How are you spending on 3rd party software?

Question

How much is your annual spend on 3rd party software and apps?

ie: pricing software, listing platforms other than Vrbo and Airbnb, digital guestbooks, integration software, direct booking sites, camera subscriptions, other subscriptions etc.

Then what percentage of all this software is it of your net profits?

Just curious as there is always some other nifty piece of software with its hand out to reduce our net profits

Ian Tyndall · Answer

Monthly rates are a mix of variable and fixed costs based on the number of properties; with three properties here is what I pay (published rates):

Hospitable $72

Pricelabs $50

Intellihost $59

Canva $14

Open ai $10

Houfy $11

$216 * 12 = $2,592

Ken Boone · Answer

Guesty for Hosts $21/mo  - time saver, guest automation cross platform, direct booking

Ring Cameras $20 /mo  - indispensable

Price Labs $35/mo   just started this a few months ago, everyone is like A+++, jury is still out for me

Hostfully Guidebooks  $20/mo  improved guest experience and email collector

REIHub  $23/mo    just started this year, another time saver

Zapier  $20/mo     massive time saver as this automates RA and does record keeping

SignNow  $16/mo  Peace of mind and meeting insurance obligations

Total = $155/mo or $1860/yrTo me for what these services provides, the $155/mo is less than half of a an average 1 night booking.  I am actually glad I went through this as I was expecting the sum to be much more.  I can totally live with these numbers.

John Underwood · Answer

@John Underwood

I've seen very few non PM people post what their annual spend is for all these apps and software.

That makes me think.

1. They are embarrassed to discuss how much of their Net profits are being spent on this.

2. Or They don’t have a clue to what is being spent on these items.

Andrew Steffens · Answer

Im spending about $10,000 a month :0

Obviously different running PM company, but:

- PMS

- Pricing

- Automations (locks)

- Web hosting

- AirDNA pro

- Docusign

- EZCare

- Channel Manager

- LSI Tools

- Slack

Probably forgetting some.  I would need more employees without so, I think it is worth it for sure.

Ken Boone · Answer

It's a matter of time before I ditch them as well.

Jose Miori · Answer

https://hostify.com/

Adam Bartomeo · Answer

We used to manage about 14 STR's and we were spending about $20k/yr. We got out of that business...

Ian Tyndall · Answer

John,

I am managing 3 properties and spend on the following:

Hospitable

PriceLabs

Intellihost (for click rates and pricing optimization)

Canva

OpenAI

Houfy for direct websites

Ken Boone · Answer

Interesting question and one in which a lot of people don't take into question when they consider self manager vs using a property manager.  I would have to go back and look at the costs and then divide them amongst my properties to figure it out but right now I am paying for the following subscriptions:

Guesty for Hosts

Ring Cameras

Price Labs

Hostfully Guidebooks

REIHub

Zapier

SignNow

When I purchase one of these subscriptions it is usually based on the criteria of how much time can it save me, or how much additional revenue can it make me, or how can it improve my business.  And depending on those things I will decide to use it or pass on it.  So I have never ran the numbers to determine what percent of my net profits they would take up.

I am now considering adding Rankbreeze or something like that.  I never considered it before, because the bulk of my customers came through VRBO.  But now it is shifting dramatically to AirBnb, which I am not thrilled about, but it is what it is.

How are you spending on 3rd party software?

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