Hostfully Property Management Platform Erfahrungen

Tried the rest...this is the best! Look no further

Kommentare: Everything about Hostfully shows a pattern of superior thought and workmanship. The Hostfully team members I have come in contact with have all showed me a unique desire to deliver a robust solution to the day to day struggles I deal with as a property manager. I have used 3 other "top rated" alternative property management solutions and they all fall flat and short. When I say I recommend "them"...Hostfully...I say that because you are not just getting software...you are getting a team dedicated to making their customers user experience a successful one! They understand their clients success (us) means their success. I am happily staying with this company because nobody else has come close to solving my challenges as they are currently doing.

Vorteile:

Simple setup...really nice GUI...easy to navigate...no unnecessary clicks and extremely intuitive. The calendar is fabulous...you know where your bookings are coming from...it's easy to make contact with guests (due to the new inbox feature)...easy to make direct bookings...take payments...make changes...issue refunds...schedule housekeeping...I mean the team at Hostfully has thought of virtually everything to make your life easier. Not to mention distribution, channel management...all this is supposed to be cumbersome...not so anymore. My revenues have increased immensely not just as a direct result of better channel integration but for the simple fact that I have so much more free time! Free time equals more marketing, etc. The productivity that this software achieves must be worth checking out. Oh...and the support! ...due to the thoughtful design of the platform I find myself figuring things out on my own....however when you are in a bind...it seems the support is always there. Hostfully's support apparatus is easily twice as fast as the other platforms I have used. It's not even close frankly. In fact, I left another platform because of this very support problem that Hostfully has solved. Lastly, let's not forget value...the price. I think their pricing plans are competitive and more than reasonable when you think about how many problems they have solved.

Nachteile:

While it's not a deal breaker...an app would be nice. Using alternative property management solutions, they all had "apps". But what's the point of an app whey they are broken, clunky and lacking in every way imaginable? That describes the "competitors" mobile offerings. Believe me I tried them...for years...each! Hostfully does not have an app...but their site is completely "mobile friendly". Initially I was concerned but it turns out I couldn't have been more wrong. I would rather have a mobile friendly site that achieves ALL than an app that claims to have all, most...or some...yet has nothing of real value. Hostfully's site is SUPER EASY on your mobile device. Don't worry about it! I'm extremely mobile and if it was a pain...I would have moved on by now...and I'm not...no way.

Free at last

Kommentare: I would recommend Hostfully for anyone who is looking for long term goals to build brand awareness, be more engaged with how to get recognized and of course helping your company look more personal to guests rather than just an operated system.

Vorteile:

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

Nachteile:

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

Software looks good but the company is not

Kommentare: Since submitting this feedback, a representative of Orbirentals / Hostfully has made contact in April, refunded the sums deducted from our account and apologised for the lack of response to my issues at the beginning of the year. She has explained that the company was conducting a merger and customer relations may have suffered at the time because of the changes and pressure of work-load I think it is very decent of her to try and make amends, even several months down the line.

Vorteile:

A move from our current pms is long overdue and I have been looking at many alternatives. This one looked promising and I was very keen on it: - It seems easy and straightforward to set up and use - There are useful connections to other apps and complementary software. - The pricing is competitive. Unfortunately I have not been able to fully explore it, nor sign up officially, as the company is not as straightforward and easy to use as the software appears to be.

Nachteile:

In order to evaluate this pms you have to sign up for a `free two-week trial AND supply your card details. As a rule, I would avoid a company that does this but they have all these great reviews and so, against my better judgment, I went ahead. I expected that there would be an email reminder that the trial was coming to an end - not an unreasonable expectation but sadly it is. I received no reminder that the two-week trial was coming to an end and that I would be charged. No notification nor receipt when they made TWO separate charges to my card. Two charges because apparently, I upgraded my account by asking to see a feature not visible on the trial account, and which was activated, not by me. Glitches happen and I thought this could be sorted out. Again, I was wrong. Instead, I received a schlock response about how everything is automated and it is up to the `user to sign up and also to cancel. So, if the software is so well automated - why can it not send emails notifying a `free trial has ended and charges have been levied? I was never able to speak to a real person. For three days I tried calling two phone numbers but they always went to voicemail. I then received an email from customer agent asking me to make an appointment to speak to him by clicking on a calendar link - the next available slot was the following week! Not the correct response when there is a problem; the correct response is to pick up the phone and sort it out today - not next week.

Hostfully is a breath of fresh air in the world of PMS

Kommentare: We are very happy and refer hostfully to others without hesitation.

Vorteile:

We have loved our onboarding experience with Hostfully. The support team is wonderful. We really appreciate the response time and attention to the details. Support is always helpful and encouraging. We love the way that the platform looks. We also really appreciate the built-in booking website. Super helpful and keeps things streamlined. We also appreciate how we receive updates regarding new or improved features.

Nachteile:

We know that the team is working on updating the calendar features. We would like to see more flexibility with the calendar so that we can add color-coding, and notes, etc. but otherwise we are very satisfied with the stremline processes.

Top Rated for many reasons. Great company culture and leadership

Kommentare: Not only, Game-changing for operations and increased revenue , but also peace of mind knowing team members have better access to operationsto help make them successful in their various support roles.

Vorteile:

customer service and help articles. triggers and templates with sms featurecleaning jobs, owner blocks

Nachteile:

increasing costssome integrated tools do not provide the same level of customer support that hostfully does. Owner blocks could be included in repots along with "costs" in spreadsheet, Owner block trigger a cleaning job

Not what it used to be

Kommentare: We have been using Hostfully for a over a year. Overnight they changed the calender view and now it is very difficult to navigate and see dates. If you have more than 25 properties then you will definitely be lost, the mobile browser does not even load more than 25 properties. Have raised this issue and talked to management on a video call and they accepted the problems and said they will do something about it, now they just ignore all emails.Don't take the annual plan, there are too many issues and nobody there to listen, and if you ask for your money back you will only get silence. Here are some more issues:- Direct booking confirmation number are very long over 20 characters which makes no sense.- Booking.com API is outdated, new amenities on extranet will not be sycned. Have complained about this but nothing being done.- App is very limited - Customer support says 24/7, but they can take upto 3 hours to reply also.- The product is getting worse and they are increasing prices.- Most of the times when you have an issue you will be given an article to solve the problem, they will not do anything for you, same with setup.- If you have an issue and the rep does not have the solution, the simple solution they have is to say that "higher tier are working on it" no matter how many times you follow up that is the response and their way out of not doing anything.- If you use VRBO then you must use USD currency for all your properties.

Vorteile:

Fast to set up if you have previous experience and user friendly

Nachteile:

Buggy calender, no proper reservation numbers, poor customer support

Hostfully is the software that brings everything together!

Kommentare: My experience with Hostfully has been great! It takes some time to get to know the ins and outs of what it can do. But once you learn it, there is no reason to look elsewhere!

Vorteile:

Hostfully is a robust vacation rental management platform that offers a range of features and tools to make managing vacation rentals easy and efficient. Hostfully's integration with popular listing platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway makes it easy to manage all of your rental properties in one place. At the same time, its reporting and analytics tools provide insights into occupancy rates, revenue, and other key performance metrics.I genuinely appreciate the platform's user-friendly interface and responsive customer support, as well as the platform's ability to automate many of the tedious tasks associated with vacation rental management. Their chat function has live people on the other end, and the response time is usually minutes (not hours or days)!Overall, if you're a vacation rental owner or property manager looking for an all-in-one solution to streamline your operations and improve the guest experience, Hostfully is definitely worth considering.

Nachteile:

I waited too long to implement a channel manager. I had 12-15 properties at the time. The more properties you have, the longer the implementation takes. For anyone planning to manage more than five units, do yourself a favor and take the plunge early.

Hostfully is getting better

Vorteile:

Channel management and communications integration across all channels.

Nachteile:

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

A must if you plan to grow!

Kommentare: I think Hostfully still has some kinks to work out, but I’m glad we are growing with them. I would recommend them.

Vorteile:

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

Nachteile:

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

Great experience

Kommentare: Again, wish we had moved sooner. Everything is user friendly and we have support 24/7.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Hostfully is fantastic for the money! Not perfect but they are working towards that!

Kommentare: I am able to effectively run the bulk of what I do with Short Term Rentals using Hostfully. I am able to automate so many things and it is amazing. I do this while paying way less than a major competitor of theirs charges.

Vorteile:

Very easy to use for most things. Features are organized and uncomplicated. The pipeline and it's organization is so easy to use and gather pertinent information about a reservation fast! Spending time setting everything up was challenging but so worth it! No nonsense.

Nachteile:

Communications and the integration with some OTAs could be drastically improved. Transferring bookings with VRBO was a nightmare.

Generally satisfied

Vorteile:

- 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).

Nachteile:

- 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

New property manager

Kommentare: Initially it was superb with [sensitive content hidden]
, after that we’ve lost touch with any one contact, the help button is responsive but almost never solves a problem. They’re very nice, but refer owners/managers to the platforms directly.

Vorteile:

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!

Nachteile:

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.

Critical Feature Missing

Vorteile:

Hostfully does have some good features..

Nachteile:

Hostfully is missing a KEY FEATURE that is pivotal to operating a short-term rental business in an efficient manner! The missing feature is their integration with VRBO. While Hostfully allows you to set up "automated messages" to guests who book through Airbnb, they lack the integration to do the same on VRBO. This is something that they won't tell you during the training sessions, so please take this as your warning!! After I signed up for Hostfully, I learned about this lack of integration and immediately canceled and am now using Guesty which not only has integration to message your guests automatically from their platform, but they also have many many more features as well! If you're serious about growing your short-term rental business, I highly recommend using software that can support you (not Hostfully)!

Hostfully. SO much potential. Yet so little focus on what is important to those USING it daily.

Kommentare: Overall amazing for the price. Loading times are the worst. And I have to clear my fucking cache every 5 minutes.

Vorteile:

Its cheap and does everything other PMS things do.

Nachteile:

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.

Great product overall, definitely needs work, but great integrations

Kommentare: I still believe in this product despite some of our biggest frustrations. Personal communication or the ability to have an assigned account manager would be HUGE.

Vorteile:

We love the integrations! Most are seamless. The calendar view is good and most of the Company level settings are nice to have. Chat customer service is great for smaller, less important issues. Templates and triggers are nice and it's always great that we can provide feedback.

Nachteile:

When really big, impactful problems arise, there is NO ONE to speak with. Sometimes it's much easier to pick up the phone.

What a pity!!!

Kommentare: I contacted this PMS thanks to the excellent references. In fact the product would be good if ... you could get there!!! The on-boarding process turned out to be a nightmare: unprofessional people - incomplete documentation - long lead times. All for a fee, of course! (on-boarding fee = 400 euros)
Moreover, if you call the San Francisco office, there is no company answering, but the President's answering machine (how many are there??!!!). Since the on-boarding procedure is so long, in the meantime I received double reservations and I lost reservations that just needed to be confirmed (they put AirBnb + Booking off-line for days). Can you give instead of a minimum rating a negative rating ... like - 1000? Do you know what happened? They told me that their product is not suitable for me and they cancelled my account. Without paying one euro in damages (real !!!!) Unfortunately software is a handicraft product where people count. Do you think I like these people?

Vorteile:

The software has very good references and the functionalities are complete. The cost is high but the product is good.

Nachteile:

The on-boarding process turned out to be a nightmare: unprofessional people - incomplete documentation - long lead times. All for a fee, of course! (on-boarding fee = 400 euros) In detail: to upload future bookings from http://Booking.com the bidirectional API does not work and a CSV file must be used. This was feasible as I would have had to upload direct bookings anyway!!! Too bad that after 10 days I was not able to have access to a complete documentation about the formatting of the fields (it's a complicated thing!!) and to my request to have the on-boarding team (paid and not international, based in New York and therefore accessible only in the afternoons and evenings) do the operation given the objective difficulties (one for all: the date format accepted is American, but I am European and I would have had to change the setting for my ENTIRE PC) they ALWAYS REFUSED to do the operation despite 17 e-mails.

Only getting 70%

Vorteile:

I would say the inbox is good. It lets me keep all the conversations with guests in the forefront. The sales funnel is good. I would say probably give us an option to delay when a customer conversation gets moved to "archived." I dont know its 24 or 48 hr after check-out. If I havent given them the "please review us and direct book with us" message upon check-out, I have to hunt for the conversation in the archived section, because its been moved. Luckily the sort feature helps the hunt move quickly, but i rather not have to hunt for it at all and choose to move it when I am satisfied.

Nachteile:

Many of the features I want to take advantage of were briefly mentioned in the "onboarding." However, the highest priority, for me, during the onboarding stage was channel integration and VRP. Automated messaging, figuring out the calendar, etc, were all tertiary concerns. So at times, I feel like Im only getting partial functionality out of Hostfully. I dont feel comfortable using the support/chat for questions about features because I only use that when something is wrong. Maybe there can be a function for non-emergency/non-bug support, like an occasional email offering a "wellness check." "Is there anything we can do help you get the most out of Hostfully?"Also! Please, please, PLEASE remove the automated pop-up on the mobile site. If Im trying to login, for functionality not on the app, I do not want to mess with a pop-up while Im trying to log in. Its not an issue on the desktop because it doesnt interfere with UI, but on a smartphone its a PITA. If you cant parse the popup between desktop & smartphone, put it on a 2min timer or something. If Im dealing with something with a guest or staff that is timely, I dont need the added frustration a damn pop-up slowing me down from fixing the issue. If Im on the phone with police with a guest safety issue, or dealing with a pipe burst at 2am and away from my laptop, the "hey lets talk" type popup is just one more step getting in my way from fixing problem for my guests.

needs major work

Kommentare: many clunky elements of the software. Frankly, I think it needs a major cosmetic overall to make it more user friendly.

Vorteile:

Good software, but needs a ton of work, especially in the Trigger management as well as accounting side of the house. The software is just "clunky" and not user-friendly in many areas which is unfortunate.

Nachteile:

The communication with guests and missing very obvious features, such as quick access to see who is currently being hosted and the ability to manage easily. Also there is no ability to charge a customer directly on the platform; we need to go through Stripe to do "add on" services

Me and Hostfully!

Kommentare: Love it! Just need a more versatile app

Vorteile:

I love the ease of managing the booking and inquiries under the "pipeline". The ability to create custom content and creating a guest guide that is actually useful. I love the ability to create my shopping Marketplace for guest meals. Your customer support is the BEST! Thank you to the team for getting me through difficult spots.

Nachteile:

It can be difficult to figure out things I can't resolve, but support is there to help until it's resolved. I do find the app limiting when I'm traveling. I have to call home to ask someone to use the desktop to resolve tasks.

Easy to use

Kommentare: Love the platform and the simple way to control all our different channels and our direct booking, easy process to book and a great way to communicate with clients. It is great.

Vorteile:

Every time is some great improvement and the hostfully team is always helping with anything we report. For us as users and even for our clients is great and easy.

Nachteile:

I know that is something they are still working on but the connectivity with VRBO is not that easy and as property management having the control of all in one place is our priority. Trust this will be done any time soon. At this moment is not 100% fully connected yet.

Best Property Management Platform

Vorteile:

The features that is easy to access and navigate

Nachteile:

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

You get what you pay for

Kommentare: It does what is supposed to do. is the best platform on the market? probably not. It is easy to use if you want to automate some stuff you don't want to do manually, but it has a lot of improving to do regarding options.

Vorteile:

It is easy to use, if you do not have experience using a property Management platform, this could be an easy training platform, it does what is supposed to do, however, if you would like to customize things, from one channel to another or to separate functions, this is not it.

Nachteile:

The time response for the customer service time is eternal. They do not reply in less than 2 hours even though is a "chat", Once you have an open ticket it may take them up to 2 weeks to respond regarding 1 issue.

A Helpful, Inclusive Tool

Kommentare: The best thing about Hostfully is how helpful and responsive the Customer Service is. Anytime I have a question, I know I can reach out for help and find incredibly helpful responses that will not only help me with the immediate issue but will also help me learn what to do in the future.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Avoid at all costs !

Kommentare: Terrible, I had really bad customer support who just fob you off and never answer you and just say management are looking into it. Will never get your money back so raise a chargeback with your bank before it’s too late.

Vorteile:

User interface was good but the bad outweighs the good.

Nachteile:

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.