Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

Love the one place to rule them all approach. The ability to create all our FRB Rentals
listings in once place, manage pricing and bookings and push it out to direct bookings as well as the OTAs (Airbnb, VRBO, etc.) is so central to a successful Short Term Rentals business. Hostfully, like any software app, isn't perfect, BUT their support and development teams take feedback and fix issues and implement new features requested by the user base. I personally have had many new features I've suggested implemented.

Cons

At FRB Rentals, we use automated templates to the extreme. Initially there is a learning curve to setting up the more advance automation using templates and trigger. Highly suggest you write it all down and map out how you want timing to happen on a booking through review, then implement it and test one step at a time. The formatting on communications should be tested with each OTA to ensure it looks good to the guest receiving it.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

Channel management and communications integration across all channels.

Cons

Some of the cumbersome channel integrations and updates are not clearly communicated specifically when Hometogo went away!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

Hostfully is great to manage leads for short term rental tenants and management short term stays - it can coordinate with many other platforms and integrations and is very versatile.

Cons

It does not work very well for mid-term rentals - it was very complicated to use and caused quite a few problems.

Pros

I liked that you help me to onboard and team is very friendly

Cons

App is horrible. Needs improvement. The price seems to be very high right now. It is not good that I can’t call [sensitive content hidden] when I need him. I can just schedule a meeting and as I am solo and do it all sometimes u can’t get to the c comp to do the appointment. I need to be able to call someone. This is very difficult for me. Thinking of doing a change

Pros

I found the customer service delivery experience to be very unique, professional and very efficient.

Cons

The fact that due to time/location differences its not over the phone.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Hostfully Property Management Platform

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

Hostfully takes a lot of work and worry out of managing our listings and guest experience.

Cons

The user interface is undergoing much needed improvements. Hopefully they'll be done soon, but it does well as it is, we're excited to see the improvements bear fruit.

Pros

The calendar view is great but definitely can still improve. When we compare it to other PMS systems. Functions like split bookings will be useful

Cons

Channel Manager and Hostfully sometimes didn't sync which led to overbookings. When this occurs a tedious manual search is then required to fix the issue.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

Customer support was super helpful and always available to answer my questions

Cons

The app doesn’t load. Viewing the website on a phone is not ideal and takes multiple steps to access the calendar. Difficult to use the website on mobile device

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

its easy to use and help is always there

Cons

when some pages disappear, but overall great expereince

Pros

The easy in connection to my website. Also, the wigits to schedule bookings are make easy to copy and paste.

Cons

Have to have all items completed before you go live.

Pros

Visually appealing
easy to navigate
Onboarding was amazing! thank you
great customer service

Cons

Email templates took me the longest - woudl love to see more of a professional look

some of the automatic templates that I don't use often go out and look way different than my emails - so more development there. A lot of cut and pasting.

Pros

Onboarding was great! Lots of help but then it stopped there… seems like I have to google everything I need help with When an issue arises like - security deposit not auto refunding or rentals not auto connecting to their suggested cleaning app- they say it’s a bug. So it’s lots of extra work to make sure things are actually linked. Features are available but no education on how to use them - except a blog sent out

Cons

White labeling your website- near impossibleIntegration of vrbo what a hassle! Direct bookings are clunky sometimes they don’t send out an email to the intended person

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

This is the most amazing platforms I have tried. And it has it all, no need to switch to another system, because this just works 100% and makes my job so much easier and quicker.

Cons

The still need to implement the Faroe Islands as a country and I am looking forward to that happens.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Hostfully Property Management Platform

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

It helps us manage our listings on multiple platforms in one software.

Cons

Slowness response of the site when eve you change pages.

Pros

I've been a loyal user for 5+ years now and Hostfully revolutionized my small (but mighty) vacation rental business.

Cons

Like all new systems, there was a learning curve to get my head around.

Pros

The features that is easy to access and navigate

Cons

What I like the least in Hostfully is that linking to different OTAs

Alternatives Considered

Pros

The onboarding was relatively easy and I had great support. The instant message system for support is great, which I use a lot!

Cons

I'm aware that there are some functions within Hostfully that I haven't utilized, and I'm interested in attending a Hostfully webinar designed for users like me. This session would help me better understand the functions I'm not currently using or might be using incorrectly once I'm up and running. There is a lot of information at the beginning so it is overwhelming.

Pros

I like how I can organize my listings and maintain my bookings in an easy to view dashboard. Plus, I like all the channel managers and options for that.

Cons

The site loads very slowly, and there are a lot of glitches that need to be repaired. Plus. Customer service is slow to respond.

Alternatives Considered

Pros

We have had nothing but a positive experience with the Hostfully platform. It is intuitive in nature, and has been very easy for us to implement in our business.

We have also found the customer service team to be very responsive and helpful!

Cons

We would like to see video supported in the property listings.

Pros

Easy to use, great support, great onboarding team

Cons

Design and lack of ability to change custom email templates

Pros

The calender is easy to read. At least you can easily see when the booking starts and when it ends. You can also read the guest's names without actually opening the booking. This makes it easy and fast to look and find a guest.

Cons

It is the worste PMS I have ever used.
1 Cannot split a booking.
2 Cannot do group bookings.
3 Very difficult to move a booking between different rooms.
4 Can't see whether a guest is checked in, or out by just looking at the calendar.
5

Pros

Hostfully is a great property management solution for short-term stays. We are not in a high end market. Hostfully is a cost-effective solution that provides everything we could ever want/need to manage our portfolio of properties.

Cons

Hostfully can be difficult to learn, set-up, and deploy. However the customer service team is too notch.

Pros

Easy to use, many capabilities & automations, a comprehensive pms for vacation rentals

Cons

Its very, very, very slow! Please fix it! Sometimes, I think my brain runs with 100km/h and Hostfully only speeds up to 20km/h and this makes it very frustrating, especially when you are in a hurry to do things! The same happens with the mobile app!

Pros

It is very user friendly. Owners enjoy being able to book themselves. One platform for all out needs

Cons

Sometimes take a bit to get responses for help

Pros

Is the most completed PMS in the market, with the best integrations.

Cons

Everything is great so far (2+ years of using it)

Pros

I love being able to manage over 100 vacation rentals through one website. Being able to make new listings in one website and have it then created on two others is incredibly helpful. Basically, I love being able to do everything ONE time!

Cons

There are still several tweaks that need to be made to make hostfully run more smoothly. There are several things that I still need to go into airbnb and do myself as well as the fact that vrbo does not sync as smoothly as it should (which may be more of a vrbo issue). Overall, Hostfully seems to be a new company and still are working to make things more efficient on their end.

Pros

The customer support team are amazing, responsive and always friendly. The platform itself has a great selection of integrations and it is constantly expanding. The Hostfully dev team is constantly adding and updating things and everyone always seems open to new ideas and ways of improving.

Cons

There are a few features that would be nice to have for the Portuguese market like certified invoicing and guest check-in, however these are usually handled by integrations. A more robust owner's portal would be a great plus too.

Pros

Customer support/technical assistance speed of replies.

Cons

On-boarding length of time. Took too long/too many meetings.

Pros

Since starting our company as an onsite provider servicing vacation rentals Hostfully has played a huge part in our success. The product support and integrations with industry staples has made the managing of a larger portfolio possible. The ability to use only the parts of the software that we needed with the option to grow and add on seamlessly has made our business thrive without adding specialized employees. This feature alone has allowed us to survive as grew.

Cons

Haven"t had a bad experience as of yet however would like to see better pricing for combining services

Pros

Mostly one-stop-shop platform
Integrations and hoping more to come
Ease of use, quick to learn & onboarding

Cons

Financials & statements
Stakeholder reporting is clumsy
More APIs with other OTAs
Analytics can be hit & miss, not easy to extract/report, no filtering
Integrations with other apps like calendrly, active campaign, acuity etc.

Pros

It is very easy and simple to use, not overall complicated. It has been the bes

Cons

The link between the channel manager not always the best which can complicate things. This was only one hiccup but everything else went well

Pros

The calendar syncs between Airbnb and VRBO, which are the only two platforms we use right now. It is the only thing that works. The calendar is accurate. And, their support team is responsive because I spend 50% of my day messaging them about bugs in the system.

Cons

Bugs. It is so difficult to manage anything about the reservation - communicating with the guest (you can't get messages into the platform from VRBO; cohosts can't communicate via Airbnb); you can't modify rates or add on additional nights w/out rates changing from dates already paid for; messages don't come through; etc. You double space after the end of a sentence and it sends &nspc after each period; It doesn't have a sort system to show you outstanding balances or pending transactions so you don't know who to follow up with; and there are problems every single day trying to do basic things that the system will not do. The answer is "we are forwarding to our higher tier department". You never hear back.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Hostfully Property Management Platform

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

We have been able to organize all of our properties and all of our platforms into one single hub, which has simplified our work.

Cons

I wish the app was better and you could do more from it and wish there was a phone # to call for help.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

User interface was good but the bad outweighs the good.

Cons

Absolutely shocking, at first they promise you the world and get you set up with an onboarding specialist which to be fair mine was very nice, however I started to notice problems after fully set up such as if a guest books more than one room this has to be manually adjusted and that in booking.com it does not show your bathroom info if you have apartments and constantly syncs out your bathroom information. There was also an issue with the reporting where data is not being pulled accurately and I was completely missold a system. After figuring out all the issues I contacted [sensitive content hidden] who sold me the platform who kept fobbing me off and telling me they will be resolved just not immediately and when asked for a refund over a week ago told me management were looking into it and now being completely ignored. I will now be raising a chargeback with my bank. Luckily I found a better platform and moved swiftly. Avoid at all costs.

Pros

The customer service is good. They respond relatively quickly and typically solve the issues. The integrations are good. However, we've recently had issues with the Lynx integration so it seems like there's been some negative changes.

Cons

The app is painfully simple. Also, we cannot edit existing templates, simply delete them. Also, there are some bugs that have been an issue since day 1 - such as jobs being assigned to someone, even though we don't have that selected as an option and never have. Also, we don't get the notification bubble on our iPhone if we've received a notification on Hostfully (our settings are updated to receive these). Overall, there are bugs, but the app is easy enough to use so we will keep using Hostfully in the meantime.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Hostfully Property Management Platform

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

It is easy to set up and hold it to work. It has a lot to offer, that we don't use - great costumer service

Cons

Errors take from time to time too long to fix it. The change from a picture is always like total new. You can't update or replace a picture

Pros

kind, yet unhelpful staff. But besides this, their system is slow to onboard some OTA's and does NOT link for previously reserved bookings. So this is NOT a good system if you have over 20 listings since you'd need to check ALL properties daily for any changes, modifications, messages, or cancelations, on reservations made previous to the day the sync for that specific OTA takes place.

Cons

over worked employees have a two week response time, and it's uncertain that in those two weeks you will even have a resolved question, just an answer that you might have to wait another two weeks for a follow up.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Hostfully Property Management Platform

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

It is much easier to run from a mobile device than the previous

Cons

Creating the templates and triggers. Also navigating the integration

Pros

Very useful tool specially customer communication

Cons

Calendar is not versatile, the only reservations that can be moved from property from property are the ones made by BRVO

Pros

The onboarding specialist [sensitive content hidden]
, after [sensitive content hidden]
unexpected departure from Hostfully, we never connected with anyone else. She was a huge asset and we are so sorry she’s gone!

Cons

Not easy to get answers about platform issues that arise. I thought Hostfully would have had their own customer service connections through the platforms to help maneuver issues/problems resolve issues that occurred with property managers specifically! Virtually impossible to communicate with the platforms about management issues.

Pros

Everything so far has been so easy. After Using Villas 365, we were very worried about the onboarding stage but it was such a breeze and we wish we did the move sooner.

Cons

Booking.com is not that great on Hostfully, unfortunately Hostfully doesnt have all features/amenities that pulls through to the Booking.com profile which affects our page score. They are working on this however.

Pros

Its cheap and does everything other PMS things do.

Cons

SLOW TO LOAD. Regular roll out of features that are fucking useless. Focus on increasing the load time. Nothing else matters to be honnest. I spend 10-20 seconds waiting for every screen to load and i am on hostfully ALL DAY it is the biggest waste of money and time imaginable and slows most of us down to snail pace when using it.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

Hostfully is fairly intuitive, and we use it to manage all of our reservations, track payments, and do some guest communications. Triggers work well, and the guest booking experience is easy.

Cons

This software is slow. The Pipeline takes 5-10 second to load every time you go to it. We are experiencing slow (10+ second) load times on each "reservation" which is very annoying. Support from the Hostfully team is very slow, and management for "high level" issues is virtually non-existent. Inbox is similarly slow/buggy and only properly "loads" after a page refresh. While all of these issues have work-arounds, they seem to be rooted in slow system performance on the Hostfully side which has been consistent since we implemented the software 8 months ago. While I have submitted a number of support tickets, no progress has been made, and we just deal with the sluggishness as a team. One last issue (which is more just an annoyance) is that when checking out/completing an online reservation in Chrome, the auto-populate fills in the email address in the last name field. 9 out of 10 guests do not notice/fix this, and the reservations CONSISTENTLY come in with Bob [email protected] for the first/last name. This requires us to manually update in Hostfully later, and additionally all of the trigger emails that generate when the bookings come in have no/wrong last name due to the error.

Pros

- I find extremely easy to edit the properties amenities, description in various languages, rules and any information that should appear on the listing across all channels. I have a good overview of ALL the fields and I can bulk edit certain infos. I have to say that this ability has greatly improved the quality of our listing and that is the most important. - I am generally happy with the enhanced reporting tool, although it needs some improvement.- I really appreciate the support team! Available at my fingertips via chat 24h/24h, they are friendly and helpful.- The pipeline allows me to check that all coming arrivals are processed (payment, contract, etc).

Cons

- Slow to load, a bit time consuming to navigate through the platform.- I find the owner reports tools are not robust enough or easy to implement. I feel like there's no permanent accounting, but airy reports. - We have to delete it completely if we don't want to pay for a property that is no longer for rent (or paused), therefore losing all the booking datas – and all datas. We cannot archive it.- Some bugs with the unified inbox tool- Not so easy to edit our customers list

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Hostfully Property Management Platform

Pros

Good, friendly, knowledgable staff (just not enough of them). Price is lower than other vacation rental software, and more in line with what you are getting for your money, which is an OK product. So much potential with this company. They do seem to care. Good automation and timing controls in accepting reservations and payments, sending forms to fill out, and checkin paperwork. They work with other key vendors such as Safely, Airbnb, VRBO, Dropbox, etc. Payment processing works well. Usability and product design not too bad to work with once you go through a big learning curve. They offer a decent website for direct booking. It's OK.

Cons

Not enough staff. You can only communicate via chat box and the rep is not dedicated to your problem from start to finish They serve multiple customers at once so sometimes you wait hours in between getting answers. Some problems have taken days or weeks to fix. At this time I have been waiting for weeks for my cleaning person's calendar access to be fixed. Onboarding and learning the product with an undedicated chat box and tutorial links took hours/months. Better be tech savvy if you're going to buy this product. They now have a group chat on certain days/hours, but you sit there waiting your turn while you listen to everyone else's problems. It is time consuming and requires patience. The app is not very good and their mobile capability needs great improvement. Forms that work with a laptop won't work for guests on handheld devices. The website they offer is limited. Needs a basic contact form so guests can reach you. However, websites are not what they are in business for. It's a bonus. Payment processing works well, but only if you use Stripe and as a company they are not nice to work with. More options there would be better. You can send your guest a rental contract to e sign upon booking which is great but it would be better if their were fields for the guest to put information into the one document. They do integrate with Docusign but I know setting it up and working out the glitches will be time consuming so I have not attempted it yet.

Pros

I like the calendar view the most out of all

Cons

The non ability to run a report for email addresses from the pre arrival form and messaging is a bit complicated

Pros

Hostfully allows both myself and the other members of the team to see a full picture of each of our properties — the calendar, booked visits, requested bookings, messages, and so much more.

Cons

There are some things that are not as intuitive as they could be. Sometimes it is not clear where information is being pulled from, or there are multiple spots to enter the same information. When that information is updated, it can be hard to remember every spot that has the same information.

Pros

The software is easy to use and easy intuitive. Great integrations

Cons

Support can be a little slow and the reporting could be better.

Pros

Well, I appreciate most from Hostfully is there everything is personally customized by me. Of course it took a year to understand how to work the system and how I could make changes, but it was surely rewarding to understand how to arrange things without contacting support

Cons

I think I am not a fan of the phone app however as long as I use the desktop version on my phone, things are dandy

Pros

We love the people at Hostfully. They are always willing to listen to the needs you have and come up with a great implementation and time line for it. Always willing to grow with you.

Cons

There isn't much because if we have an issue or something we would like for them to add they have been great about helping us with it.