Guide

Free software, and what it actually costs

Three ways to pay nothing, where each of them stops working, and the point at which they start costing more than a subscription.

In short

There are three ways to run short-term rentals without paying for software: the Airbnb calendar on its own, an iCal feed between two platforms, and a spreadsheet. All three work, up to a precise point — one unit, two platforms, moderate occupancy. Past that, the free plans vendors advertise are usually capped at one unit or one channel, or they take a commission on every booking instead. Rentals Hub is not free: €8 excluding tax per unit per month, after a fourteen-day trial with no card. This page is here to help you decide whether you need it, and for some of the people reading it the answer is no.

What is genuinely free, and how far it goes

Three tools let you run rentals without paying for software. None of them is a bad choice in itself: each has a breaking point, and what matters is knowing which one you are approaching.

The Airbnb calendar: free, complete, and blind to everything sold anywhere else.
An iCal feed between two platforms: also free, but it carries only the dates that are taken, and it is re-read every few hours.
A spreadsheet: it accepts anything, including a typo, and nothing warns you.
What they share: they hold while you have one unit and few nights to defend.

How iCal synchronisation works

What "free" means when a vendor says it

Software advertised as free is rarely free without conditions. There are four common shapes and they are not equivalent. Recognising them takes thirty seconds on a pricing page — provided there is one.

Free up to one unit: useful to start with, useless the day you let a second one.
Free on a single channel: the calendar is there, the channel manager sits in the paid plan.
Free, but a commission per booking: you pay in proportion to how well you do, and often more than a subscription.
A trial presented as a free plan: that is our case, and we write "trial", not "free".

The point where free turns expensive

Free costs nothing as long as nothing slips through. Its real price is the price of what does slip through, and it is not paid monthly: it is paid all at once, one evening, at a door.

One night sold twice: the refund, the last-minute rehousing, and the review that stays online.
Time: half an hour a day copying dates across adds up to a working week a year.
Nights left closed because the dates were not reopened quickly enough after a cancellation.
None of these costs appears on an invoice, which is exactly why they get underestimated.

What causes a double booking

When a subscription starts to make sense

The question is not "free or paid", it is "from how many nights". Use your own figures rather than ours: the arithmetic takes two minutes, and sometimes it says no.

One unit, one platform, thirty nights a year: stay on the Airbnb calendar, you need nothing else.
One unit, two platforms, moderate occupancy: iCal is often enough, and it costs nothing.
Several units, or high occupancy, or three platforms: a single night sold twice costs more than a year of subscription.
Rentals Hub is €8 excluding tax per unit per month, €13 with the channel manager. At €100 a night, that is less than a tenth of one night.

Our two prices, published

If you stay on free, at least do this

A good share of the people reading this page have nothing to buy today. Here is what lowers the risk without spending anything, and it holds with any tool.

Connect iCal both ways, not just one: half of all sync setups only run in a single direction.
Read your calendars in the morning, while there is still a day left to repair a clash.
Close the listings you no longer watch rather than leaving them live.
Enter a booking taken over the phone before you hang up, never that evening.

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