Hostaway vs Uplisting
This article examines Hostaway vs Uplisting by concentrating on the main features that a hospitality management software should offer. The data has been collected from Hostaway’s and Uplisting’s websites and help articles. We also checked their reviews at Capterra to find the aspects that the actual users are emphasising.
Guest Review
In Capterra, Hostaway has a rating of 4.7, with the highest score for Customer Service.
Trustpilot introduces Hostaway as an Excellent tool with a 4.7 TrustScore.
In Capterra, Uplisting has a rating of 4.8, with the highest score for Value for Money and Customer Service.
Trustpilot introduces Uplisting as a Poor tool with a 2.4 TrustScore.
Hostaway sends out automated messages called “Native Messages” to the guests based on the reservation event. These auto-messages will be sent to channels like Airbnb, and the guests receive them on Airbnb. You can set messages in Hostaway and send them out for Expedia, HomeAway, TripAdvisor, and Booking.com.
Regarding payments, if the channels do not process them, they will pass you the card details, and you can charge the cards to proceed with the payment through your Stripe account.
Uplisting automatically collects the payment using Stripe 3D Secure Links. It automatically pre-authorises and releases the security deposit amount that you have set for your Booking.com and HomeAway guests. Even if it is a channel collect, the guests will receive a link on the OTAs’ chatbox where they give you their payment information, and the amount will be pre-authorised and released based on the timeline you have set for each property.
Uplisting decides whether to hold or collect the security deposit amount based on the length of the guests’ stay.
In the end, the guests will go through the verification process. They are asked to upload a picture of their passports, driving licences, or identity cards. They can easily use their phone cameras to take a photo if needed.
The Security Deposit and Guest Identity Verification are premium add-ons, available for an additional fee.
Uplsting allows you to add your rental agreement, personalise it with dynamic content like guest names, and automatically send it to guests for signing. You can track the status and access the signed contract as a PDF.
You can ask guests to use their contact information for further marketing, and the consent will be GDPR-compliant.
Hostaway offers integration with top channels such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, HomeAway/Vrbo, 9flats.com, and Innclusive (which provides a commission-free listing for the owners). Hostaway also offers iCal integration with other channels such as OwnersDirect, Tripping.com, Widmu, Perfect Places, and OneFineStay.
Hostaway:
- pushes rates and availability in real-time and makes sure that those are up to date across all channels.
- enables you to export your listings (calendar and content) from Hostaway into HomeAway/Vrbo if you have five or more active listings, and they are listed on HomeAway/Vrbo.
- offers a manual iCal synchronisation when you have less than five listings for TripAdvisor and Flipkey. If you have five or more listings, Hostaway offers a 1-way API integration.
- lets you export your listings to Booking.com if you have more than five listings. However, you can only export one listing per address.
- sets channel mark-ups.
- sets a “booking window” at channel level.
- notifies you if there is a “modified reservation” by using the “Airbnb Pro” connection. You can also manage “Special Offers” in your Hostaway account.
Once you create your Uplisting account and connect to Airbnb, you can have all your listings imported to Uplisting, including prices, availability, bookings, and listing content.
You can set different OTAs rates that you are linked to and check the prices published on each in your calendar.
Hostaway gets help from cleaning services through integrations with Properly and Doinn. You can export your listings into these platforms.
- In Hostaway, you can set up cleaning tasks before arrival and after check-out.
- The housekeepers have access to the tasks on both the dashboard and their mobile app, where they can attach photos and leave comments.
Uplisting helps you automate your cleaning management.
- Uplisting gives limited access to your housekeepers.
- For each of your bookings, a corresponding turnover band is created which shows the property name, property address, existing guest name, check-out time and date, and the number of guests checking in and out.
- Your housekeepers will get updated about any changes in the information above, booking modifications, and cancellations via email.
- The housekeeper can decide whether to accept the turnover or not, and the host will get notified about it upon refreshing the platform or via email.
- Different housekeepers can be assigned to one or more properties of yours, which means they can only check the information about the chosen properties.
- You can leave notes for your cleaners about each booking.
- You can keep track of the time each housekeeper starts and ends his/her task.
- Your housekeepers have a cleaning schedule automatically created based on the bookings.
- You can also have cleaning teams defined in the system.
Hostaway integrates with Operto. Operto sends the access codes to the guests after you set a message in Hostaway to allow it to send those codes.
You can automatically send your check-in instructions to your guests, using automated messages based on the trigger rules you choose in Uplisting.
Regarding guest details and payment, the process is automated for direct bookings, and for channel bookings, the guests’ information will get updated.
Uplisting’s integration with RemoteLock enables you to connect with various smart locks and automate guest access to your property.
Uplisting also generates a security deposit link for all your bookings. Still, as they believe some of the guests may not expect to pay a security deposit, you can easily copy-paste or email the link to the ones you wish to.
- Hostaway allows you to choose the subdomain’s name for your direct booking website, select the listings you would like to be published on the website, and add titles, content, background images, and social media contact information.
- Your Stripe account will be connected to your website.
- You can use the WordPress plugin to connect your website to Hostaway’s website.
- Hostaway’s Open API option enables you to integrate your Hostaway software with any other website.
- Uplisting direct booking website contains all of your listings’ information, including pictures, availability, and prices.
- The website is hosted securely, so you do not need to hire developers or buy a domain name.
- Direct bookings automatically block your dates on Airbnb, Booking.com, and other platforms.
- Uplisting gives you the chance to have a domain name without having to pay for that.
- Uplisting direct booking website automatically represents all your properties as they are shown on Airbnb.
- The website is mobile responsive.
- It integrates with WordPress through Zapier.
- You can manually book on behalf of guests.
- You can collect payments through Stripe and make safe payments with 3-D Secure Links.
- There are no booking-related charges for direct bookings.
- Its integration with Google Vacation Rentals simplifies the sharing of your properties, pricing, availability, and restrictions on Google.
- Hostaway allows you to set weekly and monthly rates and push them to the channels.
- You can set rates for all the connected channels by editing them on the calendar.
- You also have the option to import rates from your Airbnb account into Hostaway and send them to other channels.
Uplisting does not have the option for defining and pushing weekly and/or monthly rates.
- Hostaway facilitates guest experience through integration with YourWelcome and Wishbox.
- Through Hostaway, you can send messages automatically, thanking the guests for reservations, welcome messages, and post-check-out messages and trigger them according to the channel, listing, or event type.
- You can choose templates from the system and set this automation for all channels or all listings, one listing, or one specific channel.
- You can set triggers and send the message based on the reservation status, arrival/departure, enquiry, and pending reservation. You can pause, cancel, or edit these “scheduled messages” and send them manually.
- The “Native Messaging” feature enables you to send the message to Airbnb and Booking.com, and these channels will send the email to the guest.
- The “Guest Reviews” feature of Hostaway allows you to receive reviews from the guest from the top channels, and you would be able to reply to the reviews that come from Airbnb and Booking.com.
Automated Guest Messages are designed to keep your guest informed from booking to check-out. You can make a unique tone of voice for the message templates. You can enable automated messages as below:
- New Booking
Sent when a booking is confirmed (sent within 10 minutes of booking).
- One week before check-in (based on check-in time)
This message is sent out if the guest books less than 7 days before check-in, but not if they book on the day of check-in. - Reminder of upcoming stay
Sent 72 hours (3 days) before check-in (based on check-in time). - Check-in instructions
Sent 24 hours (1 day) before check-in (based on check-in time). - Day of check-in
Sent 1 hour before check-in (based on check-in time). - First morning of stay
Sent at 10 am on the day after check-in (first morning of guest stay). - Before check-out
Sent 16 hours before check-out (based on check-out time). - After check-out
Sent 24 hours (1 day) after check-out (based on check-out time).
Unified Inbox centralises guest communications.
Automated Review enables you to leave reviews for guests and increases the number of guests who will leave a review for you.
Enquiry auto-responder can respond instantly. You can also delay the response to up to 60 minutes to respond manually.
Saved replies can speed up guest messaging.
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Uplisting provides you with a certain set of data about your guests. Using Uplisting, you can have records of
- guest lists
- guest name
- phone number and email address
- number of guests
- booking site confirmation code
Hostaway:
- connects to Properly and Doinn, so if you have an account on these platforms, you can outsource your maintenance operations.
- allows assigning tasks to the user, supervisor, and teams, which can be managed from both the system and the mobile app.
- lets the cleaners attach photos or leave comments so that you will be informed about an issue.
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Hostaway’s app is useful for hosts and staff members.
- The team members can see the tasks that they have been assigned to. They can also check all the tasks related to their team and “accept” the task to complete it.
- Using the filter options, the staff member can search the tasks in their app and choose the one that applies to their role.
- The cleaners can upload photos as attachments on their mobile app.
Uplisting has a mobile app for IOS and Android. Using the mobile app, you
- Get notifications for every new guest message from Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo (HomeAway), and direct bookings.
- Have all guest messages in one place.
- Can use pre-filled response templates to save time. You can easily select a template from your phone when responding to a guest.
- Can pull the guest’s booking data into the message with personalised snippets.
You can help the guests in real-time by answering back to them, changing the arrival time, sending them your pre-set templates, or stopping the automated email messaging for that particular guest.
You can also call the guests.
You can change the reservation’s status, booking type, and booking site.
- Hostaway offers a tagging system that allows you to add tags to the listing to make filtering easier.
- In each listing, you can create a “Custom Field” and configure detailed information about the units.
- For manually creating a listing, you can add rooms and beds. The bed-type export feature is available for HomeAway and Booking.com.
- Some settings (content) in Hostaway can be exported to Airbnb such as discounts, minimum and maximum stay restrictions, check-in & check-out time, cleaning fee, extra guest fee, etc.
- The system allows you to cross-list the properties, and you would be able to set bookable properties as separate units and together as a whole.
Uplisting helps you manage different Airbnb and Booking.com accounts from one central system, meaning that the properties may also be in different locations.
- Hostaway allows you to create general tasks and reservation-based tasks and assign them to the team members. The assignee will get notified via email. As the manager, you will be provided with an overview of all tasks in some categories such as “to do,” “accepted,” “in progress,” and “done,” and you can see them on the calendar (tasks that are linked to reservations).
- The system allows you to put the staff into groups and assign a supervisor. The tasks can be allocated to the listing, channels, or both.
- The tasks are based on the listings and events, and you can create them both manually and automatically. The manual task option is handy for not recurring tasks, and you can use the available options in the software to set them. The assignee can start and end the task from both the platform and mobile app. The system also allows you to set recurring tasks.
- There is a Time Report option that tells you how much time was spent on the task.
- You can add the following options to your tasks: a checklist, costs, resolution notes (giving and leaving feedback), and attachments (cleaners can upload images before and after cleaning).
- You can give permissions to the users to “view, modify, delete, and edit” the tasks. If the modification is done through the mobile app, any reservation changes would not be applied to the task.
Uplisting Action Screen, which is like a to-do list, will show you the list of your check-ins and check-outs weekly.
- Uplisting Action Screen is very mobile-friendly and is also printable.
- You can use Actions to track guests.
- You can mark guests as checked-in or checked-out for guest management, which is visible on the main Action view. It is helpful in arranging cleaning and other tasks.
In Hostaway, you can give owners access to the system by setting an email address and password and defining the properties they are allowed to see. The system enables you to let the owner see the listings, reservations, calendar, or all of them. You can allow them to modify, create, or delete listings and reservations, as well.
Uplisting gives access to your invited owners.
Its owner portal gives owners access to action and calendar screens with certain limitations. For instance, the owners can see the bookings and unavailability; they can also create blocked dates. However, they cannot see guest contact details or messages.
Their owner portal is a paid add-on and available for an additional fee.
Hostaway’s payment partners are Stripe and Braintree (Braintree does not pre-authorise the deposit).
- You can specify whether you process the payment by credit card or send an invoice to the guests with the payment instructions manually.
- When the invoice is created, you can charge your guests directly from the invoice; their credit card will be charged, and the amount will be managed on your Stripe account.
- You can set automatic invoices for new reservations and decide whether they will be created for all channels or only for a specific one. You can also link the invoices to some or all listings. You can set up auto-charge and split charge by scheduling the triggers (based on reservation, check-in, and check-out). You have the ability to pause or edit a charge at any time.
- Pre-authorisation only works for auto-charge and auto-invoices.
- You should manually mark the invoice as fully or partially paid.
Uplisting collects all the payments using 3D Secure Links through Stripe. If you do not wish to use a Stripe account for all your properties, you can decide which ones you want to connect to your account, enabling guests to pay while booking from your website.
Uplisting verifies whether the guest’s credit card is valid or not. If it is not, Uplisting will automatically mark the card as invalid on Booking.com, and the same thing happens for your direct website bookings.
Hostaway provides you with reports that you can view based on listing level and channel level.
Through these graphics, you can see:
- rental revenue per channel.
- booking nights per channel.
- rental revenue per reservation per channel.
- daily reservation received per channel.
- reservation per channel.
You can use the sample formula included in the system or create your calculations by selecting some values related to taxes like city tax, sales tax, and other values related to reservations like Damage Deposit and Additional Cleaning Cancelation Fee. After creating this, you will be able to check the Financial Report.
The Occupancy Report gives you information about days available, days booked, total check-ins, revenue, revenue/days booked, revenue/days available, cancellations, etc.
Uplisting provides you with some reports which can be filtered by date range and/or listing.
You can use Uplisting reports for
- Client invoicing: you can quickly calculate client invoices by filtering the invoice list to an individual property on a monthly basis.
- Task scheduling and operations: it gives you a list of cleanings, maintenance tasks, and welcomes.
- Accounting reports: these include a price breakdown for all bookings, and you can work out your earnings and tax deductibles (cleaning, booking site commission).
- Performance analysis: you can find more about your average daily rate and nightly occupancy, the average length of stay, and nights sold.
You can also export all your reports in CSV.
Uplisting allows you to track expenses and create Owner Statements and Custom Management Fee Formulas for an additional fee.
Uplisting offers integration with Key Data, a trusted data & analytics provider of real-time vacation rental market data for the short-term rental industry.
Hostaway has integration with Pricelabs, Beyond, and Wheelhouse.
Uplisting offers integration with Wheelhouse, PriceLabs, and Beyond for dynamic pricing.
Uplisting pushes your rates to all the channels you are linked to in real-time. You can set different markup percentages for any OTAs and see the final price published to each channel separately under your default rate, which is applied to your website and used by the admin.
You can also check promotions and last-minute discounts from your Uplisting account.
Hostaway facilitates being in touch with the support team and receiving assistance for most of the updates and configurations. They hold webinars when there is an update, and guides for setting up the system are available.
There is a fixed charge for the setup.
Training
- In-Person
- Live Online
- Webinars
- Documentation
Support
- 24/7 (Live Rep)
- Business Hours
- Online
In Hostaway, if you want to integrate with your accounting system, you can use an Open API.
Uplisting does not have any dashboards for analytics like occupancy or rates yet.
However, as you may be managing other people’s properties, Uplisting provides you with a management fee report per booking.
The management fee is included in each booking price breakdown, reports, and the Zapier app’s webhooks.
As Uplisting offers integration with Zapier, you can have your account connected to Xero, ZohoBooks, etc. for your accounting.
Hosaway’s unified inbox offers two views, which are the inbox and the guest conversation.
The inbox can be filtered by all listings, all channels, recent activity, and reservation status.
In the conversation page, you can find information such as the guest name, channel name (Airbnb only), check-in and check-out, name of the property, and the number of the guests. Some options link you to the calendar, booking page, and guest portal.
The guest portal contains the reservation details, photos, and Google Maps, and you can share its URL with your guests. The guests can also access the invoice, and they can leave a note for you.
Uplisting’s unified inbox displays all your guest messages in a single feed. You can quickly view and reply to messages from your Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and direct booking website, even if you are using multiple accounts!
In Uplisting unified inbox, you can:
- close & star guest messages.
- filter guest messages.
- change message ordering.
- save replies as templates.
- reply to your multiple accounts’ messages using your mobile phone.
Pricing
Hostaway pricing offers different options. To get an accurate quote, you should contact them for your customised pricing plan. Hostaway charges 367.80 GBP ($500) as the setup fee. Typically, the price starts at 25.75 GBP ($35) per listing, but it drops down as the number of units increases.
There are two options for paying Hostaway subscriptions:
- commission-based (2% of monthly revenue)
- Flat rate
Based on a rough calculation for a business operating around 200 units, Hostaway pricing would be about 14.71 GBP ($20) per listing. Another estimation for four units with a different combination of features would be 11.03 GBP ($15) each and 183.90 GBP ($250) of setup fee.
Uplisting pricing starts at 16 GBP ($20.00) per month, and there is 0% commission. Minimum subscription is 80 GBP/m ($100/m) for 5 listings.
Their Enterprise Plan allows you to pay a custom price based on your needs. The custom pricing will apply when you have 30+ listings.
Uplisting does not have a free version, but it offers a free trial.
Hostaway vs Uplisting: Which Property Management System to Choose?
Hostaway enables the user to advertise and list their properties on top channels easily. The company is looking to improve by adding new features. Hostaway communicates with its clients and develops what the users need or suggest. If you aim to concentrate on some channels, especially Airbnb, Hostaway provides you with a smooth synchronisation. However, Hostaway does not offer many tools to improve your direct bookings.
Uplisting is a well-known Vacation Rental Management Software. The system sets automated messages and helps you get connected to multiple booking channels. Uplisting automatically pulls your listings from Airbnb and pushes your data to Booking.com, HomeAway, and Vrbo. Thus, it can be one of your choices if you manage your properties using these channels only.
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