Round-up · Updated July 2026
5 best Touch Stay alternatives for vacation rental hosts
Touch Stay is a good product with one obvious gap: there's no free plan, and a single property costs $99 a year before you've seen whether guests use it. These are the five Touch Stay alternatives worth looking at, what each one actually costs, and the cases where you should stay where you are.
01 — At a glance
Touch Stay alternatives compared
Every price below came from the vendor's own pricing page, not a review site. Two of these companies don't publish prices at all, which is itself worth knowing before you book a demo.
| Tool | Starting price | Free plan? | Standout feature | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GuestIntro | Free, or $6.99/mo billed yearly | Yes, 1 property, no expiry | Free tier with no ads or sponsored content | 1–10 properties, hosts who want to start free |
| Guidey | $8.99/mo, or $89/year (1 property) | No, 14-day trial | 110 languages, automatic and manual combined | Hosts with genuinely international guests |
| Hostfully Guidebooks | Free tier; Pro price not published | Yes, 1 guidebook, with sponsored content | Upsell marketplace and Viator commissions | Hosts who want the guidebook to earn money |
| 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 |
| Touch Stay (for reference) | $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 |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Pricing checked July 2026 against each vendor's published pricing page.
02 — The alternatives
The five Touch Stay alternatives, in detail
GuestIntro
We make GuestIntro, so read this section with that in mind. The honest case for it over Touch Stay is narrow and specific: you can run one property free indefinitely, and between two and ten properties you'll pay less.
Pricing is three flat tiers rather than a curve. One property is $6.99 a month billed yearly, up to five is $16.99, up to ten is $24.99. At five properties that's $204 a year against Touch Stay's $285. At ten it's $300 against $495. The tiers stop at ten, which is the catch: an eleventh property means you've outgrown us.
The free plan is real rather than a trial. One property, no credit card, no countdown, and no sponsored recommendations inserted into your guide. It's capped at six sections and two languages, and leaves out the AI chatbot and PDF export, so it's a genuine starting point rather than the full product.
Translation covers nine languages and happens automatically. That's fewer than Guidey's 110 and fewer than Hostfully's 16, but you don't maintain it. Touch Stay's 16-language mode requires you to type every translation yourself.
Where it wins
- Free plan with no expiry and no ads
- Cheaper than Touch Stay from two to ten properties
- Flat tiers, so the bill doesn't move per listing
- AI guest chat included on every paid tier
- Around two minutes to a live first guide
Where it loses
- No tier above ten properties at all
- No PMS integrations, so links go out manually
- Nine languages against Guidey's 110
- No email, SMS or upsell tooling
- Small EU company, around 100 properties
Best for: hosts with one to ten properties who want to test a guidebook without paying first, and who don't need PMS sync. If you manage more than ten listings, skip to Touch Stay or Hostfully.
Guidey
The closest thing to a like-for-like Touch Stay replacement, and cheaper at every property count. One property is $89 a year against Touch Stay's $99, ten is $421 against $495. Prices are published in dollars, pounds, euros and Australian dollars, with a slider covering one to 200 properties.
Their real advantage is translation. Guidey runs 110 languages through Google's neural translation engine and lets you hand-write custom translations for individual items, mixing both in one guidebook. Touch Stay forces a choice between machine translation and 16 manually-written languages. If your guests are Japanese, Polish or Vietnamese and you care how the text reads, Guidey is the strongest option on this page.
It's also refreshingly ungated. One plan, no feature tiers, so branding and analytics are included from day one of the trial. The company is small: two directors, a London registration dating to 2021, and filings that put it under ten staff.
Where it wins
- 110 languages, automatic and manual combined
- Cheaper than Touch Stay at every count
- One plan, nothing gated behind a higher tier
- States plainly that it runs no ads or sponsored recommendations
- Reuse content across properties with per-property branding
Where it loses
- No free plan
- No PMS integrations and no API
- Per-property pricing with no cap
- No AI chat, upsells or check-in flows
- Doesn't advertise guest-facing PDF export
Best for: hosts whose guests arrive from everywhere. If translation quality across many languages is the reason you're leaving Touch Stay, this is the one. Note the headline "$7.42/month" is the annual price divided by twelve; monthly billing is $8.99.
Hostfully Guidebooks
Worth correcting a common assumption: Hostfully Guidebooks is a standalone product. You don't need their PMS, and the relationship runs the other way round, with guidebooks sold as a paid add-on to PMS customers rather than included.
The free tier is genuine and permanent, with no credit card. It has one significant string attached: free guidebooks display sponsored recommendations you cannot remove, so third-party promotional content sits inside your guest experience until you pay. Translation, branding and email capture are also paywalled.
What you can't do is find out what Pro costs. The pricing page shows the tier and its 199-guidebook cap, with no figure attached. You'll find numbers on Capterra and similar sites, but they describe a plan structure Hostfully has retired, so we're not repeating them. Plan on a signup flow or a sales conversation to learn your price.
Where it genuinely leads is revenue. The Guidebook Marketplace handles paid add-ons at a 1% Stripe fee and carries Viator tour affiliate links at 8% commission. If you actively sell late check-outs or mid-stay cleans, it can cover its own cost.
Where it wins
- Real free tier, no credit card
- Upsell marketplace and Viator commissions
- 16+ languages translated automatically
- Scales to 199 guidebooks with bulk editing
- Custom domain with managed SSL
Where it loses
- Paid price isn't published anywhere
- Free tier carries ads you can't remove
- Billing counts published guidebooks, so cost tracks portfolio size
- Changing billing frequency needs a support email
- Guidebook-only hosts aren't the company's focus
Best for: hosts who want the guidebook to make money, and larger portfolios that have outgrown the ten-property ceiling elsewhere. Read our Hostfully guidebook alternatives round-up if this is the tool you're actually leaving.
RueBaRue
A different shape of product. RueBaRue bundles the guidebook with SMS automation, smart lock code delivery, guest surveys, and a housekeeping and maintenance module. For a management company juggling four systems, consolidation is the pitch.
Two constraints decide this one quickly. Their guest guides support English only, stated plainly in their own FAQ, with no translation of any kind. And dedicated text numbers are available in the United States and Canada only, which disables the messaging feature the product is built around if you operate elsewhere. Outbound texts to international guest numbers work fine; it's the manager's sending number that's restricted.
Pricing is quote-only. All four plans route to a demo booking, and no figure appears anywhere on the pricing page. Their published transaction fee is 4.99% on guest add-on purchases, stacked on top of Stripe's own charges.
Where it wins
- Housekeeping and maintenance ops in the same system
- Twelve PMS integrations with free setup and onboarding
- Smart lock codes that auto-expire per reservation
- Unified inbox across guests, owners and vendors
- Area guides auto-populated from Google Places
Where it loses
- Guest guides are English only
- Text numbers limited to the US and Canada
- No published pricing at all
- Two to three unit minimum excludes single-property owners
- 4.99% platform fee on add-on transactions
Best for: US and Canadian management companies running roughly ten or more units on a supported PMS who want guest messaging and field operations consolidated. A poor fit for single-property owners, anyone outside North America, and anyone hosting guests who don't read English.
YourWelcome
The outlier here, and included because for one specific host it's the right answer. YourWelcome ships a physical 8-inch tablet to each property, included in the price along with a stand, cable, and cover for theft or breakage. There's no setup fee and no hardware cost on top.
An always-on screen on the kitchen counter converts far better than a link a guest has to find. They report an average in-property order of $82 and market the product explicitly as working "without apps or QR codes". If in-stay upsell revenue is your goal, that surface is genuinely better than a web link.
The cost of that is total hardware dependency. We found no guest-facing web or mobile alternative, which means no pre-arrival guide, nothing on the guest's phone while they're out for dinner, and no access after check-out. Pre-arrival is when guests ask most of their questions. The tablet is leased rather than owned, so cancelling means returning it.
Where it wins
- Tablet, stand and damage cover included in the price
- Best in-stay upsell surface of anything here
- Zero guest friction: no app, no QR, no link to find
- Broad PMS connectivity, 60+ platforms
- One published price, three currencies
Where it loses
- No phone or web access for guests at all
- $449.99 per property per year, roughly 4.5× Touch Stay
- Annual contract, no free trial, demo-gated
- A device to ship, mount, power and maintain per unit
- Blog untouched since May 2024; corporate restructure in 2025
Best for: mid-to-high-end serviced apartments with staff on the ground, where in-stay upsell revenue clears $450 per property per year. Wrong for almost everyone else on price alone.
03 — The other side
When you should stay with Touch Stay
Four cases where switching is the wrong move, including one where we'd tell you to stay put.
You manage more than ten properties
Touch Stay gets cheaper per property as you grow. At 100 properties it's $3,120 a year, about $31 per property annually, which nothing on this page beats. GuestIntro has no tier above ten listings, and Guidey's per-property pricing never caps out. This is the clearest case for staying.
Your guidebook populates from your PMS
Around 26 integrations, including Hostaway, Guesty, OwnerRez, Mews, Escapia and Track. Only RueBaRue comes close, with twelve. If guide content and guest details flow automatically from reservations today, moving to a tool without integrations means going back to manual sends. That's a real operational cost, and it's easy to underestimate.
You use the messaging, CRM or upsell store
Touch Stay is a guest-experience platform rather than a guidebook with extras. Scheduled email and SMS, a store with real payments and tax handling, task management, review prompts and contact collection. GuestIntro and Guidey replace the guidebook and nothing else. Count what you'd actually be giving up before you move.
You need a language nobody else covers
Touch Stay's Google Translate mode handles any language at machine quality. GuestIntro's nine are automatic but fixed. If your guests read Korean or Thai, GuestIntro simply doesn't serve them, and Guidey becomes the alternative to look at rather than us.
One thing to watch if you're staying: Touch Stay is partway through a move to a tiered pricing model, and different visitors currently see different pricing pages. In the new structure, offline access and PDF export are not included in the entry Starter tier. If those matter to you, check which tier you'd land on before you renew.
04 — Switching
How to switch from Touch Stay without losing your content
None of these tools offer an automated import from Touch Stay, so a move means retyping. It's less work than it sounds, because guidebook content is mostly short fields.
- Download your existing guide as a PDF from the Touch Stay guides list. That's your source document and your backup.
- Build one property in the new tool while your Touch Stay guide stays live. Nothing breaks for guests mid-stay.
- Copy the short fields first: WiFi name and password, check-in and check-out times, house rules, bin days. These take minutes and cover most guest questions.
- Re-add local recommendations last. Some tools populate these automatically from your address, so you may not need to move them at all.
- Swap the link and QR code in your Airbnb welcome message, check-in instructions and any printed material. Keep both guides live for one booking cycle in case you missed a link.
- Cancel Touch Stay once the cycle is clean. Downgrades there only take effect at renewal, and you have to delete guides first, so don't leave this to the last day.
05 — FAQ
Touch Stay alternatives: common questions
- Is there a free alternative to Touch Stay?
- Two of them. GuestIntro's free plan covers one property with no expiry and no credit card, capped at six sections and two languages. Hostfully's free tier covers one guidebook, but places sponsored recommendations inside it that you cannot remove without upgrading. Guidey, RueBaRue and YourWelcome have no free tier at all.
- How much does Touch Stay cost?
- One property is $99 per year on annual billing, or $12.50 per month if you pay monthly. Two properties are $150/year, five are $285/year, ten are $495/year, and it scales up to 300 properties. The $8.25 figure often quoted is the annual price divided by twelve, not a monthly rate you can actually pay. Pricing is charged per account by property count, not per property.
- Does Touch Stay have a free trial?
- Yes, 14 days, and it does not require a credit card. There is no permanent free plan afterwards.
- Can I switch from Touch Stay without losing my content?
- There is no automated export-and-import path between these tools, so switching means copying your content across by hand. The practical approach is to download your Touch Stay guide as a PDF first, then rebuild in the new tool while your Touch Stay guide is still live. Most hosts find a single property takes under an hour, since the WiFi details, house rules and check-out instructions are short.
- Which Touch Stay alternative is best for multiple languages?
- Guidey, on raw coverage. It runs 110 languages through Google's neural translation and lets you override individual strings by hand, which no other tool here allows in combination. Touch Stay makes you pick one mode or the other: unlimited machine translation, or 16 languages you type out yourself. GuestIntro covers nine automatically, which is fewer but requires no maintenance.
- Do any of these integrate with Hostaway or Guesty?
- Touch Stay does, with around 26 PMS integrations including Hostaway, Guesty, OwnerRez and Mews. RueBaRue integrates with twelve, including Guesty, Hostaway and Streamline. GuestIntro and Guidey have no PMS integrations, so guide links have to be sent manually. If your guidebook needs to populate from reservation data, that narrows the field to two.
Want the head-to-head rather than the round-up? Read our full GuestIntro vs Touch Stay comparison. If you're weighing Hostfully too, the Hostfully guidebook alternatives page covers that side. Or start from the alternatives hub.
New to the category and not sure what one of these should contain? Our guide to building a digital Airbnb guest manual walks through the sections guests actually read, and GuestIntro's pricing is published in full.
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Create a free guest manual →Pricing and features for every tool on this page were checked against the 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.