Hostaway Website Builder: Is It Enough for Your Direct Booking Strategy?

A straight-talking guide for short-term rental and serviced accommodation operators

If you have landed here, you are probably one of two people.

Either you are already using Hostaway and wondering whether the website builder that comes with it is doing enough for your business. Or you are comparing channel managers, you have spotted that Hostaway includes a free website, and you want to know whether that actually means you do not need to pay for one separately.

Both are fair questions. This blog answers them honestly.

We work with Hostaway users regularly at Webb Marketing and we build WordPress websites that connect directly into the Hostaway platform via our StaySync plugin. So we have a view from both sides. We will tell you where the Hostaway website genuinely does the job, and where it starts to fall short. We will also be honest about the situations where we think spending money on a separate website is not the right call yet, because that matters too.

What Is Hostaway and Why Do So Many Operators Choose It?

Hostaway is a cloud-based property management system (PMS) and channel manager built specifically for short-term rental operators. It is not aimed at the single-property casual host. It is built for people running a property business across multiple platforms who need everything to work together without constant manual effort.

The core features are comprehensive. You get:

• Two-way API sync with Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Expedia and more, with calendars, rates and availability updating across every platform in real time
• A unified inbox pulling all guest messages into one place regardless of which platform they booked through
• Automated guest messaging and task management for cleaning and maintenance
• Dynamic pricing and owner reporting for those managing properties on behalf of landlords
• A marketplace of over 200 third-party integrations

In short, it is a genuinely powerful platform and the reason it has grown quickly is that it delivers for operators managing a real portfolio.

Pricing is not published openly on their website and requires a demo to get a quote. Based on market data, monthly costs typically start at around £20 to £40 per listing depending on portfolio size, with a one-time setup fee on top. The cost per property decreases as your portfolio grows.

For what it does operationally, most operators who move to Hostaway do not regret it.

Does Hostaway Include a Website? Yes. Here Is What You Actually Get.

When you sign up to Hostaway, you get access to their built-in website builder as part of the package. There is no separate build fee, and it connects directly to your Hostaway account so availability, pricing and property information all sync automatically.

The builder gives you:

• A template-based website with your own branding and custom domain
• A booking engine so guests can reserve directly
• Mobile-responsive design that works across phones and tablets
• Basic SEO fields including page title and meta description

You can get something live and functional in a short amount of time, which is genuinely useful when you are in the early stages of setting up and have ten other things on your plate.

Where the Hostaway Website Builder Starts to Show Its Limits

This is the part that the Hostaway website does not tell you about. So we will.

Design and Brand Expression

The templates are functional and clean. But they are templates. If your properties have a distinct character, a premium feel, a niche audience, or a brand you have invested time building, you will feel constrained very quickly.

You cannot build a page that truly reflects a boutique serviced apartment in a converted Victorian mill, or a portfolio of eco-friendly rural retreats, or high-end corporate lets near a business park, using a template built to work generically for any short-term rental anywhere in the world.

Multiple independent reviews make the same observation: the Hostaway website builder is adequate for most operators, but it lacks the design polish and customisation that a dedicated website builder provides. When your website is competing for a guest’s attention against professionally designed alternatives, adequate is not always enough.

The Guest Experience Problem: Dead Ends and Back Buttons

Here is something that does not get discussed enough, and it costs bookings.

Imagine a guest finds your property through your website, clicks on a listing they like, and arrives at the Hostaway booking page only to find those dates are already taken. There is nothing there to guide them. No easy way to browse your other properties. No prompt to try different dates. The guest has hit a dead end and the most likely outcome is that they leave entirely.

This is a user experience failure that happens because the channel manager website builder is showing properties without filtering for availability first. The guest has no way of knowing whether what they are clicking on is actually bookable.

It is one of the main problems our StaySync plugin solves, which we will explain shortly.

Your OTA Listings and Your Website Should Say Different Things

This is a point that most people building short-term rental websites never consider, and it is one of the most valuable distinctions between a channel manager website and a proper WordPress site.

When a guest finds your property on Airbnb or Booking.com, they are already deep in the buying process. They are comparing specific properties, checking dates, looking at photos, reading reviews. They are in the middle of the sales funnel. Your OTA listing description is written for that mindset. It focuses on the property itself, its amenities, and why it stands out from the listing above and below it.

A guest who finds you through Google is in a completely different place. They might be searching:

• Short-term rental Bicester
• Contractor accommodation near Milton Keynes
• Self-catering cottage sleeping eight Cotswolds
• Corporate serviced apartment Manchester city centre

That guest has not committed to a property yet. They are gathering information and building a shortlist. They need completely different copy, different headings, different page structure, and different calls to action.

Your OTA descriptions should stay as they are, optimised for the OTA environment. But your WordPress website copy should be written from scratch, targeting the search terms your ideal guest is actually using on Google at the start of their journey.

KEY INSIGHT

A channel manager website builder does not help you think about this distinction, let alone build a site that acts on it. WordPress gives you complete control over every word on every page, meaning you can write specifically for organic search without touching your OTA listings at all.

This single difference can determine whether your website ever appears in Google search results for the terms that actually matter to your business.

SEO: The Biggest Gap Most Operators Miss

The Hostaway website builder includes basic SEO fields. A page title and a meta description. That is a starting point, but it is a long way from what it takes to rank competitively on Google for the searches that drive direct bookings.

Ranking for location-specific, niche-specific, or property-type-specific searches requires a site built around those terms from the ground up. Specifically:

• Proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3) built around target keywords
• Location-specific landing pages, for example a dedicated page for each area or property type you serve
• A blog that builds topical authority over time, answering questions your ideal guests are searching for
• Fast page loading speeds and Core Web Vitals compliance
• Accommodation schema markup that tells Google exactly what kind of business you are
• Internal linking that helps search engines understand the full scope of what your site covers
• The ability to write completely different copy for your website versus your OTA listings

The Hostaway builder is not designed to do any of that. Its job is to sync with your channel manager and take bookings. SEO is not its primary purpose, and that is fine, but you need to know it going in.

Payment Flexibility

Hostaway’s direct booking website only processes payments through Stripe. Stripe is a reliable payment processor, but being locked to one provider means you cannot negotiate rates, cannot switch to an alternative that might suit your business better, and are subject to Stripe’s pricing decisions on an ongoing basis. For operators processing a high volume of bookings, that limitation adds up.

The Conversation Nobody Has: What Happens When You Change Channel Manager?

This is arguably the most important section of this blog, and it is almost never covered in content written by channel managers themselves, for obvious reasons.

Operators change channel managers. It happens regularly and for entirely understandable reasons: better pricing elsewhere, a feature a different platform offers, a poor support experience, or simply growing into a platform better suited to a larger portfolio.

If your website lives inside Hostaway, and you decide to move to Guesty, Zeevou, Uplisting, or anywhere else, your Hostaway website does not come with you. Every bit of SEO authority your site has built, every blog post you published, every backlink you earned, the domain history, the Google trust signals, all of it is tied to a platform you are leaving. You start from zero.

A WordPress website belongs to you. It sits on your own hosting, on your own domain, and connects to your channel manager via a plugin. Switch channel manager tomorrow, update the plugin connection, and carry on. Your website stays. Your SEO stays. Your content stays. Nothing is lost.

Over two or three years, a website that you own and that builds SEO authority month after month becomes a genuinely valuable business asset. A website tied to a subscription platform is a rented tool that disappears when the subscription changes.

We Need to Be Honest About the Reality of Starting Out in Property

Here is something most marketing agencies will not say: we understand that when you are starting out as a short-term rental or serviced accommodation operator, money is tight.

Refurbishments almost always cost more than planned. Finance arrangements eat into cash flow from day one. Add in legal costs, licences, furnishings, professional photography, and the general cost of getting a property guest-ready, and by the time you are thinking about marketing, the budget is often already stretched.

If you are genuinely in that position right now, using the Hostaway website while you get your first properties generating consistent income is a completely sensible decision. We would rather say that than push you towards spending money you do not yet have.

What we would ask is that you plan for the transition. Treat the Hostaway site as a starting point, not a permanent strategy. When you are ready to invest in direct bookings and organic traffic, the path is there, and it does not have to arrive as a large one-off bill.

Webb Marketing’s book direct website packages start from £999 upfront or £100 per month over 12 months. The monthly option sits alongside your other business overheads rather than landing all at once.

The packages are also built to scale. Start with three properties on the Starter package and add pages as your portfolio grows. The cost only increases when your business is ready for it.

How Webb Marketing Works With Hostaway Operators: Introducing StaySync

We build WordPress websites for short-term rental and serviced accommodation operators, and we have built a plugin called StaySync that connects your WordPress site directly to your Hostaway account.

Here is what StaySync actually does, and we want to be precise about this rather than oversell it.

When a guest arrives on your WordPress website and searches for availability, StaySync pulls live availability data from your Hostaway account and displays it directly on your site. The guest can see immediately which of your properties are available for their chosen dates, before they click on anything.

That means no dead ends. No clicking on a property only to find it is fully booked. No frustrating journey back to the listing page to try again. The guest only progresses to a property they already know is available for their dates.

HOW STAYSYNC WORKS

When the guest is ready to complete their booking, the final checkout does transfer to Hostaway to process the reservation. That is how channel manager integration works and it is consistent across the industry. But the guest only reaches that point when they have already confirmed availability and chosen their property. That is a fundamentally different and better journey.

Beyond StaySync, every Webb Marketing WordPress site is built with the sales funnel distinction in mind from day one. Your website copy is written for guests at the top of the funnel, people searching on Google who have not yet chosen a property. Your OTA listings handle the middle of the funnel. The two do different jobs and they are written accordingly.

Hostaway Website vs WordPress: The Honest Summary

Here is a straightforward way to think about the decision.

The Hostaway website is probably the right call right now if:

• You are in your first year and cash flow is the priority
• You have one to three properties and most bookings still come through OTAs
• You are not yet investing in content marketing or local SEO
• You just need a credible online presence to share with direct enquiries
• You want to get live quickly and revisit the website decision in six to twelve months

A WordPress site is worth prioritising if:

• You have been operating for a year or more and want to reduce OTA commission dependency
• You want your website to rank on Google for searches in your area or niche
• Your properties have a brand or character that a template does not do justice to
• You want landing pages for specific guest types: contractors, corporate, families, couples
• You are building a portfolio and want a website that grows with it
• You want to write different copy for your website versus your OTA listings
• You want an asset you own outright regardless of which channel manager you use

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use Hostaway and a WordPress website at the same time?

Yes. In fact this is what we recommend. Hostaway continues to manage your channel sync, messaging, and operations. Your WordPress site, connected via StaySync, handles your direct booking presence and organic search traffic. The two work in parallel.

Will I lose my Hostaway website if I stop paying for Hostaway?

Yes. The Hostaway website is part of your Hostaway subscription. If you move to a different channel manager, the website and any SEO authority it has built does not come with you. A WordPress website that you own is not subject to this risk.

How long does it take to build a Webb Marketing website?

Most builds take three to six weeks from the point we receive your content and brand assets. Smaller starter sites can be live faster. We will agree a timeline with you at the start of the project.

Do I need technical knowledge to manage a WordPress website?

No. WordPress is the most widely used website platform in the world for exactly this reason. We also provide training and ongoing support, and our packages include access to a team of WordPress technicians. If you can update a Google Doc, you can update a WordPress page.

What happens to my website if I switch channel manager in the future?

Nothing. Your WordPress website stays on your own hosting on your own domain. If you move from Hostaway to a different channel manager, we update the StaySync connection and your site carries on as normal. Your content, SEO authority, and domain history are all preserved.

Ready to Talk It Through?

If the Hostaway website feels like it is holding your business back, or you simply want an honest conversation about whether now is the right time to invest in a proper direct booking site, we are happy to have that conversation with no sales pressure.

Book a free 30-minute call with the Webb Marketing team and we will give you a straight assessment of what would be involved, whether it makes sense for your situation right now, and which package would actually fit.

Or browse the Webb Marketing book direct website packages, with options from £999 upfront or £100 per month.

Book direct website packages | Free 30-minute call

This is part of an ongoing series looking honestly at the website builders included with the most popular short-term rental channel managers. Next up: Guesty.