A Hostfully Review: From Our Team of Superhosts

FeaAs experienced Airbnb Superhosts, we've had the opportunity to test and utilize various property management software solutions. For today, we’ll be checking out Hostfully as a tool for your vacation rental business.

Just to provide a bit of context, Hostfully is a cloud-based property management platform designed to streamline and automate various aspects of running a short-term rental business. With a strong focus on enhancing guest experience and increasing efficiency, Hostfully has gained popularity among hosts and property managers worldwide. We’ll discuss its features, pricing, general user experience, and how hosts and managers can use it for their short term rentals.

Best Hostfully Features and How Hosts Can Use Them for Their Airbnb

Hostully offers a variety of features within its property management system. We’ll explain its different tools and how you can use them to help improve your rental property.

Channel Manager

Hostfully's channel manager is a game-changer for hosts who list their properties on multiple platforms. It allows you to synchronize your listings across various booking sites, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and more. This feature saves time and reduces the risk of double bookings, ensuring a seamless experience for both hosts and guests.

In our experience, the channel manager was easy to set up and use. The synchronization process was smooth, and we appreciated the peace of mind it provided by eliminating the risk of double bookings.

Central Calendar

The central calendar feature in Hostfully is another standout tool that simplifies property management. With this feature, hosts can view all their bookings, reservations, and availability in one place. The calendar syncs with multiple channels, eliminating the need to manually update each platform separately.

Hosts can easily adjust nightly rates, set booking rules, and make direct reservations through the central calendar. This level of control and flexibility empowers hosts to optimize their pricing strategy and maximize their revenue potential. The ability to make bulk pricing edits and set custom booking rules saved us a significant amount of time and effort, not to mention its very user-friendly nature, making it easy to navigate.

Unified Inbox

Hostfully's unified inbox is a lifesaver when it comes to guest communication. It consolidates all guest messages from various booking platforms into a single dashboard. This means hosts can manage inquiries, reservations, and guest interactions efficiently, without the hassle of switching between multiple inboxes.

We particularly liked the ability to create templates and automate certain responses, ensuring quick and consistent responses to common guest questions. This feature allows hosts to provide prompt and professional customer service, even during busy periods.

Direct Booking Website

Hostfully offers hosts the ability to create a direct booking website, enabling them to accept reservations directly from their own site. This feature is particularly valuable for hosts looking to reduce their reliance on third-party booking platforms and avoid paying high commission fees.

While the direct booking website feature is relatively basic compared to standalone website builders, we found it to be a convenient and cost-effective solution for hosts who want to establish an online presence without investing in a separate website.

Automation

Automation is key to efficient property management, and Hostfully excels in this area. The platform offers a range of automation tools that streamline repetitive tasks, such as guest messaging, pricing, and reviews. By leveraging these automations, hosts can save time, reduce manual errors, and ensure a consistent level of service across their properties.

For example, automated guest messaging can be triggered based on booking status, sending personalized welcome messages, check-in instructions, and post-stay reviews. This level of automation not only improves the guest experience but also frees up hosts' time to focus on other aspects of their business.

Mobile App

Hostfully's mobile app is a convenient tool for hosts who need to manage their properties on the go. With the app, hosts can access all the essential features of the platform, such as the calendar, inbox, and reservation management. This flexibility allows hosts to respond to guest inquiries, make updates, and monitor their business from anywhere, at any time.

The mobile app is user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy for hosts to navigate and perform necessary tasks. Whether you're a seasoned host or just starting out, the Hostfully mobile app empowers you to stay connected and in control of your Airbnb business.

Inbox AI

One of the most innovative features of Hostfully is its Inbox AI tool. This AI-powered feature uses data from property details, digital guidebooks, and existing guest conversations to generate personalized guest messages. This level of customization enhances the guest experience and saves hosts valuable time in crafting individual responses.

Inbox AI leverages advanced algorithms to understand the context of guest inquiries and provide relevant, tailored responses. By automating this process, hosts can ensure prompt and accurate communication with their guests, ultimately leading to higher satisfaction rates and positive reviews.

Digital Guidebooks

Digital Guidebooks are pretty simple, it allows hosts or property managers to create comprehensive guides that can be directly sent to their guests. You can include things like directions to the property, check-in and check-out information, general house rules, wi-fi information, how-to guides, and local recommendations.

It can also be used as a platform to offer extra services and can be customized according to your rental’s needs. In the end, you’ll just have to send a link to your guests and they can access all of the information they need. It’s simple, convenient, and very presentable.

Hostfully Pricing: How Much Does Hostfully Cost?

Now, let’s move on to the costs that Hostfully brings to your vacation rental. Let us first preface this with saying that it’s not going to be cheap. But, if you think about the potential time savings and the better guest experience property management systems like Hostfully brings, it ends up being worth it in the end. With that said, here are the plans available on Hostfully.

• Starter: Starts at $119 per month per listing or $1,285.50 per listing per year when billed annually. It supports up to 4 listings and includes all of Hostfully’s basic features that we’ve mentioned above.
• Pro & Pro Plus: These plans start at $215 per listing per month or $2,322 per listing per year for up to 11 listings in Pro, and $269 per listing per month or $2,905.20 per listing per years for up to 19 listings for Pro Plus. These plans include everything in Starter, with a dedicated customer success manager, private labeling, team roles, SMS and Whatsapp messaging, and digital signatures.
• Premium - These plans are perfect for property owners with a large number of listings. Plans aren’t publicly available and everyone will get a custom quote, depending on their number of listings. It includes added access to API, custom engineering, and unlimited in-app customer support team calls.

Overall, we think the Starter plan is already pretty extensive. It covers most of what you need from a vacation rental software, and is the cheapest plan available. So, if you’re only managing a handful of listings, we recommend checking it out.

Hostfully also offers plans for their digital guidebook offerings.

• Starter: Free forever but only supports one guidebook.
• Better Version: Starts at $9.99 per month or $95.88 per year for one guidebook. It unlocks custom brand features, translations to over 16 languages, and access to all revenue generating capabilities.

They don’t offer a free trial for their property management platform but do offer free calls for a demo if you want them. However, they do offer a 14-day free trial for their guidebook plans.

Hostfully Pricing vs Alternatives

• Guesty - Lite: starts at $16 per listing/month for up to 3 listings. Pro and Enterprise: For 4-199 listings and 200+ listings, they offer custom prices and you’ll need to contact them for pricing. Guesty also charges for some of their extra features.
• Hospitable - Host: $29 per month for 1 property plus $10 per additional active property. Professional: $59 per month for 2 properties and only charge an extra $15 per additional active property. Mogul: $99 per month for 3 properties and charge an extra $30 per additional active property.
• Lodgify - Starter: $20/ month + 1.9% of booking fee per listing. Professional: $50/ month per listing. Ultimate: $73/ month per listing. They also offer discounts per plan per additional listing you have, along with up to 25% off on yearly and two-year plans.
• Hostaway - Hostaway isn’t fully transparent with their rates. They charge a monthly or annual subscription, according to your preference, and prices will vary depending on what features you’ll be using, and the number of listings you’ll manage. You’ll need to contact them directly for pricing inquiries.

Hostfully Reviews From Across the Web

If our opinions aren’t enough for you, then we present you with a handful of reviews posted across the web.

• Amber Filip says this about the platform: “As a new vacation rental host, Hostfully has been such a great resource for me. It takes a little while to figure out the system and how everything works together, but the support team is excellent. As with any technology, there have been a few hiccups along the way, so having a support team that is at my fingertips is incredibly helpful. I never feel like I'm bothering anyone with my questions and am always asked what else they can help with during every interaction. The gal I worked with for onboarding (Kana) was/is so awesome as well!”
• John B left this review: “Hostfully has been a simple and easy platform to use. I would recommend it because of its ease of use. Time for training on this product was less than a week which was great. The link between the channel manager not always the best which can complicate things. This was only one hiccup but everything else went well.”
• Ecologic Team Cash Buyers claims: “For over 7 years I have tried a few STR channel management platforms. We adopted Hostfully about six month ago. My new experience with Hostfully, is above and betond any of my previous expereinces with leading platforms.”

It’s clear that users generally appreciated the user-friendly platform. Most users had a great time with their customer service as well. However, there some complaints about syncing and calendar links. But, most hosts seem to be satisfied since Hostfully has a solid 4.2 stars out of 5 on Capterra, and 4.6 stars out of 5 on TrustPilot.

Final Thoughts

Hostfully is one of the leading property management software solutions in the market. Hosts and property managers get to enjoy its comprehensive features, to help them streamline their operations and grow their short term rental businesses.

During our testing, we appreciated the decent level of customization and the straightforward yet pleasing interface that Hostfully provides. The digital guidebook feature, in particular, is pretty amazing and helps in relaying important information to hosts in a creative and convenient way.

All in all, it’s a great platform that can help you automate and optimize your business. They also have excellent customer service that will help you manage your issues on Hostfully.

If you’re considering starting out your own Airbnb rental or just looking for a new addition to your portfolio, we suggest checking out our BNBCalc property analysis tool to give you an insight into properties on your radar. It can help you make data-driven decisions, based on what active rentals are already earning, allowing you to get an idea of not only revenue but also expenses, and paint a fuller picture of your potential investment.