Compare

Your board hires the
vendor either way.

What changes is what your board can see while it decides, and whether it can still pull up the certificates and the invoices a year later.

Hiring each vendor yourself, compared with VendoRFP, row by row
What it comes down to	Hiring each vendor yourself	On VendoRFP
Vetting	References and licenses, by you	Screened before you see them
Insurance at renewal	You have to remember to ask	Expiration stored, and a lapse stops proposals
Where the invoices land	Email, paper, six senders	All in one place, standard terms
Proof a visit happened	Their word, or you drive out	A photo is required to record it
Replacing a vendor	Start the search again	New proposals, as little as 10 days
What the job is priced against	A guess, or you walk it	Common-area grounds, drawn on a satellite map
Who reads the proposals	You, in whatever form they arrive	You, on identical terms
Deciding as a board	Email threads and a show of hands	Per-member ballots, and the tally is the record
What the platform costs	Nothing, you do the work	$25 a community, first free

“Hiring each vendor yourself” is how a self-managed community does it today. On the insurance row, precisely: Every certificate on file carries its expiration date, and VendoRFP checks those dates twice — when a vendor proposes on your work, and again when you send that company out to the community. Chasing a COI stops being your board’s job.

What “priced against” means, on the document

Every company proposing works from one packet, and this is the section of it that carries the ground. The figure comes off the boundary a board confirms on the map, and the sentence under it says what was taken out to get there.

1Scope of work

43.5acres

Traced from the mapped boundary, with this community’s own private home lots subtracted. Treat it as an upper limit: curb strips and medians inside the boundary are still counted, so a walkthrough may bring it down. Land inside that boundary belonging to neighboring associations was subtracted too. The street surface inside the boundary was measured and subtracted too.

Item	Service	On the map
Pool	Lawn Services	Located
Dog park	Lawn Services	Located
Common area	Lawn Services	Located
Playground	Lawn Services	Located

Hiring directly

Three cases where hiring directly is the right call

Run one contract with one vendor

A single landscaper on a handshake, renewed each spring by the same person, is not a paperwork problem. A platform adds a login to something that already works.

Keep a vendor older than the board

A vendor that has cut your grass for fifteen years will not be improved by an RFP process. Invite them in if you want the record. Do not make them re-propose to prove a point.

Chase the lowest possible number

The vendor sets its price and is paid that price. What VendoRFP charges a community is the $25-a-month subscription on top of it. A board with the time to run its own RFPs and chase its own certificates does not pay that, and should say so out loud when it decides.

The community

One community takes a separate vendor for each trade

Pool, courts, streets, planting, and walks are five separate contracts to place and renew.

One community from the air: pool, courts, streets, planted verges and walkways, each a separate trade — Five trades on one property. Hired directly, that is five contracts, five renewal dates and five inboxes.

See what one visit leaves behind

Proof of service

Every visit recorded with readings, photos, and times

Your board can open it in June and read about a visit that happened in March.

Example work reportRecorded

pool

Tue · Jul 21

completed

Weekly pool service. Skimmed, brushed and vacuumed, baskets emptied, water read.

Visit report

Requested
Tuesday, July 21, 2026 · 7:35 AM
On site
9:04 AM – 10:18 AM · 1h 14m on site
Completed
Tuesday, July 21, 2026 · 10:18 AM

2 photos · 1 at check-in, 1 of the finished work

What the vendor recorded

1 reading outside the normal range

Free chlorine recorded at 0.6 ppm — outside the normal 1–4 ppm range.

Water chemistry

Chlorine

0.6 ppm

pH

7.4

Alkalinity

96 ppm

Cyanuric acid

42 ppm

Water temp

81 °F

Work performed

Baskets emptied

3

Skimmed ✓Vacuumed ✓Brushed walls ✓

At check-in

The finished work

Service (paid to the company in full): $170.00
Sales tax: $10.20

Total$180.20PaidPaid to the company

Recording a visit requires a photo of the finished work.

The numbers

What a board can hold us to.

You can contract with an insured, verified vendor in as little as 10 days following your RFP submission.

10days

Replacement under contract

Calendar days, weekends included, counted from the day you submit the RFP.

30days

Insurance renewal window

How long a lapsed policy keeps a vendor proposing while the renewal certificate reaches us.

$0

Your first community

The free plan, and every feature the platform has is switched on in it.

$25/mo

Each community after

The published monthly rate for every community you add, billed to the association.

What a company gets when the clock starts

The count begins the day the RFP goes out, and this is the packet every company proposing reads. The due date on it is the one VendoRFP fills in for a board that publishes today.

Request for Proposals

Example community

Woodstock, Georgia

Reference number for this RFP: assigned when you publish it

Proposals due: Sunday, September 20, 2026

Issued through VendoRFP. Vendors send their proposals back on this site. No phone number or email address is published with this RFP.

1Submission

Proposals are submitted through VendoRFP by the date above. A proposal states the vendor’s scope, its schedule, and its pricing. The community reviews the companies and their proposals, selects a vendor, and contracts on VendoRFP.

Proposals due by Sunday, September 20, 2026.

A proposal should contain

Price every service this request lists.
State how often you would visit for each of them.
Attach proof of the insurance this request requires. VendoRFP verifies your certificate before any award.
List anything you would exclude from the mapped scope, and say why.

Run a service company? Join VendoRFP for free.

Your board hires thevendor either way.