What apartment management software costs in India

Ask three vendors what apartment management software costs and you will get one published number, one "it depends on your requirements", and one request for a call. That is not an accident — it is how the category prices itself. This guide explains the actual mechanics so you can compare quotes that are deliberately hard to compare.

The standard model: per unit, per month

Almost everyone in this category prices per unit, per month, billed annually. A unit means one flat, villa, plot or shop — occupied or not. That last part matters: you generally pay for the unit, not for whether anybody is living in it, so a society with unsold or vacant flats pays for them too. Confirm this explicitly, because it changes the bill for new projects considerably.

So the arithmetic is:

A 120-unit society quoted ₹30 per unit per month is looking at ₹43,200 a year plus GST — not ₹30. Committees routinely evaluate the small number and are surprised by the large one.

Why the rate is rarely on the website

Several of the larger platforms do not publish figures at all. A common pattern is a pricing page that names four or five tiers — a free one, then tiers split by security, management and accounting — describes the model as an annual subscription priced per unit, and lists no number against any of them. To find out what you would pay, you request a quote.

Quote-based pricing is not automatically a bad deal. It does mean two things practically: the number you are given may depend on how large your society is and how well you negotiate, and you cannot compare vendors without running a sales conversation with each of them. Budget the evenings.

When you do get a quote, ask whether the rate is held at renewal. An introductory year followed by a step up is common enough across software generally that it is worth asking about explicitly rather than assuming.

What the headline rate usually leaves out

The per-unit rate is rarely the whole cost. Check each of these separately.

GST. Software subscriptions attract 18% GST. Quotes are frequently given exclusive of it, which means the invoice is 18% higher than the number in the email. Ask whether the figure is inclusive.

Payment gateway or convenience charges. When a resident pays maintenance online, somebody pays the gateway. Ask directly: does the society absorb it, is it added to the resident's bill as a convenience fee, or is it included? A platform that is cheap per unit but adds 1–2% on every collection can easily cost more overall than one that is not.

Hardware. RFID readers, boom-barrier integration, biometric or face-recognition terminals are separate capital purchases, plus installation and sometimes an ongoing per-device fee. If gate hardware is on your list, price it as its own line — it is often larger than the software.

Onboarding and migration. Some vendors charge a one-time setup or data migration fee. Some include it. Some include it only if you sign for a year.

Tier gating. The feature the committee actually wants — accounting, or amenity booking, or staff attendance — is frequently in a higher tier than the one you were quoted. Ask which tier includes the specific thing you are buying this for, and get the quote for that tier.

Contract length and exit. Most of this category sells annual subscriptions. Ask what happens if you leave at month seven, and whether the price is locked for renewal or resets.

Where Societly sits

We publish ours, so there is nothing to request:

Excluding 18% GST. No annual contract, no onboarding fee, no hardware to buy. Starter is a real free tier rather than a trial — it does not expire, and it includes billing, online payments, visitor and QR gate passes, announcements, complaints and SOS alerts.

Worked through, for a Growth subscription:

Illustrative figures — apply your own unit count.

On collections, our position is that maintenance is the society's money: payments settle into the society's own bank account and we take no commission or cut of them. We earn from the subscription only. Enabling online collection requires a one-time KYC of the society with our RBI-authorised payment partner.

How to compare two quotes properly

Reduce everything to one number: total rupees in year one, including GST, including gateway charges at your expected collection volume, including hardware, including setup. Then divide by units and by 12 to get a true per-unit-per-month figure. Vendors quote at different points in that chain, and the ranking frequently changes once you normalise.

Then ask these five, in writing:

1. Where does maintenance money settle, and does the vendor take a cut of it?

The answer should be "the society's own account" and "no". Get it in writing.

1. Which tier includes the feature we are actually buying this for?
2. What is the total including GST, gateway charges and any setup fee?
3. Can we export our members, units and billing history if we leave? If not,

the price is not the real cost.

1. What happens at renewal? Is this an introductory rate?

Is it worth it at all?

The honest test is not the software's feature list — it is your arrears.

A society carrying meaningful old dues usually recovers the subscription cost within a quarter, not because software is magic but because automated reminders remove the interpersonal cost of chasing. Nobody on the committee has to be the person who asked a neighbour for money. That is the mechanism, and it is the most reliable financial return in this category.

A society with clean books, no arrears and a treasurer who enjoys the job is buying convenience and continuity instead. Those are worth buying — particularly the continuity, since a spreadsheet on one person's laptop is a handover problem waiting to happen — but be clear that is what you are paying for, and price it accordingly.

If you are not sure which of those you are, run the comparison against your current spreadsheet before you talk to anybody.

In short

• The category prices per unit, per month, billed annually. Multiply by units and

by 12 before reacting to the number.

• Several large vendors do not publish rates at all — you will need a sales call

per vendor to compare.

• GST, gateway charges, hardware, setup fees and tier gating sit outside the

headline rate. Normalise to total year-one cost.

• Societly is free under 25 units, then ₹15 or ₹25 per unit per month, published.
• Ask where the maintenance money settles, and whether you can export your data.

Those two answers matter more than the price.

Sources

• Societly pricing