Do you want to skip the read and get right to our top pick? The best vacation rental website builder for most people is Squarespace.
Introduction to the best vacation rental website builders.
Today’s review: what is the best vacation rental website builder you can use to create a site for your holiday let? That’s what we intend to find out.
Vacation rental businesses have gained popularity over the past decade as viable alternatives to traditional hotels, hostels, and bed-and-breakfast facilities.
Similar in principle to a serviced apartment, a vacation rental offers accommodations that offer the comforts of home to travelers who either want to experience how the locals live or want some semblance of a private residence for the duration of their stay. More often than not, these are usually private homes (or holiday homes) that their owners let out to earn additional income.
While you can do this is include your home in listing sites like Expedia, Agoda, and AirBnB, having your own vacation rental customer websites certainly ups the ante.
What Exactly is a Vacation Rental Site Builder?
With the exception of one entry in this selection, there isn’t really such a thing as a site builder that is specifically for travel sites, hotels, or even vacation rentals.
For the most part, the entrants in this list are standard site builders with ecommerce features that can be used to create portals through which to accept and schedule reservations, enable visitors to leave reviews, and enable them to select rooms and other amenities at one’s holiday home. Now, let's go to our discussion of the best vacation rental website builders.
My Vacation Rental Website Builders of Choice:
Our lineup of the best vacation rental website builders is made up of the following:
- Squarespace – best overall vacation rental website builder (My Choice!)
- Lodgify – niche-specific and scalable
- Zyro – reliability and simplicity
- Wix – versatility
Quick Comparison Table For best vacation rental website builders:
| Rank | Platform | Key Features | Price | My View | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Squarespace (My Choice!) | Professionally designed templates, intuitive website builder, integrated booking system | Starts at $12/month billed annually | Best for its design-focused templates and ease of use | Try For Free |
| 2 | Lodgify | Tailored for vacation rentals, direct booking management, channel manager for syncing with OTAs | Starts at $11/month billed annually | Best for its specialized features for vacation rentals | Try For Free |
| 3 | Zyro | User-friendly website builder, AI-driven tools, variety of templates | Starts at $2.90/month billed annually | Best for its affordability and AI features | Try For Free |
| 4 | Wix | Drag-and-drop website builder, extensive app market, booking system | Free to start, Premium plans from $14/month | Best for its flexibility and extensive customization options | Try For Free |
Criteria for the Best Vacation Rental Website Builders:
There are a number of things you need to consider when choosing a vacation rental website builder. So, to keep you from dealing with the guesswork, we did the research and found these key points for you:
Additional Accommodation Features
By these, we're talking about the likes of channel management and automation which would make routine tasks easier and more manageable;
Value for Money
How much bang will the builder give you for a buck or more? You need to look for a site building platform that gives you everything from an easy to use drag and drop builder and ecommerce features to stunning templates and other additions that could transform your site in terms of aesthetic and functionality; and
Customization
Since we're on the subject of aesthetics and functionality, how many templates and themes does the platform have at your fingertips? Also can you swap fonts and color palettes in and out easily? Oh, and a builder that allows you to add as many pages as necessary is always a plus; so is one that has widgets that can make your site's job easier.
The Best Vacation Rental Website Builders in Detail:
1. Squarespace – My choice for the Best Vacation Rental Website Builder
Overview:
The inclusion of Squarespace in our review is mostly because of the booking and scheduling function it has, along with numerous templates that are bound to give any holiday rental site a neat, professional, and polished look.
In terms of booking features, Squarespace as a contender for best website builder for rental business, does lack in that regard. But what does save it are the number of plugins you can use to include such features, as well as connectivity with third-party booking sites.
Features:
- Drag and drop site builder with built-in ecommerce capabilities;
- Over 100 industry-specific design templates;
- Built-in site customisation modules;
- Cloud-based hosting;
- Mobile application for editing or site management on the fly; and
- SEO toolkit to help you rank better in search engines.
Pros:
- This best website builder for rental property is truly optimised for ecommerce site creation and management;
- Industry-specific templates allow creators to have a professional look for their sites;
- Top notch when it comes to technical support
Cons:
- Drag and drop builder can be difficult to manipulate, especially for those new to the platform;
- Needs a third-party app or platform to handle bookings;
- Doesn’t have its own channel manager
Pricing:
Standard rates and pricing packages are as follows:
Read through their terms of service of this best website builder for rental property before you commit.
2. Lodgify
Overview:
Based in Barcelona, what truly sets Lodgify apart from the competition is that it was specifically created for the development of holiday let Lodgify websites by those who have ample experience in the field of hospitality management.
We've ranked it second best website builder for rental property. Whether you’re a small-scale holiday let manager with five properties or less, or one that’s scaling up with six or more, Lodgify gives you the tools with which to create a great site that shows your properties off in the best light and enables you to do everything from booking to payment processing.
Features:
- Property management software;
- Direct channel technology-driven website builder;
- Channel manager for interacting with third-party booking sites;
- Built-in booking system; and
- Payment processing system specifically built to accept payments in multiple currencies.
Pros:
- Has its own booking engine and channel manager;
- Built by hospitality sector professionals;
- Extensive range of third-party integrations
Cons:
- Limited number of website design templates;
- More expensive than most;
- Can be difficult to use for those who aren’t exactly clued in on the nuances of vacation property rentals
Pricing:
- Seven-day free trial and a Lite version that costs you nothing.
To know more about Lodgify, the best website builder for rental property, check out their terms of use before you subscribe.
3. Zyro
Overview:
Value for money and ease of use are what this Lithuanian site building platform delivers to its users.
As one of the best website builder for rental businesses, it pulls out the stops when it comes to aesthetic flexibility. It allows users to create stunning websites even if they don’t have that much experience when it comes to site creation.
Talking about Zyro wouldn’t be complete without mentioning its amazing blogging function. This is particularly useful for creatives in the fields of advertising, marketing, and public relations as it enables them to create client-specific pages where they can explain design studies in detail, pointing out specific nuances wherever applicable. Considering these, we included Zyro as one of the best website builder for rental businesses.
Features:
- Drag and drop holiday rental website builder;
- Customisation toolkit;
- AI Writer for creating placeholder pages; and
- Ecommerce toolkit
- Cost effective packages
Pricing:
- Monthly costs range based on features;
- Unfortunately, Zyro does not offer free plans or even a free trial.
Interested with this short term rental website builder? Read their terms of use before committing.
4. Wix
Overview:
If you’re starting up when it comes to offering vacation rentals to tourists, Wix may just be the short term rental website builder builder you need.
Wix’s two-pronged approach with regard to site building enables users – even those with absolutely no knowledge of HTML coding or prior experience to using a conventional site builder – to create an engaging website in just minutes. One can opt to encode parameters to generate a site using artificial intelligence (AI) or go a more conventional route and drag and drop their way into creating a new website.
When it comes to vacation rental booking websites, Wix delivers. This particular builder has its own integrated booking calendar. The only problem we see here, however, is that it takes time to set up.
Features:
- WIX Artificial Design Intelligence (WIX ADI) short term rental website builder;
- Conventional drag-and-drop builder;
- SEO tool suite;
- Social media integration; and
- Ecommerce tool suite
Pros:
- One of the easiest site short term rental website builders to learn and use;
- Offers possibly the most extensive selection of functional add-ons;
- Great range of travel-specific page website templates
Cons:
- A number of features, particularly those related to ecommerce and scalability, can only be availed of with a paid subscription;
- Ads can be very intrusive;
- Booking function of this short term rental website builder can take time to set up
Pricing:
Are you interested to know more about Wix as a holiday let website builder? Read their terms of use before making a commitment.
Conclusion and Recommendations to the best vacation website builders.
Now to wrap up our guide to the best website builder for rental property/best website builder for rental businesses;
Offering your home as a vacation rental is a great way to earn money, and creating a website for it is one of the best ways by which you can draw potential guests in.
With our review, Squarespace earned top marks as the best website builder for holiday rentals, quickly followed by Lodgify in terms of industry-specific features and functionality. After all, a platform created by those in the know contains features that are truly necessary and site management (as well as booking) is automated for you.
But, as with all our other reviews, we recommend that you also do some research to determine which platform works best for your specific needs.
That's all for now:
If you've read all the way through this best vacation rental website builder guide, we are thankful. We hope you can now answer the question of what are the pros and cons of the best website builder for rental businesses! We have a large collection of articles, guides, and comparison reviews of eCommerce solutions, web hosting providers, website builders, and more! Feel free to check them out;
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