Society management software when you have fewer than 50 flats

Open any society management platform's website and look at the screenshots. A dashboard with hundreds of units. A gate with a boom barrier. An amenities calendar with a swimming pool in it. A "facility manager" role, which assumes there is somebody whose actual job this is.

If your association has 28 flats and a committee of volunteers who all have day jobs, the reasonable conclusion is that this category is not for you.

That conclusion is half right, and the half that is wrong is expensive. Most of what those platforms sell genuinely is not for you. But two or three things in there matter more at your size than they do at 300 flats, not less — and the pricing model you are offered matters enormously.

The pricing model is the thing to get right

This is where small societies lose the most money, and it has nothing to do with features.

Two models exist in this category. Per-unit pricing charges a rate per flat per month, so the bill scales with your size. Bracket pricing charges a flat fee for a band — "up to 100 units", then "up to 200" — so a 20-flat society pays exactly what a 99-flat society pays.

Below 50 flats, that difference stops being a detail.

Read it as cost per flat per year and the structure becomes obvious. Under the bracket, a 20-flat society pays ₹1,500 per flat per year; a 50-flat society pays ₹600 for the identical product. Under per-unit pricing at ₹15, every society pays ₹180 per flat regardless of size.

So the first question to ask a vendor is not what it costs. It is "is that a per-unit rate or a band?" A band is a transfer from small societies to large ones, and you are on the paying side of it.

Two follow-ups hit small societies hardest. Is there a minimum? A per-unit rate with a floor of 50 units is a bracket wearing a per-unit costume — at 28 flats you pay for 22 that do not exist. Monthly or annually up front? A ₹30,000 annual invoice is a different decision for a society collecting ₹40,000 a month than a monthly charge is, at the same total.

What apartment management software costs in India covers the rest of what sits outside a headline rate — GST, gateway charges, setup fees, tier gating.

What actually matters below 50 flats

Three things. They are not the three the marketing leads with.

1. Collections, because one defaulter is proportionally huge. At 300 flats a member who stops paying is a rounding error the reserve absorbs. At 28 flats one defaulter is over 3% of your annual budget, and three is a cashflow problem — you cannot pay the security agency with an explanation. What helps is not clever accounting but that automated reminders remove the interpersonal cost of chasing. In a small society everyone knows everyone, which makes asking a neighbour for money harder than in a large complex, not easier.

2. Continuity, which is the strongest argument at your size. A 300-flat complex has an office, a manager and overlapping committee terms. A 28-flat association has the accounts in one spreadsheet on one volunteer's laptop, and everything that person knows is undocumented. When they sell up and move, the society loses its financial history and its institutional memory in the same week — the most common way a small association's records simply stop existing. See what records your society must keep, and for how long.

3. A notice trail, because your WhatsApp group is not a record. At this size the default communication channel is a group chat, and it works well enough for "the water tanker is here". It fails at the thing that matters later: proving a notice was issued, to whom, and when. That is not a theoretical concern — AGM minutes and the resolutions that rest on them are challenged on exactly this point, and a chat scrolled past 400 messages is not evidence.

What you can safely ignore

Being direct about this is the point. At under 50 flats you are very unlikely to need:

• Gate hardware, boom barriers or ANPR cameras. A visitor log on a phone is proportionate. The hardware economics do not work at your scale and mostly never will.
• Amenity booking, unless you actually have a clubhouse or a pool with contention for slots. Two societies in three at this size do not.
• Patrol tracking and violation workflows. These solve a supervision problem that appears when you have multiple guards across multiple shifts and gates.
• Asset registers and AMC contract management. Worth real money at 200 flats with four lifts and an STP. At 28 flats with one lift, the AMC folder is fine.
• A dedicated manager role, because there isn't one. Check that the product works when the treasurer is a software engineer doing this on Sunday evenings.

If a demo spends most of its time on the list above, you are being shown the product built for someone else.

The gotcha nobody mentions: committee seat limits

This one catches small societies specifically, and it is worth asking about before you commit.

Most platforms price on units but also cap committee logins on cheaper tiers. A 20-flat society easily has a seven-person committee, because in a small association a larger share of residents ends up holding a post. So you clear a unit-based entry tier comfortably and then hit a seat limit, at which point three people share one login — which destroys the audit trail, most of why you bought it. Ask for the seat number on the tier you will actually use, not the one in the pricing page's most prominent column.

When not to buy at all

Under roughly 15 flats, with no arrears and a treasurer who does not mind the job, a shared spreadsheet and a clean bank account are a legitimate answer. So is a society that has just formed and has not settled its own processes — automating a process you have not agreed on is how you end up fighting the software.

The honest test is not the feature list. It is whether any of these is true:

• You are carrying arrears you have stopped actively chasing.
• The accounts exist in exactly one place, and one person maintains them.
• A committee handover is coming and nobody can explain how billing works.
• You need to show members, or an auditor, what was decided and when.

None of those true? Stay on the spreadsheet with a clear conscience, and read the comparison properly before anyone talks you out of it.

Where Societly sits, plainly

Societly is free up to 25 units — not a trial, and not free for 30 days. Billing, UPI collections, notices, complaint tickets, the visitor log and 1 GB of document storage are included at ₹0, with up to five committee members. Above 25 units it is ₹15 per unit per month on Growth, published, exclusive of 18% GST, billed monthly and prorated to the day.

Two things about that you should hear from us rather than discover later:

• The free tier stops at 25 units. A 40-flat association is a paying customer from day one, at ₹7,200 a year on Growth before GST. If you are at 26 flats, you are paying.
• Polls, meetings, committee elections and budget planning are on Growth, not the free tier. So a small society running on Starter has billing and notices covered but will not run its AGM voting there. That is a real limit, and it is the one most likely to matter to a small committee.

Maintenance money settles into your society's own bank account, not ours, and you can export your data and leave at any time. Those two facts matter more than price at any size — they are the first two questions in the checklist for choosing a platform.

Common questions

Is there genuinely free society management software for a small society?

Free tiers exist and some are real, but read what the cap is measured in. A tier capped on units may still cap committee logins, document storage, or gate the features you came for. Societly's Starter plan is free up to 25 units with billing, UPI collections, notices, complaints and the visitor log; polls, meetings and elections are not on it. The question to ask of any free plan is not "is it free" but "what is the first thing I will hit".

We have 30 flats and no manager. Is this too much software?

It depends on whether you have a collections problem or a continuity problem. If arrears are clean and one competent treasurer holds it together, a spreadsheet is defensible. If that treasurer is a single point of failure, or you have stopped chasing dues because it is socially awkward, the software is solving something real — and both are more acute at 30 flats than at 300.

Does per-unit pricing mean we get punished for growing?

You pay more in absolute terms as units increase, but the cost per flat stays flat, which is the point. Bracket pricing does the opposite: it is cheapest per flat for large societies and most expensive per flat for small ones. Small societies are better off on per-unit pricing; that is precisely why it is worth asking which model you have been quoted.

What happens to our data if we stop paying?

Ask this before signing, and get the answer in writing. You want a full export in a format you can open, available without a support ticket, and no annual lock-in that keeps charging after you want out. An association that cannot leave has no leverage on price or service at renewal.

In short

• Ask whether the rate is per-unit or a band before you ask what it costs. A "up to 100 units" bracket can cost a 20-flat society over eight times what per-unit pricing does for the same product.
• Watch for a per-unit minimum, which is a bracket in disguise.
• The three things that genuinely matter below 50 flats: collections (one defaulter is 3%+ of your budget), continuity (your records live on one volunteer's laptop), and a notice trail your WhatsApp group cannot provide.
• You can ignore gate hardware, patrol tracking, asset registers, AMC management and usually amenity booking. If the demo dwells there, it is not your product.
• Check the committee-seat limit on the tier you will actually use. Small societies clear unit caps and hit seat caps.
• Under ~15 flats with clean books and a willing treasurer, a spreadsheet is a legitimate answer. Say so out loud before spending anything.
• Societly: free up to 25 units including billing, UPI collections and notices; ₹15/unit/month above that. AGM voting and budget planning need Growth, and the free tier genuinely stops at 25 units.