Guesty vs iGMS
This article examines Guesty vs iGMS by concentrating on the main features that a hospitality management software should offer. The data has been collected from Guesty’s and iGMS’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, Guesty has a rating of 4.5, with the highest score for Ease of Use.
Trustpilot introduces Guesty as an Excellent tool with a 4.4 TrustScore.
In Capterra, iGMS has a rating of 4.6, with the highest score for Value for Money and Customer Service.
Trustpilot introduces iGMS as an Excellent tool with a 4.7 TrustScore.
Guesty automates collecting guest information and verifying reservation details, Check-in Forms, rental agreements that explain your terms and conditions, and collecting guests’ e-signatures.
Guesty’s integration with CheKin allows the automatic collection of necessary documentation from guests, directs relevant information to the authorities, and allows guests to check in online ahead of time.
iGMS’s booking processing is effortless and straightforward. Every booking that hits your properties from OTAs has a reservation card in which the guest’s contact information is listed.
iGMS automates your payment processing, and you can also make refunds quickly. You can use the pre-set email templates for each property or create new ones manually and easily use them for communication. Your check-in instructions will also be sent out in one of the emails.
You can also alter the bookings and change the number of guests, dates, or extended stays.
Guesty provides integrations with 60 different marketing platforms or channels. Almost every single channel uses a 2-way API connection instead of 1-way or an iCal connection.
Guesty has direct integrations with six online booking platforms, including Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda, TripAdvisor, HomeAway and Misterb&b.
By using Guesty:
- You will access an auto-pricing tool which automatically adjusts prices across all booking platforms according to your specifications.
- You can use the official, step-by-step, Guesty-guided connection process for integrating with various OTAs.
- For Airbnb Integration, if you already have an Airbnb account, the integration takes about 5 minutes, and within 24 hours, all of your data from your Airbnb account or multiple accounts are pulled into Guesty.
iGMS offers native integrations with Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, and it offers iCal support for various OTAs.
Getting connected to Airbnb, HomeAway, and Vrbo, you can sync your availability, occupancy, pricing, and messaging with your iGMS account and manage them from your multi-calendar within the system.
Regarding the rest of the channels, you can only import/export your tasks and availability using the iCal connection, which requires your supervision as it takes some time for it to get updated each time a change is made.
Guesty does not offer built-in cleaning features and suggests outsourcing cleaning services.
iGMS generates mid-stay housekeeping and check-out housekeeping tasks automatically from the system upon every entry/check-out. Your iGMS multi-calendar will provide you with three types of functions differentiated with three different colours:
- Red tasks — assigned cleaning visits are indicated by a © in the multi-calendar, and unassigned ones have a silhouette of a person. Cleaning visits are automatically created upon check-out of each reservation. It is not possible to have more than one cleaning visit per day.
- Purple tasks — short visits, inspections or handyman appointments. The number of tasks per day is not limited.
- Green tasks with a check mark — completed cleaning visits and tasks.
An iGMS account holder can set up Access and Permissions in each team member’s account in the Team & Members section.
Guesty’s auto messaging enables you to send check-in instructions only if the Check-in Form has been completed. You can also use the filters to send your guests reminders to fill out the Check-in Form.
iGMS sends check-in instructions to guests via a set of ready-made email templates for each property. You can also create new templates for each booking, message them from the unified inbox, welcome them, and provide them with the necessary information for each check-in.
- Guesty offers its website builder to its users free of charge. However, Guesty charges a 3% commission of the income as its subscription fee.
- Guesty’s website reflects all reservations made through your website in your central calendar.
- Guesty allows you to sync your existing website with Guesty’s booking platform through Guesty’s Open API.
The website created by Guesty:
- enables you to create customisable coupons to offer discounts to your customers. The user can set the minimum number of nights required, valid reservation dates, expiration of the coupon, and the number of times the coupon can be used.
- allows customisation in a sense that features the listing of your choice on the homepage.
- can be integrated with Google Analytics to keep track of your marketing efforts.
- allows you to set up a Facebook Pixel to capture abandoned bookings directly through Facebook Ads.
- iGMS does not have a booking engine yet, but it is on their roadmap.
- There is no way to connect your website to your iGMS account. However, you can create each direct booking manually in iGMS and automate your communications and housekeeping afterwards.
Guesty allows you to:
- incorporate mid-term stays into your rental company’s business model.
- apply custom rate strategies to your listings, and Guesty will automatically adjust your prices and minimum night rules accordingly.
- add your longer-term listings to Airbnb’s Monthly Stay programme along with other leading mid-term booking channels.
- filter reports by the length of stay to tag extended stays within the Guesty admin to automate customised communication.
iGMS offers a tool for times when a guest wants to stay longer in your properties, which is editing the booking without going to your Airbnb account to make changes to the booking details. The property, the price, the number of guests, the dates, and the number of nights can be altered from inside the reservation card.
Guesty’s 24/7 Guest Communication Services:
- respond to your guests’ enquiries based on the urgency of incoming messages.
- answer incoming enquiries during your team’s off-hours.
- can adjust bookings at your multi-calendar based on availability, price and location.
- prioritise your reviews, escalating the most urgent ones to your attention.
Through filled detailed questionnaires and brief onboarding phases, Guesty users hand over their guest communications to Guesty’s team of experts.
- iGMS’s hosts and their teams can view structured information about the booking in reservation cards, such as the property, dates, guests, and the reservation cost.
- You can set up how the check-in will take place. A concierge can be assigned or you can also select self check-in for the task.
- Hosts can also add instructions and assign tasks to the team member related to cleaning or check-out.
- There are specific pre-set email templates for check-in instructions for each property, which are sent out automatically to your guests from Airbnb, HomeAway, and Vrbo.
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iGMS allows you to view the guest profile on the platform. The guest profile contains information about the guest, such as reservation code, contact details, their profile on Airbnb, government ID, work email, social accounts, selfies and more.
You can easily navigate to the reviews and recommendations that the guest has received. If you click on the guest’s photo, you will have the guest’s Airbnb verification information displayed. This allows Airbnb hosts to screen guests instantly via the software.
From the reservation card, hosts can message the guests or open the itinerary.
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iGMS:
- Allows recording maintenance issues.
- Enables you to create a task for your fixer from the platform with the address, date, description of the issue, and approximate duration. You can also add notes for your staff about each task.
- Allows the fixers and the cleaners to turn the task’s status to complete when done and track them in real time.
- Sends the fixers notifications on their mobile phones via text messaging when the task is created automatically from the system or manually by another user of iGMS. They will also receive another message as a reminder the evening before.
- Creates a daily schedule for each staff of yours for the following day in order to avoid missing things.
Guesty has its native mobile app, which enables its users to manage their business on-the-go by offering:
- Unified Inbox
- Multi-Calendar
- Task Management Tools
Employees will be notified through the access they have to the Task Management feature of your native mobile app. The employee’s task management software is included in the main app with a limited portion of information accessible.
iGMS has a mobile app and an iPod/iPad app that allows you to manage your properties fully from the app, just like when you are using the web version.
Guesty’s Multi-Unit feature allows you to group similar listings together. In this way, you can group your multi-units and single units to create a hotel complex and connect with SiteMinder and Booking.com. It also streamlines tasks and increases occupancy.
iGMS enables you to manage different Airbnb accounts from one central system.
Guesty enables task management by:
- creating tasks after specific triggering events such as check-ins, check-outs, planned arrivals or departures and reservation confirmations. Triggers might be related to property availability such as first availability in a row or end of rentals.
After completion of certain tasks, other actions are activated automatically similar to the domino effect.
- creating manual tasks and notifying the assignee.
- using the Task Management feature of the Guesty mobile app.
iGMS can automate your communications with the guests, your housekeepers, and maintenance staff fully.
- Communication: Pre-set email templates to be sent out to your Airbnb, Vrbo, HomeAway and Expedia guests automatically.
- Housekeeping: iGMS automatically generates check-out housekeeping tasks after each check-out. The software provides your housekeepers with a daily schedule to be followed using the staff portal.
- Maintenance: iGMS allows you to create profiles and tasks for the maintenance staff.
Guesty’s Owner Portal brings transparency for the owners and is compatible with 15+ different languages.
It provides reports that detail each property’s yearly and monthly revenues, compare their performances to one another and highlight notable trends.
Guesty’s Owner Portal allows the owners to reserve a stay at their properties directly from the portal.
iGMS allows you to define different roles in your management system.
Each property can have only one property owner.
Guesty’s online payment processor accumulates guests’ charges under their reservation, facilitates payments, and sends receipts to guests.
The auto-payments feature allows Guesty to charge guests according to your specified policies.
The auto-payments feature allows collecting each payment at the stage of your choice. However, one person on Capterra has mentioned the deficiency of this feature and Guesty’s inability to split payment.
Guesty’s payment processing feature collects all payment-related information, adding them automatically to the data on your dashboard, which is useful for charging repeat guests.
iGMS allows you to collect payments from your direct bookings, website, and hotel collections using the Stripe payment gateway.
- After connecting your Stripe account with iGMS, following every direct booking, the system will generate an invoice with the necessary information in the reservation card, which is editable.
- iGMS generates invoices, and the guests can complete their payments using Stripe 3D Secure Link.
- You can easily log payment and deposit if it is for a hotel.
- You can also refund the guest from the system.
Guesty Reporting Tools create reports on specific aspects of your business from over 65 parameters, including check-in time, addresses, revenue and many more.
iGMS’s reports include total revenue, cleaning and management fees, the number of cleaning tasks performed per month, taxes and service fees, payouts, and itinerary information.
The user could adjust iGMS reports, including payouts, reservations, monthly revenue, and tasks to give to other team members.
Guesty’s Yield Management feature sets custom rate strategies to adjust rates and minimum night stay rules and offers rate plans.
You can integrate iGMS with PriceLabs, DPGO, Wheelhouse, and Beyond to get dynamic pricing services.
You can also enable the Channel Markup feature to change pricing, availability, and rates.
The main way to reach Guesty is through live chat, accessible on all pages of their website. They are committed to being available 24/7 and responding to messages in a timely manner. Moreover, you can contact the partnerships and press team by email in five different languages. There is also a 5-week onboarding process which comes at an additional cost and is separate from the month-to-month subscription fee.
iGMS offers a Help Desk, Email Support, and Website Chat Support for Pro, Flexible, and trial accounts. However, iGMS customer support working hours differ for each plan.
The Pro users can receive support Monday to Friday 24 hours and 9:00 to 17:00 on the weekends.
Guesty is integrated with Quickbooks and Xero for facilitating trust accounting.
Sage Intacct is another integration you need to have if your vacation rental business is considered an enterprise-size company.
Guesty does not include a built-in accounting module.
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Guesty’s unified inbox lets you receive emails and enquiries through booking channels.
Archiving and filtering capabilities, and also Saved Views are useful. The most effective Saved Views suggested by Guesty are:
- Potential guests
- Guests checking in that day
- Assignee
iGMS’s unified inbox only works for Airbnb, Booking.com, and HomeAway at the moment.
iGMS allows you to respond to all guest enquiries from Airbnb and HomeAway with ready-made email templates within the system. Messages received from Booking.com require you to search the name of the guest in iGMS messenger.
iGMS’s unified inbox lets you see the booking and guest details, pin, mark, answer the messages, write notes on a To-Do list, and alter reservations if necessary.
Pricing
Guesty’s pricing strategy is different from most of its competitors, and the pricing information is not publicly available. However, it is a commission-based pricing model, so you will be charged for bookings made through the software. If you want to have a more accurate estimation of how much your costs would be, you may schedule a conversation with the Guesty sales team.
iGMS offers two different plans, Flexible and PRO. The Flexible plan has limited features activated but allows you to use Airbnb listings with full functionality, using which you need to pay 0.74 GBP ($1) per night if you have reservations. If you decide to use a PRO plan, you can choose between a monthly or annual commitment.
At the beginning of each month, you will receive an invoice from the company that counts the number of your active properties – properties that have received at least one booking. Each property’s price under the annual plan is 14.76 GBP ($20), and it is 19.93 GBP ($27) on a monthly plan.
As for the cancellation of your subscription, they have specific policies that are good to know upfront. iGMS also offers a 14-day trial in the beginning, which is an excellent opportunity for you to decide whether it is the right solution for you or not.
Guesty vs iGMS: Which Property Management System to Choose?
Guesty is one of the most popular PMS providers in the vacation rental industry. It is an established brand with many branches all around the world. Guesty has a different pricing strategy compared to most of its competitors. The pricing model is commission-based, which means you will be charged on the bookings made through the software. This naturally increases the amount of commission you have to pay to Guesty while managing and scaling your short-term rental business. There are also other charges such as the initial set-up fee. Guesty lacks built-in trust accounting, cleaning management, and maintenance management. Guesty does not have any specific module to accumulate guest’s data in a guest CRM. However, Guesty is famous for having one of the most user-friendly platforms in the industry.
Suppose you need a system that links you to some OTAs like Airbnb, Booking.com, and Expedia. In that case, iGMS helps you keep your calendar updated, manage your operations, and automate your communications. iGMS provides a central portal to manage and organise cleaning and maintenance teams. So, this platform makes it really easy to assign jobs, track work orders, make payments, and handle all the other tasks associated with cleaning and maintenance teams. However, iGMS offers only online support (no phone support) for both pro and free versions which isn’t ideal when in an emergency.
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