Fort Lauderdale · Broward County
Security for Broward boards, and the software is free.
Broward is two counties under one name. East of the turnpike the streets belong to the city and cannot be gated. The canals run behind the houses and the condo towers went up in the sixties. West of it, Weston, Parkland, Coral Springs and Pembroke Pines run private roads and staffed gatehouses along miles of canal bank. Volunteer boards run both.
- Free for any Broward association
- Chapter 493 licensed guards
- Condo, HOA and co-op boards
Max Security USA is a physical guarding company, led by decorated law enforcement veterans and headquartered at 709 W Jericho Tpke, Huntington, New York. The visitor management platform is free for any Broward association. Guarding, patrol, cameras and gate work are quoted per site.
See what the free platform includesWhat it costs
The platform costs nothing. Three things do.
For any Broward community
$0
The whole visitor management platform, for every resident and guard at your association. We set it up and support it whether or not we work your gate.
What costs money, and why
Three things cost money. The full detail is on the pricing page.
Text messaging (SMS)
Charged per message, and only if you switch it on.
Access control integration
Hardware, wiring and a licensed installer, quoted per site.
White labeling
Your own branding, quoted per community.
Two counties, one name
What works east of the turnpike does not work west of it.
One plan for the whole county gets half of it wrong. These are two different security problems.
East, the city and the coastal strip
Mostly public streets and civic associations that cannot gate, because the roads belong to the city. The question there is who is in the lobby and the garage, and whether the board can put a record in front of the police when they ask.
Fort Lauderdale, Wilton Manors, Oakland Park, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Pompano Beach, Hollywood, Dania Beach, Hallandale Beach
West, the planned suburbs
Master-planned communities on drained land, with private roads, staffed gatehouses and long perimeters along canals and golf courses. They already run access control at scale, usually on a clipboard and ten-year-old software.
Weston, Parkland, Coral Springs, Plantation, Sunrise, Davie, Pembroke Pines, Miramar, Cooper City
The turnpike is not a line we hold to, so ask about your address. Neighboring markets have pages of their own: Boca Raton to the north, Miami to the south, and the rest of Florida.
Local conditions
Six things a Fort Lauderdale board deals with and a board upstate never will.
Water runs through all six. It decides which gate operator you buy and how high the camera is mounted, and it fills the calendar too.
Old coastal condos, mid-assessment
Much of the housing on the Broward coast went up in the 1960s and 70s. It now carries milestone inspections, reserve funding and the special assessments that follow, and a board paying for those is not shopping for another line item.
The dock is a second entrance
Fort Lauderdale is cut through with canals and finger isles. In Rio Vista, Las Olas Isles, Harbor Beach, Coral Ridge and the Landings, a private dock brings boats and marine contractors onto the property from the water, and the driveway never sees them.
King tides put salt water over the road
The low eastern neighbourhoods flood on the tide alone several times a year. Salt water across the road reaches the gate operator, the loop detector and any camera mounted near grade. Equipment specified for a dry inland site fails first at the entrance.
Bridges, and why nobody should promise you a response time
The drawbridges between the barrier island and the mainland open on a schedule. A patrol car east of the Intracoastal can be four minutes away or twelve in the same afternoon. Ask a guarding company where its nearest supervisor sits, not for a guaranteed response time.
Short-term rentals are the standing argument
Fort Lauderdale's vacation-rental rules and your own lease restrictions both turn on evidence a board rarely has. A dated entry log with the plate, the unit and the time gives your attorney something to work with.
A calendar the rest of the country does not have
The boat show in the autumn and the boat parade in December fill the dock-party guest lists and put overflow parking in the swales. The cruise turnaround at Port Everglades adds rideshare traffic on top. No inland community sees any of it.
Max Security USA · Quoted per site
When the property needs people as well as software.
We guard buildings and gates for a living, and the software came out of that work. Our guards are licensed under Florida's Chapter 493. Ask for the license numbers in writing.
Gate, gatehouse and lobby guarding
Licensed guards working post orders written for your property. A gatehouse in Weston and a beachside lobby with a garage are not the same job.
Vehicle patrol
A marked car on a route you set, including the water side of a property where the dock line is part of the perimeter.
Access control and gates
Gate automation by licensed installers, specified for salt air and standing water and tied to the passes residents already issue. Quoted per site.
Cameras and monitoring
Camera installation and live monitoring, with plate reads that feed the deny list and stand up as violation evidence. Where a street cannot be gated, this is the only real option.
How it works
How a Broward association gets set up
There is no sign-up button. A person checks every community first, the board, the property and who manages it. Then we configure the site with you and your manager, if you have one.
Step 1: A call about your property
Fifteen minutes on the phone. How many units, gate or lobby, staffed or not, and whether there is a dock side.
Step 2: We verify and configure
We confirm the board and the property, then build your entrances and rules and import the roster.
Step 3: You go live
Residents and guards get their access. Support carries on after launch week.
FAQ
Questions Broward boards and managers ask us.
Cost, licensing, ungated streets, storms and who owns the data. If yours is not here, ask it on the call.
Is the visitor management platform really free for a Fort Lauderdale condo association or HOA?
Yes. There is no subscription, no per-resident fee and no trial that quietly ends. Visitor passes, gate scanning, the entry log, work orders, amenity booking and board reports are all included, whether or not we guard your property. Three things cost money: SMS, access control integration and white labeling. The pricing page has the detail. Email and in-app notifications stay free.
Are your guards licensed to work in Broward County?
Security licensing in Florida is a state matter under Chapter 493, so the county and the city have no say in it. An unarmed guard holds a Class "D" license and the training that goes with it. An armed guard also holds a Class "G" and requalifies on the firearm. The agency holds a license of its own. Ask for the numbers in writing and check them against the state register.
Do you actually cover my town, or only Fort Lauderdale itself?
The free platform works anywhere in Broward and beyond, since distance makes no difference to software. Staffed posts and installation are quoted per site after a survey, with travel included. If your address is a bad fit for a manned post we would rather tell you than staff it badly.
Our streets are public, so we cannot gate. Is any of this useful to us?
It is, and inside the city that is the common case. Victoria Park, Rio Vista and Coral Ridge all sit on city-maintained roads that no association can lawfully gate. What still works there is a guest and vendor register the residents keep themselves, cameras and plate readers with a deny list behind them, and an incident history the board owns. For a condominium, the lobby and the garage are the gate.
What happens to the gate and the system in a hurricane or an outage?
Plan for it, because on this coast it is a question of when. What a gate does when the power goes is a hardware and fire-code decision, and software does not overrule it. It fails open or it fails secure, and your board and the fire marshal decide which. If a site loses connectivity, the booth goes back to the written procedure agreed at set-up. The bigger risk is the two weeks after a storm, when roofers and unlicensed operators turn up on the same streets. That is when a complete entry log earns its keep.
Can the board give the entry log to the police, and can owners demand to see it?
Depending on the town, your police are Fort Lauderdale PD, the Broward Sheriff's Office under contract, or a municipal department of your own. Whichever it is, the log tells them who came in, when and in what vehicle, timestamped and exportable in minutes. Owners have a statutory right to inspect association records, but what counts as an official record is a question for your attorney rather than a software vendor. Access is role-based, so a board member does not automatically see everything a manager sees.
Who owns the data, and how long does set-up take?
The community owns its records, the residents, vehicles, visitor history, incidents and documents, and can export them at any time rather than only on the way out. We do not sell resident data or share it with advertisers, and there is no contract to terminate on the free platform. There is no self-service sign-up. A person verifies the board and the property, then configures your site and imports your roster. A clean, current roster is what gets you live fastest.
None of this is legal advice. Your association attorney reads your governing documents, and we do not. Read the privacy policy, see the full pricing or email [email protected].
Max Security USA · 709 W Jericho Tpke, Huntington, NY 11743
No cost, no contract, no card for the platform.
Have the free platform running before the season starts.
Tell us about your association and we will configure it at no cost. If you also want a guard at the gate, a patrol on the water side or a camera survey, we quote that separately and will tell you which parts you do not need.