Guesty Review: From Our Team of Superhosts

As experienced hosts, we’ve tested a lot of vacation rental management software over the years. Platforms like Hostaway, Hospitable, and Guesty are always among the ones that stand out when it comes to helping manage our short-term rentals. Today, we’re taking a closer look at Guesty’s all-in-one solution.

Guesty’s a bit closer to our hearts since it’s a solution we personally use. So, I guess it goes without saying that we recommend using it. However, don’t click away just yet. We’ll be discussing our insights and experiences with the platform, listing its key features and how they can help you, pricing, user experience, and the public’s general perception of the platform.

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

Guesty offers an all-in-one solution for hosts and property managers with a variety of features and tools to boast. Here are some of our favorites from the ones they offer.

Channel Manager: Guesty's channel manager enables you to manage your listings across multiple booking platforms, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, from a single interface. This feature allows you to easily update your rates, availability, and listing details across all platforms, saving you time and reducing the risk of errors. Their user-friendly interface makes channel management a breeze.

Multi-Calendar: The Guesty multi-calendar is a game-changer for hosts managing multiple listings across various booking platforms. It allows you to view and manage all your reservations from a single, centralized calendar. This feature helps prevent double bookings, ensures your availability is always up-to-date, and saves property owners countless hours of manual synchronization.

Unified Inbox: With the Guesty unified inbox, you can manage all your guest communication from one place, regardless of the booking platform. This feature streamlines your communication process, ensuring that no message goes unanswered and allowing you to provide prompt, high-quality customer service and customer support across your channels.

Automated Messaging: Take messaging automation to the next level using Guesty. This feature allows you to set up customized message templates and rules, so you can send timely, personalized responses to your guests without having to manually type out each message. This not only saves you time but also helps maintain a consistent brand voice and ensures that your guests receive the information they need when they need it. It helps a lot in ensuring a quick response time and that you’re there to provide customer support even when you’re away. We’ve found that it really helps improve the guest experience, even through simple messages.

Revenue Management: Their revenue management toolkit offers a variety of customization options, allowing you to set flexible rate plans tailored to your specific needs, taking into account factors such as seasonality, day of the week, and special events. Guesty supports integrations with popular dynamic pricing tools like Wheelhouse and PriceLabs, enabling you to automatically adjust your rates using top-tier tools within the market. We use Guesty in combination with PriceLabs, and we’ve never had any issues with the two tools.

Website Builder: Guesty offers a website builder that enables you to create a professional, branded direct booking website for your vacation rental properties. This feature allows you to drive direct bookings, reduce your reliance on third-party platforms, and save on commission fees. Guesty can even help you handle payment processing, so you don’t have to worry about anything else.

These are just some of the features that make Guesty a powerful property management software for Airbnb hosts and managers looking to streamline their operations, save time, and maximize their revenue potential. Other notable features include an Analytics dashboard featuring your listing’s valuable analytics and insights, Automation Tools that can make task management and scheduling easy, and a mobile app for on-the-go management.

Overall, we encourage you to explore Guesty’s platform and check out the variety of features and add-ons they offer that can help you manage your vacation rentals and improve guest satisfaction. They have a little bit of everything and that’s one of the things we love most about it.

Guesty Pricing: How Much Does Guesty Cost?

Guesty has a subscription-based pricing model. Their different plans are directly tied to the features you need and the number of vacation rentals you’ll be managing.

• Lite - Prices start at $16 per listing per month when billed annually or $23 per listing per month when billed monthly. It includes integrations with Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, direct reservations, a unified inbox, multi-calendar, task management, payment solutions, a mobile management app, and a booking website, among a few others.
• Pro - Unfortunately, prices for pro plans aren’t publicly available. It’s best suited for property owners with 4 to 199 listings, and you’ll have to get a quote from them for pricing. It includes everything in Lite with access to all channels within the Guesty Distribution Hub, advanced capabilities, accounting, revenue management, advanced analytics and insights, CRM, API, and an owner portal.
• Enterprise - The final plan is perfect for customers with more than 200 listings. Similar to Pro, it’s custom-made based on your needs so pricing will vary. It features everything in Pro plus enterprise-grade features, automation, security, premium support, advanced analytics, and more.

Guesty’s Lite plan is honestly already pretty robust. It includes the most important features you’d be looking for in property management software, while not breaking the bank. It’s going to be adequate for most hosts, giving you access to a direct booking website, direct integrations with the top STR platforms, task management, payment solutions, their mobile app, and a dashboard. However, it might not be enough for those with a larger portfolio or specialized, leading to the need to upgrade to their more extensive plans.

Guesty Pricing vs Alternatives

Of course, Guesty isn’t the only property management software out there. So, we’ve gathered a list of potential Guesty alternatives, along with their prices to help you assess if the costs involved are worth it.

• Hostfully - Starter: $119 per month for up to 4 listings. Pro & Pro Plus: $215 per month for up to 11 listings, and $269 per month for up to 19 listings, respectively. Premium: Custom plans for hosts and property managers with numerous listings. They also offer a 10% discount for annual plans.
• 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.

Guesty Reviews From Across the Web

That’s enough chatter from us. It’s time to take a look at what other hosts and property managers are saying about Guesty. We’ve gathered a few verified reviews left by real property owners, hosts, and users of Guesty across different sites.

• Anthony Wintheiser said this: “The software is easy to use, chock full of features and functions, and the customer support is top notch. Highly recommended!”
• Jennifer P left this review: “It saves me a lot of time compared to my previous property management systems. The automation is great and the unified inbox works well. I can pull lots of different reservation reports but there are little to no analytics on the business unless you pay an additional fee per property. Its costly and accounting is very complicated and analytics are very limited, everything is an additional expense which is very frustrating.”
• Tucker P has this to say: “Having tried three other software solutions (Loodgix, Streamline, MyVR), I can confidently say that the team at Guesty and my account manager Taylor Murphy is the ONLY software you need to consider. Their platform is not just user-friendly; it's a hospitality powerhouse. Managing bookings and communicating with guests, accounting, lock management, distribution channel management, Merchant service, automations and more are a breeze.”

Users typically applaud the user-friendly interface, great customer support team, and the variety of features found within the property management software. However, some have also complained about the general pricing, especially for their add-on features, along with some minor issues with some of the systems. The general sentiment is that users have been satisfied when using Guesty. They achieved a rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Capterra, 4.2 out of 5 stars on TrustPilot, and 4.5 out of 5 stars on G2.

Final Thoughts

After our review of Guesty’s features, we believe that it’s a fully capable vacation rental property management platform that can help add considerable value to your rental business. It’s a comprehensive all-in-one solution that offers a little bit of everything, especially if you’re willing to pay for the extra tools.

While Guesty's pricing can vary a lot, we still think that the platform's extensive features, reliable support, and scalability makes it a worthwhile investment for serious vacation rental businesses. If you’re still unsure about the pricing, we highly suggest checking out the platform through their 14-day free trial and fully exploring Guesty’s capabilities to determine if it's the right fit for your needs.

Overall, we highly recommend Guesty to Airbnb hosts and vacation rental property managers looking for an all-in-one solution to automate and optimize their businesses. Its user-friendly interface, comprehensive features, and excellent customer support make it a standout choice in the vacation rental management software market.

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.