. We support a number of communities in Canada and offer the added advantage of being familiar with many of Canada’s provincial requirements for HOAs and Condo associations.

Yes. We’re currently working with communities ranging in size from a 45-unit townhome complex to a 2,000-unit, two-tower high-rise.

Just one senior staffer who will take care of everything from design to support, upgrades, and billing, just as a property manager does.

Never. You can opt to include a business directory on your site and you can upload whatever vendor advertising you care to include; but that’s entirely up to you.

No. We’ve never required contracts and we never will. If you’re happy with us (and we’re confident you will be), we know you’ll stay with us. It’s that simple.

None whatsoever. We’ll walk you through all the features and functions once your Website up and running, and you’ll immediately see how easy everything is to use. Down the road, if you should ever need something that requires a bit of programming, just let us know. We’ll take care of it for you.

Your Website will include control panels that you can use to post documents and photos, make entries to your events calendar or business directory, and add, edit and delete information from your Newsboard, and more. The control panels are extremely simple to use: anyone who can click on a check box or open a drop-down menu will be an expert in minutes. Anything that requires a little programming we’ll handle from our side at no additional charge.

Watch a how-to video on uploading documents and creating newsboard postings.

That depends mostly on you. Once you’ve completed a simple questionnaire, we can create a shell site for training purposes within a few hours. If you provide us with all the information we need to start custom-designing and pre-loading your site, we can have you up and running within a few days. Most customers need more time to pull their content together; but on our side, we can move as quickly as you wish.

You’ll be entitled to unlimited telephone and e-mail support. We love hearing from you and will give you all the time you need for training, follow-up questions, special requests, or even for tips on property or association management, with never an extra charge. In fact, we encourage you to use us as a sounding board. We’ve got a lot of experience working with communities and can give you good feedback on any ideas you may have.

Absolutely, and you get them for free. If the upgrade is an enhancement to an existing feature, such as WalkScore, we’ll install it automatically and let you know it’s there.

If the upgrade is a new feature or function that is included in your subscription package, we’ll load it onto your Website and notify you immediately. If you choose to use it, you can activate it on your end whenever you like.

If you have an idea or request for a new feature, let us know. We’re proud to say that, to date, we’ve implemented everything our customers have asked for.

The easiest way is to fax or mail them to us and have us convert them to PDFs* for you. We’ll scan, convert and upload your Bylaws, CC&Rs, and last six months’ worth of archived documents (such as newsletters and meeting minutes) for free.

For other documents, we charge a nominal fee for scanning, conversion to PDF, and uploading: just $5 per document, plus return shipping if you want the paper versions back.

* Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) is the ideal way to share documents online. By converting files to this format, you enable anyone to easily download, view, use and print the content; but you also protect it from being changed, which is invaluable for legal documents.

The domain name is portable and you can certainly take all your content with you; but the Website coding, which produces the simple interface, is proprietary and goes hand-in-hand with our hosting provider.

A domain name is an address for a Website. Ideally, it’s a memorable or easy-to-spell word or phrase followed by a .com, .net, .org or other suffix--CondoSites.net, for instance. You need a domain because that is what people must type into the URL bar of their browser when they want to visit your site.

Sure. While we’re on the phone with you, we’ll logon to our preferred registrar and search for the name you want. If it isn’t available, we’ll brainstorm and search alternative names with you until we find an available one you like.

It’s up to you. CondoSites can purchase your domain name for you and include the registration cost and, later, renewals, within your monthly hosting and service fee. This way, your contact information is never visible to spammers or marketing companies. Should you ever cancel with us, you’ll just have to reimburse us the price of the domain if we bought it for you; or, if you don’t want to keep it, we’ll retain the domain.

Of course. Just re-point the domain to our servers and we’ll take care of the rest. If you choose to transfer the domain to our registrar and control, we’ll take care of future renewals and administration for you, with a written assurance that we’ll transfer the domain back to you, if you wish, should you ever choose to cancel with us.

You can. Just let us know and we’ll release your domain for transfer. The domain registrar may charge your community a transfer fee; but as long as you’ve been a customer of ours for at least three revenue months, we won’t. If you’ve been with us for less than three revenue months, you’ll just have to reimburse us the price of the domain if we bought it for you.

We have our own server with InMotion Hosting. They’ve won numerous awards for their service and they host our server in a brand new, state-of-the-art data facility in Los Angeles, California.

Never. Overseeing the hosting of your Website is our job.

Absolutely. CondoSites ensures that your entire Website—documents, photos, databases, archives, and the most recent version of all your dynamic content--is backed up every 36 hours by InMotion Hosting, our Web hosting provider in Los Angeles. For added protection, we back up your data weekly in our Seattle area office, as well.

Regarding privacy: Neither CondoSites nor InMotion Hosting will ever share or sell any of your Website, association, or community information to anyone, ever. Should you choose to do business with any of our partners, you’ll deal directly with them.

Regarding security: For maximum online security, we use 256-bit SSL encryption for all work and maintenance to our sites. InMotion Hosting bases its Web hosting system on the Linux/Unix operating system for greater speed and reliability. They monitor it 24/7 for any signs of unusual activity and benchmark it continuously for performance.

Sorry, but no. Our business model for working with HOAs and Condo associations is based on charging a modest monthly fee for hosting, support and service, rather than charging a single large fee for design only.

Sorry, but it wouldn’t work. We’ve integrated our Website technology into our own Unix server. Your website would not function outside of our server environment.

CondoSites will customize the “skin” of your new Website to give it the unique look and feel of your community. Just send us your logo and several photos, if you have them. We’ll incorporate them into the design and create a complementary color scheme around them. Once you approve the skin, we’ll then incorporate that look and feel into the rest of the site.

You can hire a professional photographer to take some, of course; but you’ll probably find there are a number of residents within your community that are skillful at digital photography. Consider enlisting a volunteer, or running a contest (with a prize!), to get some good shots.

If you’d rather not include actual photos of your property, we can acquire stock photographs for you to give your site an attractive look without delaying launch. Ask us for more details.

If you don’t want to use stock photography or actual photos of your property, we can, for an additional fee, have one of our design partners create an attractive, graphic look for your Website that reflects an interesting aspect of your surroundings.

Once we have photos or graphics that you’re happy with and we can effectively use, we can generally complete the design process within a few days.

It’s up to you. You’ll have the option of choosing whether or not you want search engines to index your publicly-accessible content (anything that doesn’t require a password to access) and list your Website in their results.

If you do want your Website indexed, you’ll be glad to know that CondoSites Websites are already optimized for easy search engine crawling. If you don’t, we’ll install scripts that tell Google and other search engines not to crawl or list your site.

Absolutely. Our sites are regularly tested on multiple versions of Internet Explorer (versions 6 through 8), Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome. CondoSites websites also work beautifully on the Apple iPhone and iPad’s mobile Safari browser.

Absolutely. In fact, you’ll have a number of options. You can issue a single username and password to all users; you can create and issue a different username and password for each user group, such as owners, realtors, and renters; or you can have each user register for a personal username and password.

You can. You’ll have direct access to Google Analytics, a free application that tells you how many people are visiting your site, at what times, and from which cities, and even how long they stay on your site. The Google Analytics dashboard is easy to read, and you can have reports e-mailed directly to you, or even to the whole board, with no downloading required.

Yes. You can offer community domain-associated e-mail accounts to your board members, property managers, and property staff. They’ll be able to access their e-mail through a Webmail interface, an e-mail client such as Microsoft Outlook of Apple Mail, or through an e-mail compatible mobile device such as the Blackberry or iPhone.

You can. We can set up small e-mail groups, such as your board of directors, for you; or we can provide you with a solution for managing larger lists, such as your entire community, through a 3rd party solution.

Yes. We use Spam Assassin, a server-side spam filtering program, to help prevent spam from reaching your e-mail accounts.

We do. If this is your first association Website, we recommend that you send out printed announcements featuring the site’s URL. We can customize an announcement for you in a choice of formats, convert it into a PDF, and e-mail it to you so you can handle the printing on your end. If you need help with the printing, we can refer you to one of our trusted partners.

Yes. We can provide you with postcards, refrigerator magnets, and other items, and we’ll customize them for you at no extra charge. You’ll just pay any out-of-pocket costs for merchandise, production and shipping.

Our entire service is available for a flat $50 a month. (You can see what’s included on our Features and Price page.) We do not charge any set-up fees, no contract is required, and your satisfaction is guaranteed.

Never. When you sign on with CondoSites, you’re entitled to unlimited telephone and e-mail support. Contact us as often as you like for any reason.

Once your pre-launch Website is activated, we’ll bill you forward, 30 days in advance, in quarterly increments: i.e., 30 days in advance of Jan-Feb-Mar, or Apr-May-Jun, etc. If your billing cycle begins within a quarterly cycle, we’ll offer you the option of paying the remainder of your first and all of your second quarter fee at the same time: e.g., Aug-Sep plus Oct-Nov-Dec. Fees are due within 25 days of billing.

We want you to be happy. If during your post-launch first 30 days with us you’re unsatisfied for any reason, we’ll cheerfully refund your money. If at any point thereafter you choose not to stay with us, we’ll refund the unused portion of any payment you may have made.

The amount of time we put into designing, programming and supporting our customers’ Websites isn’t affected that much by the size of their communities, so it doesn’t seem fair to charge as if it does.

Most Website designers are graphic artists who work with a variety of businesses. Their knowledge of community and association needs is usually limited, and their involvement with a client generally ends when the Website design is approved.

CondoSites is a full service brand that works exclusively with HOAs and condo associations. In addition to designing and keeping current with community Websites, we provide everything our clients need—training, support, services, feature upgrades and, naturally, hosting--for as long as we work together.

When you consider that community liaisons vary widely in their experience, and that they come and go over time, it’s reassuring to know that CondoSites is the continuous thread that keeps the association’s Website running smoothly over time.

The administrator (community liaison) can upload, edit, change, or delete virtually all of the community Website’s content through a set of easy to use control panels. He or she can also assign certain user groups, such as board members, or property staff members, access to some or all of the control panels, as well.

CondoSites handles the uploading of fixed content, such as permanent graphics, external links and special design requests, that require programming.

It’s done through a set of control panels that are extremely easy to use. If you can send an e-mail or fill out an online form, you’ll be an expert in minutes.

Watch a how-to video on uploading documents and creating newsboard postings.

You can upload and store as many documents as you want in any format, including Microsoft Word and Excel, Adobe PDF, JPEG, MP3, and more. We do ask that you limit the size of the documents you upload to about 3.5 MB for easy download by your users. We’ll gladly help you with any that may be larger.

They need to be no larger than 3.5 megabytes in size, and we suggest that you size them down to 800 x 600 pixels for easy viewing on the Website.

Yes, and you don’t have to do a thing. CondoSites automatically archives your dated materials for you. You’ll find the folders where past newsletters and meeting minutes are stored prominently displayed on the navigation column of your Website.

To preserve the community feel of the Website, we do not permit the posting of banner ads or pay-per-click ads. You can include advertising in your business directory, however; and if you have the code for coupons or display banners that directly pertain to a given ad, you can include those within the directory listing, as well.

Also, although we’ve never seen it happen, and are not responsible for any of the content you upload to your site, we would not knowingly allow the posting of any material that is obviously offensive to others.

We always welcome the opportunity to work with multi-property managers. Ask us about our discounts for designing and hosting Websites for multiple communities.

Call us at (206) 347-1047 during Pacific Time business hours (we’re based in Washington State). Or contact us by e-mail. We’ll gladly answer any questions you may have. If you like, we can provide you with references and happy customers that you can talk to, as well.