Experience with YourPorter for 25+ units?

Question

Hey folks! I recently started using YourPorter as my PMS to help manage 25 units. It's certainly bang for your buck and does most of what I need it to, but I am wondering if anyone has 25+ properties that they manage with YourPorter. I am having my doubts that it is going to be able to hang with me as I continue to grow my portfolio - I'd love to hear about your experiences with managing a large portfolio on YourPorter!

Thanks, Ev

Evan W. · Answer

@Cliff H. Yeah I agree, the UI is a mess. Training someone on those platforms would be a pain. That’s ultimately why I went with yourporter - the whole platform is user-friendly, it has most of the features I need, and the mobile version is actually usable.

My issues:

- The direct booking website is very basic, takes too long to load, has very little functionality, and it looks decent.

- The inbox is barely usable - slow, too many clicks. I still use the Airbnb inbox.

- They actually just added a Smart Pricing integration, so that’s no longer an issue !

- Revenue management is basic and I’ve had trouble with multiple bookings being left out of reports.

- Customer service is not as responsive and prompt as I’d like them to be.

All in all, it’s been good. It just seems like Erinc is conducting the train - running around trying to improve the software, develop new features and make everyone happy. I’m worried he’ll burn out haha. We’ll see.  Ev

Cliff H. · Answer

Hey Evan, I hear you on the customer service response time. It's almost 24 hours to a tee whenever I reach out and some of the issues are definitely higher priority issues that are directly impacting my business. Perhaps they could include an "urgency" drop down and maybe offer a tiered pricing offering where large portfolio manager like yourself can just pay to get more of those P1 support "incidents" per year. I'll throw that out as as suggestion for their team, but since you've got a lot on their system I suspect your voice may hold more weight.

Your point about Erinc conducing the train is actually one of the most refreshing aspects I've seen in the suite: suggestions for product improvements, even large ones, are acted on and implemented with a speed I've rarely seen anywhere else. They're clearly agile and that's great to see as the product builds out. I asked for direct booking coupons and more flexibility in the direct booking site and they implemented from scratch in < 2 months time.

Can't say I've seen the issues with slowness on the direct booking site that you mention. Perhaps there's additional lag time introduced as you add more rentals to the mix? Definitely worth calling out with the team if you have not done so already. Again, I'd think larger portfolios like yours would be a key audience the team would want to keep satisfied.

Also, I've posted it elsewhere, but seeing some of the other comments around jumping ship to alternative products I will say that I ended up on YourPorter after unsuccessful trials of iGMS, BookingAutomation, and many of the other tools in the market. The result of that testing was the following comparison chart of many of the large players in the STR channel manager space:

https://docs.google.com/spread...

Brian G. · Answer

@Evan Winterhalter heard Smartbnb is great for guest communication but not sure what other functionality it offers. Have you tried it?

Alice Collins · Answer

iGMS is great for managing a larger portfolio of properties. I looked at many different softwares and I must say that so far iGMS has helped loads.

Cliff H. · Answer

Not there yet @Evan Winterhalter but curious on what issues you’re hitting? I tend to think of systems like Beds24 or BookingAutomation for larger portfolios, but their UX is awful and there’s so many toggles/switches you could spend a lifetime just learning all the options.

Olivier Chaine · Answer

Used to be a Guesty user a long time ago. Left because of their lack of HomeAway support and how unresponsive they were to bugs, suggestions, etc. It is a powerful platform and now that they have native HomeAway support I am guessing it’s much better. But since they were difficult to work with, often blowing me off when I reported critical or important bugs (that lasted 6 months plus), I have been reticent to try them again.

SmartBnb has been excellent, especially since their redesign and Launch of their new platform. It’s real power is the messaging, and some of the other features are not there / need to do something separate. Their support is very very responsive, fixing issues quickly, walking me through how to do certain things in different ways. Their conditional messaging makes automation really fast and easy. New mobile app and chrome desktop app are very snappy. Webhooks fire off zapier messages, and automation.

Have been looking for stand alone website solution since it’s not included (and I’m picky). Considering your porter if there’s a way to disable / not use other functionality and stay with smartbnb?

Evan W. · Answer

@Cliff H. I agree about Erinc. They have been great about taking customer feedback and rolling out new features. I could tell that was the case from the beginning, and that's ultimately one of the reasons I chose YourPorter. I like your idea about a tiered pricing offering for a P1 support option. It's certainly something I would be interested in now, and especially as I scale my business. I'll mention this to support as well.

There have been quite a few instances where customer service has taken over 24 hours. I think they often see my inquiries, and rather than respond & acknowledge the issue, they get to work on solving it before they reach out. I can't say for sure, but it's happened a couple times where I encounter an issue/bug, and get a response 1-2 days later that says they cannot find the issue. I go back in to recreate it on my end, and POOF, magic... it's gone. I think they'd benefit from a little more transparency, but I definitely appreciate their ability to get shit done.  Ev

Evan W. · Answer

@Brian Gerlach I trialed Smartbnb for a few days. They definitely have a superior inbox and guest communication system, however there's not much else that I find useful in my own business. To touch on @Thomas Enright 's point, I think Smartbnb was essentially designed as a unified communication channel. It didn't solve my main problems, and it's mobile version is clunky despite it's sleek look. Biggest features they were missing for me - direct bookings/website builder, pricing control/integration, robust calendar. YourPorter's calendar is smooth and functional - both on mobile and desktop.

Yes, YourPorter just added Dynamic Pricing Integrations with Pricelabs, Wheelhouse, etc. but before that YourPorter pulled prices from Airbnb automatically - and pushed those prices to our booking engine.

I also use Breezeway for cleaning/maintenance/task management. Smartbnb and YourPorter's task management was not as feature-rich as I needed it to be, so that wasn't really a factor for me.

Cliff H. · Answer

@Brian Gerlach I looked into Guesty, but saw nothing in their feature list that was not covered by other solutions.

As is the case with most of us, my time is limited. I prefer to focus on solutions that are willing to be open and direct about their pricing versus an outdated contact us / join our webinar / get up-sold on our value prop approach. This is often just another way of stating that a product is more focusing more on enterprise-level custom integrations with significant upfront integration costs. That's totally fine that they are focused on that market, it is just not a niche I am going to worry much about in a comparison centered on the needs of smaller, independently operated/managed STR owners.

Brian G. · Answer

@Cliff H. did you ever try Guesty? Don’t see it on your excel comparison sheet.

Experience with YourPorter for 25+ units?

Most Popular Reply