Uplisting vs Hostfully
This article examines Uplisting vs Hostfully by concentrating on the main features that a hospitality management software should offer. The data has been collected from Uplisting’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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
Uplisting does not have the option for defining and pushing weekly and/or monthly rates.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Uplisting helps you manage different Airbnb and Booking.com accounts from one central system, meaning that the properties may also be in different locations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Training
- In-Person
- Live Online
- Webinars
- Documentation
Support
- 24/7 (Live Rep)
- Business Hours
- Online
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.
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.
Hostfully has a direct integration with Quickbooks.
Besides that, Hostfully also integrates with Zapier and allows you to connect with many other accounting software.
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
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
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.
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.
Uplisting vs Hostfully: Which Property Management System to Choose?
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.
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.
