Hostify Review: From Our Team of Superhosts

Throughout our experience running short term rentals, we believe that finding the best property management system is one of the most crucial tasks for your business’ success. Your PMS acts as your backbone when running a vacation rental, so looking for one that not only works for you but also fits your needs is essential.

We want to help you on your journey of finding the best property management system. Join us as we take a closer look at Hostify’s key features, user experience, pricing, its public perception, and more. Who knows, Hostify might be the PMS of your dreams.

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

After our testing period, we’ve noticed a couple of Hostify’s standout features. These are the ones that you’ll likely be getting the most use out of if you choose to use it for your vacation rental business.

Channel Manager: Hostify's Channel Manager is a powerful tool that allows you to sync your calendars across multiple booking platforms like Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and Expedia, eliminating the risk of double bookings. By managing your listings from a single dashboard, you can save time and ensure consistent pricing and availability across multiple channels. We’ve found the feature to be very convenient as it displays all of your bookings and rates from a user-friendly dashboard. It also allows you to perform edits, create bookings, and easily organize your rental properties.

Booking Website: With Hostify's customizable booking website, you can transform website visitors into paying guests without any additional channel commission fees. The mobile-friendly design, integrated discount coupons, and automated booking, payments, and pricing make it easy for guests to view availability, make reservations, and pay for their stay directly through your website. Having a commission-free booking website not only extends your reach but also makes you look more professional. We definitely recommend having one, whether using the tools on Hostify or via a different platform.

Online Check-In: Hostify's Online Check-In feature streamlines the guest arrival process, allowing you to automatically confirm arrival times, contact details, and collect signed rental agreements before guests arrive. It also automatically syncs with Hostify, updating you in an instant. We've found that the ability to customize the check-in form and communication templates through branding, adding fields, and uploading documents can greatly improve the overall guest experience and can lead to more guest reviews.

Task App: We personally know how challenging it can be to keep up with the daily tasks of having multiple vacation rental properties. Hostify offers assistance with your daily operations and simplifies the process with the Task App. With features like checklists, issue reporting, and photo uploads, you can ensure that every property is always guest-ready. The app also facilitates seamless communication among team members, reducing miscommunication and enabling smooth coordination. It helps automate processes from cleaning, maintenance, and even general inspections, allowing you to stay on top of your rentals without constantly monitoring them.

AI Inbox Assistant: Managing guest communication is one of the best ways to interact with guests and show them your top-notch customer service. Hostify's AI-powered Inbox Assistant helps lighten the load by automatically categorizing and prioritizing messages, suggesting personalized responses, and even auto-responding to common inquiries, providing a great support system to an often overlooked aspect of the vacation rental business. The AI Inbox Assistant saves countless hours and ensures prompt, professional communication with guests.

Payment Solutions: Hostify's integration with popular payment processors like Stripe and PayPal enables seamless payment processing for various booking channels. The ability to send payment requests, securely store payment details, and automate recurring payments can simplify your financial operations and provide a positive user experience. We particularly appreciate the centralized payment solution, which allows users to spend less time switching between systems and more time growing the business.

Mobile App: If you’re anything like us, we know that you’re always on the go, monitoring your different rentals. Hostify's mobile app has been a lifesaver with features like unified inbox, multi-calendar, and real-time notifications. Through the app, we can manage our listings, communicate with guests, and stay on top of bookings from anywhere, at any time. The app also features a user-friendly interface, making it easy to learn. Hosts and property managers should definitely have it installed if their serious about Hostify.

Hostify Pricing: How Much Does Hostify Cost?

Another major factor when it comes to choosing a property management system is the pricing. Of course, you’ll have to factor in the costs compared to the advantages that a PMS brings to your business. Hostify offers relatively simple plans that charge you depending on the total amount of rentals you have.

• 5-19 Rentals: Includes all features and costs $20 per rental per month.
• 20-49 Rentals: Includes all features and comes with a slight discount at only $16 per rental per month.
• 50-99 Rentals: Includes all features plus access to the Hostify WordPress Plugin. They also offer a discounted rate of $13 per rental per month.
• 100-199 Rentals: Includes all features, access to the Hostify WordPress Plugin, and a custom domain for your vacation rental business. Only costs $10 per month per rental.
• 200+ Rentals: A specialized enterprise-level plan that comes with all features, more customization features, additional app branding, WhatsApp support, and more. Prices aren’t available so you’ll have to contact Hostify directly.

Note: Hosts or property managers with less than 5 properties can only access Hostify’s annual subscription plan which costs $1000 per year. Once you have at least 5 rentals, you can avail their normal monthly plans.

Overall, it’s great to see that all of their features are available to all users, regardless of rental business size. This means that your experience shouldn’t vary by too much no matter how many rentals you have. It’s also excellent to see that they don’t charge any onboarding fees nor have any extra charges for other features.

While they don’t have a direct free trial option, Hostify does offer a 14-day money-back guarantee, which essentially gives you a free pass to fully explore the platform and see if it satisfies your business needs.

Hostify Pricing vs Alternatives

Now that we’ve talked about Hostify’s pricing plans, let’s check out how it stacks out against some of the popular PMS that hosts and property managers use. Here’s a couple of them.

• 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.
• 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.

Comparing the numerous PMS options, it seems that Hostify charges right around what the other platforms charge. While each platform does offer different features, their prices don’t vary as much and you can simply choose whatever system works best for your rental business. One major thing you shouldn’t overlook though is if the platform supports multiple channels and if they have integrations for the channels you use.

Hostify Reviews From Across the Web

Now, let’s take a look at what others have experienced when using Hostify. We’ve gathered a handful of them to see what others think about the platform.

• Pere Gras left this review: “This software solved many headaches for me, for me it was very important that it was simple, intuitive and took away my workload. Hostify achieved the three pillars I needed and even greatly improved my management with great integrations. I recommend it 100%”
• Lior L says this: “The costumer service is just amazing ! In general the platform is friendly and with a lot of functionality. Definitely worth the money value! Still missing some functionality with external companies.”
• Enrique A wrote this: “As a CEO who has tried 6 differents PMS I find in Hostify the software that allows me to control all the aspects of my business. Moreover, thanks to Hostify I can automate the main processes and have more time to design the revenue management strategy.”

Overall, most users seem to be satisfied with using Hostify in their vacation rental business. They scored a solid 4.6 stars out of 5 on Capterra and a respectable 3.9 stars out of 5 on TrustPilot. They typically applaud Hostify’s simple and intuitive UI. However, there were also some complaints about integrations and slow customer support responses.

Final Thoughts

Overall, our experience in using Hostify has been solid. We liked their beautiful interface with user experience in mind. We also admire their full-feature availability for all of their plans, with no extra charges for other features that would usually have been behind paywalls on other platforms.

However, it might not be suitable for smaller vacation rental business owners or even beginner hosts or property managers, mainly because of their minimum 5 rental policy. The annual plan requirement for smaller businesses can definitely be a huge deal breaker.

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.