I digitized HOA records and initially considered using a collaboration tool like Slack partnered with Google Drive to create an online community.

Although a corporation and their hierarchy can impose tools easily, HOA communities don't have that luxury. You have broad demographics, skills and no time to support any of them.

A bigger issue is credentialing. You don't want the business of helping seniors log into or reset their Slack password.

My ultimate "non-engineering" solution was to use email for everything. A mailing list for communications. Records requests are handled via email with some automation.

There's tremendous opportunity for more email Saas -- like Sourcehut but for other disciplines.

Everyone and everything can do email. It's easy to automate, and authentication is someone else's problem (the recipient only needs access to their inbox).