Entrata vs Guesty: Which is a better fit?

Tonya I.: Hello, my name is Tonya. I'm an Operations Manager for a mid-size property management firm located in Miami. We have been using Entrata for 16 years and have been very happy. I give this product definitely five out of five. Prior to switching to Entrata, we used one site, used a couple different products there, as well as ERD. Those were great, but definitely have benefited from switching. We were looking for all inclusive solution that also would be cost effective. The greatest benefit that we saw in Entrata is that it had all the different modules that were addressing our needs in terms of prospect portal, resident portal, accounting suite, as well as document management and generating [inaudible 00:00:50] lead management, really all in one and, throughout the years, we have used all those products. One other feature that I think really separates Entrata from others is that it caters to student properties and has a large number of operators and owners in student housing using this product. We really loved the roommate matching feature that exists in Entrata, so that was very helpful to us. The onboarding and migration process was very straightforward. We had a dedicated team that was assigned to us initially. We started way ahead and worked through the high level items in terms of setting up us as a company, general ledger, all GL codes, all the important stuff as well as everything on the leasing side. And then, we were migrating at first one property at a time and then a couple at a time, and it was pretty straightforward. The downtime was about maybe a week, and that was long time ago. Now, they have a self migration tool that allows to do it almost instantly, so long you're prepared and can roll with it. Currently, I think you have two options and we actually utilized both options recently with the recent migrations. You can have them help to migrate or you can do self migration, so both options were available. But, again, that was very organized, methodical, straightforward and, before you go live, you have a chance to review everything and sign off on everything to make sure you really confirmed and completed everything as you wanted. Just if someone had already made up their mind to switch, just really, prior to migration, make sure that you have everything cleaned up in your old system, so whatever data you're bringing in is clean and there are no errors remaining. Check your deposit reports, your resident aged payables, vendor aging, all of those reports, making sure you're 100% ready to migrate. Other than that, that will be smooth sailing.

Keith S.: So it's Keith, Director at Bnbhost, Limited and I'd rate Guesty five. So we compared to Limova, I think they were called. Again, they were pretty bad, so I don't actually remember what they were called. We got a small trial of them and it was just the facilities and the size of Guesty, in comparison. It was a lot cheaper, wasn't as good. I think that made us aware of how good the infrastructure around Guesty was. So if there was a problem with calendars and them syncing, then it was how available the customer service team at Guesty was, in comparison, is night and day. So with Guesty, it was something that was, you would open a ticket and someone would instantly respond and you would have it escalated. With Limova, I think it was, we'll get back to you within a couple of working days. And again, when you're trying to run multiple units across the city in a high-paced environment, a couple of days kills you. You would have to get something that was bigger and better. And so actually when we weighed up the cost differential, it was substantially less expensive, but we pretty much went with the old adage of, you pay for what you get, and that's why we stayed with Guesty. The other thing that was excellent about Guesty was their integration links. Not only the direct integration links, but just the variety of platforms that they were going to set us up with. What we felt was a non-negotiable for us as a company is if there was not a direct calendar link or integration and someone says, "Oh, you would need to rely on iCal links," they're just never as good as direct integrations. The thing that kills you in this industry is when you have double bookings and with iCal links, I know that they are near perfect, but there's always the chance that you can have a double booking because they've just synced. Two people book at the same time for the same dates, and the iCal links don't have enough time to talk to one another. So again, we're not really in the business of taking chances at any point. So we decided, "Do you know what? With the integration links that Guesty provides us, it's so varied and it covers the big players." Other really nice thing about Guesty was if there was something a bit niche. So we added it with a company called, our website called Plum Guide and with Marriott Bonvoy, we actually reached out to Guesty as one of their bigger channels to say, "We would really like it if we had a direct integration with them." It wasn't available at the time, but they flagged it up as if, "Okay, you're one of the people that's asking that. That'd be nice to do it." And eventually both Plum Guide and Marriott Bonvoy Villas appeared as direct integrations. Sometimes, they make it a premium feature, which again is slightly frustrating because it's, again, further payments, but actually, again, you pay for what you get. The other thing that we looked at was kind of Guesty started appearing with further products that meant that instead of going to other third party websites to do different tasks that we need, they were able to bring these things to us in one place. Again, trying to cover as many things that they would know a working management agency would need. These are things like the accountancy tools, advanced analytics so that it can work with our pricing software. All of these things just mean that you become more reliant on Guesty, which a lot of people would probably say, "Well, you don't want to be too reliant," but actually, we are the opposite. We see that why would you not have all the information in one place when we've got so many moving parts within the business? When we were uploading and starting with Guesty, the best thing about it was it's so simple to use and again, that's something that is well appreciated when you're doing it at volume. Even things like how to upload the pictures, how to move them into the order that you want, how to upload captions. The best thing about Guesty is is that you can have that middle section whereby you've got all of the information that you want to push out to all of the different channels you want to be listed on, but you can do it in one place. You don't need to do it four times over. You can do it in one place. So that was for ease of setting everything up and then getting it integrated. The other nice thing was that you can tag internal names on them. We refer to our flats with the line of the address first and then the owners afterwards. So it's just a nice way that when we're looking at Guesty, instead of looking at addresses, which would be kind of hard to keep track of, it's always just the internal names that we can see and that just allowed us to easily upload everything, know what needed to go and where. And then once we had everything set up, it was almost like the more time you took on setting up, which was simple enough, it was just bulky and the amount of stuff we were adding up, the more time and effort you made on spending the time to get everything right. It just meant that the follow-up features like pulling reports and your analytics and everything was more beneficial to use as a company. So it was easy to set up one, but then also, it was worth taking the time to set up because you felt the benefits of taking that time afterwards. So the onboarding side of things was effortless. The other nice thing was we were given a direct success manager called Hazel who has been excellent throughout and she was readily available to talk us through any of the process that we were stuck at, introducing new features if they were there and then explaining to us in easy terms as to Guesty is your hub and it pushes out. It's not that if you make changes on your Airbnb account, it doesn't pull through to Guesty. Guesty is your mainframe and it pushes out. Once that was explained to us, it's pretty easy. So my advice if you are thinking about Guesty is don't balk at the price when you first see it. It is the best investment you'll make for your management company, certainly if you're wanting to scale up. I know it's expensive, but for me, Guesty comes into its own. It's when things go wrong is when you will rely on Guesty and everything that they have around them. And I think for me, there will be cheaper options and there'll always be companies that are startups that will be half the price or a quarter of the price, but actually, when you look into them and you think, "Oh, well, they're not much different. The user face looks almost the same." It kind of is. It is deep down, you know that there's tools there that Guesty have got you covered on. But most importantly, it's the reliability of the software. We have multiple employees that log in every single morning. It doesn't break. The calendars don't forget to sync, which leads to double bookings. Guesty becomes something that you can rely on and doesn't bring you problems. And sometimes, the cheaper software, when you're at high capacity times of the month and there's a lot of servers, messages coming through and calendars that need to be synced, they can be overwhelmed by it. So I would say that Guesty is a tool which by you pay for what you get and you embrace the fact that it's the best in its class and you just go with that. I would also encourage people if they stick with Guesty is to communicate with them what features do you not have that you would love to have? They're a company that like to get the feedback on things, and actually, you see the tweets come through. Eventually, if you wanted different features or different analytics or for it to look differently or pull different information, you push that onto them and they will have a team of people that can do that for you. So they're not the finished product. They never will say they are, but it's the fact that they can evolve and move with the different trends and different ways we analyze the data means that they're always improving, which again means that you've just got a more reliable service. So my advice would always be pay the money. It's the best bit of money you'll spend in your company and then just enjoy the relationship you have with them and communicate about things that could be better because they always take that on board.