Hostfully is a short-term rental management software platform that promises to make Airbnb business operations easier and more efficient. The app offers a range of tools, from a channel manager and central calendar to a unified inbox and task management, so it has the potential to streamline and facilitate various day-to-day activities in the work of hosts and property managers. But how does it work and what do customers say?
In this Hostfully review, we’ll take a closer look at the platform’s core features, integrations, pricing structure, ideal user profile, and real customer feedback from top-rated review sites. We'll break down what users like most, what pain points have come up in reviews, and whether the tool lives up to its promises. Finally, we’ll share a few top-tier software solutions—both alternatives and complements—that can help you run a smarter, more scalable short-term rental business.
And if you’re looking to unlock even more performance from your Airbnb business, check out SummerOS. Whether you use Hostfully or another PMS, SummerOS plugs into your existing tools to deliver strategic visibility, automated insights, and portfolio-level control. From comp set benchmarking and owner-ready reports to underwriting, forecasting, and task automation, SummerOS gives you the power to move from reactive to proactive management.
🙌 Start your free trial and experience the STR platform built for growth-minded managers.
What is Hostfully?
Hostfully is a short-term rental and guest experience platform that automates and simplifies property management operations. The company was founded as the synergy between Stephan Osmont, who had built a property management software, and David Jacoby and Margot Schmorak, who had built a guest experience platform. Hostfully was officially established in 2015 and has its headquarters in San Francisco, CA. The company mission is to help vacation rental hosts and guests make the most of every stay based on the belief that local travel experiences make the world a better place.
Currently, Hostfully offers two distinct products that aim to streamline and improve the management of vacation rental properties: 1) A property management platform and 2) Digital guidebooks. The app is used by thousands of hosts and property managers in 80+ countries and gets 21,000+ bookings per month.
Who is Hostfully best for?
The Hostfully Airbnb management software has a number of tools that can help different operators in the short-term rental industry.
The main customers of Hostfully include:
- New and experienced DIY hosts with one or more listings on different channels
- Local and national Airbnb managers with diverse portfolios
- National and international, small- and large-scale vacation rental management companies working with STR investor customers
While all these groups of users can benefit from the tools available on Hostfully, the platform is generally geared towards professional property managers rather than individual hosts.
What is Hostfully used for?
As one of the best short-term rental software platforms available on the market, Hostfully can perform a wide range of functions due to the multiple features developed by its team over the years.
Our Hostfully review shows that it offers two main products:
- Property management platform that reduces workload and operational costs while enhancing guest experiences by streamlining operations
- Digital guidebooks that help make guests happier and generate more revenue by automating the creation of customized digital guidebooks for guests
Let’s take a look at the features integrated within each of these Hostfully products:
Core features
Hostfully offers a number of must-have features for every property management system (PMS). They include:
- Automation: Hostfully automation streamlines and optimizes the most repetitive tasks that take up the most time when managing STRs. Some Airbnb automations include pricing, messaging, payments, check-in and check-out, guest reviews, and reporting. This helps decrease workload, eliminate manual mistakes, improve team efficiency, and boost guest experiences.
- Channel manager: The Hostfully Airbnb channel manager provides price and availability syncing, calendar management, listing content synchronization, and comprehensive management from a single dashboard. It connects with 50+ booking channels including Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com as well as more niche websites.
- Booking pipeline: Hostfully has a central dashboard for booking management that covers multiple filters, accelerated booking workflow, and automated responses to manage guest and reservation details, enhance coordination between team members, and save time.
- Unified inbox: The Hostfully unified inbox brings together messages from different booking channels as well as emails into a single place to ensure that all guest inquiries get a response. Within the inbox, you can build message templates, automate communication based on triggers, add attachments, and sort and filter messages. This helps improve your ranking on Airbnb and other platforms and generate more 5-star reviews.
- InboxAI: The Hostfully InboxAI syncs the guidebooks, PMS, and guest communication to leverage AI in a way that optimizes guest communication for even better experiences. The tool provides AI-generated responses to guest messages that can be reviewed by hosts before being sent.
- Open API: Hostfully offers an open API so that hosts and property managers can customize solutions, build their own platforms, integrate any external tool, or connect their own website. With open access to Hostfully data, you can process, analyze, and display data in the way that makes the most sense for your business.
- Dashboard: The Hostfully dashboard displays monthly Airbnb metrics, current bookings, leads, and lead assignments for monitoring performance and managing reservations. You can control access by team members so that each team member sees the business aspects that pertain to their job.
- Analytics: With Hostfully analytics, you can track and analyze preselected metric categories, financial insights, property data, team performance, RevPAR, and revenue by channel. This helps you gain insights into your listing and business potential.
Operations features
In addition, Hostfully offers a range of tools that help streamline operations to increase efficiency, including:
- Property data management: Hostfully provides comprehensive two-way synchronization between listings and the platform dashboard. You can create and edit settings on Hostfully and have your daily rates, booking restrictions, listing content, and photos automatically updated across all OTAs in real time.
- Payment processing: With Hostfully, you can ensure seamless financial transactions and automate deposit collection, fee collection, taxes, cleaning fees, upselling services, refunds, and owner payouts. Hostfully connects with 25+ payment plugins including but not limited to Google Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Revolut Pay, and others.
- Task management: The app supports the automated generation, assignment, and monitoring of team tasks based on triggers associated with booking data. This helps save time on team communication, improve team collaboration, and avoid costly mistakes when getting properties ready for guests.
- User permissions: Hostfully allows you to customize the access to the platform of different types of users such as managers, booking agents, property sales managers, associates, service providers, property owners, and external sales agents. This feature is particularly helpful for Airbnb management companies with large teams.
- Mobile app: The Hostfully mobile app allows you to access all core and additional features on the go so that you can manage your short-term term properties anywhere anytime.
Marketing features
As one of the best Airbnb management software solutions, Hostfully offers specialized marketing capabilities for generating more bookings. These include:
- Direct booking: Hotfully allows hosts and property managers to drive direct bookings, which benefit from the lack of Airbnb host fees, by launching a new vacation rental website or integrating their already existing website. Direct booking websites connect with all Hostfully tools meaning that you have all necessary data while syncing reservations from booking channels and your own website.
- Branded experience: Hostfully helps you create and grow your own brand with a custom domain for your direct booking website and custom logo and business name applied to all customer-facing assets. In this way, you can work on brand recognition and trust, showcase your brand, and reduce booking friction.
- Customer data management: The Hostfully customer data keeps track of all guests and their most important attributes to be used for remarketing and boosting repeat customers. You can get to know your guests, enrich guest profiles, and improve guest relationships for more positive reviews and bookings.
Guest and owner management features
Hostfully has developed dedicated tools that help manage guests and property owners to grow your Airbnb management business more easily. These features include:
- Central calendar: The Hostfully central calendar brings together and consolidates listings and reservations from all OTAs. The multi-channel calendar helps you check out which properties are booked, which are vacant, when guests arrive, when cleaning is scheduled for, and other important events. Moreover, you can manually change booking rules and nightly prices for specific dates to maximize revenue, including bulk adjustments.
- Guidebook integration: The guidebook integration allows you to create and auto-populate guidebooks with information available in the PMS as well as to automatically share them with guests prior to arrival. This reduces guest inquiries while offering better guest experiences and generating more revenue with upsells and referrals to local businesses.
- Pre-arrival form: This feature helps Airbnb hosts and managers collect all necessary data from guests before their arrival in a non-intrusive manner. In this way, you can have the information required by local short-term rental regulations and needed to provide the ultimate guest experience.
- Digital rental agreements and digital signatures: Hostfully facilitates the creation, sending, and signing of custom vacation rental agreements that automatically pull in reservation details such as the guest name and passport number, check-in and check-out information, and property name and address. This helps you protect your rental without the need for additional manual work.
- Owner financial reports: You can automate the process of keeping your clients in the know via regular, pre-configured financial reports. This helps gain property owner trust and retain them as customers in the long term.
- Owner portal: Hostfully provides property owners with their own portal to access the booking calendar, block dates for their personal use, set up owner payouts, communicate with managers, and receive financial statements and reports. This facilitates the management of owners and puts a lot of the required tasks on autopilot.
- Multi-unit solutions: Hostfully helps you consolidate all your listings and see them from a single place. You can create and distribute multiple listings of the same type on all channels in addition to bulk managing daily rates, listing titles and descriptions, photos, and amenities across similar listing types.
- Reporting: Hostfully automates the generation of various reports including owner reports, fee reports, and transaction reports with daily, weekly, or monthly schedules. Reports can be published as HTML, CSV, and PDF.
Digital guidebooks
One feature that makes Hostfully stand out from all the other vacation rental management software apps is the digital guidebooks. While some competitors have basic guidebook functionalities, Hostfully offers the most sophisticated tool in this category.
Hostfully guidebooks offer an easy option to provide guests with all the information they need before, during, and after their stay to optimize their experience while eliminating unnecessary communication.
Specifically, before arrival, you can highlight the unique amenities of your property, explain the check-in process, share the house rules, and upsell additional services for extra income. During the guest stay, you can provide essential user guides for appliances, offer local transportation information, recommend tourist attractions, and share promo codes with discounts at local businesses. Afterwards, you can convey the check-out procedures, upsell extra services like transportation to the airport, and ask for a review.
The most important features of Hostfully digital guidebooks include:
- Easy content creation for generating personalized guidebooks in a matter of minutes
- AI itinerary planner for offering a customized itinerary for guests’ entire trip based on interests and needs
- Referral revenue for passive income via the recommendation of local tours, guides, and entrance tickets
- Upselling services for more revenue with additional services such as early check-ins, mid-stay cleaning, in-home chef, late check-outs, and others
- Custom branding for reflecting the brand of your business by uploading your logo and adjusting colors to match your brand
- Universal device optimization by sharing guidebooks via PDF, QR code, or unique link that open on any device
- Translation in 16+ languages for easy communication with global guests
- Multimedia support for making attractive guidebooks using images, videos, and embedded Google Maps
What’s missing
While Hostfully offers a rich suite of tools, there are some features that the platform is missing compared to alternative solutions.
The main tools absent from the Hostfully app are:
- Dynamic pricing: While hosts and property managers can adjust prices and create rules, Hostfully does not have its own Airbnb pricing tool for automating your dynamic pricing strategy. This can be done via integrations with leading tools like Wheelhouse, PriceLabs, and Beyond.
- Smart locks management: Hostfully does not automate the management of Airbnb smart locks for efficient check-ins and check-outs. Nonetheless, the app connects with smart home products that can help in providing keyless access.
- Guest review automation: The guest communication automation features of Hostfully help streamline some parts of the process of collecting guest reviews, but the platform does not have a dedicated tool for this function.
- Accounting: Hostfully can automate financial reporting and payment processing, but it doesn’t have dedicated Airbnb accounting software, while some competitors do. Still, the platform integrates with accounting apps to address this issue.
- Short-term rental financing: Finally, Hostfully does not provide specialized financing options to improve your properties and grow your business, like those offered by Hostaway and Guesty.
All in all, the Hostfully tools make it one of the most comprehensive vacation rental management platforms available to hosts and professional managers. Still, the lack of some tools, especially dynamic pricing, is something that you should take into account when deciding if this is the right fit for your business.
Hostfully pricing
When choosing between Hostfully and an alternative, it’s important to consider the cost that using the platform entails. To get the best value, you need to look at both the features and the price.
Hostfully has separate pricing plans for the PMS and the digital guidebooks products, but always check their website for the most up-to-date pricing.
Hostfully property management platform pricing
Based on our review of Hostfully, the platform offers four different subscription plans for the property management platform. The total cost depends on the available features, number of rentals, and payment frequency with monthly and annual options, with the latter providing a 10% discount.
Hostfully plans cover:
- Starter: All the main features necessary to get an Airbnb business rolling. $117/month for up to four properties, when billed annually.
- Pro and Pro+: All tools necessary to grow STR business. Either $207/month for up to 11 properties or $257/month for up to 19 properties, both when billed annually.
- Premium: Features needed to scale up a business with advanced needs. Custom pricing.
Hostfully does not offer a free trial because of the hands-on onboarding services. Potential customers can get a free demo to learn more about the capabilities of the platform before making a decision. Meanwhile, all plans come with live onboarding calls and a personal onboarding contact for the first 45 days. There is also a one-time implementation fee for all subscriptions.
Hostfully digital guidebooks pricing
To use the Hostfully guidebooks feature, there are different subscription plans. These include:
- Starter: All main features to create a guidebook for your vacation rental business. Free forever for one guidebook.
- Even better version: Access to brand customization, revenue generating features, and translations. From $9.99/month for one guidebook to $2,500/month for 500 guidebooks (when billed monthly) and custom pricing for more guidebooks. Annual subscriptions benefit from a 10% discount.
While Hostfully is rather pricey for hosts with one or two listings, the cost becomes more competitive for larger-scale operators.
Hostfully integrations
Hostfully provides many tools on its own, and where it’s missing some capabilities, it offers them via integrations with third-party Airbnb host tools.
Hostfully connects directly with 100+ apps in the following categories:
- Accounting: Quickbooks, Ximplifi, VRPlatform, Clearing, Hostkit, Accountable, Koopkit, and Ctlrbnb
- Amenities: sojo
- Application integration: Zapier and Enso Connect
- Cleaning and turnover management: Turno, Breezeway, Properly, Operto Teams, EZCare, Cleanster, Clyn, and ResortCleaning
- Communication: Besty AI, Host AI, Guest Guru, Charge Automation, GuestLabs, Akia, HostbuddyAI, and others
- Data tools: SummerOS, Key Data, Moving Lake, and Wheelhouse Booking Insights
- Digital signatures: Check-in Scan and DropboxSign
- Distribution channels: Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, RedAwning, Google, bnbfinder, HomeToGo, Lake, GoLightly, Homads, Rentalz, TravelStation, VacayMyWay, Rentals United, and others
- Dynamic pricing: PriceLabs, Beyond, Wheelhouse, Rented, Smartpricing, DPGO, Turbosuite, Quibble, Nightpricer, and others
- Guidebook integrations: Viator, Mozio, AIPEX Virtual Concierge, and BabyQuip
- Image compression: TinyPNG
- Insurance and guest screening: Autohost, Chekin, InsuraGuest, Safely, and Superhog
- Luggage storage: LuggageHero and Nannybag
- Marketing automation: Mailchimp, StayFi, Autorank, and Smart Pineapple
- Payment processing: Stripe, PayPal, and VacationRentPayment
- Reviews: Revyoos
- Smart home: Jervis Systems, Minut, NoiseAware, Lynx, Ok2Charge, RemoteLock, PointCentral, and Operto Guest Technologies
- Space visualization: Matterport and TruPlace
- Staffing: Extenteam
- Website development: Boostly, Hudson Creative Studio, and InterCoastal Net Designs
The list of integrations makes Hostfully comparable to most PMS platforms.
Hostfully reviews: What customers say
Hostfully has an average rating of 4.4/5 stars from 400+ reviews on a number of trustworthy review websites. You can find additional customer feedback on the Airbnb Community Center and Reddit.
Hostfully reviews are available on:
- Capterra: 4.2/5 stars from 226 reviews
- Trustpilot: 4.7/5 stars from 175+ reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 stars from 40 reviews
- Secret: 4.7/5 stars from 29 reviews
- Airbnb Community Center
Next, let’s take a look at what Hostfully customers consider to be its biggest strengths and weaknesses according to their reviews:
Positive reviews of Hostfully
Hostfully reviews reveal a lot of things that customers love about the platform. The most important advantages highlighted by happy customers include:
Simplifies STR management operations
Many Hostfully customers emphasize the ability of the app to streamline the management of multiple listings and give your Airbnb business a boost.
Specifically, Jenniner wrote the following on Capterra:
“We have been able to organize all of our properties and all of our platforms into one single hub, which has simplified our work.”
Zach shared similar impressions on Capterra:
“Hostfully works seamlessly 99% of the time. Automated messaging and direct integration with our pricing, housekeeping, and smart home solutions has taken a huge strain off of our guest services team, and freed them up to provide actual service to our guests.”
Carly left the following review on Capterra:
“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!”
Great, comprehensive features
Related to the potential of the platform, customers consider that it has a lot of useful tools that help optimize different aspects of the vacation rental management process.
Amber praised Hostfully in her review on G2:
“Hostfully has been an absolute game-changer for our property management operations. The platform is user-friendly, robust, and incredibly efficient. It seamlessly integrates all aspects of our short-term rental business, from booking management to guest communication and even maintenance scheduling. The guidebook feature is a standout, providing our guests with comprehensive, personalised information that enhances their stay.”
Jan shared his positive experience with Hostfully on G2:
“Easy to use and very intuitive. Great software to manage and distribute your listing to different channels. Plenty of flexiability. But best of all an outstanding software connections and more with ALL the listing sites, dynamic pricing, your website and direct booking. So many softwares in the industry easily dovetail with Hostfully, and that is a blessing.”
Eddie wrote the following Hostfully review on G2:
“They have the core features I need and offer integrations with other best-of-breed software providers to fill in any gaps.”
Strong integrations
In addition, Hostfully users generally think that the app offers good third-party integration options that further improve the capabilities of the platform.
Myka commented this on Capterra:
“We love their direct booking capabilities and their integrations with all of the software platforms that we need.”
Dana’s review of Hostfully on Capterra reads as follows:
“It integrates well with Airbnb and Booking.com. We love the program!”
David expressed his satisfaction with Hostfully on Trustpilot:
“The product support and integrations with industry staples has made the managing of a larger portfolio possible.”
Good value for money
Numerous Hostfully users think that the app provides a good balance between tools and price, making it one of the most affordable options available on the market.
In his review on Capterra, Austin wrote the following:
“Hostfully has lots of great features at a fairly affordable price compared to other softwares.”
Phoebe shared her impressions on Capterra:
“Its cheap and does everything other PMS things do.”
Camille highlighted the good value for money of Hostfully on Capterra:
“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.”
Helpful customer support team
Finally, Hostfully provides above-average customer services according to reviews by satisfied users.
Shannon wrote this review on Capterra:
“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.”
Michel shared similar sentiments on G2:
“I have been working with Hostfully for a few months now, and I am extremely impressed with their support. They are always ready to assist in every way possible, ensuring a smooth and efficient experience.”
Joseph left this review on Capterra:
“The customer service is good. They respond relatively quickly and typically solve the issues.”
Negative reviews of Hostfully
While many users have found value in Hostfully's tools and would recommend the platform, some customers have noted areas where the software could be enhanced to better serve their needs. These observations may be helpful if you’re evaluating whether Hostfully aligns with your specific operational requirements.
Onboarding and learning curve
Several users reported that the initial setup and onboarding process can be time-intensive, particularly for smaller operators or those new to STR management platforms. Some noted that getting everything configured requires a meaningful investment of time and effort—though many also acknowledged that once up and running, the system performs reliably.
In specific, Jason wrote this review on Capterra:
“The setup process takes some time. I think that is true for any platform, so it's not really a complaint about Hostfully. It was just the worst part. However, once you are set up and running, it works non stop for you.”
Celia shared a similar experience on G2:
“As a smaller vacation rental business owner (four properties or less), it took a lot of time to invest in getting set up and integrating (although supported through this).”
Usability and interface
A few customers pointed out that certain parts of the interface feel unintuitive or require multiple steps that could be simplified. This occasionally led to confusion when managing listings or updating property details.
Lincoln wrote the following review of Hostfully on Capterra:
“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.”
Giovanni shared his comments on Trustpilot:
“ [i]ntegrations with Airbnb and Booking.com work differently, making everything very confusing, especially in the end of month reports (it should be a channel manager that combines everything in one place... and instead).”
Hostfully is clearly a valuable platform for many STR professionals, offering a wide range of tools to help streamline operations and improve efficiency. At the same time, some users—particularly those with more complex portfolios or limited time for onboarding—have noted challenges. It’s also worth pointing out that the number of positive reviews dwarf the number of negative ones.
As with any PMS, it’s worth considering both the capabilities and learning curve in the context of your specific business needs.
How reliable is Hostfully?
One of the best ways to assess Hostfully’s reliability is through the lens of customer satisfaction. Many users report that once the platform is fully set up, it runs smoothly and consistently—some even estimate that Hostfully performs without issues 98–99% of the time, which is notably strong for a SaaS platform.
That said, some users have experienced technical hiccups, including occasional bugs and glitches that affect listing sync or reservation accuracy. In a few of these cases, customers noted delays in receiving support when issues arose, which impacted their ability to resolve problems quickly.
Given this range of experiences, Hostfully appears reliable for many users, but it’s worth being aware of the occasional reports of downtime and support lag—especially if uptime and rapid response are critical for your business.
Hostfully alternatives and add-ons
Hostfully is a capable short-term rental management platform that helps hosts and property managers automate many of the repetitive, time-consuming tasks involved in running a vacation rental business. However, for operators with larger or more complex portfolios, the platform’s missing features and occasional technical challenges may leave room for improvement.
Here are three top alternatives and complementary tools to consider.
1.SummerOS
Unlike Hostfully competitors, SummerOS is a purpose-built platform that complements your PMS, including Hostfully, rather than competing with it. Whether you manage three listings or three hundred, SummerOS helps you unify your portfolio data, unlock actionable insights, and streamline high-leverage workflows so you can manage smarter and grow faster.
Developed by property managers for property managers, SummerOS offers the strategic capabilities most PMS tools lack:
- Streamlined data and operations for managing all your properties from one platform
- Real-time analytics to track individual property and entire portfolio performance
- Highly customizable Airbnb comp sets for superior benchmarking and comparison
- Generating qualified leads and onboarding new customers and properties faster than ever before
- Identifying underperforming properties and building tailor-made strategies to bring them up to speed
- Sophisticated underwriting and pro forma tools for improved financial health
SummerOS gives you everything you need to go from reactive operations to proactive portfolio management—all in one intuitive dashboard.
🙌 Start your free trial and experience the STR platform built for growth-minded managers.
2. Smoobu
Smoobu is a direct competitor of Hostfully that covers more or less the same functions. As a leading PMS, Smoobu helps streamline the management of vacation rentals and short-term rentals.
The main features provided by Smoobu include a channel manager, reservation system, booking system, availability calendar, rates synchronization, guest communication, guest guides, and statistics. Smoobu has its own Airbnb dynamic pricing tool, but it costs extra. What Smoobu offers more than Hostfully is a guest review management feature.
The two platforms integrate with a comparable number of third-party software tools used by Airbnb hosts and property managers.
With regards to pricing, Smoobu plans start at $27/month with a 0.9% booking fee.
3. Lodgify
Lodgify is a popular alternative to Hostfully. The two offer similar capabilities, but there are some important distinctions.
Lodgify core features comprise channel management, website builder and booking widget for direct reservations, reservation system, payment processing, unified inbox, automations, task management, owner statements, and reporting and analytics. Importantly, Lodgify has its own dynamic pricing tool, but it doesn’t help with the creation of personalized digital guidebooks, like Hostfully.
With respect to integrations, Hostfully offers a wider range of options.
Lodgify has three different subscription plans, with costs starting at $16/month + 1.9% of booking revenue for one property, when billed annually. Even with some extra features being available as add-ons, Lodgify is significantly more affordable for individual Airbnb hosts than Hostfully.
Is Hostfully worth it?
Our review confirms that Hostfully is a reputable and capable property management system, especially for larger short-term rental operators looking to streamline their operations. Its standout feature—customizable digital guidebooks—offers a unique way to elevate guest experiences through automation. However, the platform does have some limitations, including the lack of native dynamic pricing and review management tools, which requires third-party integrations.
If you’re looking for the next-level platform that ties everything together, check out SummerOS. Whether you already use Hostfully or another PMS, SummerOS integrates seamlessly with your stack, giving you one command center for smarter operations, advanced forecasting, and better portfolio performance.
SummerOS helps you keep high-value homes—and attract new ones—with data-backed revenue projections and clear monthly performance reports. No guesswork, no fluff.
