A cheap channel manager,
with the arithmetic shown.
Ten dollars per listing per month, or nothing at all. No commission, no setup fee, no contract, and a page that works out your bill instead of asking you to book a call to find it out.
Laurie saved $4,000 last year when he switched to Host Port.
“I was paying hotel money for software I needed a training call to understand. Host Port does the same job for a fraction of it. One calendar, every channel, and nothing I have to think about on a changeover day. Moving all four took less than an hour to do.”
Laurie hosts four stays around Manly, NSW.See them on Airbnb
Two lines. That is all of it.
Most of this category quotes rather than publishes, and the number you end up with depends on how the call goes. Here is ours in full, with nothing held back for a sales conversation.
One-way iCal sync, the unified calendar, manual bookings and blocks, the mobile app, a commission-free direct booking page, and team access. No card at signup.
Two-way channel sync on the listings you switch it on for, with rates and stay rules pushed out, reservations pulled in, and OTA messages in the inbox.
The only other money involved anywhere is card processing on direct bookings, which settles through your own Stripe account at Stripe’s rates. We do not mark it up and it never passes through us.
It is a multiplication, so here it is done.
Same rate at every portfolio size, no tier you cross, no escalator on renewal, no minimum.
| Listings on Pro | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| 1 listing | $10 | $120 |
| 3 listings | $30 | $360 |
| 5 listings | $50 | $600 |
| 10 listings | $100 | $1,200 |
| 25 listings | $250 | $3,000 |
That column says listings on Pro, not listings in your account. You are billed for the ones you switch channel sync on for. Run your busiest property on a direct connection and leave the other nine on free iCal, and your bill is ten dollars, the subscription counts the listings you turned on, and nothing else.
One night lost costs more than a year of this.
We would rather make this argument against ourselves than have you discover it. Price is not what makes a sync reliable, the method is.
A stay imported by calendar feed in May was auto-cancelled on the first of July after a single missed poll of that feed, and a direct guest booked the same night on the second. The tell was that another platform’s import of the same feed still showed the stay, so the booking existed, and one system had simply stopped being told about it.
At $10 a month, a listing costs $120 a year. A single lost night in peak season is usually more than that on its own, before the cancellation and the review. That is the whole argument for paying for a real two-way connection on a calendar that is genuinely busy, and equally, the reason free iCal is the sensible choice on one that is not.
We have since put guards behind the free route, a two-strike rule before anything is cancelled, a mass-drop guard, and night-level coverage rather than trusting the identifiers a feed hands us. They make iCal survivable. They do not make it real-time, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The mechanics are on the Booking.com and Airbnb sync pages.
The cheapest thing about it is leaving.
Switching costs are a price too, and they are the one nobody puts on a pricing page. Here is exactly what happens.
The listing keeps syncing
Turning channel sync off un-mutes the iCal feeds it had taken over, so the listing falls back to free sync rather than going dark. That is a deliberate step in the code, not a side effect: dates keep moving, you just lose the speed and the rate pushing.
You stop paying for it at the end of the period
Switching a listing off marks it pending, and the subscription quantity is recalculated from the listings actually switched on. You are not billed for it again, and you are not refunded mid-month either, we would rather say that than let you find out.
The free plan is not a penalty box
A downgraded listing is not a crippled one. It keeps the unified calendar, the direct booking page, the mobile app and every person you have invited, the same free plan a new host signs up to, not a punished version of it.
Nothing is held hostage
Your listings, bookings, guest messages and calendar history stay exactly where they are, readable on the free plan. There is no export ransom and no read-only penalty box.
The cheapest booking you take is the one nobody taxes.
A page about price would be incomplete without the side of it that is not our price at all, the commission you are already paying somebody else.
It is on the free plan
Every listing gets a booking page whether you pay us anything or not. It is not a Pro feature and it is not a trial, it is part of what $0 gets you.
We take none of it
Not a percentage, not a booking fee, not a listing fee. The money goes from the guest to your own Stripe account, and the only deduction is Stripe’s own processing rate, which we neither set nor mark up.
It is the one channel with no cut
Every OTA takes something. A guest who books you directly is worth more than the same guest arriving through a platform, which makes the booking page the highest-margin thing on this page, and it costs nothing.
We are not going to tell you to leave the platforms, they fill calendars that would otherwise sit empty, and ours are on them too. The point is narrower: when a guest would have booked you anyway, the booking page is the version of that stay where the whole amount reaches you.
What is free, and what the ten dollars buys.
Unlimited listings. No credit card, no trial clock.
- One-way iCal sync with Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo
- Unified calendar across every listing
- Manual bookings, blocks and notes
- Mobile app with push alerts
- Commission-free direct booking page for every listing
- Team and cleaner access, unlimited seats
Per listing, per month, in AUD. Only the listings you switch on.
- Everything in Free
- Two-way sync, usually inside a minute
- Rates and stay rules pushed with availability
- Reservations pulled in with guest and totals
- Airbnb and Booking.com messages in the unified inbox
- Cancel any month and fall back to free iCal
Decided per listing, changeable any month. Full pricing.
Common questions
How much does a channel manager cost?
Ours is $10 AUD per listing per month for two-way sync, and free indefinitely on one-way iCal for as many listings as you like. Across the category you will see per-listing subscriptions, per-channel pricing, percentage commissions and quote-only pricing, which is why comparing headline numbers rarely tells you what you will actually pay. The section above lists the five questions that do.
Is there a genuinely free channel manager?
Ours is, on iCal, with no card and no time limit, and iCal is a real standard rather than a crippled demo, so it moves your dates between Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo properly. What free does not give you is speed or detail: iCal carries dates only, and each platform refreshes on its own schedule. That is the honest trade, and for a calendar with room in it, it is often the right one.
Do you charge per channel?
No. It is per listing. Connect Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, Expedia, Agoda and Hipcamp to the same listing and it is still $10, there is no per-channel line in our billing at all.
Can I pay for just one property?
Yes, and this is the part most hosts do not expect: you are billed for the listings you switch channel sync on for, not the listings in your account. Put your busiest property on Pro and leave the other nine on free iCal, and you pay $10 a month.
Are there setup or onboarding fees?
No setup fee, no onboarding fee, no migration charge and no minimum contract. The only other money involved is card processing on direct bookings, which goes through your own Stripe account at Stripe’s rates. We do not mark it up and we never touch it.
Do you take commission?
Never, on any plan, including bookings through your direct booking page. There is no commission mechanism in the product, not a rate set to zero, but nothing that could take a cut at all.
Is there a discount for lots of listings?
The rate is flat at $10 AUD per listing per month at every portfolio size. If you are running something large and the maths genuinely does not work, email us and we will talk properly rather than run you through a sales funnel.
What happens if I cancel?
The listing drops back to free iCal sync instead of going dark, and your listings, bookings and messages stay readable. You stop being billed for that listing at the end of the current period; there is no mid-month refund and no exit fee.
Is cheap software a false economy for a channel manager?
It can be, and it is worth being specific about where. Price is not what makes a sync reliable, what matters is whether the connection is a real two-way one or a calendar feed both ends refresh on their own timetable. A single double booking costs more than a year of almost any subscription in this category, so the question to ask is not what a tool costs but how it fails.
Is the mobile app an extra charge?
No. iOS and Android are included on both plans, push alerts and all. There is no separate app fee and no per-device charge.
Is there a free trial of Pro?
There is something better: a free plan with no clock on it. Rather than give you fourteen days of everything and then switch it off, we let you run free sync for as long as you like and turn on a paid connection for one listing when you want it. If it does not earn its keep that month, switch it back.
Do I need a credit card to start?
No. The free plan does not ask for one, and there is no trial clock running in the background waiting to convert you.
Start at nothing. Pay when it earns it.
Put your whole portfolio on the free plan tonight, and upgrade the one listing whose calendar is tight enough to justify it. That is the cheapest way to run this, and it happens to be the way we built it.