Round-up · Updated July 2026
The best Hostfully guidebook alternatives in 2026
Most hosts looking for a Hostfully Guidebooks alternative are leaving for one of two reasons: the sponsored recommendations stuck inside the free tier, or the fact that Hostfully won't tell you what the paid tier costs until you're inside their signup. Here are five alternatives, with real prices where real prices exist.
01 — At a glance
Hostfully guidebook alternatives compared
Prices below came from each vendor's own pricing page. Two of these companies publish nothing, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on demos.
| Tool | Starting price | Free plan? | Standout feature | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GuestIntro | Free, or $6.99/mo billed yearly | Yes, 1 property, no sponsored content | Published prices and an ad-free free tier | 1–10 properties, hosts who want a clean guest page |
| Guidey | $8.99/mo, or $89/year (1 property) | No, 14-day trial | 110 languages, automatic and manual combined | Hosts with guests from many countries |
| Touch Stay | $99/year, or $12.50/mo (1 property) | No, 14-day trial without a card | Around 26 PMS integrations | Managers above 10 properties already on a PMS |
| RueBaRue | Not published, quote only | No, 14-day trial | Guest messaging plus housekeeping operations | US and Canadian managers running 10+ units |
| YourWelcome | $449.99 per property per year | No | Free in-property tablet, included in the price | Serviced apartments monetising in-stay upsells |
| Hostfully (for reference) | Free tier; Pro price not published | Yes, 1 guidebook, with sponsored content | Upsell marketplace and Viator commissions | Hosts monetising the guidebook, up to 199 guides |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Pricing checked July 2026 against each vendor's published pricing page.
02 — Context
Hostfully guidebook pricing, and what actually pushes hosts out
The paid price isn't published
Hostfully's guidebook pricing page shows three tiers: Free, Pro capped at 199 guidebooks, and Enterprise for 200 and up. Pro and Enterprise carry no dollar figure. You can confirm this yourself in about ten seconds, and it's the single most common complaint we hear. Billing works per published guidebook, and annual saves 10% over monthly, but the base number stays behind a signup.
If you've seen prices quoted on review aggregators, treat them carefully. They reference plan names Hostfully has retired, which means they're describing a product that no longer exists.
The free tier carries advertising
Hostfully's free plan is genuine, permanent, and needs no credit card. It also displays sponsored recommendations that cannot be removed. For a host using the free tier as a long-term solution, that means third-party promotional content sitting in the middle of your guest experience. Translation, branding and email capture are paywalled too, so the free tier reads more like an extended demo.
What is not a reason to leave
Worth correcting, because it's the most repeated claim about this product: Hostfully Guidebooks does not require their PMS. It's standalone, with its own signup and its own subscription. On the PMS side, guidebooks are actually a paid add-on not included in any PMS tier, so the bundling runs opposite to how it's usually described. If you want a guidebook without a PMS, Hostfully already qualifies.
03 — The alternatives
Five Hostfully Guidebooks alternatives worth considering
GuestIntro
We build GuestIntro, so weigh this accordingly. Against Hostfully specifically, the case is about the two things above: our prices are published in full, and our free plan puts no sponsored content in front of your guests.
Three flat tiers. One property at $6.99 a month billed yearly, up to five at $16.99, up to ten at $24.99. The free plan runs one property indefinitely with no credit card, capped at six sections and two languages, without the AI chatbot or PDF export. It's a real starting point rather than the whole product, but nothing is inserted into your guide to pay for it.
Where Hostfully clearly beats us: translation coverage (16+ against our nine), portfolio ceiling (199 guidebooks against our ten), and revenue tooling, which we don't have at all. If any of those three decide it for you, stop reading here.
Where it wins
- Every price published, no signup required to see it
- Free plan with no sponsored recommendations
- AI guest chat included on every paid tier
- Flat tiers rather than per-guidebook billing
- Around two minutes to a live first guide
Where it loses
- Hard ceiling of ten properties
- Nine languages against Hostfully's 16+
- No upsell marketplace or affiliate revenue
- No PMS integrations
- Small EU company, around 100 properties
Best for: hosts with ten or fewer properties who want a clean guest page and a price they can read off a page. See the full GuestIntro vs Hostfully comparison for the head-to-head.
Guidey
If translation is why you're looking, this is the answer. Guidey runs 110 languages through Google's neural translation and lets you override individual strings by hand, combining both in a single guidebook. Hostfully's 16+ is automatic and good, but it's a Pro feature and the list is fixed.
Pricing is published across four currencies with a slider from one to 200 properties, which makes it the easiest tool here to evaluate without talking to anyone. One plan, no feature gating, so branding and analytics are included from the first day of the trial. They also state plainly that they run no ads or sponsored recommendations, which is the direct answer to Hostfully's free-tier problem.
Where it wins
- 110 languages, automatic and manual combined
- Published prices in four currencies
- No ads or sponsored recommendations
- One plan, nothing gated
- Shared content reused across properties
Where it loses
- No free plan, unlike Hostfully
- Per-property pricing with no cap
- No upsell or revenue tooling
- No PMS integrations and no API
- Very small company, two directors
Best for: hosts who want Hostfully's language breadth and then some, without the sponsored content, and who don't mind paying from day one.
Touch Stay
The most established alternative, and the one to pick if you're leaving Hostfully but keeping a large portfolio. Pricing is fully public and computable from one property to 300: $99 a year for one, $285 for five, $495 for ten, $3,120 for a hundred. That last figure works out around $31 per property per year, which nothing else here matches at scale.
Their integration depth is the real moat. Roughly 26 PMS connections covering Hostaway, Guesty, OwnerRez, Mews, Escapia and Track. Beyond the guidebook you get a CRM, an upsell store with tax handling, task management and campaign tools.
Translation is their weak spot and it's worth understanding before you move. Two modes, and you can't combine them: Google Translate for unlimited languages at machine quality, or a Multi-Language mode covering 16 languages where you type every translation yourself. If you're leaving Hostfully because you liked the automatic 16, Touch Stay is a step backwards.
Where it wins
- Fully public pricing from 1 to 300 properties
- Around 26 PMS integrations
- Cheapest per property at scale
- Mature support, large knowledge base, public status page
- AI chatbot and AI content assistant
Where it loses
- No free plan at all
- Automatic or good translation, not both
- SMS is metered and pauses when the budget runs out
- Downgrades only apply at renewal, after deleting guides
- Pricing model currently mid-migration
Best for: portfolios above ten properties already running a supported PMS. Our Touch Stay alternatives round-up goes deeper if you're comparing the two directly.
RueBaRue
If Hostfully's price opacity is what's bothering you, RueBaRue is worse: all four of their plans route to a demo booking with no figure shown anywhere. Included here because the product itself is genuinely different, not because the sales process is pleasant.
What you get is consolidation. The guidebook comes with SMS automation, smart lock code delivery, guest surveys, and a housekeeping and maintenance module with inspections and work orders. For a management company running several systems, that's a real pitch.
Two hard limits. Guest guides are English only, stated in their own FAQ, with no translation at all. And dedicated text numbers are US and Canada only, which removes the feature the product is built around if you operate anywhere else.
Where it wins
- Housekeeping and maintenance in the same system
- Twelve PMS integrations, free setup and onboarding
- Auto-expiring smart lock codes per reservation
- Area guides populated from Google Places
- No setup fees, 14-day trial without a card
Where it loses
- English-only guest guides
- No published pricing whatsoever
- Text numbers limited to US and Canada
- Two to three unit minimum
- 4.99% platform fee on add-on transactions
Best for: North American management companies with ten or more units who want operations and guest messaging in one system. Not for single-property owners or non-English-speaking guests.
YourWelcome
Included specifically because of Hostfully's revenue angle. If you chose Hostfully for the upsell marketplace and want to push that further, an always-on tablet in the property converts better than any link. They report an average in-property order of $82 and market the product as working without apps or QR codes.
The trade is severe. We found no guest-facing web or mobile access, so there's no pre-arrival guide and nothing on the guest's phone once they leave the flat. The tablet is leased rather than owned, the contract is annual and paid upfront, and there's no free trial. At $449.99 per property per year it's the most expensive option here by a wide margin.
Where it wins
- Tablet, stand and damage cover in the price
- Strongest in-stay upsell surface available
- No app, no QR code, no link for guests to find
- Broad PMS connectivity
- Published price in three currencies
Where it loses
- No phone or web access for guests
- Nothing available before arrival or after check-out
- Annual contract, no trial, demo-gated
- Hardware to ship, mount and maintain per unit
- Blog untouched since May 2024
Best for: serviced apartments with on-the-ground staff where in-stay revenue clears $450 per property per year.
04 — The other side
When you should stay with Hostfully Guidebooks
Three cases where nothing on this page is an upgrade.
You earn money through the guidebook
The Guidebook Marketplace handles paid add-ons at a 1% Stripe fee and carries Viator tour affiliate links at 8% commission. Early check-in, late check-out, mid-stay cleaning, airport pickup. GuestIntro and Guidey have no equivalent, and Touch Stay's store is comparable but not clearly better. If your guidebook is a revenue line rather than a cost, leaving is hard to justify.
You have more than ten guidebooks
Pro covers up to 199 with bulk editing. GuestIntro stops at ten. Guidey scales but its per-property pricing never caps, so at 100 properties you'd pay $2,503 a year against Touch Stay's $3,120 and an unknown Hostfully figure. Volume changes this comparison in ways that the unpublished Pro price makes genuinely hard to assess.
You need languages outside the common nine
Hostfully translates automatically into 16+ languages including Arabic, Mandarin, Hebrew, Polish and Vietnamese. GuestIntro covers nine and none of those five. Only Guidey beats Hostfully here, and it has no free tier. If your guests read Arabic or Polish, the shortlist is Hostfully or Guidey.
The pragmatic move, given the unpublished price: run Hostfully's free tier and a free GuestIntro property side by side for a booking cycle. Both cost nothing and neither requires a card, so you'll learn which guest experience works before anyone quotes you anything.
05 — FAQ
Hostfully guidebook alternatives: common questions
- How much does Hostfully Guidebooks cost?
- Hostfully publishes a free tier and names two paid tiers, Pro (up to 199 guidebooks) and Enterprise (200+), but attaches no price to either. Billing is per published guidebook, and annual billing saves 10% over monthly. Third-party sites quote various figures, but those describe a plan structure Hostfully has retired, so we don't repeat them. Expect to enter a signup or sales flow to learn your price.
- Is Hostfully's free guidebook plan actually free?
- Yes, permanently, and with no credit card. The catch is that free guidebooks carry sponsored recommendations you cannot remove, so third-party promotional content appears inside your guest experience. Translation, custom branding, email capture and bulk editing are also excluded from the free tier.
- Do I need Hostfully's PMS to use their guidebooks?
- No. Hostfully Guidebooks is a standalone product with its own signup and its own subscription, and no property management software is required at any point. The relationship runs the opposite way: on Hostfully's PMS pricing page, guidebooks appear as a paid add-on that isn't included in any PMS tier. If you've read that Hostfully forces a PMS bundle, that's inaccurate.
- Can I get a guidebook without a PMS at all?
- Every tool on this page works without one. GuestIntro and Guidey have no PMS integrations whatsoever, so they're guidebook-only by design. Hostfully and Touch Stay integrate with PMS platforms but don't require them. RueBaRue is the closest to an exception, with a two to three unit minimum that makes it awkward for single-property owners.
- Which alternative has the best translation?
- Guidey, at 110 languages through Google's neural translation, with the option to hand-write individual strings. Hostfully is next at 16+ automatic languages, though translation is a Pro feature rather than a free-tier one. GuestIntro covers nine automatically. Touch Stay makes you choose between machine translation and 16 languages you type yourself.
- Can I move my Hostfully guidebook content to another tool?
- Not automatically. No tool here offers a Hostfully importer, so switching means copying content across by hand. Hostfully's billing counts published guidebooks and you can unpublish to reduce your count for the next cycle, which gives you a way to wind down gradually rather than cancelling everything at once.
For the direct head-to-head, read our GuestIntro vs Hostfully Guidebooks comparison. If Touch Stay is also on your list, the Touch Stay alternatives round-up covers that field. Everything else lives on the alternatives hub.
Still working out what belongs in a guest guide? Our guide to the digital Airbnb guest manual covers the sections guests actually open, and GuestIntro's pricing is published in full.
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Create a free guest manual →Pricing and features were checked against each vendor's own website in July 2026. Where a vendor doesn't publish a price, we've said so rather than quoting third-party figures. Vendors change pricing without notice, so confirm before you buy.