Hostaway Reviews

The endless possibilities of setting in the website.

Quite a difficult setup procedure. Minimal website design for customer interface

I love the softwares simplicity and I especially love their customer service. This was part of the reason I left my previous vacation rental software and I'm very glad I did! [sensitive content hidden] is our Hostaway integrator, and she does an incredible job. She is extremely vigilant and always answers asap !

I have not used Host Away long enough to write a negative review

We did an exhaustive search of similar companies to manage our 22 nightly rental cabins in Alaska. Switched from Checkfront and Resnexus. Spent three months getting set up, countless hours learning and adapting, all while paying $600/month for the software. Finally got it all working right and thought we were set. BUT SEE CONS!

Without warning, Hostaway starting charging our guests a 2% "guest service fee," nearly tripling the cost of their service. It went from $600/month to $600/month + 2% of $600,000 gross. Assuming this was a mistake we called tech support, and got a million excuses. "Costs have gone up," "Other software systems also charge a fee," "the customer pays it," etc. We asked if we had agreed to it, and they claimed the license agreement says "prices may change without notice." I guess it does, but tripling the price without notice seems beyond excessive. We're now looking to start the whole process over again.

Exhaustiveness of the solution. I can deal with a lot of my business tasks with Hostaway.

Although Hostaway offers financial reports, I find that they are not customizable or detailed enough to meet specific needs.

[sensitive content hidden] have all been very helpful from the technical support team. I've been really impressed by the level of response time and the overall on-boarding support.

There is a lot to the process of migration. It has been time consuming, but the support is always there throughout.

Direct booking website builder and channel manager/messaging.

Not the most intuitive design or housing/categorization of certain features. The interface could be improved to improve user experience. But it gets the job done as is.

I enjoy working with our onboarding agent [sensitive content hidden]. He is extremely helpful, attentive and has worked extra hard with us to understand the platform and to be successful with it. He’s patient and has worked with us extra and for that we are very thankful for being paired with [sensitive content hidden].

There is a lot to learn for someone who is brand new to the business.

Makes everything very streamlined. My onboarding rep, [sensitive content hidden], was great at guiding through things and giving tips and advice

A sort of steep learning curve, but its short and steep. Already worth the time I invested

very professional and if i ever need anything they answer right away

the only thing that they have no control over is the transfer of info to different platforms, some info goes and some you have to do manually. but that is controlled by the other platforms.

Supports a few diffrent softwares API's, but most of the other channel managers now do too..

The company policies are terrible, and there is a significant amount of bugs. The support team often blames the user, but in my case, it was always the system's fault. I had to spend an enormous amount of time providing step-by-step instructions on how things happened, and even then, I was assumed to be at fault. They overcharged for the service by almost 2x. Luckily, I noticed it after a couple of months. However, the worst part was that I almost had to beg them and prove multiple times there was an overcharge just for them to realize they had charged double the service price multiple times. The same happened multiple times with their finance service. I undercharged my customers multiple times, losing a ton of money. The worst part was that the same issue occurred twice, and both times they did not even bother to look into their system. I had to spend about 5 hours on emails and video calls just for them to fix it. They also do not follow through on what they promise. After the first finance issue, I asked their support to agree to compensation if it was not my mistake; they would compensate for the error. In response, after the issue was finally addressed and proven to indeed be a system error, they sent a nonsensical ChatGPT answer back. I am extremely disappointed and very unhappy with the service. It was my most stressful 8 months out of all other services I have used in my 5 years of hosting using different channel managers.

[sensitive content hidden]!!! I LOVE [sensitive content hidden] O!! He has been the most amazing guide! Incredibly helpful, funny, nice, intuitive, and friendly mentor in this setup process I could’ve ever asked for!! I didn’t even dream that a person like this existed in my industry.

I dreamed of having STRs & unfortunately, I have been struggling to streamline the backend processes of this business with Guesty for Hosts. I have felt solo the entire time learning on my own by desperately surfing the Internet and researching resolutions. Guesty offered me ZERO assistance setting up, and long waits to speak with uneducated employees who could not easily answer my questions. [sensitive content hidden] took away ALL of those issues! He eradicated all of those concerns and easily handled any questions that arose, I just am soooooo thankful to have found this company, the intuitiveness of the software, and the people that you have hired are simply amazing. [sensitive content hidden] was amazing, everyone I’ve encountered has been amazing, punctual, friendly, & professional. If I could give 20 stars, I would! I feel as though I have partners now, and I am no longer alone, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

Haven't found anything yet. Maybe HTML abilities in the message templates & automation? Would be nice to have a preview of them before sending them out? But I am sure you all are working on this already!

Has many functional features that help with operations.

Hostaway is more focused on adding additional services to sell versus improving the product they already have.

The ability to control my listings with a minimum night stay, changing pictures, titles etc

Not so user-friendly. The mobile app limits what you can do. Many times I have to wait to get back in front of a PC to handle a simple task.

What I have truly enjoyed about Hostaway is its ease of use! And a lot of the different features and options that it has to make additional monies.

We had a competitor prior to Hostaway, and the channels really didn’t speak well to the Integration service that we had. And it came to a point where I had to handle everything manually, and I had bookings overlap, which made our guest very unhappy when I had to cancel. Keep everything neat and tidy.

Working with my sales consultant has been wonderful as well! Answering every question I’ve ever had. And working with the on boarding. Team has been wonderful as well. I absolutely love this product.

One thing I think that Hostaway could work on is the website feature that it offers. If you’re going to offer a website, it should not be as rudimentary and basic as it is. There are limited amount of pictures that you can add, and the fonts are very boring and the color schemes are also very basic. It’s OK for what it is but it does not suffice if you really want to promote your product. my suggestion would be that if it is too expensive to have a nicer website for Hostaway, then maybe offer a tiered program. And let the customer choose what they want to pay.
I have not been 100% happy with Customer Service. A lot of times my questions had to be asked to higher-ups as well as the lack of response to them. The issues I’ve had have worked themselves out by themselves. But I would like help as soon as I make that phone call , and, of course, having English as a first language speakers would help also. The good thing is I haven’t really had to call Customer Service as the system is pretty simple to use.

I have very few issues! Usually if I have an issue, it is fixed quickly!

When I have an issue it can be very difficult to find someone who knows how to fix it! [sensitive content hidden] has saved me with several issues recently and in the past. He is exceptional as far as customer service and knowledge go!