Your Porter App was a vacation rental management software platform, complete with a channel manager, website builder, and other convenient features for an affordable price. In 2021, top vacation rental management platform Guesty acquired Your Porter App and has since rebranded to Guesty for Hosts.
In this post, we’re going over the pricing, features, and our overall Guesty for Hosts (Your Porter App) review, so you can decide if it’s the right solution for your business.
What is Guesty for Hosts
Prior to Guesty’s acquisition, Guesty for Hosts used to be known as Your Porter App. But even then, the platform has stayed true to being “a mobile-first vacation rental management software designed to help Airbnb and short-term rental hosts automate guest communication, sync calendars instantly, accept direct bookings, and coordinate teammates.”
They offer a “one-stop solution” for vacation rental property owners and managers. They claim to simplify every aspect of owning and managing several short-term rental properties and streamline the process.
From Your Porter App to Guesty for Hosts
Your Porter App and Guesty used to be two separate, competing platforms. But in 2021, Guesty decided to acquire Your Porter App and rebranded it to Guesty for Hosts. While Guesty still has its own separate property management platform catering to enterprise-level players, Guesty for Hosts is geared toward smaller-scale vacation rental business owners and managers.
Guesty claims they kept everything great about Your Porter App with the acquisition and rebrand and more.
Stay tuned as we’ll be releasing a more in-depth breakdown between Guesty and Guesty for Hosts.
Guesty for Hosts (Your Porter App) Pricing
Guesty for Hosts (Your Porter App) remains to be one of the most affordable vacation rental management software platforms on the market. You can get started for as little as $14/listing/mo.
For property managers with more than 3 listings, Guesty for Hosts offers special discounted pricing. You can contact them to ask about it.
Guesty for Hosts also offers a free 14-day trial, so you have plenty of time to connect your properties and try out their features before deciding if you want to subscribe.
Guesty for Hosts Features
Guesty for Hosts comes with all the basic features you’d expect from a vacation rental management platform, including a channel manager, website builder, and automated guest messaging. The video below produced by Guesty for Hosts provides a general overview of their platform features.
Now let’s get into the individual features in more detail.
Channel Manager – Sync Your Listings Across Multiple Sites
A vacation rental channel manager is one of the most convenient tools you can have as a short-term rental owner or property manager. The Guesty for Hosts channel manager provides an easy way to manage your properties across multiple listing sites (including your own website).
Guesty for Hosts has direct API integrations with Airbnb and Booking.com. It can also sync with Vrbo/Homeaway, Tripadvisor, and others via iCal calendar sync. Guesty for Hosts is among the best channel managers on the market currently, especially for the price.
Direct Booking Website Builder – Single-Click Setup
Of all the vacation rental website builders, Guesty for Hosts is one of the easiest to set up. You can preview what your website would look like using their Single-Click Website preview, without even creating an account.
The Guesty For Hosts website builder itself is pretty basic, and pretty much all Guesty for Hosts websites look the same. But it gets the job done, and it’s very easy to set up. Here’s an example of a Guesty for Hosts website. Since there’s just one template, your website will look pretty similar.
As you can see, the Guesty for Hosts website template is pretty basic, but it’s well-designed and optimized for direct bookings. In terms of customization, you can only really change the primary color and the font. But you can also add your own custom CSS to your website if that’s something you’re familiar with.
Overall, Guesty for Hosts provides one of the lowest-cost and easiest ways to create a direct booking website for your vacation rental.
Automated Guest Messaging
With Guesty for Hosts, you can also set up automated replies to guest messages. This is a great way to be more responsive (which can improve your Airbnb rankings), and save you a lot of time. Here are a few of the key highlights:
- Customize templates based on channel and other booking circumstances
- Schedule messages for specific days and times
- Submit automatic reviews
- Translate your messages into guests’ native language
Message automation can be a game changer for your business, which is why it’s such a common feature in vacation rental software platforms. Hospitable is another popular option for guest messaging automation, but Smartbnb doesn’t offer a direct booking website builder like Guesty for Hosts.
Other Features
In addition to their bread and butter features, Guesty for Hosts also offers some other convenient features:
- Financial reporting – Keep track of your revenue, payments, and expenses, and calculate your management fee and owner payouts (for property managers).
- Cleaning management – Schedule cleanings, share your calendar and send reminders and step-by-step instructions to your team.
For an extra fee, Guesty for Hosts users can also gain access to their Smart Lock Automation, Chargeback Protection, and you can also use your own domain name for your direct booking website using the Guesty for Hosts Website Builder.
Guesty for Hosts Pros and Cons
We’ve scoured different review sites and here are some of the pros and cons of the Guesty for Hosts experience:
Guesty for Hosts Pros
- User interface is intuitive and easy to navigate; the learning curve is not steep.
- Base plan includes many of the barebones integral features of a property management software.
- Integrates with most of the major online travel agencies like Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com
Guesty for Hosts Cons
- Best used for 1-3 short-term rental listings; you’d need to migrate to Guesty if you want to manage more than 3 properties.
- While there is an auto-translate integration in the platform, it can be unreliable
- It’s most reliable with Airbnb, but users report a lot of glitches and problems integrating with other online travel agencies like VRBO and Booking.com as well as syncing problems.
Guesty for Hosts Alternatives
With all that said, you might find Guesty for Hosts just might not make the cut for you. Luckily, there are a lot of Guesty for Hosts alternatives in the market for you. Here are our top picks:
OwnerRez
OwnerRez is a robust platform built for property managers. If you have multiple properties to manage, OwnerRez can offer great value for the price.
Uplisting
Uplisting is a premium, comprehensive vacation rental management platform. They are quickly growing in popularity due to their focus on usability, reliability, and excellent customer support. They’re our top pick overall if you’re looking for the best vacation rental management software.
Our Recommendations
We recommend Guesty for Hosts for vacation rental owners with around 1 – 10 listings, who are looking for an inexpensive vacation rental management software platform.
For property managers with 20+ properties, Guesty For Hosts can still be a good option, but you might consider looking at OwnerRez as another alternative. It’s also very affordable (especially for higher property numbers), and has a lot of features built specifically for property management companies.
Compare vacation rental software options with our spreadsheet.
View spreadsheetIf you’re managing 1 or 2 listings, Guesty for Hosts’ pricing is some of the lowest you can find anywhere. And it offers many of the same features as competing vacation rental management software platforms, like a channel manager, website builder, and automated guest messaging.
Check out our other posts to see how Guesty for Hosts compares to other vacation rental channel managers and website builders.
If you’re interested in trying out Guesty for Hosts, use this link to get $20 off your first month (after your 14-day free trial).
