Zeevou vs Kigo
This article examines Zeevou vs Kigo by concentrating on the main features that a hospitality management software should offer. The data has been collected from Zeevou’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, Zeevou has a rating of 5.0, with the highest score for Customer Service, Features, and Value for Money.
Trustpilot introduces Zeevou as a Great tool with a 3.9 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.
Zeevou processes bookings as efficiently as your Airbnb experience, besides enabling you to vet your guests. Zeevou ensures it will never send check-in instructions before completing the steps below.
When you receive a booking in Zeevou, the system sends out an email to the guest, stating the steps waiting to be taken. You can customise the steps.
- General Information
- Guests can specify if they are booking for themselves or on behalf of someone else.
- Zeevou hides any forwarding email addresses from channels to capture the guests’ real email addresses and GDPR-compliant marketing consent.
- Business and leisure bookers are identified.
- Early check-ins and late check-outs can be upsold.
- Information like booking purposes and other custom questions can be asked.
- Guest Information
- This optional step enables you to collect further information on all the guests staying to enrich your contact database.
- You can even ask the guest to upload files like a scanned version of their passport/ID or a photo of their card.
- Agreement
- Zeevou’s E-signature feature allows you to get your terms and conditions digitally signed by guests.
- Zeevou shows if the guest has signed your terms and conditions. You can review all the information and verify the guest in the system.
- Once a guest has been marked as verified, a copy of the agreement envelope will be available for download.
- Upsells & Payment
- A pop-up appears, allowing guests to buy specific services and add-ons.
- A 3-D Secure Link is sent to the guests to complete their payment, ignoring card details sent across by channels. 3-D Secure payment links reduce the risk of unauthorised usage of cards.
- Guests can download a draft invoice for their stay at the point of payment.
- Security Deposit
- The system will automatically attempt to block and release the funds off the card according to the specified timeline.
- It is possible to use a different payment gateway for security deposits to be used for payments. Guests can enter two separate cards for the payment and security deposit.
Zeevou’s check-out management feature shows who has left the property on time and who has not checked out yet.
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.
Zeevou offers 2-way API integrations with more than 200 channels from OTAs to property listing sites.
By using Zeevou,
- you can advertise your properties on Zeevou Direct, a commission-free OTA.
- you can add a fixed amount as a mark-up to compensate for the channel’s commission.
- you do not need to pay any extra fees or commissions for bookings that flow through Zeevou’s channel manager.
N.B. Zeevou does not create listings for you or sync images and other content to OTAs except on Zeevou Direct and Here to Help.
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.
Zeevou allows you to automate your cleaning management.
- Check-out & mid-stay housekeeping tasks are automatically generated according to your specified frequency of cleaning.
- You can keep track of housekeepers’ availability, and they can request leaves through the mobile app.
- Zeevou’s advanced allocation algorithm optimises task allocations to housekeepers based on check-out and check-in times of guests, cleaners’ availability, and the average time needed to clean each unit type, taking into account travel time between properties.
- Housekeepers’ mobile app includes the status, the timing, and any notes you may have left for them. The system captures their time and location at the start and end of every task.
- Housekeepers can be required to take photos for each task they complete so that you can check on the quality of the cleaning.
- Photos are timestamped to help combat unfounded guest complaints.
- Housekeepers can also report maintenance issues through the mobile app.
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.
Zeevou offers a fully remote automated booking processing system that allows you to collect guest details, take payments, and sort out security deposits, and verify your guests from your home or office remotely.
Whether you use key safes, door locks with codes, KeyNest, or any other solution, you are assured that guests will not be sent any check-in instructions unless the booker has met all the conditions that you choose to set.
RemoteLock integration with Zeevou allows property managers to use various smart locks. Self-expiring PIN codes can be created to track the guests’ arrivals and departures. It also provides a convenient check-in and check-out experience for the guests.
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- Zeevou offers free direct booking websites which automatically transfer the information of your properties, unit types, and units from the PMS to the website.
- Zeevou’s website reflects all reservations made through your website in your central calendar.
- Zeevou generates a page for every country, city, and property similar to the system’s hierarchy.
- There are no booking-related charges for direct bookings.
- Zeevou’s booking engine pulls live rates and availability and supports multi-currency setups.
- You can collect payments through digital payment gateways and make safe payments with 3-D Secure Links.
- Zeevou’s website is mobile-friendly and compatible with all devices.
- The website is SEO-friendly and customisable, allowing you to create custom pages.
- It has a blog section to help you rank higher on search engines.
- The website has Open Tag Graphs for Facebook and Twitter content sharing;
- Zeevou integrates with the Google Search Console through the automatically generated sitemap, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, enabling you to track website performance.
- It integrates with WordPress through a plugin and other sites such as Wix using iFrame.
- You can create vouchers and promotions.
- You can set up add-ons to sell additional services as part of rate plans.
- Zeevou enables you to track and capture abandoned bookings at your direct booking website directly through Google Tag Manager.
- Zeevou allows you to add interactive features with custom scripts, such as live chat services.
- The website is GDPR-compliant.
- By connecting to your Airbnb account, your Airbnb reviews will show up automatically on your direct booking website.
Instant Website Builder
You can instantly convert your Airbnb listings into a free direct booking website with Zeevou. New users only need to copy and paste their Airbnb listing URL into the corresponding field on the website builder page, and the process of creating their website will begin automatically. Zeevou will read the Airbnb page and automatically populate the listing section of your website with relevant information. You only need to review the imported data – to make changes where necessary – and add specific details, including rates and min/max stay.
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).
Zeevou:
- allows hosts to set weekly and monthly rates.
- ensures that monthly invoices for extended stays do not vary from month to month.
- allows for the setting of multiple rate plans running in parallel so that a different rate can be adopted for a nightly stay to that of a monthly stay for the same listing.
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- After completing the automated booking process, the guest will then be informed that their booking has been confirmed.
- Airbnb Messaging Autoresponder automatically responds to your guests when you are not available, thus boosting your Airbnb ranking.
- The notifications of Airbnb are shown in Zeevou because Airbnb supports API messaging. You can reply to the notification within Zeevou, and your replies will be displayed in Airbnb to guests.
- The notifications of Booking.com are also shown in Zeevou thanks to Booking.com messaging API.
- You can automate the sharing of a house manual with information on the property or details of local businesses and attractions.
- Closer to arrival, you can automate the sending of check-in instructions, including the ability to attach a check-in guide for each property.
- Customisable trigger rules and variable-based templates help you improve guest experience.
- The VIP Guest Flagging feature of Zeevou enables you to keep track of your VIP guests, offering personalised services to them, and enhancing their loyalty. You can flag your existing and new guest profiles with Gold, Silver, or Bronze badges.
- 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.
Zeevou has built-in guest CRM.
- All the bookings related to a guest are displayed under their Guest Profile whether the booking is pulled in from an OTA or your direct booking website.
- Payments and all the bookings are recorded in these guest profiles.
- Through the guest CRM, you can send notes, emails, and text messages to your guests, as well as log tasks that relate to them.
- You can keep track of whether or not a guest has already been verified in Zeevou.
- Guest profiles can be created in Zeevou even if they do not have a booking yet.
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Zeevou enables you to:
- record maintenance issues.
- keep track of who reported them and how urgent they are.
- add a description and upload attachments.
- track the issues as they progress through various stages of completion.
- avoid expensive call-out fees by checking whether a staff member has verified the issue reported yet or not.
- get housekeepers to report maintenance issues at the point of cleaning by submitting them through Zeevou’s Mobile App.
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.
Zeevou has released a mobile app for use by members of your team which is the mobile version of Zeevou Hub. The Host App doesn’t currently include all the Hub’s features since it takes longer to develop them thoroughly on mobile.
This application is under test now. With Zeevou Host App,
- you can see upcoming arrivals and pending check-outs based on a specific timeline in the booking section.
- in the booking list, each reservation is specified by the lead guest’s name, the channel, and the arrival/departure dates. It also shows the booking statuses with various colours and illustrates if the booking has a cleaning or maintenance problem.
- you can easily create a booking via Zeevou’s Host App when receiving a call from your guests anytime and anywhere (this option is not included in the first release).
- you can take care of cleaning issues promptly.
- you have all your messages unified in one Inbox.
- you can use the booking actions such as extending and splitting the booking or changing the booking status.
- you can apply filters based on dates, property, booking status, payment status, and security deposit status.
The mobile app for housekeepers is a native mobile app available for Android and iOS. Zeevou Mobile App enables you to:
- automate the creation and assignment of check-out and mid-stay housekeeping tasks.
- create tasks manually.
- communicate essential points to your housekeepers within Zeevou.
- get a report of any issues that housekeepers have noticed directly through the Zeevou Mobile App.
- track the time and location at which housekeepers start and finish the cleans.
The Maintenance Mobile App, Investor Mobile App, and Guest Mobile App will be developed next. Further developments will cost you no money after launch.
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.
- With Zeevou, you can manage a chain of properties or properties across different countries in one unified hub.
- You can set other currencies by property.
- The system architecture allows for global expansion as the structural hierarchy is based on multiple levels: countries, cities, areas, properties, buildings, floors, unit types, and units.
- Similar units are grouped under a unit type, allowing you to quickly shift bookings to maximise occupancy.
- At the property level, you can assign office staff, check-in staff, and housekeepers (a person, a team, or a company) who have limited access to the system. There are dedicated fields for check-in instructions, check-out instructions, and details on finding the property. These can all be pulled into the automated emails that you can set up within Zeevou, avoiding the need to create a separate check-in template for each property.
- Zeevou enables you to operate multiple brands from one place while specifying a marketing distinction.
- You can enter your meta title and meta description for SEO purposes, in addition to specifying Open Graph Tags to optimise how your links are displayed across social media platforms.
- The hierarchy of the system is automatically reflected on Zeevou’s direct booking website and booking engine.
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Zeevou automates a large number of your day-to-day administrative tasks centrally.
- Check-ins: The automated booking processing ensures that all the required steps have been completed before self check-in instructions are sent out.
- Housekeeping: Zeevou automatically generates check-out and mid-stay housekeeping tasks and assigns these to staff.
- Maintenance: Zeevou allows you to record and track the progress of your maintenance issues.
Zeevou allows you to provide real-time access to all your staff.
All users added to Zeevou can access the calendar and their tasks through the responsive web app to cut down on internal communications.
Zeevou allows you to create a profile for each company that you are outsourcing, like a cleaning provider, associating a manager profile with it and offers them a limited view of the booking calendar.
Zapier Integration connects your system to more than 3000 apps including Google Calendar, Slack, Quickbooks, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Trello, Mailchimp, Benchmark, etc. for your vacation rental management.
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.
Zeevou’s Owner Portal offers real-time access to owners and investors. Hosts can specify the access level of the owners, landlords, and investors.
Staff with access to financial details will see:
- arrival and departure times.
- the number of guests staying.
- the finances relating to the booking.
- add-ons.
- the Monthly Profit Report: they can see details of all income and expenses relating to their property (Blaze and Dazzle hosts).
- commissions held by booking agents.
- management fees charged by hosts (Blaze and Dazzle hosts).
Hosts with access to guest data, in addition to the above, will see
- the names and contact details of the guests staying.
Investors can also create bookings and block dates directly within Zeevou.
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.
Zeevou streamlines the whole booking process and takes care of everything before a guest is given access. Zeevou:
- sends a 3-D Secure Payment Link to collect payments for bookings and add-ons, reducing the chances of fraud and chargebacks.
- allows you to integrate with payment gateways to set different levels of security requirements based on the transaction amount.
- enables you to log payments taken outside of the system in cash, by bank transfer, or through a card reader.
- allows you to take payments over the phone.
- has the option of turning on weekly or monthly invoicing.
- has the Partial Payment Link feature to generate a payment link to collect payment for part of a booking to split the cost of a booking between guests.
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.
- The reports can be filtered and sorted based on various fields. Specific searches can be saved to be reused in the future.
- Data can be exported and downloaded as CSV or Excel files.
- Zeevou offers Profit Analysis for both hosts and investors in real-time. In this report, information about channel commissions, card payment fees, and profit of selling add-ons can be pulled.
- A number of operational reports can also be accessed by users, their staff, and outsourced companies.
KigoPay is in charge of reporting by integrating KigoPay with Kigo’s new channel management technology.
Rates can be set in bulk for multiple unit types in one go.
Alternatively, Zeevou enables you to adapt the rate plans automatically by Rate Rules. This feature allows you to define your own rules to have a more customised rate-setting.
Kigo Revenue Management:
- studies your occupancy rates and sets the prices.
- updates the prices across your properties.
Zeevou provides set-up, onboarding, and training support for free for all the Dazzle, Glow and Blaze hosts. You get a Partner Success Manager who will accompany you throughout onboarding and support you should you have any queries or concerns.
Zeevou will automatically import all your future Airbnb and Booking.com bookings, and you can import the rest using the Bulk Booking Import functionality.
Zeevou’s onboarding support is provided for as long as you need, as the ultimate goal is to make sure that you feel confident in using the system and get all the support you require.
For any specific queries, bug reports, or to request new features, the built-in support system allows you to Raise a Hand directly to the developers easily.
Zeevou’s monthly Host Forums also allow you to provide your feedback on the recently released features and contribute to Zeevou’s roadmap.
- 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).
Zeevou has integration with Xero. The Xero integration automates posting of invoices, incomes, expenses and simplifies reconciliation. Whenever a guest checks out, Xero automatically sends the invoice to you.
Zeevou also allows you to differentiate between income within the system.
Zeevou supports standard invoicing, as well as proxy invoicing for managed units and TOMS invoicing for EU-based operators.
Investor Deals in Zeevou allow you to configure the system to calculate income and expenses to mirror the deal you have set up in real life in a highly customisable manner.
The invoices generated by Zeevou take into account the investor deal to work out the account they should be applied to and the tax schema to be used.
Zeevou also allows hosts to keep track of expenses – whether they are recurring or one-off or payment-related expenses such as transaction costs or currency conversion fees. Expenses can also be allocated in full or in part to investors. The information around the splits in income and expenses between you and your investors is then taken into account in the Monthly Profit Report.
Zeevou also allows you to specify for each Investor Deal whether you want the funds to flow to your payment gateway or to that of the investor.
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.
Zeevou’s Unified Inbox feature allows you to import all your emails, from emails from the OTAs to normal correspondence. In addition, you can access all messages from channel communications to text messages in the same place.
It shows messages from Airbnb and Booking.com from the enquiry level while for the other channels, it shows messages after booking confirmation.
In the conversation view of Zeevou Unified Inbox, communications are visible in a timeline with details.
You can see the details of the related booking in each communication. Also, each booking contains a log of all communications (whether emails or SMSes) that relate to them.
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Pricing
Zeevou offers four sets of prices depending on the features included in each plan. These four pricing plans are Spark, Glow, Blaze, and Dazzle. The Spark plan, which is free, connects you to the community of hosts seeking to optimise their hospitality businesses.
This plan includes a free direct booking website together with other basic, but still very useful tools. The Glow plan’s main purpose is to increase your turnover by maximising bookings. Glow is 14 GBP per unit per month. The price per apartment on the Glow Plan is 24 GBP per month. The Blaze plan will give the users a handful of Zeevou features which brings ultimate automation to its users. Blaze costs 38 GBP per unit per month and includes all the features of Spark and Glow plus:
- Small Group Business Support
- Rate Rules
- Check-Out Management
- Cleaning App
- Real-Time Reporting
- Maintenance Management
- All Integrations
- Task Management
- Unlimited Seats
- Custom CSS
- Dynamic Pricing (30 days rolling)
According to Zeevou pricing strategy, rooms cost less than apartments, and you can save up to 80% if you go with Annual Commitment. The more units you commit to Zeevou, the less you have to pay per each, and the price drops exponentially. All sign-ups come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
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.
Kigo also offers optional add-ons with separate set-up fees and monthly subscriptions:
- Kigo Platinum Support: monthly subscription of £400 ($500)
- Kigo Check-Out: set-up fee of £242 ($299) plus a monthly subscription of £43 ($49)
- Premium Website: set-up fee of £404 ($499) plus a monthly subscription of £50 ($59)
In addition, a minimum monthly fee of £161($199) is charged if the monthly fees are less.
If you want to have a more accurate estimation of how much your costs would be, you may schedule a call with the Kigo sales team.
Zeevou vs Kigo: Which Property Management System to Choose?
Kigo is a well-known Vacation Rental Management Software. Kigo has a good reputation in support services and functionalities. 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 that is made on any channels the moment you start using Kigo.
Zeevou has developed a wide range of features which allow you full automation and tools to get more direct bookings. So, as your business grows, you do not need to worry about the large amounts of commissions and subscription fees. Zeevou offers unlimited and free support forever, and it does not charge you anything for extra features. In other words, it provides you with all the features it develops over time based on its roadmap with the development tasks prioritised with the help of Zeevou users.
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