Guide

Choosing software, without having to ask the price

Seven questions that genuinely separate the offers in this market — and the first is whether anyone answers you when you ask what it costs.

In short

Vacation rental software comes down to seven points: how it bills, what the channel manager costs on top, setup fees, how long you are committed, which platforms are genuinely connected directly, what happens to your data if you leave, and what the product refuses to do. Rentals Hub charges €8 excluding tax per unit per month on Starter and €13 on Pro, channel manager included, with no setup fee and no commitment — and publishes the list of what it does not do.

The three ways of billing you, and what each one changes

This is the question that decides the rest, because it decides what your success costs you. All three models exist in this market and they do not reward the same things.

Per unit per month: predictable, independent of occupancy. This is the Rentals Hub model.
Per booking: painless in low season, expensive when the season is good.
On commission: the vendor earns more when you rent for more, which may be aligned — or may not.
Watch the tiers: "up to 5 units" compares badly against "per unit" until you put your own numbers in.

Our two prices, published

The four lines that only appear at signature

They are rarely hidden, but they are rarely on the pricing page either. You have to ask, and how you are answered is itself information.

Setup or configuration fees, often presented as onboarding.
Commitment: monthly, annual, and what leaving mid-year actually costs.
The channel manager: included, optional, or billed per connected platform.
The booking website: included, or sold separately with its own commission on direct bookings.

Check the platforms one by one

Every vendor shows a row of logos. What the row does not say is which are connected directly and which go through a plain iCal file — and that difference is exactly the one our syncing guide sets out.

Ask, for each platform you care about: direct connection or iCal?
A direct connection brings bookings back and sends prices out; an iCal does neither.
With Rentals Hub, Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, Vrbo and Agoda are direct, Google too — as a metasearch, which shows rather than sells —, and the rest is iCal. That is written down, not implied.
Be wary of a logo shown without a verb: "compatible" means nothing precise.

What you take with you if you leave

Nobody picks software thinking about the day they will leave it, and yet that is the day you find out what you bought. Two questions are enough.

Can you export your bookings, your guests and your rates, and in what format?
What becomes of your booking website, and of your domain name, if you stop?
How long does your data stay reachable after the contract ends?
A vague answer to those questions is an answer.

Ask what the product does not do

This is the most useful question of the lot and the least asked. A vendor who can answer has thought about their scope; a vendor who answers "everything" will let you find the holes after you have paid.

Unified guest messaging, dynamic pricing, housekeeping, accounting: each of those words is worth a precise question.
Rentals Hub publishes the list of what it does not do, and keeps it current — it is a page of the site, not a sales answer.
A real trial beats a guided demo: you are looking for what sticks, not for what shines.
Fourteen days is enough to add a unit, open some dates and connect a platform. That is the real test.

What Rentals Hub does not do

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