CINC Systems vs FRONTSTEPS for Property Managers

CINC Systems and FRONTSTEPS both sell the back office a community association management company runs its associations on, and the buyer comparing them tends to phrase it the way one of our tracked prompts does: CINC Systems vs FRONTSTEPS Caliber for HOA accounting and resident portals at a 50-association management company. Caliber is the accounting module inside the FRONTSTEPS suite, and the resident portal is a separate product on each side. A 50-association firm is big enough to need real per-association books and small enough that one bad migration hurts. This page puts the two side by side from the vendor database and the research behind the HOA management software guide, then covers where each fits, what is published about price, and what to ask in each demo.

Where each fits

Both records carry the same segment, HOA communities, and neither names a property management system integration. That is how this category works. The platform is the system of record, and the integrations that matter are banks and lockbox providers.

CINC Systems, based in Duluth, Georgia, is a single community association management platform for management companies: accounting, operations, compliance, a branded board and resident portal called CINC Connect, and payments. It claims more than 1,000 management companies and more than 6 million doors. The research records a claim of 38 direct bank integrations and an intelligence layer called Cephai. Its partners page returned a 404 when we checked, so the bank count is the integration claim on record. The CINC Systems profile has the sources.

FRONTSTEPS sells a suite of named products. Caliber handles accounting, budgets and daily financial tasks. Community is the mobile app for managers, boards and residents. Payments is its own processor. Dwelling is a gate and visitor security platform for gated communities. Manager covers back-office web tools, and ALLi is its AI assistant. Its partners page names twelve banking partners, among them Western Alliance, Axos, BankUnited, First Citizens, Webster and Truist, and claims 40 integration partners without naming the rest. The FRONTSTEPS profile carries the record.

The structural difference is one platform against a set of modules. CINC sells management, accounting and the board and resident layer as one product. FRONTSTEPS sells parts you can see separately, and one of them, Dwelling, has no counterpart in CINC’s record. A management company with gated communities that wants gate and visitor management from its accounting vendor has a reason to look hard at FRONTSTEPS. A firm that wants one product and one login has a reason to look hard at CINC. A FRONTSTEPS homepage testimonial describes collaborative management between managers and volunteer board members, which is the resident-portal half of the prompt, and both vendors sell that half.

The bank list is the other filter. Association funds sit in lockbox, operating and reserve accounts at a short list of banks, and the software choice follows them. CINC publishes a count, 38, with no names on the pages we fetched. FRONTSTEPS publishes twelve names. FRONTSTEPS’s list can be checked against your banks before the demo. CINC’s can only be checked in it.

Pricing models

Neither vendor publishes pricing. The database records “Not published” for both, each sourced to the vendor’s homepage, and the rest of the management-company tier is the same, apart from Enumerate, which publishes only a $500 monthly minimum on an annual contract.

Ask both for the same set of figures so the quotes compare: the per-door or per-association rate, the monthly minimum, the setup fee per association, the payment processing fees and who pays them, and the contract term. For FRONTSTEPS, ask which modules the quote includes, because Caliber, Community, Payments, Dwelling, Manager and ALLi are named separately and a quote for accounting alone will not answer a question about accounting and resident portals. For CINC, ask whether CINC Connect and Cephai are inside the base price. Then compute the annual figure at 50 associations and again at the count you expect in two years.

Payments deserve their own line. FRONTSTEPS markets Payments as a PCI DSS compliant processor of its own, and CINC sells payments inside its platform. Ask each whether owners pay the card and ACH fees or the association absorbs them, whether the firm can set that per association, and whether an existing processor can stay.

What to ask each in a demo

The research for this category is vendor-sourced, so the questions come from the pain points vendors sell against rather than from customer complaints.

1. Ask CINC to name its 38 bank integrations and confirm yours are among them. Ask FRONTSTEPS whether each of your banks is one of its twelve, and what happens for an association that banks elsewhere.
2. Walk an invoice from receipt through board approval to payment, then a violation from inspection through notice to hearing. On FRONTSTEPS, watch how many modules the walk crosses and whether the record follows without re-entry.
3. Show the board’s phone. What can a board member approve, vote on and read in CINC Connect or the FRONTSTEPS Community app without calling the manager?
4. Show the monthly board financial package for one association and say how long it takes to produce for fifty.
5. Show the AI on a real record. Cephai and ALLi are both sold as assistants. Ask what each one does to your data, what it costs and what happens when it is wrong.
6. Ask FRONTSTEPS to name more of its 40 integration partners, and ask both what leaving with your data costs.

What the Index shows

The live comparison above shows how often each vendor turned up in the current edition, across the same prompts and runs. The live table suggests ChatGPT treats CINC Systems as a default for management companies and FRONTSTEPS as a name it adds less often, which means a firm that wants FRONTSTEPS on its shortlist will usually have to put it there itself. The rows for CINC Systems on the Index and FRONTSTEPS on the Index list the prompts and sources.

Which fits you

CINC Systems fits a 50-association firm that wants one platform for books, operations and the board and resident portal, and whose banks are on CINC’s list. FRONTSTEPS fits a firm that wants to buy accounting, resident apps and payments as distinct products, that manages gated communities where Dwelling’s gate and visitor tools matter, or whose associations already bank with one of its named partners. The bank check and the invoice walk will tell you more than either sales deck.

If Vantaca is the third name on your list, read CINC Systems against Vantaca. The Vantaca alternatives page covers every other back office and the tools for self-managed boards, and the HOA vendor comparison table puts all of them in one place. If the gate and visitor side is a bigger question than the books, the multifamily access control guide covers intercoms and entry systems.

If you build HOA software and want to know what buyers hear when they ask an assistant for a shortlist, AI visibility for proptech companies explains what we measure and what the fix costs.