Has anyone used OneRooftop for software, website, sites synch?

[Villy Ellinger]

A friend of mine is using OneRooftop for hosting his vacation rental website that synchs with VRBO, Airbnb, etc, but also allows him to take direct payments from his website. I'm considering looking into it, as supposedly it can also synch not just calendars but changes to seasonal rates, etc. I really would like some additional opinions. I'm looking for something like this for sure, just don't know if OneRooftop is the right one or if there is better. I appreciate your feedback.

[Valerie Rogers]

I used to use OneRoofTop. (It was called WebChalet when I first started using them.) I liked the website that came with it and their support team was great.

I never used any of their channel management tools though, just the calendar sync option.

What I didn't like was the way managing reservations worked. The page had SO MANY buttons on it, it was so confusing! It must have been a right brain/left brain thing, but whatever it was did not jive with the way my brain works. I never could get comfortable with it.

When I decided to make a change I went to MyVR. I liked their interface much better and the website for my properties was nice too, but in the end the cost was too high. I discontinued it after one year.

What I liked about both platforms was the ability to sync my VRBO calendar to my website calendar, the ability to point repeat guests and other referrals to my website instead of VRBO, the ability to take payments through my website and the automated messaging. I never did get as far as integrating my VRBO listings to the MyVR system. Something about that just worries me so I haven't tried it yet in any of the platforms I've use.

Now I am using Tokeet since March of this year. (I saw a recommendation here on BP.) It has been a bumpy ride so far. 

Some of the features they advertise are:

• Automation for messaging (important to me since for every booking I have about 4 emails plus a couple of reminders that I want to send automatically)
• Electronic rental agreements (which allowed me to discontinue my Docusign membership which costs around $240/year)
• Invoicing through the website which allows guests to pay directly
• A website to advertise the properties
• Channel management that integrates with all of the major channels such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Homeaway, TripAdvisor, etc. 

Message automation: works very well. The only thing I don't like about it is that we cannot choose to pause or not send a particular message. It is either all or nothing. I'd like to be able to see the messages queued up and be able to edit a message for a particular booking or even pause it so that it would not be sent. (MyVR had this and it was nice.)

eSignature Agreements: Getting the rental agreements set up was kind of a nightmare because even though Tokeet has formatting tools when creating the templates, I discovered that if you used ANY formatting at all when the signed agreement was converted for a PDT the entire thing was run together in one mish-mashed paragraph...terrible! Also, if the last sentence happened to be in BOLD lettering I could not see the guest's signature even though it was signed. I had to figure out on my own that the formatting was the issue so I had to rewrite the rental agreements using only plain text. (I used * instead of bullet points, etc.) Once that was done, it has been working fine. It was just a painful process until I figured it out. (Maybe this post might help someone else who decides to use Tokeet.)

Invoicing: I have never been able to use it. Tokeet advertises that you can use a different payout account for each property which is important for my business model. My clients' payments from guests go directly to the client, not to me. But during my testing I found that the "Pay by PayPal" button on an invoice created for one property actually led to the PayPal account belonging to another owner....that would be a disaster! I reported the issue to Tokeet support back in March and so far I'm still not able to use the invoice option. Kind of a bummer but I can work around it by sending a guest an invoice from PayPal directly but I'd prefer to do it through Tokeet to keep everything in one place and to be branded with my brand.

Website: It is ok, but not as beautiful or slick as I'd like. Tokeet has admitted that working on their website builder is not a high priority for them right now. They are trying to get all of the "under the hood" tools working properly and adding improvements so they probably won't be spending a lot of time on the website builder for a while. I appreciated their honesty to help set my expectations.

Price: Very reasonable. The price that I am paying ($39.99/month for up to 15 properties) is so much less expensive than OneRoofTop or MyVR.

I hope this helps!