Beds24 is a software platform that helps vacation rental property owners and managers as well as other operators in the hospitality industry manage tasks and processes more efficiently. With diverse tools that range from channel management to guest communication, Beds24 promises to help you save time, get more bookings, and scale your Airbnb business. But what exactly is Beds24? And is it really worth it for Airbnb hosts and property managers?
In our Beds24 review, we go over a detailed overview of the available features, functionalities, integrations, and subscription plans that the platform offers as well as its ideal customers. We'll check the average ratings of the app on trustworthy review websites and analyze individual customer reviews to highlight the main strengths and weaknesses of Beds24 and whether existing users are more likely to recommend it or not. Finally, we'll offer top alternative and complementary Airbnb management software options for hosts and managers with different portfolios and needs. With all of this, we aim to help you choose the best vacation rental software for your specific situation.
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What is Beds24?
Beds24 is an Airbnb management software that operates as an all-in-one platform for managing vacation rentals and hotels. Mark Kinchin founded the company in Berlin, Germany in 2005 in response to his own need for an affordable booking engine. While Beds24 started as a booking channel, over the years the team has developed multiple additional features in an effort to build a more comprehensive property management system (PMS) for the needs of the hospitality industry. The company mission is to help accommodation providers automate routines and simplify workflows in order to be able to save time while increasing efficiency and profit.
At the moment, Beds24 is used by thousands of customers in over 150 countries. One of the main advantages that the system offers is that it works and provides support in multiple languages which has helped it expand its international presence. In addition, Beds24 is a preferred partner of major booking channels and OTAs which allows hosts and property managers to enjoy optimized listings that rank well.
Who is Beds24 best for?
The Beds24 team has worked on tools that aim to meet the needs of a range of operators in the vacation rental and tourism industries.
Beds24 can help:
- Individual hosts who own one or more short-term rentals that they list on multiple booking channels
- Professional Airbnb managers with local or national portfolios of vacation rentals
- Nationwide and international short-term rental management companies that work with hundreds of owners across different markets
- Owners and managers of rooms, apartments, villas, B&Bs, hotels, hostels, and other units rented out on a short-term basis
Importantly, Beds24 can be used to streamline property management tasks for properties located inside and outside the U.S.
How does Beds24 work?
As one of the best short-term rental software platforms, Beds24 provides a number of tools and features that help automate some of the most time-consuming day-to-day tasks associated with the management of vacation rentals.
All these tools work together under a single platform to streamline operations while also improving results by preventing double bookings, automating communication, and enhancing guest experiences. Here's some of Bed24's top features.
Channel manager
Beds24 is best known for its Airbnb channel manager feature. This allows hosts and property managers to easily combine and manage their listings across different vacation rental websites to avoid double bookings and increase transparency.
Some of the main characteristics of the Beds24 vacation rental channel manager are:
- Pooled inventory which means that each channel has access to all your properties for automatic updates to inventory to prevent overbookings
- Flexible constellations which support multiple room types and individual and multi-unit properties
- Listing import which allows you to get started with your existing listings
- Content management which helps you create new listings directly from Beds24 as well as to update listing titles, descriptions, photos, amenities, and other content
- Occupancy pricing which means that you can offer prices specific to occupancy to get more bookings on Airbnb and other channels
The Beds24 channel manager connects directly with dozens of popular and niche booking channels and OTAs as well as with wholesalers and metasearch engines including but not limited to:
- Airbnb
- Vrbo
- Booking.com
- Google Vacation Rentals
- Google Hotel Ads
- Tripadvisor
- Trivago
- GTA
- Hotelbeds
- Hotels.com
- Trip.com
- VacationStays
- Agoda
- Marriott Homes & Villas
- Hometogo
- Holiday Guide
- Hostelworld
- Travelbug
- Bookeasy
With the channel manager, you can distribute your STR listings to a wider audience of potential guests to generate more reservations without losing track of available bookings.
Online booking system
Another key Beds24 feature is the online booking system. The internet booking engine (IBE) can be embedded in your already existing vacation rental website or the booking page can be used as a booking website to start driving direct bookings. While listing your property on the best short-term rental websites is a quick way to get in front of the eyes of millions of guests around the globe, the power of direct bookings should not be underestimated either. You can get additional exposure through your SEO efforts and get direct reservations on which you don't have to pay commissions to the listing platform.
The main benefits of the Beds24 online booking system include:
- Customization: With the modular approach, you can customize the design, layout, and content to match your website. You can choose from preset designs or create your own with picture sliders, maps, booking calendars, and price tables.
- Mobile-friendly implementation: The booking form is fully responsive and works seamlessly on different devices.
- Multiple languages and currencies: The booking page supports 30+ languages and features an optional currency converter to show the price in the guest's preferred currency.
- Payment collection: The booking system collects payments from guests and transfers them directly into your account via Stripe, PayPal, AuthorizeNet, Globalpayment, and others.
- Upselling options: The booking engine allows you to sell additional services, offer packages, and provide voucher codes to earn more revenue from your reservations.
With the online booking system, you can turn your website into a booking engine or launch a simple website for direct bookings.
Guest communication
Beds24 provides a set of tools that help improve and automate guest communication. As you already know, efficient and fast communication with guests is one of the main factors for getting more bookings, providing superior guest experiences, generating a lot of 5-star reviews, and ranking high on Airbnb and other distribution channels. Specifically, quick responses to guest messages is one of the requirements for obtaining the Airbnb Superhost status.
Beds24 offers the following guest communication features:
- Central inbox: Beds24 brings together all guest messages from Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, and Expedia and allows you to respond to them from a single place.
- Automation: You can automate most guest communication based on refined triggers and events such as pre-arrival, arrival, stay, check-out, and post-stay.
- Smart templates: You can easily personalize messages with dynamic placeholder template variables while benefiting from saved templates to address the most frequent questions and concerns of guests.
- Sophisticated triggers: Hosts and property managers can customize triggers to send automated messages based on factors including but not limited to origin of the booking, status of the booking, payment status, certain time before or after the booking, and certain time before or after check-in or check-out.
Optimizing guest communication without wasting unnecessary time is an important way to earn more positive reviews and generate more business that should not be underestimated.
Front desk system
Beds24 provides a cloud-based front desk system, or property management system, that can be easily and securely accessed at any time from any device.
The Beds24 PMS includes:
- Dynamic multi calendar: The customizable booking calendar brings all information in one central place and allows you to change prices, assign listings, manage rentals, add or edit bookings, block listings, adjust restrictions, and others.
- Flexible pricing: You can optimize your Airbnb pricing strategy with seasonal prices, discounts based on the number of guests, prices based on length of stay, vouchers, extra fees, price linking, dynamic prices, and multiple prices with hierarchy.
- Communication platform: The messaging option features a central inbox, custom communication templates, triggers, email options, and WhatsApp integration.
- Payment collection: You can collect payments from guests directly into your account.
- Smart automation: With automated workflows, you can streamline communication, payment collection, price syncing, availability syncing, and booking actions.
The cloud-based front desk system of Beds24 allows Airbnb hosts and property managers to manage their rentals on the go.
Multi property management
Beds24 offers a range of features that aim to make the management of a portfolio of short-term rentals more efficient in order to serve professional property managers and Airbnb management companies.
These tools include:
- Custom branding via a white-label system that can run on your own website
- Booking engine for individual listings and groups of listings
- Quick onboarding from OTAs or via APIs
- Payment collection using credit card or PayPal
- Automated routines to manage bookings, guests, invoicing, housekeeping, and reporting
- Owner management to provide owners with full or restricted access to selected rentals and metrics
- Standard and custom reporting to track performance and report to owners
- Direct integrations with dozens of third-party software tools
- APIs to integrate with external systems
The multi property management makes Beds24 a potentially good fit for Airbnb managers and agencies.
Housekeeping
Beds24 helps manage housekeeping processes for smooth business operations. This includes cleaning and other activities that need to be performed between stays.
Payment processing
Another feature provided by Beds24 is secure and automated processing of guest payments. The platform can collect payments from guests and deposit them into your account for reservations made via OTAs/booking channels and your own website. Beds24 accepts payments made via credit cards, debit cards, virtual credit cards, Bitcoin, and others. Moreover, you can receive payments in different manners.
In addition, Beds24 allows you to view, track, and create reports on bookings, payments, and outstanding payments.
Reports and analytics
With Beds24, you can generate standard and customized reports to track the performance of different Airbnb metrics. If you're a professional manager, you can create reports to share with owner clients for enhanced transparency and customer retention.
Beds24 indeed has multiple tools that help handle many of the most tedious tasks required for managing vacation rentals.
What's missing
Meanwhile, some of the most crucial features that are missing from Beds24 but are available on competitors include:
- Dynamic pricing: While Beds24 has some pricing capacities, it doesn't offer a sophisticated dynamic Airbnb pricing tool like other PMSs.
- Website builder: The Beds24 booking system can operate as a standalone website, but it's not a full-scale website builder.
- Team and task management: Beds24 has more limited capacities to support team collaboration and automate task management than alternatives.
- Guest review management: Some aspects of guest review generation can be put on autopilot with communication automation, but some Beds24 offer complete guest review management solutions.
- Smart locks management: Beds24 doesn't provide a feature that helps manage smart locks for automated check-ins and check-outs.
- CRM and lead management: Some of the top Beds24 alternatives offer a CRM tailored to the needs of the hospitality industry, while it is absent from this platform.
Based on our review of Beds24 capacities, the platform can help streamline important STR business operations, but its features and capabilities are limited compared to many top competitors.
Beds24 pricing
Instead of having subscription plans, like most vacation rental management software, Beds24 pricing is determined by the type of property that you have and the exact features that you want as well as the number of rentals that you have in your portfolio and the number of channels on which you list them.
The Beds24 cost starts at $16.78/month for access to the PMS and the online booking system for one vacation rental.
Following is a summary of all the factors that affect the overall price that you need to pay:
- Type of property: Vacation rental, hotel or B&B, hostel, or other
- Number of properties
- Use of channel manager
- Number of booking channels/OTAs where the property is listed
- SMS booking notifications
- Additional users
- Private label
Because of the complex pricing structure, it's difficult to estimate the range of possible fees. Hosts and property managers can use the Beds24 pricing page to estimate the total cost based on their portfolio and preferences.
Meanwhile, it's important to note that there is a free trial, so you can test the Beds24 tools before purchasing a subscription. In addition, all fees are monthly, so no long-term commitment is needed.
Beds24 integrations
In addition to offering a lot of its own tools, the best Airbnb management software has to work seamlessly with a lot of other tools to provide missing functionalities. Beds24 connects with hundreds of third-party tools to optimize workflows, improve guest experiences, and bring more income. Most integrations are direct, but some are provided via Make.
The most prominent Beds integrations cover the following categories and apps:
- Accounting software: Kashflow, sevDesk, Xero, Hotelinvoicer, and Quickbooks
- Analytics: Google Analytics
- Business intelligence: KeyData
- Communication: GuestTalk, Slack, Apple Notifications, Mailgun, Swikly, and WhatsApp
- CRM: Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Sugar CRM, and Pipedrive
- Deposits, online check-ins, and guidebooks: Charge Automation
- Documents: Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Forms, Dropbox, and Box
- Guest experiences: Aipex, Duve, and YourWelcome
- Guest registration and police reporting: Chekin, Hostkit, and Feratel
- Guest screening and protection: Safely, Superhog, and Autohost
- Housekeeping and task management: Breezeway, Flexkeeping, HelloShift, Operto, Sweeply, and Lula Cleaning
- Integration platforms: Make, Zoho, and Zapier
- Lock systems: Jervis Systems, Nuki, Remotelock, Igloohome, Vikey, and Hostvana
- Marketing: Mailchimp and GetResponse
- Meta search: Google, Tripadvisor, and Trivago
- Noise monitoring: Minut
- Payment processors: Stripe, PayPal, Global Payments, Bitpays, and AsiaPay
- POS system: Poster POS and Zettle
- Price comparison: Triptease
- Refund protection: Refund Protect
- Revenue management: PriceLabs, Beyond, and RoomPriceGenie
- Surveys: Surveymonkey
- Task management: Asana
- Website builder: Webready, ResyPress, and Rezintel
With these diverse integrations, Beds24 is able to provide solutions for the functionalities that it doesn't provide within its own suite of tools. However, this comes with the need to pay for multiple tools which raises the overall cost.
Beds24 reviews: What customers say
Beds24 has an average rating of 4.8/5 stars based on over 1,700 unique reviews across multiple platforms, with additional feedback available on Reddit, Quora, and Airhosts Forum.
Beds24 reviews are available on:
- FeaturedCustomers: 4.8/5 stars from 1,520 reviews
- SelectHub: 96% rating from 118 reviews
- Capterra: 4.8/5 stars from 101 reviews
- GetApp: 4.8/5 stars from 101 reviews
- Software Advice: 4.8/5 stars from 101 reviews
- G2: 4.2/5 stars from 13 reviews
- Quora
- Airhosts Forum
Let's take a look at what customers like the most and the least about Beds24.
Positive Beds24 reviews
Most Beds24 customer reviews reveal positive experiences with users being generally satisfied with the product and likely to recommend it to others.
The main strengths of Beds24 highlighted in reviews include the following.
High level of customization and flexibility
Customers think that Beds24 has a lot of important features that come with a great degree of customization which means that you can configure the platform to work in line with your specific needs.
Lesley wrote the following on Capterra:
"The flexibility of the system is amazing, want to keep it simple, thats possible, want to have multiple levels of complexity, thats possible too."
Wolfgang shared a similar opinion on Software Advice:
"The highly customisable software offers the best possible support for rental processes with maximum adaptability to your own requirements."
Yury left the following review on GetApp:
"Excellent functionality, flexibility and stability!"
Top value for money
Many users consider that Beds24 provides the best value for value in the market, compared to other PMS platforms.
In specific, that's what Naina said on Capterra:
"Much expensive software's are not capable of even delivering half of what they offer. These guys. The price is super cheap, I mean literally super cheap. It is an extreme value for money."
Firman shared a similar sentiment on Capterra:
"We have currently using more than one PMS to this day , but Beds24 gives the most worth of your money with features and usability."
Passe_tisse commented the following on Airhosts Forum:
"One the one hand it is cheap, super powerful (you can have sub accounts, merge accounts, export calendars with custom fields for your cleaning services, have a widget to create your own website, handle Airbnb/Homeaway/Booking.com XML apis, have automation utils, integration with smartlocks, an API for more customizations if you are a developer, apply percentage / offset price depending on the channel etc…)."
Easy-to-use platform
Additionally, Beds24 customers find the interface to be particularly user-friendly and the platform to be intuitive to use.
Related to this, John's review on Capterra reads as follows:
"Compared to the six different on-line booking platforms that we use, Beds24 is by far the friendliest, easiest piece of on-line software to setup and work with. It's cost effective, intuitive, full featured and not buggy!!"
Similarly, Regine wrote on GetApp:
"Beds24 is very easy to use and helps keep track of all the reservations coming from different channels. Taking payments for customer reservation is easy and fast."
Veronica shared her experience with Beds24 on GetApp:
"Easy to set up and manage. Support it's on line. Intuitive."
Strong integrations
Another strength of Beds24 that many users like to talk about is the rich suite of available third-party integrations that help facilitate operations for Airbnb hosts and property managers.
Cliff shared his thoughts in this regard on GetApp:
"Endless features/integrations."
David praised Beds24 on Software Advice as follows:
"The next best, but very much related, characteristic is its ability to integrate with other systems."
Anabell wrote the following on Capterra:
"It integrates with other platforms that are important to us."
Helpful and knowledgeable customer support
Finally, customers have had positive experiences with the Beds24 customer support as highlighted in many of their reviews of the platform.
Sylvain commented the following on GetApp:
"The customer service and online/Zoom support is second to none. At first it is not easy to navigate by yourself, I decided to use the 30 minutes free tuition and then a paid hour. The best return on investment I have made in a long time. The gentleman was extremely professional, knowledgeable and very pleasant."
Rod wrote this in his review on Capterra:
"Our rep and her team of customer support rocks, they are very knowledgeable and reply in under 24hrs sometimes within the hour - Love it."
An anonymous user of Beds24 shared their opinion on GetApp:
"The team at B24 are responsive to customer needs and make small and big enhancements to the system on an ongoing basis."
Negative Beds24 reviews
There are very few negative reviews of Beds24 as customers are generally happy with the product.
Still, here are some weaknesses and areas of improvement that users mention in their online reviews, such as the following.
Difficult-to-get-started-with platform
While some customers find the platform to be very intuitive and easy to use, others have faced difficulties, especially when first getting started. It seems that the main challenges in understanding how Beds24 works stem from the multiple features and tools that have to be figured out. Moreover, it seems the design is a bit outdated, which causes troubles to customers who are used to different apps.
In specific, Mark wrote the following review on Software Advice:
"The initial set up of Beds24 is quite clunky but if you persevere with it, it's well worth the money."
David shared similar sentiments on Software Advice:
"Because it is a completely DIY system, it can be quite daunting getting set-up. You have to figure out how to do everything by following the self-help guides."
Mark commented the following on GetApp:
"It's the overall high level of functionality that creates the obstacle for new users to get the business application set up. However, low cost direct training and support is available which solved this obstacle. The interface is dated and many important processes are not intuitive."
Lack of user-friendliness
For some customers, difficulties and challenges go beyond setup and implementation and into the actual usage of Beds24 for managing short-term rentals.
Reid shared his frustration on Capterra:
"So many mistakes -- expensive mistakes -- that came about b/c the software user interface is so difficult to navigate, tons of sub-entries and duplicate entries required, incredibly complex design. Good for someone who wants to spend a few weeks becoming an expert on the software."
Fabrizio wrote the following on GetApp:
"Sometimes it's abit difficult to because of all it's functions, but here again i just open a ticket and help is quick and precise."
Cristina's review of Beds24 on GetApp reads as follows:
"Sometimes it's a little bit difficult to understand some mechanisms but support is always there to guide you."
Missing integrations
The final weakness of Beds24 revealed in customer reviews is the lack of some integrations with popular Airbnb host tools.
Naina wrote the following review on Capterra:
"I needed integration with my local major OTA called goibibo.com which I couldn't find in the huge list."
Firman commented the following on Capterra:
"Still the lack of feature integration with point of sales system or the front desk for a large scale hotel."
Anabell shared a similar experience on Software Advice:
"They don't integrate with some of the systems I want to use. They are good for 1-2 properties but not for more."
In conclusion, Beds24 reviews are very positive and highlight the robustness of the platform as well as the multiple features and options that it provides to STR operators. Nevertheless, you need to take into consideration the potentially challenging implementation and use, especially if you're not tech-savvy.
Is Beds24 reliable?
Beds24 customer reviews reveal that this Airbnb property management software is very reliable and trustworthy. The platform's rankings are great, and the reviews are overwhelmingly positive.
Importantly, Beds24 users do not mention technical problems and glitches, and this makes the product seem stable, which is a crucial characteristic for any software app. The last thing you want as a host or property manager is your listings disconnecting, tools getting stuck, and integrations malfunctioning.
Based on this, we can conclude that Beds24 is reliable. However, you should keep in mind that its tools are somewhat limited in comparison with other top platforms in the field and a bit more complicated to set up, especially for non-technical users.
Beds24 alternatives
Beds24 can help automate many important aspects of short-term rental property management. However, because of some missing tools, advanced setup, and limited functionalities, Airbnb operators might need to look elsewhere to find the best platform.
These are the top three alternatives to Beds24 for beginner and experienced hosts and property managers.
1. Beds24 vs SummerOS
SummerOS is a top-ranked vacation rental management platform that is a game-changer in the industry. Rather than competing with Beds24, SummerOS complements the PMS by centralizing all data and business operations under a single powerful platform that helps you manage smarter, grow faster, and stay ahead in the competitive short-term rental market.
Designed by property managers for property managers, SummerOS provides the following benefits:
- Streamlined data and operations for managing an entire portfolio from a single platform
- Tracking listing and portfolio performance with real-time data analytics
- Highly customizable Airbnb comp sets to focus your benchmarking and analysis on the competitors that matter the most to your business
- Finding new qualified leads and onboarding properties with an ease
- Identifying underperforming properties and building data-based strategies to bring them up to speed
- Automated alerts and tasks to prevent operational issues and enhance guest experiences
- Automated custom reports for owners to boost transparency and increase customer retention in the long term
- Advanced underwriting and pro forma tools for better financial health
Whether you're managing a few properties or an entire portfolio, you can move from reactive to proactive management for more revenue and faster growth.
SummerOS costs only $15/month per property for access to all tools and all markets, with reduced pricing for larger portfolios. You can get started with a 14-day free trial to test the features for yourself.
2. Beds24 vs Hostaway
Hostaway is one of the leading PMS platforms in the vacation rental market. Similar to Beds24, it helps Airbnb hosts, property managers, and STR management companies operate more efficiently.
The main tools available on Hostaway include a channel manager, reservations manager, multi-calendar, multi-unit support, payment processing, website builder, revenue management, and reporting and analytics. Some features that Hostaway offers and Beds24 doesn't that are worth highlighting include dynamic pricing, cross-listings, smart locks management, vacation rental contract signature, guest review automation, and short-term rental financing.
With regards to integrations, Hostaway connects with 180+ third-party tools, which is comparable to the integrations provided by Beds24.
The main disadvantage of Hostaway is that it doesn't provide an estimate of the expected cost unless you schedule a demo with the support team and discuss your needs. All that's known about the pricing is that there are monthly and annual subscriptions, and there is no free trial. That's why it's not possible to say whether Beds24 or Hostaway is the more affordable option.
3. Beds24 vs Lodgify
Lodgify is a close alternative to Beds24. Lodgify can cover the needs of individual hosts, professional property managers, and operators of different types of accommodations, such as B&Bs, cabins, cottages, villas, small hotels, and others.
The core Lodgify features include a channel manager, booking system, guest communication and management, website builder, booking widget, payment processing, owner statements, and reporting and analytics. Unlike Beds24, Lodgify has its own dynamic pricing tool which helps boost revenue by striking the optimal balance between daily rates and Airbnb occupancy rate.
Meanwhile, Lodgify works with 40+ third-party software tools used in the short-term rental business. This is significantly less than the integrations that Beds24 offers.
Unlike Beds24, Lodgify offers three plans that provide access to different tools and are designed for different types of users. Subscriptions can be monthly, annual, or biannual. Pricing starts at $16/month for one property when billed annually for the most basic plan.
Is Beds24 worth it?
Beds24 is a legitimate property management system that can help hosts and property managers automate many of the most tedious tasks associated with the management of short-term rentals. While available features are robust and reliable, they are relatively limited compared to what some top Beds24 alternatives offer. Most importantly, the app does not have its own dynamic pricing tool. In general, it can work for both individual hosts and professional managers who are looking for a way to streamline some processes but still want to remain actively involved in the management of their rentals.
Meanwhile, if you're looking for the best way to take the driver's seat in your vacation rental business and bring all data and operations under a single roof, check out SummerOS. Whether you're using Beds24 or any other PMS product, SummerOS can complement your existing tools to streamline all aspects of the property management process, from finding new leads and onboarding new properties, all the way to supporting guests and reporting to owners. We take the complexity out of managing your Airbnb properties and turn it into an effortless growth.
Manage smarter and grow faster with SummerOS.
