Hospitable Review: From Our Team of Superhosts

If you’ve been in the Airbnb game for a relatively long time, you might know a vacation rental management software called Smartbnb. Well, that name is long gone and is called “Hospitable,” better aligning with their core values as a company.

This review is a little bit closer to our hearts since the team of Superhosts here at BNBCalc personally uses Hospitable to help us manage our short term rentals. However, that doesn’t stop us from giving our opinion about Hospitable and talking you through the key features, pricing plans, general user experience, and others.

Best Hospitable Features and How Hosts Can Use Them for Their Airbnb

Hospitable offers a variety of excellent features designed to simplify vacation rental management for hosts and property managers. Here are some of the features and tools we love from Hospitable:

Unified Inbox: The Unified Inbox merges messages from multiple booking platforms, into a single, centralized inbox. This feature makes it easy for hosts to manage guest communication efficiently, even when dealing with numerous reservations across different channels. With reservation details and AI-powered guest summaries available in the sidebar, you can quickly respond to inquiries and provide excellent customer service without switching between platforms. You can even download the Hospitable app to answer messages on the go, it makes guest communication easy and convenient.

Channel Manager: Hospitable's Channel Manager allows you to synchronize your listings across Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com. It provides a unified calendar view that shows booked nights and daily rates, the Channel Manager helps prevent double bookings and streamlines the reservation management process. We’ve found the feature to be particularly valuable if you have multiple properties listed on different platforms, as it saves time and reduces errors.

Task Management: The Task Management feature is a game-changer for hosts who work with cleaning staff or maintenance teams. It can help you automatically assign tasks based on check-in and check-out dates. You can set up custom rules to notify team members via email, SMS, or daily digest, making it easy to coordinate and stay on top of tasks. It’s one of our favorite ones, mainly because once you set the rules, the system does everything for you. Just set it, and forget it.

Pricing Sync: Hospitable integrates with third-party dynamic pricing tools like PriceLabs, Wheelhouse, and Beyond to automatically apply and publish optimized daily rates across all your listings. This feature helps maximize your revenue potential and ensures that your prices remain competitive in the market by using one of the top dynamic pricing tools in the industry. We use Hospitable with PriceLabs, which is why integrations are a must-have for us.

Smart Lock Integration: Hospitable's Smart Lock Integration feature allows you to automate the creation and distribution of unique access codes for your guests. Hospitable directly integrates with popular smart lock systems such as Schlage, August, and Yale, allowing you to grant access to your property based on check-in and check-out dates without manual intervention. This feature not only enhances the guest experience by providing seamless entry but also reduces the workload for hosts and property managers. It’s one of those things that you didn’t know you needed until you’ve actually used it. Ours runs on Schlage Encode Smart Locks and we haven’t run into any major issues. Keep your guests safe while eliminating the need for manual turnovers.

Direct Booking Websites: Hospitable offers a Direct Booking Website feature that enables hosts to create professional, customizable vacation rental websites optimized for desktop and mobile devices. If you drive direct bookings through your own website, you can reduce your reliance on third-party platforms and save on commission fees. Hospitable's website templates are designed to showcase your properties effectively and provide a smooth booking experience for your guests. It makes it easy to create presentable and functional websites that can help expand and showcase your rentals.

Hospitable Pricing: How Much Does Hospitable Cost?

It’s time to check out the subscription plans that Hospitable has to offer along with the features and tools that are included within them. This will help hosts and property managers plan ahead of the costs and see if Hospitable is worth it for their vacation rentals.

• Host - Plans start at $29 per month for a single vacation rental and $39 per month for two listings. It features the core aspects of what you would expect from vacation rental management software like AI automation, channel management, and a unified inbox.
• Professional - Starts at $59 per month for up to two rentals with an additional $15 per month for each active property. The extra $15 scales regardless of how many properties you add, making it a great choice for property owners with multiple rentals. It includes everything in Host but adds a metrics dashboard, support for Hospitable’s app marketplace and API, smart device integration, and direct bookings.
• Mogul - The final plan starts at $99 per month for up to three properties, asking for an extra $30 per additional active property. This is another great choice for property owners and property managers with multiple listings. It includes everything we’ve previously mentioned, along with extensive brand management, and extra owner relations features.

Overall, the Professional plan offers a great bargain and is pretty suitable for almost every host and property manager out there. Its access to extended features can help you provide excellent service to your customers, while increasing guest satisfaction. Mogul can also be a great choice if you’re looking for accounting integrations, owner statements, and even trust accounting, which can be helpful for better financial management.

Hospitable Pricing vs Alternatives

Hospitable isn’t the only vacation rental management platform out there. There’s a handful of popular and great ones to choose from, and we’ve gathered a few of them today. It’ll help you paint a better picture of the costs that come with these kinds of tools.

• Guesty - Lite: starts at $16 per listing/month for up to 3 listings. Pro and Enterprise: For 4-199 listings and 200+ listings, they offer custom prices and you’ll need to contact them for pricing. Guesty also charges for some of their extra features.
• Hostfully - Starter: $119 per month for up to 4 listings. Pro & Pro Plus: $215 per month for up to 11 listings, and $269 per month for up to 19 listings, respectively. Premium: Custom plans for hosts and property managers with numerous listings. They also offer a 10% discount for annual plans.
• Lodgify - Starter: $20/ month + 1.9% of booking fee per listing. Professional: $50/ month per listing. Ultimate: $73/ month per listing. They also offer discounts per plan per additional listing you have, along with up to 25% off on yearly and two-year plans.
• Hostaway - Hostaway isn’t fully transparent with their rates. They charge a monthly or annual subscription, according to your preference, and prices will vary depending on what features you’ll be using, and the number of listings you’ll manage. You’ll need to contact them directly for pricing inquiries.

Honestly, it’s a bit hard to compare the pricing across platforms, mainly because each of them offers unique services that might suit your business better. However, as we’ve mentioned, we use Hospitable in our own vacation rentals, and from our experience, it’s able to provide everything we need and a bit more.

Hospitable Reviews From Across the Web

Moving on, we’ve scoured different review sites and collected a handful of verified comments left by hosts and managers who use Hospitable. This can help us get a better grasp of how other property owners and property managers view the platform.

• Daniel DuBosque says this: “Super easy set up. Integration is powerful, seamless and helpful! The features are very helpful and it made managing multiple platforms very easy! Would definitely reccomend.”
• A verified reviewer left this comment: “Hospitable was the very first software I incorporated into my business. I manage my own STRs and it has been instrumental in helping me automate reservation management and guest messaging. Sometimes it takes more than 2-3 days for customer service to answer inquiries and it takes quite a while for bugs in their software to be investigated and resolved. I also wish Hospitable had more robust reporting.”
• Wendy D. claims: “I love using Hospitable. Not only is it simple to use, they are constantly adding new features as a result of host feedback. They host calls where you can listen in on changes and new features on the horizon and then give feedback on existing features. It's is easy on the eyes unlike some other property management software that is ugly and difficult to use. Hospitable is also easy to set up and integrate with Airbnb and VRBO.”

The overall feedback seems to praise Hospitable’s easy-to-use UI and users love how quick it is to set up. A negative review here and there primarily talked about some customer service issues taking to long to respond but not much were said about the platform itself. But, most users seem to be satisfied with Hospitable. It’s even reflected in the 4.9 stars out of 5 score on G2, 4.8 stars out of 5 on Capterra, and 4.3 stars out of 5 on TrustPilot.

Final Thoughts

Overall, we think that Hospitable's user-friendly interface, powerful automation features, and competitive pricing make it an attractive option for those looking to streamline their Airbnb management processes We believe that this piece of vacation rental software is a reliable choice for hosts and property managers of all experience levels and portfolio sizes.

One small factor that could be a downside is their somewhat limited number of integrations. However, they do cover the popular rental platforms and dynamic pricing tools.

If you’re still unsure, make sure to check out their 14-day free trial offer to fully explore the platform and its capabilities.

If you’re considering starting out your own Airbnb rental or just looking for a new addition to your portfolio, we suggest checking out our BNBCalc property analysis tool to give you an insight into properties on your radar. It can help you make data-driven decisions, based on what active rentals are already earning, allowing you to get an idea of not only revenue but also expenses, and paint a fuller picture of your potential investment.