Hospitable vs Hostfully
This article examines Hospitable vs Hostfully by concentrating on the main features that a hospitality management software should offer. The data has been collected from Hospitable’s and Hostfully’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, Hospitable has a rating of 4.8, with the highest score for Customer Service, Ease of Use, and Value for Money.
Trustpilot introduces Hospitable as a Great tool with a 4.1 TrustScore.
In Capterra, Hostfully has a rating of 4.3, with the highest score for Customer Service.
Trustpilot introduces Hostfully as an Excellent tool with a 4.3 TrustScore.
During Hospitable’s direct booking process, guests will go through the screens outlined below:
Guest Details
The primary guests need to provide their name, email, phone number, and billing address.
Payment
Guests must insert their card number, expiration date, and CVC. Hospitable currently accepts Visa and Mastercard.
Guest Vetting
For Direct Premium bookings, once guests have submitted their booking request, they will go through the Autohost guest vetting portal, during which guests must:
- Agree to damage protection policy terms.
- Verify their contact information, residence details, and birth date.
- Provide a valid government-issued ID (such as a driver’s licence, passport, or equivalent).
- Specify the purpose of their visit (e.g., business or leisure, special events, etc.).
Autohost will assess the provided data and associated metadata, and deliver feedback through the Inbox.
Hospitable will only decline a reservation if the guest is listed as banned or if a potential fraud risk is identified. You will receive a notification once the guest has finished using the guest portal, indicating that you may proceed with accepting the booking.
Credit Card Authorisation
After the guest submits their request, Hospitable verifies (but does not charge) their payment method to ensure it is valid for the full booking amount. Hospitable then sends the guest a confirmation email containing their booking request details and a reference ID.
Hostfully can completely automate your booking process, no matter if the booking is coming from OTAs or direct through your website.
Through the Hostfully dashboard, you can see all received bookings and from there, you can manually or automatically assign the reservation to an agent that will be responsible for it.
Once assigned, the booking moves over Hostfully’s Pipeline management, which gives you a general overview of all bookings. This includes the booking’s origin, the guest’s current stage within the process, and their payment status. Through the Pipeline, you can also take actions on these bookings, such as send a quote, place a hold, mark as booked, show alternative options, change payment status, send messages, close the lead, and more.
Guest Information
A pre-arrival form can be automatically sent to collect information about all your guests, including their names, real email, phone numbers, information about their trip, and government IDs. You can also customise this form to request any additional information you might need.
Agreement
Rental agreements can be automated and digitally signed with Hostfully proprietary digital signature features, no matter if the booking is coming from an OTA or directly.
Upsells and Payments
Hostfully direct booking system also allows you to automatically offer upsell services such as early check-ins, or late check-outs, mid-stay cleanings, and any other services you’d like to offer.
Payment can also be automated through Stripe, Paypal or VacationRentPayment, and Hostfully allows you to set a rate multiplier on a channel-basis, so you can offset OTA commissions and make sure you’re getting paid what you want.
If the guest pays in an alternative form, i.e. wire transfer, venmo, cheque or cash), the host can manually mark the reservation as paid and keep total control of payments.
It is also quite clear whether the guests have paid or not in the software. The Pipeline will colour code each reservation based on payment status. If you need to collect additional payment from the guest, the PMS will trigger an automated message to the guest with a secure payment form, allowing the guest to complete the remainder payment. You can also manually click to trigger “Payment Balance Request” reminders to the guest.
Security Deposit
Security deposits can be fully automated, and refunds can also be provided directly from the Hostfully platform.
Hostfully has tools in place within the Pipeline to show whether the guest has completed the pre-arrival form, as well as provided an electronic signature on the hosts rental agreement.
Hospitable’s channel manager seamlessly connects with Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo, facilitating the synchronisation of data across all these booking platforms. It guarantees that your calendar’s availability and pricing information remain current and accurate.
Their channel manager can only connect to Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Homelidays, bookabach, Abritel, FeWo-direkt, and stayz.
Hostfully has built its channel manager allowing hosts to connect with many OTAs directly without the use of third-party channel managers. Among Hostfully’s direct API integrations are Airbnb, Vrbo (Preferred Partner), Booking.com (Premier Partner), TripAdvisor, HomeToGo, Tripvillas, Yonder, GoLightly, and more.
Hostfully also integrates with channel managers such as Rentals United and NextPax.
By using Hostfully, you can:
- Import all your listings from Airbnb and avoid manual work.
- List your properties on the Hostfully channel to increase direct bookings.
- Use the rate multiplier feature to offset commissions.
- Sync pictures, description, amenities, prices, and real-time availability.
- Automatically create listings on OTAs.
Hospitable enables you to establish your own rules while the system autonomously delegates tasks. Your cleaning staff will be informed about upcoming cleanings, even for last-minute bookings. So, it eliminates the need for manual reminder notifications and saves you valuable time.
You can choose when, how, and who gets notified about new tasks. Notifications are available through email and SMS, as well as via an iCal feed or a daily summary.
By using Hostfully, you can choose between their own cleaning/task portal or use the cleaning/management integrated partners:
- Breezeway
- Properly
- VRscheduler
- EZcare
- TurnoverBNB
Hostfully cleaning/task portal can help you:
- Automate the creation of tasks, such as greeting or check-out cleanings for every booking.
- Automate emails or text messages to all your cleaners and maintenance staff.
- Provide access to a service provider portal with a calendar, tasks, and notes per property.
- Get to know when a task is completed directly on the Hostfully main calendar.
Through Hospitable smart lock integrations, you can connect popular smart lock brands, such as Schlage, August, Yale, SmartThings, and RemoteLock apps with booking platforms and your personal website.
Hospitable generates and sends exclusive door access credentials to your confirmed guests just before their check-in. Additionally, once their reservation ends, the system automatically erases the unique code, preventing any unauthorised access after check-out.
Hostfully is fully integrated with home automation software, such as PointCentral, RemoteLock, Lynx, and Operto.
By using these integrations, door codes can be automatically generated for all bookings and automatically sent to guests upon different parameters set in the trigger’s section.
If you’d like to share the door codes in a more elegant way, the Hostfully Digital Guidebooks are fully integrated with Hostfully PMS, allowing you to generate a secured link guidebook for each of your reservations, including guest’s first and last name, check-in and check-out dates, and of course, the door code they will need to use to get into the property.
- Hospitable offers customisable website templates.
- Their website accepts custom domains.
- Hospitable website is optimised for desktop and mobile.
- They offer guest screening empowered by Autohost (for the Premium plan).
- Hospitable’s Direct Premium website offers £4M worth of damage protection (powered by SUPERHOG).
- You can receive credit card payments through your website during booking. Hospitable will take the hit on lost payment processing fees if a guest cancels.
- Sales and lodging taxes are automatically calculated and collected.
Hospitable offers two websites: Direct Premium and Direct Basic. Their pricing is different based on the number of properties. But the base price for businesses with less than 10 properties is £6/property for Direct Basic and £4/property for Direct Premium. Direct Premium has also a per-booking charge of 6% of the nightly rate and fees + £8.
Direct Basic is designed for hosts who are experienced in handling direct bookings and prefer a “do-it-yourself” approach. With this option, you can use site builder, booking widget, and tax collection features. Direct Premium includes the aforementioned features plus tax calculation, payment processing fees, guest vetting, and £4M damage protection.
- Hostfully offers free direct booking websites to all PMS clients.
- Hostfully direct booking website provides a search bar, so guests can find their perfect property.
- Property pages are completely synced with the Hostfully platform and will auto-populate your property information with pictures, descriptions, amenities, pricing, availability, and reviews.
- You can add customisable header, footer, and Meta using HTML and CSS.
- Hostfully enables you to white-label the website with your logo, domain, and headlines.
- You can track your performance on Google Analytics.
- Their website offers an upselling feature.
- Hostfully provides search widgets, booking widgets, and calendar widgets which can be integrated with any platform, including WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, and others.
- Hostfully also provides a discount code feature, which allows you to create codes to offer discounts, track marketing campaigns, or even create special promotions.
Hospitable:
- Allows use of custom codes to proactively offer guests to extend a reservation.
- Enables hosts to inform guests about the possibility of extending their stay automatically by sending a message only if the day before or after their booking is available.
Hostfully is designed for short-term rentals and can accommodate long stays including two payments from the guest, as well as discounts for longer stays. Hostfully does not support automatic recurring monthly payments or lease management.
- After completing the booking process, Hospitable sends guests a confirmation email containing their booking request details and a reference ID.
- Hospitable offers AI-powered messaging, which is available in 29 languages.
- Hospitable provides pre-programmed answers to common questions.
- They instantly piece together your information and details about the reservation to send a quick response.
- Their integration with ChatGPT allows you to craft responses instantly.
Hostfully is widely known for its digital guidebooks, providing one of the leading guidebooks in the industry.
Completely integrated with the Hostfully PMS, Hostfully guidebooks allow you to pull name, check-in and check-out dates and door codes automatically, providing a seamless experience to the guest.
In Hostfully Guidebooks, you can add pictures of the property, welcome messages, check-in essentials, access information, directions, parking information, house manuals, amenities, and local attractions/ recommendations.
Setting up a guidebook is a 30-minute process, and the hosts can build the guidebooks up incrementally over time.
Besides the Guidebooks, Hostfully PMS has a lot of ready-to-use email templates, SMS templates, and trigger rules. The link to the property guidebook can also be automatically included in the templates. To see example guidebooks, click here.
You craft automated guest messages triggered by preset dates/times/events, such as check-in, during stay, and check-out.
All Hostfully communications are GDPR-compliant.
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Hostfully’s Property Management Platform also has a built-in CRM, separated in two different sections:
- Pipeline: The Pipeline was designed to allow you to manage all your leads, enquiries, current bookings and past bookings. Through the Pipeline, you can visually see payment status, source, check-in and check-out dates, guest name, price, and number of people in each reservation. Besides that, the Pipeline can tell you where the guest is in the booking process. Stages are: Quote, Hold, Booked, and Staying. From the Pipeline, you can also open a reservation and easily manage it. Lastly, the Pipeline allows you to filter reservations by Status, Channels, Properties, Agents, and also sort them by the most recent or arrival date. A search option is also provided, making it easy to find any specific details on any reservations.
- Customers: The customer section was designed to allow the property manager to find all past, current, and future guests, and all reservations related to them.
In addition, Hostfully has an integration with MailChimp to export all guest details for re-marketing purposes.
With Hospitable, you have the ability to designate positions, such as Owner, Manager, Check-in, Concierge, Check-out, Cleaning, Laundry, and Maintenance for your team members. You can also choose the particular functions and areas that your team members will be able to access.
Most of the clients on Hostfully are using one of the integrated partners to manage cleaning/maintenance. Hostfully PMS also provides you with a maintenance portal.
Each service provider will receive access to their own service portal, where they can see all jobs assigned to them and either decline or accept those jobs within their portal, which is then communicated to the platform. They can also access a maintenance calendar and notes.
Through the templates and triggers section, property managers can send automated emails and text messages to all service providers.
The Hospitable mobile app has the same features as the desktop app.
With this app:
- You can communicate with your guests via the unified Inbox.
- You can view the week or month ahead on the integrated calendar.
- You can create and edit your messaging rules, question detection, and review settings in the Guest Experience section.
- You can personalise your messages by creating or editing your own custom codes or using their 70+ shortcodes.
- You can delegate tasks to other members of your team, automatically or manually, using the Operations section.
- You will get notifications in real-time whenever you receive a message in the Inbox.
Hostfully has provided a mobile app for hosts.
With this mobile app, you can:
- View all your reservations at a glance on a single screen.
- Access detailed information on pricing, occupancy specifics, payment confirmations, and more by simply clicking on any reservation.
- Gain a comprehensive overview of upcoming check-ins and check-outs, and efficiently handle incoming leads.
- Track requested properties, stay durations, and revenue earned.
- Read and respond to guest messages using either the system’s predefined templates or your personalised quotes.
- Stay updated with timely notifications, whether it’s task updates or messages from your guests.
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Using Hostfully, you can manage properties in different countries and currencies.
You can also group properties by tags, making it easy for you to filter or retrieve these properties using the Hostfully open API.
Hospitable enables you to simultaneously modify pricing and availability for several properties. And these adjustments will be pushed to your listings across all platforms.
- You have the option to include notes for a single day or for multiple days within the calendar. This functionality allows you to provide context for why a specific date is reserved or why you’ve adjusted the pricing for a particular day.
- You can link Hospitable.com webhooks with Zapier for enhanced automation of your business operations. These webhooks will be dispatched whenever you get a fresh booking or when there’s a modification in the reservation’s “status.”
Hostfully defines user “roles” to provide access control to particular parts of the system for the people managing a specific area of your business.
Hostfully also empowers you to send all your check-in information through their template and triggers section, based on the status of a reservation, or payment status.
Once a booking is created, Hostfully can automate the creation of cleanings, maintenance, or any other order you’d like to set up.
You also can create a profile for each of the service providers and give them access to the Hostfully service providers portal. That way, they will have access to all pending and completed orders and real-time calendar view of all properties they’re assigned to.
Hostfully integrates with Zapier, an online automation tool that connects Hostfully to 400+ software such as Gmail, Trello, Slack, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Hubspot, Google Sheet, and many more.
With Hospitable, you can assign the Owner role and select specific features and properties the owner can access.
Hostfully provides vacation rental management companies (VRMCs) with a way to manage calendars collaboratively with the property owners they represent. It allows each property owner to access the “Owner Portal.”
This is a part of Hostfully’s site where owners can co-manage the availability of their rental and get informed about the status of their calendars. VRMCs can also publish financial statements to owners, to keep owners informed about the monthly revenue, expenses, commissions, taxes, and more.
Some key features include the ability to:
- Notify owners of every new booking.
- Provide multiple email addresses for the above notifications.
- Allow/disallow the owner to block dates on their calendar.
- Decide whether the Agency or the Owner will collect and remit tax(es). This will affect the Due Agency and Due Owner amounts in the financial report accordingly.
Hospitable complies with PCI Level 2 standards, and an Attestation of Compliance (AOC) can be provided upon request.
They neither handle nor retain credit card information from hosts when they make payments for Hospitable services. For this, Hospitable delegates the responsibility of processing credit card and PayPal transactions to Braintree.
Braintree is a trusted provider that facilitates online transactions for many businesses and adheres to PCI standards when it comes to securely storing and managing credit card data.
Hospitable does not handle or retain credit card information for Airbnb and Vrbo guests. For Booking.com guests, they store tokenised credit card details in accordance with PCI-DSS standards and delegate payment processing to Stripe.
Hostfully can completely streamline your payment process with different payment processors:
- Stripe
- PayPal
- VRP (VacationRentPayment)
These payment processors can be used for direct bookings and channels that allow you to be the merchant of record.
As part of the check-out process, Hostfully can offer:
- Split payments
- Upsells
- Digital rental agreement signing
- Payment collection
- Payments processing with custom security deposits
You can also take payments outside the system (back transfer, Venmo, Cash, Zelle, etc, and easily add a new payment record in the order).
- You can export financial and operational data and then import them into your accounting and analytics software.
- You can customise your data filters to extract insights according to various criteria, including property, dates, guest identities, team members, and more.
Hostfully reports can be created based on dates, properties, and owners.
You can create reports for:
- Bookings
- Payments
- Check-ins and check-outs
Hostfully has also launched the Extended Data Report, which allows you to export all the data you have related to all bookings, properties, channels, etc., to an Excel Spreadsheet. This way, you can have all your data in one single report.
All reports can be exported to PDF and Excel.
Hospitable seamlessly integrates with Beyond and PriceLabs, enabling you to apply their dynamic pricing solution to all of your listings on VRBO, Airbnb, and Booking.com.
Hostfully has integration with the top three dynamic pricing companies in the vacation rental industry:
- PriceLabs
- Wheelhouse
- Beyond
All dynamic prices can be synced with your direct booking website, as well as any other channels you’re integrated to.
You can also set pricing periods and apply them to specific seasons, holidays, conferences, or special events.
Hospitable support team is typically accessible 24/7 during the weekdays and offers extra assistance on weekends. You can get in touch with them by sending an email to support@hospitable.com or engaging in a live chat.
They also provide Hospitable Hosts Workshops. These workshops cover a wide range of topics, from scaling up to handling emotional support and service animal requests.
If you already have properties created on Airbnb, Hostfully is able to import all your listings to the system, avoiding any manual work.
Every Hostfully client has access to an onboarding manager that will be able to schedule 1:1 meetings.
During your onboarding process, your designated onboarding manager will assist you with:
- Importing your properties from other channels to which Hostfully is connected
- Configuring pricing
- Setting up your payment processor
- Adding your calendar Reservations
- Automating messaging
- Setting up the booking channels
Additionally, Hostfully provides unlimited customer support 24/7.
Additional training and onboarding sessions are also available upon request and might be charged separately.
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Hostfully has a direct integration with Quickbooks.
Besides that, Hostfully also integrates with Zapier and allows you to connect with many other accounting software.
Hospitable’s Unified Inbox pulls messages from Vrbo, Booking.com, and Airbnb inbox into one centralised inbox.
They gather all the necessary information, including guest reviews, ratings, and location details, ensuring that both you and the software have the essential data required to provide timely and welcoming responses.
Your responses seem to originate from the same platform where guests interacted with you. So, they won’t need to use a different application or communication channel.
With Hostfully’s Unified Inbox, you can stay in touch with your guests without the need to log in and out of various OTAs. You can chat with them via SMS, WhatsApp, email, or messaging platforms. Additionally, you can create pre-written templates and set triggers to automatically send them to your guests.
You’ll be able to filter your messages by date, guest name, and other parameters.
Hostfully does not do any web scraping, but rather only builds its connection via their approved partner API.
Pricing
Hospitable offers a subscription-based pricing model, with prices starting at £30 per month for two listings. After the first two, users only pay for listings that receive bookings on each given billing month.
Hostfully has three different pricing plans: Starter, Pro, and Premium. On monthly subscriptions, Hostfully charges a one-time implementation fee of 315 GBP, which is automatically waived on annual subscriptions. There is also a 10% discount for annual payments.
Team Access Roles, and Digital Signature features are not included in the Starter plan. The Starter plan supports up to four properties and costs 86 GBP on a monthly basis. The Pro plan supports up to 19 properties and costs 157 GBP on a monthly basis. The Premium plan starts from 205 GBP for 20 properties, and you pay additionally for additional properties. The 21st property costs 10 GBP and the price goes down as you increase the number of properties. Additional properties can cost as low as 5 GBP if you have more than 100, or even 2.5 GBP if you have more than 1000.
Hospitable vs Hostfully: Which Property Management System to Choose?
Hospitable primarily serves smaller enterprises, particularly independent landlords and smaller property management companies with a minimum of two rental properties. So, its services are designed to be straightforward and uncomplicated. Its flexible and transparent pricing enables users to only pay for listings that are actively rented and know exactly how much they will be charged each month. However, their direct booking website comes with additional costs and some features are only available in the Direct Premium plan. In addition, Hospitable has no direct contact number for its support team, so all communication takes place through email or online chat.
Hostfully is currently recognised as one of the best PMSes in the industry. Their PMS product won the VRMB All-Around Vacation Rental Software, and their digital guidebook was also recognised by Software Advice (sister company to Gartner’s magic quadrant). Hostfully is known for its clear interface, pipeline management, reliable direct integration with OTAs, many integrations with best-in-class vacation rental systems, and also its affordability when compared to top PMSes.
We are committed to ensuring that all our comparison articles are factually entirely correct and accurate. If you have spotted anything that you feel is wrong or misleading in this article, we’d appreciate hearing from you.
