All Forum Posts by: Alex Pondville

Well, I'm going to chime in here again.  We have tried Hostaway, OwnerRez, Hospitable and Guesty for Pros.  There are many others we've looked at but never actually tried.  These ones I'm familiar with.  Here are my thoughts:

Hostaway: Stay away.  There's very little support and a lot they can't do.  They sell you on the platform before you can actually get in and play around.  It's very weak in the automated messages category.  They do integrate with a lot of vendors, and the site looks pretty but the platform itself has a long way to go before it's worthy of being used, in my opinion.

Hospitable: We used Hospitable for years. They're really good at the auto messages thing.  Sadly, they're not as robust in other areas.  They don't connect with a lot of other platforms and their support has gone downhill big time.  I really wanted to continue using them, but for growth it just wasn't the best choice for us.  After using them for years we asked to jump on a Zoom call with their sales team to try to figure out a way we could continue using them, but they replied that their team was too busy focusing on new sales to jump on a call.  That told me all I needed to know.

OwnerRez: This is a decent product.  They do most things and they do most of those ok.  They don't connect with a lot of apps and other vendors though, and their site and services are clunky.  It's like they built their platform in the Bronze Age and its been held together with duct tape ever since.  Looking at their forums, their moderators are against any kind of growth or adaptation of new technologies.  Throw the word AI in there and they fight against it tooth and nail.  Again, they're ok, everything is a la carte, but at the end of the day you have to be ok cutting services and planning on using exactly what they have forever.  Don't bank on them integrating with new technologies any time soon.

Guesty for Pros: This is expensive but does have the most support.  It does everything, but there are a fair amount of glitches.  Their automessages and workflows are good and more robust than the competition.  My problem with them (other than the price) is that they're trying to do everything.  They have their own payment platform (you could use Stripe... or GuestyPay), they have their own dynamic pricing (you could use PriceLabs... or GuestyPricing), they have their own smart locks (you could use RemoteLock... or GuestyLocks), etc.  That is all well and good, though you don't save any money using their software.  It's the same pricing as others.  The problem is there are so many glitches in their base system that still need to be ironed out.  I wish they would work on those before jumping into their own services that you can add on.  I would imagine all those are a bit glitchy as well.  That said, they have the most to offer and aren't afraid of integrating with new tech and apps.  Overall, this is the service we are using now and are decently happy with it.  I think it is the best of the bunch.

In the end there are no great solutions in this category.  You'll have to just choose the one with the least amount of headaches as it relates to your business.