justST8A direct booking website is not a website. It is a calendar, a payment page and a set of rules about who can book which nights, wearing a website as a coat. That is why a Squarespace page with a contact form does not work and why this category of software exists at all. Here is what the main options cost and what they are really for, with every price taken from the vendor’s own pricing page in July 2026.
What a booking website has to do
Before comparing prices, agree on the job. A direct booking site needs to:
- Show real availability. Pulled from the same source of truth as your Airbnb and Booking.com calendars, not typed in by hand.
- Push availability back. A direct booking must block the same nights on the platforms, or you have built yourself a double-booking machine.
- Take a card at the moment of decision. Bank transfer and “pay on arrival” lose strangers.
- Price correctly. Seasons, minimum stays, cleaning fees, extra guests.
- Confirm instantly, in writing, with your cancellation terms attached.
Everything else — templates, blogs, upsells — is decoration on top of those five. Judge the tools on the five first.
The options at a glance
| Tool | Entry price (checked July 2026) | Website included or add-on | Fee on direct bookings | Contract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| justST8 | Free for 1 property/1 unit; Starter from €14/month | Included — it is the product | None on any plan | Monthly |
| Lodgify | from €16/month (Basic); Starter, the first plan with the site builder, from €28/month | Included from Starter up | 0% booking fee on all plans | Monthly, yearly or bi-yearly; longer terms discounted |
| OwnerRez | $40/month minimum (1 property) | Add-on: Hosted Websites $15/month for 1 property | No booking fees | No contract |
| Uplisting | £80/month for 1–5 properties (+VAT); £72/month billed yearly | Included | 0% commission | Monthly or yearly (10% off) |
| Guesty Lite | from $9/listing/month + 1% per reservation; or from $29/listing/month monthly | Booking engine included | 1% per reservation on pay-as-you-grow; none on flat plans | Monthly or annual |
| Hostfully | Growth from $15/property/month + platform fee (amount not published) | Included | 0.85% on Growth; none on Pro (from $25/property/month) | Monthly or yearly; yearly discounted |
| Zeevou | Forever Free at £0/month, unlimited properties | Included on the free plan | 0% direct booking fee | Monthly or 12-month annual; paid prices not published |
| Hostaway | Not published — quote only | Booking engine included; a Pro website tier exists, price not published | 1.8% booking engine fee plus a 1% application fee (US listings on Stripe) | Not published |
| Boostly | Not published — book a call | Done-for-you build | Not published | Not published |
If you have one or two properties
This is where the money is smallest and the decision is easiest to get wrong, because per-property pricing is kind to you here and flat pricing is not.
Lodgify starts at €16/month for its Basic plan on monthly billing for one property, but Basic is channel sync only — the no-code website builder and booking widget begin on Starter at €28/month (checked July 2026). There is no setup fee, a 7-day free trial, and every plan is advertised with a 0% booking fee. Prices climb with the number of properties, and the deep discounts are attached to yearly and bi-yearly terms, so compare like for like when you look.
Zeevou is £0/month on its Forever Free plan with unlimited properties, a direct booking website, hosting and a 0% direct booking fee (checked July 2026). If you have the patience to self-onboard — guided onboarding starts at £100 — nothing else on this page competes on price.
Guesty Lite covers one to three listings from $9 per listing per month plus 1% per reservation, or from $29 per listing per month on the flexible monthly plan (checked July 2026). Worth it mainly if you expect to graduate into Guesty’s larger tiers.
justST8 — ours — is free for one property with one unit and €14/month on Starter, with no commission on any plan. The specific thing we do is import: paste your existing listing URL and the photos, description and rates come across, which removes the evening of copy-pasting that stops most hosts from ever finishing.
If you have three to ten
The maths inverts. Per-property pricing that felt cheap at one unit gets expensive, and flat plans start to look sensible.
Uplisting charges a flat £80/month plus VAT for up to five properties on monthly billing (£72/month billed yearly), then £16 per property per month for 6–40 (checked July 2026). Direct booking site included, 0% commission, 14-day trial with no card. At five units that is £16 a property; at one it is £80, which tells you exactly who it is for.
OwnerRez runs a sliding scale: a $40/month minimum covering one property, $15 each for properties two and three, $10 for the fourth, $8 each in the 5–9 band. Channel management is free; the hosted website is a premium add-on starting at $15/month for one property, and there are no setup fees, booking fees or contracts (checked July 2026). It is the most complete system here, and if you need rental agreements, QuickBooks or damage protection it is the honest answer.
If you manage for other owners
Now the website is the least important part of the purchase, and you should stop optimising for it.
Hostfully starts at $15 per property per month on Growth and $25 on Pro, both plus a platform fee whose amount is not published — so you cannot compute your bill from the website alone. Growth carries a 0.85% direct booking fee and a 1% payment gateway fee; Pro removes both (checked July 2026). Its owner management and guidebook tooling is the reason managers buy it.
Hostaway publishes no subscription pricing at all; the pricing page is a quote form. It does document a 1.8% booking engine fee on reservations through its booking engine, plus a separate 1% application fee, currently for US listings paying through Stripe. By default the guest pays the 1.8%; you can switch it to come out of your payout instead. Neither the subscription price nor any onboarding fee is published, so treat third-party numbers you find elsewhere with suspicion and ask for a quote in writing.
Boostly sells a done-for-you direct booking website and marketing programme rather than a self-serve tool. No prices are published; the site books you a call. That is a legitimate model — some hosts want the work done, not the software — but you cannot compare it on this page without asking.
Three questions that decide it faster than a feature list
Does the sync go both ways?
Everything here syncs. What matters is whether a booking taken on your site closes those nights on Airbnb and Booking.com, and how quickly. Calendar refreshes are periodic, not instant, and the gap is where clashes live — we explain the mechanics in how to stop double bookings and the failure modes in Airbnb calendar not syncing.
Is the fee really zero?
“Commission-free” and “no booking fee” are used loosely. Guesty’s cheapest plan attaches 1% per reservation. Hostfully’s Growth plan attaches 0.85% plus a 1% gateway fee. Hostaway’s booking engine attaches 1.8% that a guest pays unless you turn it around. Lodgify, Uplisting, OwnerRez, Zeevou and justST8 all publish no fee on direct bookings. Whatever the number, put it next to what the platforms take — here is how to calculate that honestly.
What happens at property number four?
Look at the price at the size you will be in two years, not the size you are today. Flat plans reward growth; per-listing plans punish it until the volume discounts kick in.
The part the software cannot do
None of these tools will bring you traffic. A booking site converts people who already know your property exists — repeat guests, referrals, people who searched your name. That is marketing work, and it is the same work whichever of these you buy. Start with the direct-bookings playbook; then pick the cheapest tool that does the five jobs at the top of this page.
See what your listing looks like as a site
Paste your Airbnb or Booking.com link and justST8 imports the photos, description and rates, syncs your calendars both ways and takes card payments. One property free, no commission on any plan.
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