justST8 vs Lodgify: which fits your rental?

We make one of these two products, so read this with the appropriate scepticism — and then check the numbers, because we have linked the source for every one. Lodgify has been building vacation-rental websites since 2012 and has thousands of reviews behind it. justST8 is younger and narrower. Both will get you a booking site with a synced calendar. They suit different hosts, and this page is an attempt to say honestly which is which.

What each one actually is

Lodgify is a small property-management suite with a website builder inside it. You get a channel manager, a no-code site builder, a booking widget you can embed in an existing WordPress or Squarespace site, rate management, automated guest messaging on higher plans, and — on its top tier — task management, owner statements and guest invoices. It scales from one property to a few dozen.

justST8 is narrower on purpose. You paste the URL of your existing Airbnb or Booking.com listing; we import the photos, the description and the rates and turn them into a booking site on your own domain, with two-way calendar sync and Stripe card payments. It is built around the assumption that the content you need already exists in a listing you spent an evening writing two years ago.

Price, side by side

Lodgify’s figures above are the euro, monthly-billing, one-property prices shown on their pricing page in July 2026, with the currency set to EUR. Two things to know when you check for yourself. Their price changes with the number of properties you enter, so a like-for-like comparison means setting that number to yours. And the page usually runs a promotion attached to yearly or bi-yearly billing — if you are happy to pay a year up front, the effective monthly figure drops a long way below the numbers above, and that is a real saving, not a trick.

Where Lodgify is the better choice

We would rather you buy the right thing than the thing we sell. Pick Lodgify if:

• You want to talk to a human on the phone. Phone support is included from their Professional plan, and priority live chat, email and phone on Ultimate. We do email only. For some hosts that single line settles it.
• You need operations, not just a site. Task management, check-in/out automation, owner payments, reports and statements, guest invoices — these live on their Ultimate plan and we do not have equivalents.
• You want to be listed on Google Vacation Rentals. Lodgify includes that from its Professional plan.
• You already have a website you like. Their booking widget embeds into WordPress, Squarespace and similar, so you can keep the site and add the booking layer.
• You want a long track record. They have thousands of public reviews and more than a decade of operating history. We do not, and no amount of writing changes that.
• You want a large template library. Their design choice is breadth: many themes, lots of knobs.

Where justST8 fits better

• You want it done this evening. The import is the whole point. Your listing already has good photos and a description you agonised over; we start from those instead of from an empty template.
• You have one property and want to spend nothing. Our free tier covers one property with one unit permanently, including the calendar sync and the payment flow. Lodgify’s trial is seven days.
• Your portfolio has awkward shapes. Our plans are property bands — 4 on Growth, 12 on Portfolio, 40 on Agency — with multi-unit properties handled as a first-class case rather than as separate listings.
• You want fewer decisions. There is one good design, not forty. If you enjoy configuring a theme, this is a downside, and you should read it as one.

The things that are the same

Neither of us takes a commission on your direct bookings. Neither charges a setup fee. Both sync two ways with Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com so that a booking anywhere blocks the nights everywhere. Both take card payments at the moment of booking rather than leaving you chasing bank transfers. Both let you use your own domain.

And both share the limitation that no booking-website product escapes: sync is periodic, not instantaneous. Platforms refresh imported calendars on their own schedule, which is why the double-booking window exists at all no matter whose software you buy. If that is new to you, read how to stop double bookings and what goes wrong with iCal sync before you take your first direct booking.

A way to decide in five minutes

Answer three questions honestly. How many properties will you have in two years? If the answer is more than about fifteen and you will be managing some of them for other owners, neither of these is really your product — look at OwnerRez, Uplisting or Hostfully, which we cover in our comparison of six direct-booking tools.

Do you need to phone someone when it breaks? If yes, Lodgify. That is not a concession, it is a real product difference, and it matters more at 9pm on a Friday than any feature list suggests.

What is stopping you today? If the honest answer is “I have been meaning to do this for a year and I never get past the blank page”, start with the import — ours is free for one property and takes minutes, and if the result is not what you want you have lost an evening, not a year’s subscription.

Before you buy either

Work out what direct bookings are worth to you first. For most hosts the platform fees add up to one to three months of income a year, which makes a €14 or €28 subscription trivial — here is how to calculate your own number. Then be realistic about the traffic: a booking site converts people who already know you exist, so the first year of direct bookings is repeat guests and their referrals. The playbook for getting there is here, and it is the same playbook whichever of us you choose.