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Automated Airbnb Property Software: Comparison Report [2020 Update]

By Jasper

November 16, 2019

When you start to have multiple short-term rental listings, it gets more challenging to manage them all at once. You may now be thinking it’s time to move to automated Airbnb property management.

You’ve taken all the steps: you wrote a killer description, created a stunning photo gallery, chosen the perfect cancellation policy and responded to all your reviews. And your listings are skyrocketing.

Mary in the 2-bedroom villa with seaside view is checking out a day later than expected and will need some towels, while Jeronimo in the studio 10 minute’s walk from city centre still can’t connect to the WiFi.

More bookings, better business, more listings and a busier host comes with its downsides: having to coordinate, in real time, between different properties, at different checkout times, and with guests that don’t always (or almost never) arrive or leave at the time agreed.

property management software

In automated Airbnb property management, you can expect not only to sync calendars across multiple listings, but also to share your Airbnb calendar with your cleaner or other team members.

Depending on your needs, you need to find software that:

Streamlines operations by putting all your listings in one place
Makes it easy to keep track of communication with different guests
Automates that communication
Keeps all the different Airbnb accounts in one place, if applicable
Has a multi-calendar dashboard

Today we’ll talk about what features different automated property management software have so that you can find one that best suits your needs.

Scroll to the bottom of the page to see what special deals you can get on this software.

Central Calendar for Bookings

The main benefit of using automated property management software is getting one central calendar where you can see all your listings. The one in the above photograph is by Your Porter.

When your number of listings starts to grow, you need to be able to stay on top of the calendar to know when people are coming in and out. Most management software will automatically update the calendar across different channels. This helps especially when you’re working with different team members that are in charge of different properties.

Your Porter: Direct API integration with Airbnb, Booking.com, and HomeAway.
Hostfully: Airbnb, HomeAway/VRBO, Booking.com, TripAdvisor Rentals, HometoGo (direct API only available for 5 or more properties though iCal Sync is available for any number of properties.)
Lodgify: Two-way API integrations with Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, HomeAway/VRBO, plus iCal sync for all other channels.
Hospitable: Airbnb, HomeAway/VRBO, instant property sync.
iGMS: Native API Integration with Airbnb, Stayz and VRBO/HomeAway. Booking.com, Tripadvisor and others are synced with iCal.

Reviews and tutorials:

Cleaning and Team Management

If you have listings all over the world, another feature that you might want your rental property management software to have is cleaning and team management. Having a delegation system in place where workers can view, accept and mark tasks as complete will make a property manager’s job far simpler.

Your Porter: Scheduled task notifications (email and SMS) to teammates, push notifications when the task is completed. Weekly/monthly task overviews and shared calendar with limited access.
Hostfully: Delegate jobs/tasks to any service provider, fully automated task creation. Use triggers and templates to automate task delegation to teams.
Lodgify: No task delegation feature.
Hospitable: Automatically create and assign tasks like cleaning, check-in and check-out jobs, and send automated notifications to teammates via email or SMS, or keep them up-to date with iCal feeds.
iGMS: Advanced cleaning and team project management platform. Real-time and automated, allows to set the roles/accesses and auto-assign cleaners.

Check out my detailed Your Porter review & tutorial Check out my detailed Hostfully review & tutorial Check out my detailed Lodgify review & tutorial Check out my detailed Hospitable review & tutorial Check out my detailed iGMS review & tutorial

Automated Guest Messaging and Communication

Guest communication is a very important part of the guest’s experience, although one that can be tedious and burdensome for the host. Cutting and pasting messages for each guest not only becomes annoying but simply impossible after a certain number of listings.

Luckily, most automated Airbnb property management software has integrated automated messaging. There are more benefits to this than just saving time: your response time will go down because you answer guests instantly, which means your listing will improve its ranking. Which means more listings, and more messages!

And you can use them to go beyond just the standard message flow. For example, Hospitable uses an AI you can configure to answer your guests’ random questions in a way that’s not disingenuous.

If you’re too worried about having a “bot” talk to your guests, there are some options: for example you can set it up such that if a guest writes a message with the word “dog” in it, you can send an automated message that includes an answer to any question you’ve ever received about dogs.

That way you’re likely to cover the question. Another option is to only answer questions automatically on topics where the questions tend to be very straightforward, such as WiFi and parking, and answer other questions manually.

Your Porter: Automated messaging for Airbnb, HomeAway, and Booking.com. Unified Inbox for all 3 channels.
Hostfully: Sophisticated, event-based message automation system, available across channels including the PM’s own websites; with multilingual capabilities, SMS, and direct Airbnb message support.
Lodgify: Automated email messaging.
Hospitable: Sophisticated scheduled and event-based native messaging for Airbnb and HomeAway/VRBO, including conditional paragraphs;t rainable machine-learning component to detect and reply to guest questions.
iGMS: Messages from all platforms integrated in a single inbox. Set event-based message templates.

Pricing management tools

Your pricing strategy should differ across booking channels, so it’s useful if the property management software has a tool that makes this easier. For instance, Your Porter App takes your smart prices from Airbnb and pushes them to Booking.com after adjusting with your customized markup rate.

It’s also useful if you can edit the pricing within your calendar or set rules that the management platform follows.

Your Porter: Mark-up pushes your prices, updates your Booking.com prices based on your Airbnb rules. Integrated with all major smart pricing tools (BeyondPricing, PriceLabs, Wheelhouse).
Hostfully: Sophisticated price management. Total control over multi-channel pricing.
Lodgify: API Integrations with PriceLabs and Outswitch dynamic pricing and revenue management tools, works across all channels.
Hospitable Push prices to Airbnb and HomeAway. Upcoming integration with PriceLabs.
iGMS: Smart toolkit pricing management (on beta), which you can modify straight from the calendar. Pushes pricing to Airbnb, HomeAway.

Guest Review Management

Another great feature to look out for in automated property management software is guest review management. All hosts know that the more reviews you write, the more you get back. And the more reviews you get, the higher you rank and the more listings you get. It’s just science.

If you can automate guest reviews to go out at a specific time during checkout, that’s another task off your to-do list.

Your Porter: Has 60 templates to choose from to automatically review guests.
Hostfully: No automated guest review feature.
Lodgify: No automated guest review feature.
Hospitable: Automatic positive guest reviews based on templates attributed randomly. ‘Bad review mode’ lets you send your negative review within 20 seconds of the review window closing, so guests don’t have a chance to retaliate.
iGMS: Automated guest reviews with your own pre-defined templates.

Property Management Website Builder

Lodgify is known for its website builder for vacation rentals. This may be useful for hosts who want to take the next step and “brand” themselves. Normally, these websites will still be fully integrated and synced with the calendars of all the other platforms. These short-term-rental-specific websites help you create a page that’s SEO optimized and from where guests can book directly.

Your Porter: Super easy, one-click website creation. You can choose from 8 color palettes, get online payments via Stripe and PayPal.
Hostfully: White-label custom platforms (with your own URL) and an upselling platform.
Lodgify: Template-based, customizable website creation.
Hospitable: No website creation feature.
iGMS: No website creation feature.

Financial Reporting

When you have multiple listings to manage, it means you’re a professional and you need to stay on top of your finances. If you can have financial reporting integrated into your Airbnb automated property management software, all the better. That way you can track income and expenses and make sure you’re going in the right direction.

Your Porter: Get a detailed report with price breakdowns from all channels.
Hostfully: Analytics and Reports feature where you can see your conversion rate, net bookings revenue, leads, and occupancy rate by property, integration with Quickbooks.
Lodgify: Transaction reports and you can connect it to your accounting system.
Hospitable: Metrics product can track over 40 metrics, including financial, messaging, and reviews, with customizable dashboards and reports.
iGMS: Create professional reports with a full overview of finances, transactions, reservations and work orders.

Pricing of the property management software

Scroll to the bottom for exclusive sign-up deals for Get Paid For Your Pad readers.

You’ve probably already chosen which software works for you based on your needs after reading this article. Here are the prices for each of them:

iGMS – Free up to 4 properties, $20/month/per property for PRO plan. Only pay for active properties (not listings) if you get reservations. No setup fee and no cancellation fee – (Click here to sign up). iGMS promo code (30% off PRO plan): GPFYP30

Hospitable – Starting at $18/month for 2 properties. Fixed price per listing. Only charges for properties with revenue in the last 30 days. Volume discounts applied automatically – (Click here to sign up).

Lodgify – From $30/month – (Click here to sign up). Lodify promo code (10% off): GPFYP

Hostfully – From $59/month, more competitive as you get more listings – (Click here to sign up)

Your Porter – $9/month – (Click here to sign up). Your Porter promo code ($20 off): PAD

All of these tools are good, it’s just a matter of what exact features you’re looking for. Sometimes you can mix and match the cheaper ones (e.g. Hospitable + Your Porter App), depending on your needs and budget.

Automated Airbnb Property Management Software Review Table

	iGMS	Your Porter	Hospitable	Lodgify	Hostfully
Direct API Integrations	Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell	Cell
Airbnb	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Homeaway	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
VRBO	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Booking	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
TripAdvisor	No	No	No	No	Yes
Expedia	No	No	No	Yes	No
Automated messaging	Airbnb, Homeaway, VRBO, event-based	Airbnb, Booking, Homeaway	Airbnb, Homeaway/ VRBO trainable AI feature	Automated email messaging	Event-based smart emails and text messages
Price Management	Smart pricing (Beta)	Push your Airbnb prices to booking	No	No	Multi-channel smart pricing
Task Delegation	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Automated Reviews	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Website Creation Tool	No	Yes	No	Yes	No
Financial Reporting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pricing based on number of listings
5	$100	$25	$42	$104	$59
10	$200	$70	$81	$164	$155
15	$300	$105	$116	$164	$289
25	$500	$175	$180	$256	$289
50	$1000	$350	$329	$239	$289

Special sign-up deals for property management software

We’ve partnered with a number of property management software companies to offer exclusive deals to our readers. Use the sign-up links below to take advantage of these discounts and special offers.

iGMS:Sign up now to receive $30 credit for the PRO plan (coupon code GPFYP30)

Lodgify:Sign up now to receive 10% off your monthly subscription (coupon code GPFYP)

YourPorter:Sign up now to receive $20 off your first month (coupon code PAD)

Tags: Airbnb Tools automation hosting tools PMS

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