Top 5 Best Vacation Rental Website Builders in 2023

As the vacation rental market becomes more and more competitive, having your own website is an excellent way for your properties to stand out online. A direct booking website can also increase your profit margins (by removing booking fees from the equation), and give you independence from OTAs like Airbnb and VRBO.

Fortunately, it’s never been easier to create a website for your vacation rental. In this post, we’ve reviewed our top picks for the best vacation rental website builders. You’ll find a comparison of their pricing, features, and example websites, to help you find the one that matches your needs, budget, and style.

Compare vacation rental software options with our spreadsheet.

View spreadsheet

The Best Vacation Rental Website Builders

Here are our top picks for website builders that are designed specifically for vacation rentals:

Lodgify – Best vacation rental website builder. Offers the best combination of vacation rental management and website builder features.

OwnerRez – Great for property managers with lots of properties. Comes with tons of automation and integration features. Only pay for the features you want. Limited website builder features.

Tokeet – Another alternative to Lodgify, with great website customization options, and a lower price.

Uplisting – Excellent vacation rental software product, but virtually no ability to customize your website. Great option if you want to add a booking site to an external website (e.g. Squarespace).

iGMS – Another excellent vacation rental management software platform with a very limited website builder. Great if you’re looking to add booking pages to an external website.

We’ve also included an overview of some of the most popular website builders (Squarespace, Wix, WordPress), and how you might use them to create a direct booking vacation rental website.

An Introduction to Vacation Rental Website Builders

In addition to the popular website builders (like Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, WordPress, etc.), there are now an increasing number of vacation rental website builders to meet the demand of this growing industry. They’re built specifically for property rentals, and they come packaged with other features designed to help you manage your short-term rental business.

Using a vacation rental website builder is the easiest way to create a direct booking website since direct booking is built right into the website (along with other vacation rental management features).

Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a website builder for your Airbnb, holiday rental, or other short-term rental.

• Additional vacation rental features – All of these website builders are actually just one feature in a larger property management system. You’ll want to look into their other features like channel management, automation, and others you might be interested in.
• Value for the price – The platforms here have a wide range of price points. Given that the website builder is just one of several features in these vacation rental management software platforms, it’s important to keep in mind what else you’re getting for the price.
• Ability to customize your website – How many templates do they have and how customizable are they? Can you change fonts and colors? Can you create additional pages?
• Design aesthetic – What do their websites look like? Depending on your priorities, this may be more or less important to you. As web designers, it’s important to us. 🙂

Comparison of the Best Vacation Rental Website Builders

Here’s a quick comparison of the price and features of the best vacation rental website builders.

	Price	Able to Customize	Additional Features
	$$$	★★★★★	★★★★★
	$$$	★★★★★	★★★★★
	$$	★★★★★	★★★★★
	$$$$	★★★★★	★★★★★
	$$$	★★★★★	★★★★★

Additional features include things like channel management and calendar sync, guest messaging automation, Quickbooks accounting integration, and lots more.

Vacation Rental Website Builder Reviews

Now let’s take a closer look at each of these.

1. Lodgify

Lodgify is one of the most popular vacation rental website builders on the market today. They are trying to establish themselves as the “Shopify for vacation rentals.” Their strength is in their backend features, and not in their web design or blogging features. That said, you can find many examples of well-designed Lodgify websites on the web. Here’s one example.

If you are looking for a basic website builder with a ton of automation features and integrations that will make your life easier, Lodgify is one of the best options available.

Our Lodgify Recommendation

We think you should check out Lodgify if:

• You want to take direct bookings
• You are a property manager or owner of multiple properties
• You want a central hub (channel manager) where you can easily manage pricing and property details across all your listing sites
• You like the design of their website templates

If that sounds like you, start your Lodgify 7-day free trial.

2. OwnerRez

OwnerReservations or OwnerRez is quietly growing a very committed user base because of their robust feature set, low price, and responsive customer service. Even more so than with Lodgify, their strength is in their backend features, and not in their web design. The website builder is quite basic, giving you a very simple (but clean and attractive) website. Here’s an example of an OwnerRez-hosted website.

Our OwnerRez Recommendation

OwnerRez might be perfect for you if:

• You are a property manager who makes commission payouts to property owners – (check out the Property Management feature)
• You want to automate a lot of your booking processes
• You are fine with a simple website template

As we said, OwnerRez users tend to be very satisfied, committed customers. If you like the sound of some of their features, then start your 14-day trial at OwnerRez.

3. Tokeet

Tokeet is another comparable alternative to Lodgify. It comes with a few template options, and the ability to add pages and customize your design (you can even add custom CSS and JS). Here’s an example of a Tokeet direct booking website.

Visit Tokeet.com to learn more.

4. Uplisting

Uplisting is a premium, comprehensive vacation rental management software. It’s our top pick on our list of the best vacation rental channel managers. Their product is robust and reliable, and their customer support is excellent.

The Uplisting website builder is very basic. There’s only 1 template, and no ability to customize it or add additional pages. That said, we love the design of their booking website template. It’s modern, clean, and designed to get guests to book.

If you want to use Uplisting, but you also want to be able to customize your website, one option is to link to your booking website from an external website (like Squarespace). Here’s a beautiful example of a company doing just that.

Visit Uplisting.io to learn more.

5. iGMS

iGMS (formerly AirGMS) is a popular short-term rental management software with a comprehensive feature set. In 2022 they’ve now added direct booking websites. You can preview your website just by entering your Airbnb URL with their ‘Preview Your Website‘ feature.

The iGMS vacation rental website creator is very limited in terms of customization, and you can’t add additional pages. But if you’re looking to add booking pages to an external website, then iGMS can be a great option. Here’s an example of a direct booking website built with iGMS.

iGMS also offers a flexible pricing option ($1 per night booked), which is a great, inexpensive way to get started using a vacation rental management software.

Visit iGMS.com to learn more.

Other Popular Website Builders

Here are some other popular website builders. These are the best website builders for vacation rentals, but require a bit more setup to take direct bookings. If you plan to take direct bookings, we recommend combining one of these websites with a vacation rental website builder from the list above. For example, use Squarespace and Lodgify.

Squarespace

If you haven’t really loved any of the templates you’ve seen so far, then you might be interested in Squarespace. Squarespace is known for their beautiful design, and they have a Real Estate & Properties template category, with several good options for vacation rental websites.

If you want the Squarespace aesthetic, but with more booking features, there are multiple ways you can do this. You can use Lodgify’s Squarespace integration, or you can add a “Book Now” button that links to any other direct booking software. This could be Lodgify, Uplisting, or any other booking software you choose.

Check out our list of Squarespace vacation rental websites for some inspiration.

Our Squarespace Recommendation

Squarespace is probably the best fit for you if:

• You aren’t planning to take direct bookings (or you are planning to handle it with a separate vacation rental software)
• You like the look of Squarespace website templates

Choose a template and start your free Squarespace trial.

Wix

Wix has exploded in popularity in recent years. They have a ton of templates, and features that can be added to make virtually any kind of website you can think of. For vacation rental owners and property managers, they have a range of “travel & tourism” related website templates that are perfect for showing off your properties and integrating a booking calendar. Check out our list of the best Wix vacation rental templates.

As one example, this template has everything you need to showcase your properties.

Our Wix Recommendation

You should check out Wix if:

• You either have only a few properties to manage, you plan to integrate with another vacation rental software for direct bookings, or you aren’t planning to take direct bookings. Wix also has a channel manager, designed primarily for hotels, called Wix Hotels (but based on reviews we’ve read, we don’t recommend it).
• You’ve found a website template that you like

If Wix looks good to you, then get started with a 14-day Wix trial.

WordPress

Last, but certainly not least, is WordPress. By some estimates, WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. It’s open source software, free to use, and has an incredibly large base of users and developers working to make it better all the time.

To set up a WordPress site for your vacation rental business, you need

1. a hosting subscription (like SiteGround – somewhere your website can “live”)
2. a vacation rental WordPress theme
3. a direct booking WordPress plugin

Check out this post on the best WordPress vacation rental themes and plugins.

Our WordPress Recommendation

We recommend WordPress if:

• You are willing to do some research and learning to set up your site (or you plan to hire someone to build a custom website for you)
• You want to truly “own” your website and be able to customize it with no limits

And if you’re looking for someone to build a custom website for you, we can help! Contact us for a no-pressure quote.

Which One is Best For You?

In our opinion, these are the best website builders to create a short-term rental website. There are others, but one of these (or a combination of 2) should fit your needs. Learn more about how to create your own vacation rental website and how to optimize your website design for bookings.

And if you have questions or you’re interested in learning about our custom vacation rental websites, contact us and we’d be happy to answer any questions you have.

Written by The Floorspace Team

This article was written as a collaborative effort by multiple members of the Floorspace team. We're a group of internet marketers and designers, with a wide range of experience marketing and managing short-term rentals.