iGMS vs Kigo
This article examines iGMS vs Kigo by concentrating on the main features that a hospitality management software should offer. The data has been collected from iGMS’s and Kigo’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, 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 4.3 TrustScore.
In Capterra, Kigo has a rating of 3.7, with the highest score for Features.
Trustpilot introduces Kigo as a Poor tool with a 2.6 TrustScore.
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.
Kigo enables the automation of responding to enquiries to convert them to bookings as quickly as possible. You can build a template and automated response emails that confirm the availability of the property of interest or show other available properties.
In the Kigo Reservation Module, you can check:
- Booking source
- Occupancy dashboard
- Full portfolio
- Revenue breakdown
Kigo has an integrated payment processor which has a Single Settlement reporting capability. It helps in fraud prevention and checking transaction history. Kigo charges 5% per booking for using KigoPay.
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.
Two–way real-time connection with all of Kigo’s partner channels.
Kigo’s channel manager:
- Keeps rental rates competitive across portals.
- Fills the calendar gaps by automatically relaxing length-of-stay limits and adjusting pricing to optimise occupancy.
- Charges 3% per booking for all the payments outside Kigo, for example, for your Airbnb bookings.
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.
With Kigo Operation Manager, you can:
- Schedule cleans and tasks in the centralised management area.
- Give your cleaners and maintenance staff easily accessible clear sets of daily and weekly tasks to complete.
- Set your expectations by attaching photos and have a place to receive photos in real-time from cleaners.
- Automate all communications through the system by email and SMS.
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.
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- 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.
Instant Website Builder
With the iGMS Website Builder, you can set up your website with no coding knowledge. All it takes is a simple click on the “Create a website” button to transform your Airbnb listing into a fully functional website. All your information, including property descriptions, photos, amenities, and pricing will be automatically pulled from Airbnb.
Kigo’s Website Starter Package makes an image-driven, mobile-friendly, secure WordPress website for all of your properties.
The website Kigo makes for you:
- Allows map search.
- Manages multiple properties easily by organising units from countries to buildings based on a geographic hierarchy.
- Groups properties together to increase the occupancy rate like homes by the beach, pet-friendly, cabins, etc.
- Tracks your website performance through analytics.
Kigo charges for Premium Websites a set-up fee of £404 ($499) plus a monthly subscription of £50 ($59).
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.
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- 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.
- Kigo has made a mobile-friendly link to communicate in real-time with guests, chase down reviews, and target repeat referrals and direct bookings for the future. You can test it by typing rebrand.ly/guestxp on your phone.
- Kigo’s bank-safe eSignature helps in sending, signing and securely storing documents.
- Kigo provides a ready-to-use template for your automated guest messaging system.
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.
With Kigo Operation Manager, you can:
- Schedule cleans and tasks in the centralised management area.
- Give your cleaners and maintenance staff easily accessible clear sets of daily and weekly tasks to complete.
- Set your expectations by attaching photos and have a place to receive photos in real-time from cleaners.
- Automate all communications through the system by email and SMS.
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.
With Kigo, you will not force your guests to download and install an app. Kigo provides a URL or a web-based link that you send to the guests, and they can open it and access the information.
This platform allows you to communicate with your guests pre-arrival, during the stay, and after check-out. You can automate sending the terms and conditions, and they can use the e-signature tool to sign.
You can also send local attractions, coupon codes, or FAQs to them.
iGMS enables you to manage different Airbnb accounts from one central system.
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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.
With Kigo Operation Manager, you can:
- Schedule cleans and tasks on the centralised management area.
- Give your cleaners and maintenance staff easily accessible clear sets of daily and weekly tasks to complete.
- Set your expectations by attaching photos and have a place to receive photos in real-time from cleaners.
- Automate all communications through the system by email and SMS.
iGMS allows you to define different roles in your management system.
Each property can have only one property owner.
Kigo’s Owner Portal:
- Creates multiple owner statements in bulk.
- Provides automatic calculation of property management commissions and accounting adjustments like credit card fees, channels’ commissions and promotions.
- Customises the type of information to display.
Owners can:
- Check property availability calendars.
- Book an owner stay or guest-of-owner stay.
- Download their owner statement.
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.
KigoPay is a payment solution designed by Kigo.
- KigoPay processes multi-currency transactions from one centralised location.
- KigoPay automatically generates event triggers and notifications for reconciliation, fraud, chargeback disputes, etc.
- Kigo payment processing services are PCI DSS compliant with bank-level encryption.
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.
KigoPay is in charge of reporting by integrating KigoPay with Kigo’s new channel management technology.
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.
Kigo Revenue Management:
- Studies your occupancy rates and sets the prices.
- Updates the prices across your properties.
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.
- Kigo has a one-time set-up fee of £810 ($1000).
- Kigo Platinum Support provides direct access to an expert who speaks your language and offers product walkthroughs and tailored tutorials.
- Kigo Platinum Support costs a monthly subscription of £400 ($500).
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KigoPay completely streamlines all reconciliation and financial data. Integrating KigoPay with Kigo’s new channel management technology simplifies complex calculations for tax and fee reporting from channel partner bookings.
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.
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Pricing
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.
Kigo charges around 3% for offline transactions and 5% for online transactions made through KigoPay. A 0.5% payment gateway fee is applied to all payments processed through non-KigoPay integrated payment gateways.
iGMS vs Kigo: Which Property Management System to Choose?
To find the best PMS, you need to focus on your needs and expectations. 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 you are in an emergency.
Kigo has a good reputation in support services and functionalities. This software also offers direct integration with Airbnb, Booking.com, and HomeAway/Vrbo and pushes not only rates and availability, but also photos and descriptions in real-time. However, the commission-based pricing strategy of Kigo, sometimes, becomes too costly as apart from the subscription fees you pay to this PMS provider, they get a commission for each booking made on any channels the moment you start using Kigo.
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