Hostaway Cost and experiences
New Orleans, LA · Member since 2018 · 23 posts · 5 votes
@Michael Melendez
Thanks for the insight into the pricing and pros/cons of the system. At this point, I think I might be leaning towards VREasy. I’m going to schedule demos for VREasy, Guesty, and Hostaway and see which I like best. Thank you again for taking the time to share your insight!
Eleven months later I'm having the same challenge in reaching Hostaway. It's been 48 hours, my excitement has waned. Thanks for sharing your insights, I'll take a look at VREasy as an alternative, Guesty is great but more than what I need.
UPDATE: I reviewed the above tools and researched a couple of others (Lodgify and Your Porter) but decided on OwnerRez. It provides all that I need, is reasonably priced for one property but scalable. Although the user interface appears a little dated compared to Lodgify and Your Porter, the functionality was there and the thing that sold me was their user forums. Posts were recent - the user community is active and the OwnerRez team has a dedicated admin monitor that answers questions promptly, takes suggestions to the company's product development team where they're implemented if deemed usefull. Nice to see a company that's responsive to good input. The team members are former vacation rental owners so they understand the nuances that make for a good site.
Im Considering Hostaway for the 20 Properties I manage. Does anyone in a similar situation Cover the cost of Hostaway (or other pms) by charging the property owner for the expense?
here's my latest review after 4 months.....
First if you only have a few properties or just getting started with a channel manager stay far from hostaway. They love to charge charge charge $,$$$. I was originally going to go with a smaller company but thought THOUGHT the bigger company would be just better. Best customer service, better experience, better everything.
I was totally wrong. From the start I was already upset paying $150 for a "training fee" for which I didn't want to attend nor did I attend because I work and can't hangout on zoom calls in the middle of the day. You are forced to pay this. If it's that complicated to learn and use this fully setup turnkey program maybe its really not that good? I thought the $150'/month was worth it even for 1 property to sync everything because I manage my own properties. I had a lot of issues with double bookings. The customer service is ****. They just don't care. It's too big to fail I guess. They were polite but they just made me run around in circles.
I cancelled BEFORE my next term. Got charged another $150. Found out it was ANOTHER fee for in their agreement I have to give them a 30 days cancellation notice. Am I a ****ing tenant??? I couldn't believe this for digital software having to give "notice".
Anyway's I found a company called Hospitable. It's $40/month. Much easier to navigate. Still has features. It actually does calculations/analytics hostaway did not and could not. And the customer service answer my questions with things like screenshots and videos for my account. Not vague answers I already know. Anyway I'm sold on them for 1/3 the cost and I wish I knew about them sooner.
Hostaway might be good if you are big and you have a person fulltime who runs property management. I flip fulltime and run my rentals on my phone. It needs to be simple and easy to see quickly.
That's my input. Go with them if you want, but if you are small i'd strongly recommend checking out hospitable instead for 1/3 cost and NO fees upfront for "training" and cancelling.