Compared, October 2026
Seven ways to get a direct booking website live, scored on the same eight criteria. Two of them are ours. Where HomeRunner loses is on this page, by name, next to where it wins.
By Eli Pritykin, founder of HomeRunner and Hudson Creative Studio. Updated October 2026.
Not sure a direct site pays for itself at your size? Run your numbers in four taps. The answer can be no.
The quick answer
Seven situations we hear most. Five of them point away from us.
You already have a website you like.
It installs into the site you run, syncs your PMS and adds search, property pages and checkout. No rebuild. WordPress and custom-coded sites today; Squarespace and Webflow in early access.1
You are on Guesty and want one vendor with the least effort.
$49 a month plus 0.5% of direct booking volume, built and billed inside Guesty.5
You are on Hostaway with a small portfolio.
$49 a month plus a 0.5% reservation fee, with a free one-page Standard site if you need less.9
You are on Hostfully and want a booking page with no setup.
Included with every account. Works as soon as your properties exist.13
Two to ten listings, nothing to host, live this week.
$89.99 a month for two properties plus $8 for each one after that, hosted for you.17
You want coaching, a rebooking CRM and a site someone else builds.
Training, a GoHighLevel CRM and a done-for-you WordPress build on their hosting.22
You run a brand.
Twenty-five or more listings, or a design a template cannot give you. A bespoke build by the studio that makes HomeRunner, or by one of the partner studios under Hire an Expert.30
Side by side
Each cell is a fact from the vendor’s own pages, with the source number. Scroll sideways on a phone.
| Type | PMS pairing | Checkout on your domain | If you leave | Software price | AI readiness | Email list | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HomeRunner | Booking platform that adds to the site you already have | Guesty Pro, Hostaway, Hostfully, OwnerRez, Hospitable, Lodgify, Streamline, Track, Boom | Yes with Guesty, Hostaway (Stripe), Streamline, Track on request. PMS-hosted with OwnerRez, Hostfully, Hospitable, Lodgify3 | Site, domain, content and data stay live. The booking engine stops.4 | $45/mo up to 5 listings, $95 up to 15, $175 up to 25. Flat.2 | Machine-readable property pages, AI sitemap, read counts, attributed bookings. Included.6 | Guest capture to your PMS; SendSquared integration7 |
| Hudson Creative Studio | Bespoke design and build on HomeRunner, by the studio that makes it. Three more studios are listed under Hire an Expert. | The same nine as HomeRunner | Same as HomeRunner3 | Same as HomeRunner. The site, domain, content and data are yours, on your host.4 | Pre-built site $2,000. Bespoke design quoted per project from a $5,500 minimum budget on Hire an Expert. Plus the HomeRunner subscription.30 | Same as HomeRunner, plus local guides and guest-type pages written for your market in the build | Guest capture to your PMS; SendSquared integration7 |
| Guesty Advanced Website | Hosted builder inside the PMS | Guesty only | Redirects to the Guesty Booking Engine to pay8 | A deleted site cannot be recovered. No export documented.8 | $49/mo + 0.5% of direct booking volume, plus Guesty5 | AI-written titles and meta, IndexNow, local business schema5 | Pop-ups and forms. Email tooling not documented. |
| Hostaway Booking Website Pro | Hosted builder inside the PMS | Hostaway only | Yes9 | Site taken offline when Pro ends. Downgrade deletes content.10 | $49/mo + 0.5% reservation fee. Guests pay a further 1.8% (US). Plus Hostaway.9 | AI-written titles and meta, SEO settings9 | Email campaigns, pop-ups, lead capture on Pro9 |
| Hostfully Direct Booking Site | Booking page included with the PMS; Premium editor in front of it | Hostfully only | Guests pay on book.yourdomain.com14 | Not documented | Included. Growth plan adds 1% gateway fee + 0.85% commission, waived on Pro.13 | SEO and AEO panel in the Premium editor15 | Inquiry capture. Marketing tools not documented. |
| CraftedStays | Hosted builder | Hostaway, Guesty, Hospitable, OwnerRez, Hostfully | Native PMS checkout or your Stripe, on your domain17 | Site goes offline. Export claimed, format not documented.18 | $89.99/mo for two properties + $8 each, up to 20. $69.99 in year one.17 | Server-rendered pages, FAQ blocks, review markup, first-party citation research19 | Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Campaign Monitor, Go High Level20 |
| Boostly | Done-for-you WordPress build on Boostly hosting | 27+ PMSs claimed | Through your PMS gateway23 | Site files in a shared Dropbox folder within 14 days. Plugins, PMS connection and CRM licence end.24 | Build price not public. $97/mo membership. $500 per extra revision round.22 | No AI-search claims. SEO results not warranted.25 | GoHighLevel CRM with rebooking emails26 |
How we evaluated
Does the website pull live rates and availability, and does a booking land in the PMS as a confirmed reservation with payment attached? Builders that create inquiries or leads instead of reservations score lower.
Can a guest search, see a live quote with fees and extras priced in, and pay without leaving the page? We also looked for AI search, rate comparison against the OTAs, and saved favourites.
Whose domain, whose site, whose data, whose checkout? And the test that matters most: if you cancel, is there still a website?
Does the product ship, and can you see it? We counted dated public changelog entries and checked how a release reaches a live site.
Can your team change pages, copy, menus and images without a developer or a ticket?
Does it add to the site you already have, or does it require a rebuild on the vendor’s platform?
Can an AI assistant read each property’s rates and availability, and can you see the reads and the bookings that follow? We did not score citation or ranking claims. No vendor can promise those, and we do not either.
Subscription, percentage fees, setup, and what the price does at 5, 15 and 25 listings. Figures are each vendor’s own, dated.
The seven, reviewed
Each review ends with where that product beats HomeRunner. Our two end with where we lose.
Booking platform that adds to the site you already have. Made by us.
HomeRunner is a booking engine that lives in your own website and syncs with your PMS. Search, property pages, live quotes and checkout render on your domain. Nine PMSs connect today. Pricing is a flat monthly fee by listing count, from $45 a month for up to five listings, with no percentage of bookings and no fees until the site is live. The Toolkit (maps, reviews, keyword search, AI Booking Channel) is included. Conversion Kit and AI Concierge are paid add-ons priced as a percentage of the Core fee.26
Three ways in. Subscription only, which installs into the site you already run. A pre-built site from Hudson Creative Studio for $2,000. Or a bespoke design from Hudson Creative Studio or a partner studio, quoted as a project.12
Operators who want the website to be theirs, on their domain, and want it to keep getting better without a rebuild.
Bespoke design and build on HomeRunner, by the studio that makes it.
Hudson Creative Studio is the agency that built HomeRunner and still builds sites on it. A studio project is a WordPress site designed from scratch: brand, layout, photography direction and copy, local guides and guest-type pages written for your market, content and redirects carried over from the old site, and the HomeRunner engine wired to your PMS. It ships on a host you choose. The finished site is yours in exactly the way every HomeRunner site is: your domain, your site, your data, your checkout.412
It is the slowest route on this page and the only one priced as a project rather than a card. A pre-built site is $2,000. A bespoke design depends on the portfolio and the design, so that number comes after a scoping call; our listed minimum is $5,500. We are also not the only studio that builds on HomeRunner. Rentamira, BuildUp Bookings and Regan Marketing Co. do too, and all four are listed with their minimum budgets under Resources, Hire an Expert. Case studies show what HomeRunner did to direct bookings for three operators.30
What a customer said, in a public Google review: “With the help of Hudson Creative, we are now generating leads primarily through our direct booking website, notably increasing our profit margins.” Sarah Goldfarb, Nice Stay NYC.30
Operators with a brand to protect, a migration to get right, or a portfolio past the point where a template reads as one.
Hosted builder inside the Guesty PMS.
Guesty sells two website tiers. Basic is a free single page on a guesty.site subdomain, or $15 a month on your own domain. Advanced is a multi-page editor with templates, a blog, custom code, 30 languages and analytics, at $49 a month plus 0.5% of direct gross booking volume, free until you publish. Both sit on the Guesty Booking Engine, which cannot be swapped for another engine, and guests are redirected to it to complete the transaction.58
Guesty’s pricing page says it charges no percentage fees on direct bookings. Its billing article charges Advanced Websites 0.5% of volume. We quoted the billing article.5
Guesty operators who want a site from the same vendor, on the same invoice.
Hosted builder inside the Hostaway PMS.
Hostaway bundles a free one-page Standard site with every subscription and sells Booking Website Pro as an add-on: a drag-and-drop editor, templates built for rentals, a blog, an AI content assistant, email campaigns, pop-ups, coupons and extras at checkout. Guests book and pay on the site. The price is $49 a month plus a 0.5% reservation fee on bookings it generates, and Hostaway charges guests a further 1.8% in the US.9
Two lines from Hostaway’s own terms matter if you are weighing it. When Pro ends, any public site it powers is taken offline. Downgrading to Standard deletes the content.10
Hostaway operators with a small portfolio who want a cheap, native site now.
Booking page included with the Hostfully PMS, plus a Premium editor.
Every Hostfully account includes a Direct Booking Site: a branded booking page with checkout, upsells and promo codes, available as soon as your properties exist in the PMS. A newer Premium Direct Booking Site adds a drag-and-drop marketing site with up to 1,000 pages, a blog with AI drafts and an SEO and AEO panel. Guests browsing the Premium site are sent to the Basic booking site to choose a property and pay.131415
Hostfully’s own guide says the pre-built site “has limited SEO capability compared to a custom-built alternative” and lists WordPress as the highest SEO ceiling. Its integration directory lists HomeRunner.16
Hostfully operators who want a booking page with no setup and no extra line item.
Hosted builder for operators on five PMSs.
CraftedStays connects to Hostaway, Guesty, Hospitable, OwnerRez or Hostfully by OAuth, pulls listings, calendars, pricing and reviews, and gives you a live preview in minutes and a published site within about a week. Checkout runs through native PMS checkout or your own Stripe on your domain, with no booking commission. Aria, their AI editor, builds pages from plain-language prompts, and their site structure (headed sections, FAQ blocks, review markup, server-rendered text) is built around their own research into which pages AI assistants cite. Newsletter forms sync to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Campaign Monitor and Go High Level.17192021
The Host Plan is $89.99 a month for the first two properties plus $8 for each additional one, up to 20, with a $69.99 promotional rate for the first twelve months. Above 20 properties pricing is custom. White Glove onboarding starts at $1,500 and a custom build at $4,500.17
Operators with two to twenty listings who want a good-looking site fast and never want to run a site of their own.
Done-for-you WordPress build, hosted by Boostly, with training and a CRM.
Boostly builds your site in Elementor on its own servers, connects your PMS (27 and counting, by their count), and bundles a GoHighLevel CRM that emails past guests to rebook, an academy with 80 hours of training, coaching and a 2,000-host community. Checkout goes through your PMS’s own gateway. Boostly builds a WordPress site on its own hosting; HomeRunner adds a booking platform to a site you own and host. The headline promise is 65% direct bookings within 12 months or your money back plus $1,000.22232627
Read the terms before you count on that. The refund covers the setup fee only, the $1,000 is an account credit, the measurement happens once at month twelve, and eligibility requires two email campaigns and four social posts a month through the Boostly CRM plus monthly coaching, among ten conditions. The contract says it overrides any figure in advertising.27
Ownership works like this. The site is yours once the setup fee is paid, and on leaving you get the files in a Dropbox folder within 14 days. The theme, plugins and code are licensed only while the site stays on Boostly hosting, so the PMS connection, premium plugins and CRM end when you go. Text edits go through support, unlimited for the first 30 days after launch. During the build, one revision round is included and further rounds are $500 each; after the 30 days, changes are $500 a day.2425
Small operators who want someone else to build the site and teach them direct booking as a discipline.
The agency question
“Every change requires billable hours, and the site does not get continuous platform improvements over time.”How a competitor’s buyer’s guide files Hudson Creative, under custom agency builds.28 Here is how it actually works.
Every site runs the same release. Between mid-July and 10 October 2026 the three public changelogs logged at least 276 dated entries, and new features arrive switched off until you turn them on. Updates install from your site’s plugin manager.29
Pages, copy, menus and images change in your own site editor, WordPress or otherwise. Billable hours exist for new design work. Maintenance of the booking engine is the subscription.
Your domain, your site, your data, your checkout. Cancel HomeRunner and the website is still there. The booking engine stops.4
Setup help is unlimited and included. Month to month, with 30 days’ notice.2
Subscription only installs into the site you already have. A pre-built site from Hudson Creative Studio is $2,000. A bespoke design from Hudson Creative Studio is a quoted project with a timeline, and it is the slowest of the three. Partner studios listed under Hire an Expert build on HomeRunner too.
You bring the site and its hosting, or have one built. WordPress and custom-coded sites are live today; Squarespace and Webflow are in early access. A bespoke design takes longer than a template. Local guides and guest-type pages are written per site today.
How to choose
Frequently asked
Have a situation these do not cover? Tell us about your portfolio and we will say which option fits, including the ones that are not ours.
The one whose tradeoffs you can live with. If you want the site to be yours and to keep improving without a rebuild, HomeRunner. If you want the least effort and are staying on your PMS, your PMS’s own site. If you want speed with nothing of your own to run, CraftedStays. The 60-second guide on this page routes each case.
HomeRunner is $45 a month for up to five listings and $95 for up to 15, flat. CraftedStays is $89.99 a month for two properties plus $8 each after that. Guesty Advanced and Hostaway Booking Website Pro are each $49 a month plus 0.5% of booking volume on top of the PMS plan. Hostfully’s booking page is included with the PMS, with a 1% gateway fee plus a 0.85% direct booking commission on the Growth plan. Boostly does not publish a build price. A pre-built site from Hudson Creative Studio is $2,000; a bespoke design from any studio is a quoted project. Sources 2, 5, 9, 13, 17, 22
WordPress and custom-coded sites today. Squarespace and Webflow are in early access. No site yet? A pre-built site from Hudson Creative Studio is $2,000, and a bespoke studio build is quoted as a project. Source 1
The website stays. It is your site on your domain, and the content stays with it. The booking engine stops and your reservations remain in your PMS. Source 4
No. The fee is flat by listing count. Your payment processor’s fee and your PMS’s fees still apply, and Hostfully’s Stripe article applies its 1% gateway fee and 0.85% commission to bookings through its site, widget or API, so a Growth account pays them with or without HomeRunner. Sources 2, 13
HomeRunner, and any Hudson Creative Studio build on it, with Guesty, Hostaway (Stripe), Streamline and Track on request. Hostaway Booking Website Pro. CraftedStays. Guesty Advanced redirects to the Guesty Booking Engine. Hostfully pays on book.yourdomain.com. Boostly uses your PMS gateway. Sources 3, 8, 9, 14, 17, 23
Yes. Your PMS data moves because it never left the PMS. Content and photos come across from a Boostly file handover or a CraftedStays export. The site itself is either rebuilt or HomeRunner is installed into the site you already have. Reviews import from your PMS where the connection supports it. Sources 18, 24
That an AI assistant can read each property’s rates, availability and minimum stay from a page built for it, and that you can see the reads and the confirmed bookings that followed. It does not mean an assistant will cite or rank you. Nobody can promise that. Source 6
Yes. Rentamira, BuildUp Bookings and Regan Marketing Co. are listed with Hudson Creative Studio under Resources, Hire an Expert, each with a minimum budget. Pick by portfolio and style; the booking engine and the ownership terms are the same whichever studio builds it. Agencies that want to be listed can apply through Partner with us. Source 30
Updated October 2026. Every competitor fact carries the date we read it. Send corrections to info@homerunner.io.
Sources
One-to-one comparisons, same criteria: HomeRunner vs Guesty Sites, Hostaway Booking Website Pro, Hostfully sites, CraftedStays and Boostly.
Send your portfolio size and PMS. We will say which option fits, including the ones that are not ours.
