Hostfully Review Prices & Features

Hostfully Review Prices & Features

Hostfully is an established brand in the vacation rental industry, focusing on streamlining operations through automation and providing property managers with tools to drive more direct bookings and 5 stars reviews.

Hostfully founded in 2016 in San Francisco. Oriental and Hostfully merged and have continued their operations under Hostfully since then. Oriental helps distribute bookings across different platforms.

Today I will show you a complete hopefully review. Hostfully is a vacation rental software used to manage over 30,000 properties. Guidebooks are the best feature. It is a digital guidebook that provides detailed information to guests.

What is Hostfully?

It has two products: the property management platform, an all-purpose software for vacation rentals, and the Guidebooks product, a digital guide that enhances a guest’s experience.

Why Hostfully?

There are several other online guidebook companies, such as Touchstay and Coral. I have tried both of them and they work fine. Hostfully has my preference though, for several reasons.

They are the market leader in the space, and constantly innovate their product. For example, voice access via Alexa and Google Assistant has recently been implemented.

Hostfully is also recognized by a lot of guests, which builds immediate trust. The tool is also easy to use and has excellent support.

Last but not least, your first Hostfully guidebook is 100% free! That means even if you are a casual host renting out a small guest room, you can be a professional.

How does it work? 

Setting up your first Hostfully guidebook is easy. Simply sign-up for a free account and you should have your guidebook online within an hour or so. The backend is very user-friendly, although a little confusing at times. Keep reading because below I´ll take you through the entire process so you don’t waste time trying to figure out everything on your own.

Summary of Hostfully Review

Hostfully was originally known as Oriental. It is a rental management platform that was established in 2015. Property managers wanted an easier way to manage vacation rental properties. It currently manages over 30,000 properties in 85 countries.

Although Hostfully can be used as an end-to-end vacation rental management system, it has two unique features. Guidebooks are Hostfully’s digital guides that property managers can create for guests to have all the rental information.

Property managers can view the entire rental lifecycle from start to end with the pipeline view. Additional features include a central calendar and inbox, payment processing, and website templates.

Pricing for Hostfully depends on how many properties you manage. Prices start at $79 per month. Customers must pay a $400 one-time implementation fee. This fee is waived if they purchase a year-long contract. Hopefully does not offer a free trial.

Potential customers should make use of Hostfully’s prerecorded demo videos and sign up for a live demonstration before buying the product.

Hostfully is an expensive, but powerful vacation rental management software.

The digital Guidebooks and pipeline reservation management tools are two of the unique features that set it apart from other competitors in this field. It is an excellent tool for any rental manager with multiple properties who needs it.

Prices and Costs for Hostfully

Prices for Hostfully vary depending on whether you are using Guidebook or vacation rental management. Prices range from $79 per property to $1500 for 250 properties, and up to four properties.

A $400 one-time implementation fee is charged. This fee is waived when you buy an annual plan. Guidebooks have different pricing models depending on whether you are a professional manager or host.

Vacation Rental Management

Certain features are only available on certain plans.

Starter: $79/month for one to four properties

Pro: $189/month for between 5 and 19 properties

Premium: Starting at $250 per Month for 20 Properties and increasing per Property

Guidebooks for Individuals

Guidebooks are digital booklets that guests receive. They include information such as internet passwords, places to eat, and things to do.

Premium: Unlimited free forever, includes one guidebook

Power Host: $9.99/month (or $7.99/month with an annual plan); includes one custom recommendation category and a guidebook

Guidebooks: Business Resources for Property Managers

The Business Guidebooks are recommended for property managers who require more sophisticated information.

Price: $24.99/month (or $19.99/month with an annual plan); Guidebooks available for one to five listings

Prime Plus: $49.99/month (or $44.99/month with an annual plan); Guidebooks available for six to 10 listings

Professional: Prices vary; Guidebooks available for more than 10 listings

Hostfully Coupon

Use the Hostfully coupon code SBARSJ604. To get a discount on pricing This code will give new customers Guidebooks free of charge for 2 months, and $100 off a property management platform subscription.

Hostfully Key Features

This review will discuss the main features of Hostfully and give insight into how they can help your vacation rental business. To give you an idea of Hostfully’s layout, we will show you images of the software.

SoftwarePundit’s review process explains how SoftwarePundit rates and reviews software tools.

Direct Booking Website

You may need a direct bookings site even if your properties have been listed on channels such as Vrbo or Airbnb. This will avoid paying fees for those channels.

Hostfully allows you to create a new direct booking website or use a widget from Hostfully that will enable guests to book directly through Hostfully.

Although the website setup is simple, it’s not very customizable. If you are looking for a highly customizable website, it is best to use a different site.

White labeling the website will allow you to hide that Hostfully is used by your guests. You can use the direct booking website to:

• Show your entire property list
• Capture guest information
• Collect payment
• Give property details to your guests

Listing Management

Customers have the option to either import data from Airbnb via an API sync or manually create listings on the Hostfully platform.

The manual listing creation tool has one advantage: information is condensed into a few pages. This makes the process much simpler. Other tools can be tedious and require you to click back and forth between pages.

Creating Listings

These pages are useful for creating listings.

Once you have completed the first page, fill in the next sections.

• Description
• Amenities
• Photos
• Pricing calendar
• Fees and policies
• Service providers
• Owner
• Notes
• Review
• Check-in instructions and rental conditions

Book Bookings and Pipeline View

You can view details about booked stays once bookings have been made using the pipeline view. This view is exclusive to Hostfully.

It provides a complete overview of your life cycle, including all confirmed and potential bookings, conversion rates, and total sales.

The pipeline view displays each of your properties as well as four circles: Hold, Quote, Arrival, and Stay. A quote circle is a potential stay that guests have inquired about.

A deposit can be collected or guests may place holds to transfer a booking to the Hold circle. After a booking has been confirmed, the Arrival circle will show the impending arrival date and activate the Stay circle once the booking is active.

You can search within this section by:

• Status
• Agent
• Property
• Booking channel
• Recent
• Arrival date

Centralized Calendar

For any vacation rental software, a centralized calendar is essential. It allows you to collect booking information from all channels and place it on one calendar.

To avoid duplicate bookings, it is important that the central calendar automatically updates whenever a booking has been made via any channel. Hostfully’s central calendar is very useful because of the color-coded blocks.

You can see which channel each booking originated from and you can drill down to each booking for more information.

Bookings Overview

Below is a calendar that will display a list of all properties’ bookings.

Each color corresponds with the channel that the bookings were made through. This will ensure you always know where your guests booked their rooms.

You can select a block to view an overview of the booking. This includes details about guest contact information and payment details.

Conclusion

Hostfully is my favorite web-based guidebook that is designed that is aimed at Airbnb hosts. The major reason for this is that it is completely free and it’s well designed and provides industry-leading features.

The only downside is that it could be a little difficult creating your first guidebook. It takes a while to get comfortable with the template and card structure. Once you are comfortable with it you can make multiple guides in a short time.