The Best Property Management Software For Your Rentals: Top PMS Picks From Our Team of Superhosts

There comes a time when a host or property manager simply can’t handle all of their vacation rentals at once. Sometimes it’s just too overwhelming to manage all of these rentals alone. Luckily, property management software exists.

Choosing the right property management software is like choosing a partner for your rental business. It’ll be the tool you’ll mainly depend on and will be the main factor that’ll help you grow further.

You’ll need a reliable and flexible property management tool to anchor your vacation rental properties. The question is, which PMS should you get? Well, today, we’re listing our top picks for the best property management software we’ve encountered as Superhosts. Our goal is to give our insights and experience to assist you in choosing one that fits your rental management needs.

Hospitable

Up first is Hospitable. We might be a bit biased here since it’s one of the tools we personally use in managing our Airbnbs. However, we chose this piece of rental property management software for a reason. One of the main features we love about it are the powerful automation properties that handle the tedious and time-consuming tasks, allowing us to focus on our guests, providing great customer service, and other more important duties.

It also grants access to advanced features like smart lock integrations, task management, guest communication, and team collaboration directly from the mobile app. This makes it easy to provide excellent customer service, and monitor your rental properties even when away from your laptop.

Hospitable Key Features

• Unified Inbox: All of your messages across all of your booking channels are conveniently combined into this single inbox.
• Channel Manager: Allows you to synchronize your rental listings across Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, preventing double bookings and saving time managing listings.
• Task Management: It can help you automatically assign tasks based on check-in and check-out dates, along with custom rules you set to automate the system.
• 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.
• Smart Lock Integration: This feature allows you to automate the creation and distribution of unique access codes for your guests, with direct integrations with popular smart lock systems.
• 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.

Hospitable Pricing Plans

• 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.

Who We Recommend Hospitable For

Overall, we recommend Hospitable for pretty much all hosts and property managers. Its user-friendly interface along with powerful automation features makes it an excellent choice for beginners or experienced hosts, regardless of their portfolio size.

If you’re eager to learn more about the platform, check out our full Hospitable review.

Guesty

Guesty offers a wide variety of management tools, providing a great all-in-one platform for a host or property manager looking to automate their business. Guesty is another favorite of ours and is another property management software our team uses. Its intuitive UI and handful of useful features make it a great fit not only for rentals but also for other property types.

They have robust accounting tools, support for online rent payments, can provide funding through Guesty Capital, and a mobile app to boot. This makes it a perfect fit for real estate investors with properties within the STR industry and those getting their feet wet in mid-term rentals.

Guesty Key Features

• Channel Manager: Enables you to manage your listings across multiple booking platforms from a single interface, allowing you to easily update rates, availability, and listing details.
• Multi-Calendar: It allows you to view and manage all your reservations from a single, centralized calendar. 
• Unified Inbox: Manage all your guest communication from one place, regardless of the booking platform, streamlining the communication process and allowing you to provide customer support wherever you are.
• Automated Messaging: Allows you to set up customized message templates and rules, so you can send timely, personalized responses to your guests without having to manually type out each message. Can be great for common questions, providing as a decent customer support team, even when you aren’t available.
• Revenue Management: Their revenue management toolkit offers a variety of customization options, allowing you to set flexible rate plans tailored to your specific needs, taking your financial management to a new level. Also has integrations with some of the best dynamic pricing tools.
• Website Builder: It’s one of the more advanced features that enables you to create a professional, branded direct booking website for your vacation rental properties.

Guesty Pricing Plans

• Lite - Prices start at $16 per listing per month when billed annually or $23 per listing per month when billed monthly. It includes integrations with Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, direct reservations, a unified inbox, multi-calendar, task management, payment solutions, a mobile management app, and a booking website, among a few others.
• Pro - Unfortunately, prices for pro plans aren’t publicly available. It’s best suited for property owners with 4 to 199 listings, and you’ll have to get a quote from them for pricing. It includes everything in Lite with access to all channels within the Guesty Distribution Hub, advanced capabilities, accounting, revenue management, advanced analytics and insights, CRM, API, and an owner portal.
• Enterprise - The final plan is perfect for customers with more than 200 listings. Similar to Pro, it’s custom-made based on your needs so pricing will vary. It features everything in Pro plus enterprise-grade features, automation, security, premium support, advanced analytics, and more.

Who We Recommend Guesty For

Overall, Guesty has a user-friendly interface and an excellent customer support team that’s willing to lend you a hand. While it can be used by hosts or property managers with only a handful of properties, we mainly recommend Guesty for real estate professionals managing multiple rental listings. Their Pro plan provides access to numerous advanced features including accounting tools and financial management options, among other management tools, making it a viable all-in-one tool.

If you’re eager to learn more about the platform, check out our full Guesty review.

Hostaway

Hostaway provides a comprehensive all-in-one platform featuring excellent customization options, tons of integration capabilities, and powerful scaling properties. It’s without a doubt one of the best rental property management tools out there.

Through our experience, we do think that it has a steep learning curve and that you’ll need to dedicate a decent amount of time to learning the platform. Its huge and extensive feature set can be overwhelming to beginner hosts and property managers.

Hostaway Key Features

• Channel Manager: Manage multiple rental listings with ease through Hostaway’s direct integrations with popular OTAs, reducing the risk of double-booking and syncing your calendar across platforms.
• Hostaway Dynamic Pricing: It works by analyzing factors such as seasonality, local events, and competitor pricing, the tool provides the most competitive rates for listings daily. Although, we still recommend getting a dedicated dynamic pricing tool, but this is a great start if you aren’t interested in other platforms yet.
• Automation Tools: Features automation of processes such as messaging, guest reviews, tasks, and payments, streamlining the workflow for you or your team members.
• Marketing Tools: Includes setting up a direct booking website, WordPress plugin, coupon management software, and a website builder.
• Operations and Online Rent Payments: Hostaway can handle payment processing, contract signing, guest invoicing, automated payments, and proper task management/assignments.
• Analytics and Reporting: This includes occupancy reports, owner statements, financial reports, and expense tracking.
• Communication: Features like a unified inbox, automated messaging, a separate owner and guest portal, along with native support for SMS & WhatsApp.

Hostaway Pricing Plans

Unfortunately, Hostaway doesn’t publicly list their prices on the site. We recommend contacting Hostaway directly to get a quotation. Hostaway bases their prices on the amount of rental properties you have and the features you’re going to use. Each host or property manager has different needs, so they justify their pricing as specifically tailored for you.

We were able to find some publicly available information from forums and threads stating that the minimum monthly fee for Hostaway starts at around $50. Some claim to be paying around $200, while larger enterprise clients are paying upwards of $5000. However, don’t take any of these seriously as it can vary based on your needs and portfolio size. Again, we recommend simply contacting them directly to get a direct quotation.

Who We Recommend Hostaway For

We acknowledge that it’s a bit hard to recommend something you don’t even know the price of. Who knows if you’re getting a good deal or not, right? But, with extensive features like those available on Hostaway and the platform’s modular approach, we can see how it fits medium-sized businesses who are looking for a property management system that can scale as big as they need it to. Hostaway’s main advantage is definitely its scalability, so if you have plans of really expanding your portfolio, it might be the perfect tool for you.

If you’re eager to learn more about the platform, check out our full Hostaway review.

Hostify

Hostify stands out as one of the simpler property management software out there. It has all of the core features you’d look for in a PMS from a channel manager to a unified inbox, and a mobile app. It even has a couple of advanced features like AI messaging and smart automations.

The main thing that shines from Hostify is their all-inclusive subscription plans, boasting no extra charges, and a cancel-anytime policy. To us, this is a rarity within the space, and is definitely nice to see that it doesn’t hinder the platform in any way. We also liked the beautiful UI that Hostify comes with, making it not only easy to navigate but easy to digest as well.

Hostify Key Features

• Channel Manager: Merges all of your rental listings across your booking channels into a single dashboard, allowing you to manage and sync them into one platform.
• Booking Website: Hostify's customizable booking website allows you to transform website visitors into paying guests without any additional channel commission fees.
• Online Check-In: Helps streamline and automate the guest arrival process, leading to an improved guest experience.
• Task App: Features like checklists, issue reporting, and photo uploads can help facilitate smooth communication between team members, and help in automating the cleaning and maintenance process.
• AI Inbox Assistant: Uses AI to automatically categorize and prioritize messages. Also uses AI to suggest personalized responses or can be set to auto-respond to common inquiries.
• Payment Solutions: Hostify offers integrations with Stripe and PayPal, among other payment solutions, enables seamless payment processing for your booking channels.
• Mobile App: A dedicated Hostify mobile app that allows you to manage and monitor your listings from your phone. Doesn’t quite have the flexibility that the site has, but can still get the job done while you’re away from your PC.

Hostify Pricing Plans

• Less than 5 Rentals: Only an annual subscription plan that costs $1000 per year, but includes all of the features.
• 5-19 Rentals: Includes all features and costs $20 per rental per month.
• 20-49 Rentals: Includes all features and comes with a slight discount at only $16 per rental per month.
• 50-99 Rentals: Includes all features plus access to the Hostify WordPress Plugin. They also offer a discounted rate of $13 per rental per month.
• 100-199 Rentals: Includes all features, access to the Hostify WordPress Plugin, and a custom domain for your vacation rental business. Only costs $10 per month per rental.
• 200+ Rentals: A specialized enterprise-level plan that comes with all features, more customization features, additional app branding, WhatsApp support, and more. Prices aren’t available so you’ll have to contact Hostify directly.

Who We Recommend Hostify For

We’d comfortably recommend Hostify for hosts or property managers with small to medium-sized portfolios looking for a simple property management system that gets the job done. All of their features are unlocked, regardless of the plan you choose, making it a solid choice if you’re not a fan of additional fees and costs. It checks off all of the basics, a mobile app, and a straightforward pricing plan.

If you’re eager to learn more about the platform, check out our full Hostify review.

Final Thoughts

Our team here at BNBCalc manages vacation rentals ourselves, it’s actually one of the main reasons that led to the creation of our property analysis tool. So, we know firsthand how crucial it is to find the right property management software for your rental properties can be. The right PMS can take your managing duties from a strenuous and dreaded task to a quick and delightful experience. Hopefully, our picks helped you in deciding which property management tool you should use.