Guesty Review, Pricing & Features
What is Guesty?
Guesty is a premium vacation rental management software (VRMS) that’s best for property managers with 20 or more properties who can pay for a more advanced tool. With over 1,000 customers and 100,000 properties managed on the platform, it’s a popular tool that many owners opt for due to reliability and advanced automations. We recommend Guesty to professional property managers who already have 20 or more properties and are looking to scale their business.
Table of Contents
- What is Guesty?
- Guesty Review Summary
- Guesty Pricing & Cost
- Guesty Features
- Guesty Customer Support
- Guesty vs. Competitors
- Is Guesty Right For You?
Guesty Review Summary
Guesty, originally called SuperHost, was founded in 2013 by Amiad and Koby Soto. The company graduated from Y Combinator and has grown rapidly since its founding. With over 60 million dollars in funding and over 100,000 properties managed on the platform, Guesty is one of the biggest players in the vacation rental management space.
Guesty is an end-to-end VRMS that includes features such as a channel manager, direct booking website, multi-calendar, payment processing, guest communication, and more. The company’s standout features include the open API as well as integrations with the largest online travel agencies (OTAs) like Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda, TripAdvisor, and Vrbo.
Guesty pricing is not publicly available, but they charge between 2% and 5% on all bookings. There is also a one-time onboarding fee. Additional features, like Guest Communication Services, also come at an additional cost.
Overall, Guesty is a powerful player in the space that’s commonly regarded, both by customers and by other VRMS companies, as one of the top tools on the market. Customers are pleased with the functionality of the tool, and during our research we found that the most common customer complaint is the high price. When we used Guesty ourselves, we found that the tool has robust features but is easy to navigate because many sections are helpfully interconnected—for example, you can navigate to individual reservations directly from the inbox.
Guesty is highly recommended for those with more than 20 properties who are looking to scale their vacation rental business. If you have fewer than 20 properties or don’t need a tool that’s quite as advanced as Guesty, the following VRMS tools will be better for you:
Guesty Pricing & Cost
As mentioned before, pricing information for Guesty is not publicly available. However, they do operate on a percentage-per-booking basis. There is a one-time onboarding fee, which is separate from the month-to-month cost. If you schedule an initial call with Guesty, they can estimate what your costs would be and can provide a better picture of what your payments would look like.
Guesty Key Features
Throughout this review, we’ll describe Guesty’s main features and provide images of the software to give you a sense of what the tool looks like. We’ll discuss how the included features can support your vacation rental management business.
To learn more about our how we research and rate software tools, read about SoftwarePundit’s review methodology.
Dashboard
The Guesty dashboard, called the Overview Page, provides a high-level overview of your rental property business. The Overview Page displays current and upcoming reservations, the number of confirmed check-ins, average payments, nights booked, and more. If you’re a management company with a large portfolio, having a dashboard is crucial to get a quick analysis of property performance. This aspect is not found within all VRMS tools, so it’s definitely a plus that it’s included with Guesty.
Channel Manager
A channel manager synchronizes your listings from across different OTAs, enabling you to change listing and booking information from within Guesty and applying changes to everything at once. Guesty has API connections with Agoda, Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway/Vrbo, and Misterb&b. If you have more than 15 listings, you can also connect directly with TripAdvisor. While this list is not quite as extensive as some other VRMS tools offer, it does cover the biggest channels.
Guesty customers can also connect with RentalsUnited, an external channel manager with its own list of 60+ channels.
Centralized Calendar
The centralized calendar brings together booking information from all channels that your properties are synchronized with. Guesty’s centralized calendar will provide you with a list view of all your properties and indicate which channel each booking originated from.
You’ll also be able to alter rates within the multi-calendar, which displays the rate for each property every night. The updated rates will automatically push to any channels the properties are integrated with. If you select an individual booking, you’ll be able to drill down into those specific booking details.
Bookings Overview
Once you select a booking, you’ll be able to see information about the guest and their booking details, including:
- Payment amount
- Dates of stay
- Guest contact information
- Additional charges
Listing Management
From within Guesty, you’ll be able to both build and make changes to property listings. You can change marketing photos, block off time on calendars, create tasks, and more. When you select individual listings, you’ll be provided a property overview that’s much like the overall Guesty dashboard. This overview provides you with information like occupancy rates per month, upcoming reservations, the average payout, and more.
Centralized Inbox
With the centralized inbox, customers will be able to communicate with all of their guests. All communications go to this inbox, whether the guest is using Airbnb, Booking.com, or their email account. As you can see from the image below, the layout of the inbox is quite intuitive, with all messages listed on the left, the current chat displayed in the center, and relevant guest booking details displayed on the right.
There are some additional actions that guests can take from within the inbox, such as:
- Filter messages by check-in date, tag, city, and more
- Assign messages to specific agents
- Send messages via Airbnb, email, SMS, and WhatsApp
Overall, this is one of the more advanced inboxes we’ve seen across VRMS tools and, like the rest of Guesty’s platform, it’s quite detailed though still intuitively designed.
Automated Messages
There are two types of automated messages that Guesty offers: semi-automated and fully automated. Semi-automated messages are pre-saved replies for frequently asked questions. For example, guests might continuously ask for the code to the front door keypad. Your team can save time by pre-saving the code and simply sending that canned response when the guest asks. You can search for messages in your saved replies to filter easily.
Fully automated messages are triggered by a sequence of events. For example, you can create automated messages that will be sent when a guest makes a reservation, three days before arrival, and once the guests have checked in. Guest-specific information will be pulled into the messages with dynamic variables, so Guesty customers won’t have to worry about inputting correct check-in and check-out dates.
Guest Communications Service
Guesty offers a unique service where Guesty employees can be on call 24/7, or during specified hours, to communicate with guests on the host’s behalf. Guests will be under the impression that they are communicating directly with the host. This feature will be particularly useful for property managers that would like to improve response rates and cannot dedicate the time to being available to guests at all hours.
Task Management
Vacation rental property businesses often involve the coordination of many different teams, from the management company to the cleaning team to the landscaping team. From within Guesty, you can create profiles for all team members and assign tasks to individuals. These tasks are created with start and end dates, descriptions, and can involve checklists so team members know what needs to be completed. This feature is more advanced than similar features found in other VRMS tools, and we also found it to be laid out more intuitively for the user.
Team members can also:
- Provide photos of the completed task
- Input notes about the task
- Utilize the mobile application for tasks
- Provide feedback about tasks
Task management can also be done through third-party tools, which many customers choose to do for more advanced capabilities.
Analytics
Along with the analytics provided through the dashboard, Guesty allows you to pull together reports about properties. This can be done both for individual properties and for owners with many properties. This is a crucial feature that isn’t found in every VRMS tool. Below is an example of a report pulled together for an owner’s property portfolio:
As you can see, crucial data like the number of booked nights, occupancy rates, and the overall revenue are displayed here. While it isn’t the most advanced display of analytics, it’s quite sufficient for owners who want a bigger picture of their revenue. For more advanced data, Guesty customers can opt in for a more advanced analytics tool.
Additional Features
Guesty offers additional features to support vacation rental owners, managers, and guests. These additional features are briefly listed and described below.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Direct Booking Website | You can build a landing page for direct bookings through Guesty. Customers can input contact information, logos, photos, and more. The website takes about five minutes to set up, and though the template is simpler than some competitors offer, the direct booking sites are modern in appearance. |
| Automations | Along with messaging and task automations, which were described above, there are also automated review templates, home automation abilities, and auto payment options. All automation tools will ensure that all necessary tasks get done without constant input from your team members. |
| Payment Processing | Guesty integrates with Stripe and Swikly, both of which provide the ability to collect payments and security deposits. |
| Owner Portals | If you manage properties for many different owners, you’ll be able to create portals for the property owners and assign properties to their portals. By doing this, owners will have some visibility into their properties—and their properties only—which many owners will want to have. |
| Revenue Management | Both from within the multi-calendar and in the revenue management tab, you can change rates for individual dates, holidays, or other relevant blocks of time during the year. This is helpful for anyone with a vacation rental home with high and low seasons, as you’ll want to adjust rates accordingly. |
| Integrations | Guesty’s Marketplace, which houses the available integrations, offers nearly 100 connections with external software vendors. The available integrations are across operations, pricing, home automation, guest experience, payment processing, data, and insurance. |
| Mobile Application | The Guesty mobile application allows you to manage most aspects of property management on the go. We were not able to test the mobile app, but customers have reported that notifications are delayed and that the app can be unreliable. |
Guesty Customer Support
The main way to get in touch with Guesty is through live chat, which you can access on all pages on the Guesty website. There are email addresses that customers can use to get in touch with the partnerships and press teams. While there aren’t phone numbers that customers can call, we found that the live chat response was fairly quick. Many Guesty customers are also assigned a dedicated account manager.
| Customer Support Channels | Live Chat, Email |
| Training and Onboarding | Yes |
| Other Support Resources | Recorded Demos, Blog, Help Center, Webinars |
| Application Status Page | No |
Guesty Alternatives & Competitors
Guesty competes with other heavy hitters in the vacation rental management software industry like Hostfully, Hostaway, and Lodgify. Some Guesty alternatives are listed below.
Is Guesty Right For You?
If you’re a professional property manager or a property management company with over 20 properties, Guesty is recommended. The automation tools are ideal for those with larger portfolios, and management companies will benefit because you can connect as many Airbnb accounts to Guesty as you need. We found that the software was intuitively designed while still being advanced and feature-rich.
Having an advanced software does come at a higher price, and Guesty customers note that using the tool can get expensive. If you’re not a professional manager or you have fewer properties, it’s likely that you’ll fare better with a less advanced tool. For those alternatives, consider:
If you’re interested in signing up for an introductory call with Guesty, visit their website.