7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Let a Homeowner Build Your HOA Website

Every HOA has that one resident. 

Tech-savvy, well-meaning, maybe even eager to help. 

So when they volunteer to build the community website, it feels like a win. One less thing for the board to worry about. 

One more task checked off the list.

But here’s the problem: what starts as a helpful gesture can quietly turn into a major liability. 

From missing credentials to outdated content, legal tangles to late-night tech issues—boards often don’t realize the risk until it’s too late.

Yes, building a website is easier than ever. But running a secure, reliable, and board-controlled digital platform for a neighborhood? That’s infrastructure. And like any critical system, it needs to be built to last.

Below are seven reasons why relying on a resident to manage your HOA website might not just be risky—it might cost your community more than it saves.

Sure, it might seem like a simple favor. A resident builds the site, the board saves money, and everyone’s happy. But in reality, the risks stack up quickly. Here are seven reasons why handing over your HOA website to a well-meaning resident usually causes more problems than it solves.

Setting up a basic website is simple. But keeping it updated, secure, and compliant every week of the year is real work. 

HOA sites require ongoing attention, including:

These responsibilities add up fast. 

Without a clear plan and dedicated support, even minor issues can lead to major headaches for the board

Even the most committed resident volunteers can become unreliable when personal disagreements enter the picture. 

A policy dispute or HOA-related frustration can quickly turn into a digital roadblock.

One community relied on a tech-savvy board member to manage its website. 

After losing a vote on a controversial policy, the member quit overnight, deleted the backend tools he had built, and walked away. 

The board was left scrambling to restore functionality without any documentation or backup.

When one person controls the keys, personal conflict can impact the entire community.

When residents build the website, it’s common for domains, hosting, and admin access to be tied to their personal accounts. That may not seem like a problem until control needs to shift.

In one case, a former resident refused to hand over access, stating, “I registered the domain and built the site—it’s mine.” 

We had to step in to recover it through arbitration. Communication to homeowners was delayed for months, and the association spent thousands on legal fees and recovery efforts.

Too often, community websites are launched with good intentions but little attention to security. 

Passwords are reused, software isn’t updated, and sensitive data sits on platforms that aren’t adequately protected.

HOA sites commonly include: 

Without the right safeguards, they become easy targets for phishing scams, data breaches, or spoofed emails that cause real confusion.

One overlooked detail can create problems for every homeowner, and solving them is rarely quick or inexpensive.

Websites aren’t static. Things go wrong, often at the worst possible time, including:

Without a dedicated support system, these tasks fall to the person who built the site—if they’re still around to handle them.

One community we worked with ran into trouble when its volunteer site admin took a long vacation. 

During that time, the online pool access form stopped syncing with the gate system. 

Residents showed up to locked doors, and the property manager received a flood of complaints.

Without reliable support, small issues quickly spiral into resident frustration and board-level stress.

At first, managing the website might seem simple—just a few updates here and there. But over time, those “quick tasks” add up: document uploads, form troubleshooting, last-minute requests from the board, and resident login issues. It never really stops.

We’ve seen volunteers start out enthusiastic but quietly disappear after a year or two. There is no handoff, documentation, or backup plan.

When burnout sets in, the board is often left unprepared and without the tools to keep things running smoothly.

A community website isn’t just a side project. It’s part of your infrastructure—just like your financial systems, records, and security tools. Treating it like a favor creates gaps, confusion, and emergencies that could have been avoided.

Without structure, critical tasks get delayed or missed, documents go unpublished, and residents lose access. 

The board ends up reacting to problems instead of preventing them.

Your community deserves better than a patchwork system held together by goodwill. It deserves something built to last.

Your HOA website is too important to leave to chance. Volunteer-led sites may work for a while, but often lead to missed updates, broken tools, and unnecessary stress when things go wrong.

Creek Bluff offers a professional, secure, and fully supported platform built specifically for community associations. We manage the details—domain setup, security, updates, resident access—so your board can focus on the big picture.

No burnout. No lost logins. Just a reliable digital foundation your community can count on.