# Hostaway review (2026): is it worth it? > Vacation rental PMS and channel manager for property managers Checked Oct 24, 2026 ยท graded Oct 24, 2026 by ToolGPA. Hostaway is a property management system and channel manager for vacation rental managers. It lists properties on Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Google and Expedia from one dashboard, gathers guest messages from those channels plus email, SMS and WhatsApp into one inbox, and adds dynamic pricing, owner statements and a direct booking site. Prices are quoted by portfolio size. - **Category:** Vacation Rental Software - **Made by:** Hostaway - **Website:** https://www.hostaway.com - **Runs on:** Web, iOS, Android - **Who should skip it:** Skip it if you want to see a price first, as every price is a quote based on your listing count. - **Facts last checked:** Oct 24, 2026 ## Pricing Hostaway's current pricing could not be confirmed from its own site. ## Key features - **Channel manager and multi-calendar:** Syncs listings, rates and availability with Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Google and Expedia over direct API connections, with regional channels through the marketplace. - **Unified inbox:** Messages from Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com sit in one inbox with email, SMS and WhatsApp, alongside templates and automated messages. - **AI Replies and AI CoHost:** AI Replies drafts answers to common guest questions and can send them automatically. AI CoHost, new, reads live account data and suggests next steps. - **Dynamic pricing:** Adjusts nightly rates for season and events across channels, alongside coupons, promotions and upsells. - **Owner statements and reporting:** Financial and occupancy reports, owner statement templates with automated delivery, an owner portal and a QuickBooks connection. - **Direct booking site and open API:** A website builder with a booking engine and widgets for existing sites, an open API, and 300+ marketplace integrations. ## Good for - Property managers running a few to a few hundred short-term rental listings - Teams that answer guests over OTA messages, SMS and WhatsApp in one place - Managers who send owner statements and run an owner portal ## Worth knowing - Hostaway publishes no prices: the pricing page asks for your listing count and returns a quote. - Sign-up goes through a demo or quote request; the site shows no self-serve plan or free trial. - The quote form is built around managers with 2 or more listings and sends single-listing hosts to a separate page. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.0 out of 4**, graded Oct 24, 2026. Hostaway lists your properties on Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Google and Expedia and gathers those messages with email, SMS and WhatsApp in one inbox. It publishes no prices: you give your listing count and get a quote. There's no self-serve plan or free trial on its site, and hosts with a single listing are sent to a separate page. - **Value for money: C.** No price is published. The pricing page asks how many listings you have and returns a quote, so the price only comes from Hostaway's sales team, and we can't set it against this category's $25.52 middle. - **Free plan and trial: F.** Nothing free on record. Sign-up goes through a demo or quote request, and the site shows no free plan and no trial. - **Features: B.** Channel sync over direct connections, one inbox for channel, email, SMS and WhatsApp messages, AI replies, dynamic pricing, owner statements and an owner portal, a booking site and an open API. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in the core work. - **Ease of use: C.** Hostaway rates 4.3 on the US App Store from 447 ratings, which puts it at C on our ease ladder. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web, iPhone and Android, an open API and 300+ marketplace integrations, QuickBooks among them. There's no desktop app. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Hostaway's own pages on 24 October 2026. Its pricing page shows no price. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among vacation rental tools - Hostaway's GPA of 2.0 is higher than 0 of the 10 other vacation rental tools we grade, and level with 1. - It stands best on features (B, above 2 of 10) and worst on free plan and trial (F, above 0). The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/vacation-rentals ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace Hostaway you would be making two-way connections to Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. That makes this kind of software worth paying for, not this one in particular: 9 of the 10 other vacation rental tools grade higher. - You could make: Reports: an app builder makes this well. - You could not: Two-way connections to Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo. - You could not: One mailbox that several people work at once. - You could not: The WhatsApp Business API, which Meta opens only through approved partners. - You could not: A real app for iOS and Android. Something home-made would be a web page. - You could not: It plugs into other products, Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com among them, and has an API. - You could not: AI features, unless you pay a model provider for each request yourself. - You could not: Hooks into the device itself: widgets. - You could not: The depth: we grade its features B, which means it covers the whole job. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## What people say - **App Store rating of the iPhone and iPad app:** 4.3 out of 5 from 447 ratings in the United States, read Oct 24, 2026. This is the store's rating of the app, not a score from ToolGPA. Source: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1237641501 ## Works with Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Expedia, Google Vacation Rentals, QuickBooks, WhatsApp **Tags:** Channel manager, Shared inbox, AI features, WhatsApp messaging, Reports, Public API ## Alternatives - [Guesty](https://toolgpa.com/tools/guesty): Property management software for short-term rental hosts and managers. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/guesty-vs-hostaway) - [Hostfully](https://toolgpa.com/tools/hostfully): Vacation rental property management software and digital guidebooks. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hostaway-vs-hostfully) - [OwnerRez](https://toolgpa.com/tools/ownerrez): Vacation rental software priced per property, channel manager included. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hostaway-vs-ownerrez) - [Uplisting](https://toolgpa.com/tools/uplisting): Short-term rental channel manager with flat or pay-per-booking plans. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hostaway-vs-uplisting) - [Lodgify](https://toolgpa.com/tools/lodgify): Vacation rental software with a direct booking website builder. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/hostaway-vs-lodgify) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Oct 24, 2026: - https://www.hostaway.com - https://www.hostaway.com/pricing/ - https://www.hostaway.com/page-data/pricing/page-data.json - https://www.hostaway.com/features/ - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hostaway-vacation-rental-pms/id1237641501 - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fi.hostaway&gl=US&hl=en Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/hostaway Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).