Looking for the ultimate solution to effortlessly manage your short-term rentals and gain valuable insights into guest experiences? The best short-term rental management software is designed to help landlords effectively manage their properties, offering advanced features such as managing booking websites, financial analyses, and seamless integration with third-party platforms. We’ve picked five of the best short-term property management software based on their pricing, features, ease of use, and customer feedback.
- Lodgify: Best for direct booking system and website builder
- Hospitable: Best for messaging automation
- Escapia: Best for robust accounting and reporting tools
- Guesty: Best for multiplatform integration
- OwnerRez: Best for QuickBooks integration
The Close’s Top Picks for Best Short-term Rental Management Software
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Lodgify: Best for Its Direct Booking & Website Builder
Why I Chose Lodgify
Lodgify ranks first as the best short-term rental management software for its powerful direct booking system and user-friendly website builder features. With Lodgify, you can easily create your website to accept direct bookings and synchronize them with other platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo. This makes managing all your bookings from one central dashboard and saving on third-party fees super convenient. Plus, your personalized website can gather and showcase guest reviews and is accessible in over 30 languages.
Additional Features
- Reporting and accounting tools: Evaluate and analyze your past business performance, helping you stay on top of your numbers.
- Third-party integrations: Lodgify integrates with 43 software applications, like Booking.com, Mailchimp, Beyond, and Zapier.
- Automation tools: Automate repetitive tasks to minimize workload and save time.
- Mobile app: Manage your business or properties anytime and anywhere. You can download it from Google Play and the Apple Store.
Hospitable: Best for Messaging Automation
Why I Chose Hospitable
Hospitable is one of the best short-term rental software because of its cool automated messaging feature. It comes with prebuilt templates for responding to a booking request, welcoming a guest at check-in, or saying goodbye. You can use them right away and even customize them however you like. What’s fantastic is that Hospitable uses AI to answer guest questions and create draft responses quickly. The AI determines the guests’ questions and sends prewritten responses to common questions, such as “What’s the Wi-Fi password?” All you have to do is click the magic wand tool in the Inbox, check the response, make any necessary changes, and hit send.
Additional Features
- Analytics and reporting: You can easily export financial and operational data, which you will then import into your chosen accounting and analytics software for in-depth analysis.
- Channel manager: List properties on multiple channels without having to bother about syncing schedules, messages, and cleaners with reservations.
- Team collaboration: This enables you to assemble and work with a team and assign roles on a single platform.
- Smart locks integration: Automatically create and send unique messaging door codes to prevent unwanted guests on your property.
Escapia: Best for Robust Accounting & Reporting Tools
Why I Chose Escapia
Escapia is the ultimate software for managing short-term rentals. All these awesome accounting and reporting features are explicitly tailored for managing properties. You’ll have access to nearly 300 prebuilt reports at no extra cost, to easily understand everything about a single property or the overall performance of your entire portfolio. Whether you need month- and year-end reports, owner statements, or need to optimize services like check-in/checkout and housekeeping, Escapia has got you covered.
Additional Features
- Signatures platform: Easily create, preview, and send custom rental agreements and addendums.
- Performance dashboard: This dashboard provides real-time, easy-to-understand information, helping you make smarter and faster decisions about your business.
- Reservation calendar: Avoid double-booking and organize your vacation rental reservations effortlessly.
- Owner portal: Access and download all historical owner statements and obtain property details.
Guesty: Best for Multiplatform Integration
Why I Chose Guesty
Guesty makes it easy to manage your short-term rental properties. With over 200 integrations, handling multiple rental properties from one convenient dashboard is simple. This all-in-one platform syncs your listings across various booking websites like Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and Expedia, eliminating the need to spend time manually updating each one. Plus, a variety of integrations for guest management, finances, home automation, marketing, and operations are available.
Additional Features
- Unified inbox: Manage your guest communication in one place, making it easy to stay organized and responsive.
- Multi-calendar: This provides a comprehensive view of all your upcoming bookings and synchronizes across multiple booking platforms, helping you avoid double bookings and stay on top of availability.
- Automation tools: Tools, such as guest communication, cleaning, and maintenance, help you save time and reduce the risk of errors.
- Accounting tools: These tools allow you to manage invoices, track expenses, and generate financial reports in one place, helping you keep track of all your financial data.
- Guesty CRM: It is a customer relationship management (CRM) feature embedded within Guesty’s features, such as Unified Inbox, Multi-Calendar, and Reservations Page. It offers real-time, accurate information during guest or lead interactions.
OwnerRez: Best for QuickBooks Integration
Why I Chose OwnerRez
OwnerRez is a short-term rental management software company offering QuickBooks integration, advanced automation features, and responsive customer support. Plus, with their QuickBooks integration, all your financial data gets automatically and directly pushed into QuickBooks Online, allowing users to organize their finances efficiently. Another great thing is that OwnerRez lets you set up a vacation rental website with a “Book Now” button on your own domain in just a few minutes. Its websites are fast, mobile-friendly, and great for SEO. Best part? No technical skills are needed.
Additional Features
- Channel management: This provides direct API integration with top channels like Vrbo, Airbnb, booking.com, and Tripadvisor.
- Property management: You can calculate commission, generate owner statements, and record expenses.
- WordPress plugin: Integrate your WordPress website using the OwnerRez officially supported plugin.
- Free trial: OwnerRez offers a 14-day free trial, during which you can try its premium features. However, after the trial ends, you will be billed a regular monthly invoice if you continue to use its features.
Methodology: How I Chose the Best Short-term Rental Management Software
To evaluate and discover the best short-term rental management software in this article, I leaned on our team of licensed real estate pros, researchers, writers, and editors, who created a weighted rubric to evaluate each website. Our team has spent hours researching dozens of best vacation rental management software, assessing each based on the most impactful elements for rental property managers and owners. Here are the criteria on which we based our evaluations:
- Pricing (20%)
- Pricing is based on the cost structure and a la carte options of short-term rental software for property owners and managers.
- Property Management Features (30%)
- Based on various property management features offered that help property owners and property managers simplify lists and market rental properties, screen guests, and track financials. The property management features we evaluated included rental applications, applicant screening, and lease generation.
- Renter Communication (15%)
- Based on various renter communication features offered that help property owners and property managers to engage and connect with their guests. Renter communication features we evaluated include renter portals, online signature tools, and online rent payment.
- Ease of Use (10%)
- It is based on how easy it is to navigate the provider interface and whether it provides hassle-free transactions and communication between property owners and guests.
- Help & Support (5%)
- We looked into the convenience and attainability of customer service for technical support, onboarding, and training.
- Customer Rating (10%)
- Based on customer feedback for each program, with particular attention given to reviews of the product and popularity of the provider, to certify the software meets user satisfaction.
- Expert Score (10%)
- Expertise in the field and firsthand experience with the providers allow us to evaluate the standout features, value for the money, and ease of use of property management software.
Your Take
The best short-term rental management software enables vacation rental hosts and managers to manage their properties efficiently. After extensive research, we found that Lodgify is the best short-term rental software for its robust features, which simplify day-to-day operations, maximize bookings, and enhance guest experiences.
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