Hostaway website builder alternatives, compared: native builder vs Pro vs CraftedStays vs Boostly vs custom (2026)
Five ways to put a direct booking site in front of a Hostaway account, with verified prices, a scored comparison, three-year costs for 10, 30 and 80 listings, and the cases where each option, including custom, loses.
There are five realistic ways to put a direct booking site in front of a Hostaway account. Hostaway's free Booking Website, Booking Website Pro at $49 a month, CraftedStays from $89.99 a month, Boostly at a setup fee plus a monthly retainer, and a custom build at project cost. Under 15 listings, use the free builder or a subscription template. Above 50, the template is usually the constraint. In between, the back-office decides it.
That is the answer. Below is the evidence, the prices, a scored comparison, and the cases where each option, including ours, loses.
Who this is for
Operators already on Hostaway who have typed "Hostaway website builder alternative" into a search box. You are not choosing a PMS. Hostaway stays. Every option on this page reads availability and rates from the Hostaway account you already have. What you are choosing is the layer guests see, and whether anyone builds you a back-office that is not Hostaway's UI.
If you are still choosing a PMS, this is the wrong page.
The five options in one paragraph each
Hostaway Booking Website (Standard). Hostaway's own template builder, "included at no extra cost with your Hostaway subscription" (Hostaway, Direct Booking, retrieved 2 September 2026). Templates, branding, live availability, Hostaway's booking engine. Hostaway's support centre describes it as "available at no cost for all Hostaway users" (Hostaway Support, Booking Websites Overview, retrieved 2 September 2026). It is the default, and for many operators it is the right answer.
Hostaway Booking Website Pro. The paid tier. "$49/month, plus a 0.5% reservation fee on bookings generated through Booking Website Pro" (Hostaway, Direct Booking, retrieved 2 September 2026). Hostaway's support centre calls it "a more complete and flexible website solution, with enhanced features and customization options" and notes you "can create as many websites as you want. Subscription charges only begin once a website is published" (Hostaway Support, Booking Websites Overview, retrieved 2 September 2026). Some agreements carry a "Booking Website Pro Minimum" charged per instance from the start of the contract regardless of use; read yours (Hostaway Support, Booking Website Pro Terms of Service, retrieved 2 September 2026).
CraftedStays. A subscription template platform with native Hostaway sync. "$89.99/mo for your first two properties, plus $8/mo for each additional property. Above 20 properties, you move to volume pricing under our Institution Plan, which is custom-quoted. There is no setup fee, no booking commission, and no markup on guest payments" (CraftedStays, Pricing, retrieved 2 September 2026). A first-year promotion of $69.99 a month was running at time of writing. Operators on Hostaway "receive monthly credit on subscription for the first 12 months" (CraftedStays, Property Management Website Builder, retrieved 2 September 2026). It is a well-run product with a genuine partner relationship to Hostaway, and it is the option most operators searching this term will land on first.
Boostly. A done-for-you WordPress site with a PMS booking widget, a CRM, and a coaching community, built by Boostly's team. Boostly's own pages publish no price; it is quoted on a call. They do publish a guarantee: operators who follow its plan reach 65% direct bookings within 12 months of the site going live, or Boostly works for free until they do and adds $1,000. Boostly says most sites go live within 35 days (Boostly, Book a Call, retrieved 4 October 2026). An independent operator review documents the pricing as setup fees of $997 to $2,997 plus $97 to $297 a month by portfolio size, and from $497 a month above 50 listings. It also notes that the booking outcome depends on the operator's own execution (Rakidzich, Boostly Direct Booking Website 2026 review, retrieved 4 October 2026). Boostly's strength is the community and the guarantee, not the design system.
Custom build. A site and an operator dashboard designed for one operator, on the operator's own domain, reading live from Hostaway. A project fee, typically $12,000 to $45,000 at STYLABS and quoted after scoping, plus ongoing maintenance. This is what STYLABS builds. It is the most expensive option for a small portfolio, the slowest to launch, and the only one that touches the back-office. Four such builds so far: Makarska Exklusiv, Hireavilla, Manzil, Stayscape. Details at /work/hostaway.
The comparison
| Hostaway Standard | Hostaway Pro | CraftedStays | Boostly | Custom build | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Published price | Included with subscription | $49/mo + 0.5% per booking | $89.99/mo for 2 properties, +$8/property; custom above 20 | Not published by Boostly. An independent review reports $997–$2,997 setup + $97–$297/mo | $12,000–$45,000 project fee, quoted after scoping, + maintenance |
| Time to live | Minutes | Minutes to hours | "Live in days" (CraftedStays' claim) | 30–35 days (Boostly's claim) | ~12 weeks (STYLABS standard) |
| Design | Template + branding | Template + more customisation | Template + branding; paid custom builds available | Their WordPress template system, built for you | Yours, from scratch |
| Availability sync | Native | Native | Native partner integration | Booking widget pulling from Hostaway | Direct against your Hostaway account |
| Booking flow | Hostaway's booking engine | Hostaway's booking engine | Theirs, Hostaway-backed | Widget, Hostaway-backed | Yours end to end (e.g. card, PayPal, bank transfer with deposit split) |
| Operator dashboard | Hostaway's UI | Hostaway's UI | Hostaway's UI | Hostaway's UI + Boostly CRM | Your own, modelling what Hostaway does not |
| Multi-language | Not documented | Not documented | Not documented on pricing pages | WordPress plugins | Built in where the audience needs it |
| Maintenance | Hostaway's | Hostaway's | Theirs | Theirs (retainer) | Yours or your partner's |
| Extra fees to watch | 1.8% guest service fee on US/Stripe listings | 0.5% reservation fee; 1.8% US/Stripe; possible BWP Minimum | None stated | Domain, Stripe fees | Hosting, domain, payment processing |
| What you own on exit | Domain, content | Domain, content | Domain, content; site stays on their platform | Domain; WordPress site portability depends on contract | Everything: code, design, dashboard, data model |
Hostaway and CraftedStays figures are quoted from their own pages, cited above. Boostly publishes no price, so its figures come from the independent review. STYLABS figures are its own.
Scored, criterion by criterion
Scores are 1 to 5. Do not add them up. An operator with six listings and an operator with eighty weight these completely differently, which is the point of the section after this one.
| Criterion | Standard | Pro | CraftedStays | Boostly | Custom | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speed to launch | 5 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 1 | Twelve weeks against minutes is not a close race. Custom loses this outright. |
| Upfront cost | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 1 | Custom is the only option with a five-figure invoice before a single booking. |
| Three-year cost, 10 listings | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1 | Worked below. Custom cannot be justified on commission alone at this size. |
| Three-year cost, 80 listings | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | The subscriptions converge on $17k–20k. Custom starts just below that and can run to nearly three times it. |
| Design ownership | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 5 | Every template is recognisable as that template. |
| Booking flow control | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 5 | Only custom lets you decide how a guest pays and what they see while doing it. |
| Back-office | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | Four of five options leave your team in Hostaway's UI. Boostly adds a CRM for guest marketing, not operations. |
| Maintenance burden | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 1 | Custom moves hosting, security, updates and uptime onto your side of the ledger, permanently. |
| Exit and lock-in | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 | Templates are month-to-month but the site does not leave with you. Custom code does. |
| Proof of outcome | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | Boostly's guarantee is the only quantified promise in the market. Custom's proof is per-client, not statistical. |
Where custom loses, stated plainly
We build custom sites. These are the situations where you should not buy one from us or anyone else.
Under roughly 15 listings. The commission you would recapture cannot carry a project fee plus three years of maintenance. Use the free builder. If the template bothers you, CraftedStays fixes the front of house for the price of a dinner a month.
You need a site this month. Custom is twelve weeks on our standard, and CraftedStays' own competitor table puts agency builds at "2-3 months" (CraftedStays, Vacation Rental Websites, retrieved 2 September 2026). They are not wrong. If the season starts in five weeks, the builder or a subscription platform is the only honest recommendation.
Nobody on your team will own a codebase. A custom site is a product you now run. Hosting, dependencies, security patches, the day a payment provider changes an API. If there is no one whose job that is, and no budget to make it someone's job, an unmaintained custom site will underperform a maintained template within a year. Operators consistently underweight this.
You want a guarantee. Boostly will put a number on it and work for free if it misses, with conditions. We will show you four live sites and their operators. Those are different kinds of assurance and some buyers legitimately prefer the first.
Your problem is marketing, not the website. If the site converts fine and the issue is that nobody reaches it, the money belongs in photography, paid search and email, not in a rebuild. Boostly's coaching community is built for exactly this.
Where each of the others loses
Hostaway Standard loses when the brand is the product. A Hostaway theme is recognisable as a Hostaway theme, and the guest who has already seen your property on Airbnb lands on a thinner version of a page they have already left. It also offers no path forward: when you outgrow it, everything above is a migration.
Hostaway Pro loses on the 0.5% reservation fee at scale. On $1.2 million of direct revenue that is $6,000 a year, every year, for a template. And the Pro Terms of Service describe a per-instance minimum that "accrues irrespective of the Customer's use"; if your agreement has one, you pay whether or not the site is published.
CraftedStays loses when you need anything the platform does not expose. It is a template system, well executed, and it says so. Its own pricing moves you to custom-quoted pricing above 20 properties and it sells paid custom builds, which is the platform conceding that past a certain inventory the template is the constraint. And like every option except custom, your operations team is still working in Hostaway's UI.
Boostly loses on design system and portability. It is WordPress underneath, with Boostly's template layer, and the monthly fee is a retainer for hosting, support and community rather than a hosting bill; the independent review notes cancelling changes what you keep (Rakidzich, retrieved 2 September 2026). The guarantee is real but conditional on following the programme, and it guarantees a booking share, not a brand.
Three-year cost, worked for three portfolios
Assumptions, so you can rerun this with your own numbers: 36 months; direct-channel revenue of $15,000 per listing per year (this only matters for Hostaway Pro's 0.5%); CraftedStays at published Host Plan rates, and for 80 listings the published Institution tiers ($140 base including 10, then $5, $4.50 and $3.80 per property by band) before annual discounts; Boostly at the tiers the independent review reports; custom at STYLABS's range of $12,000 to $45,000 for a guest site with an operator dashboard, plus $100 to $300 a month maintenance, which is CraftedStays' estimate for custom ongoing cost. CraftedStays' estimate for an agency site without a dashboard, $5,000 to $10,000 or more upfront, is shown beside it. Hostaway subscription and payment processing are excluded because every option pays them.
| 10 listings | 30 listings | 80 listings | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostaway Standard | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Hostaway Pro | $1,764 + $2,250 fee = ~$4,000 | $1,764 + $6,750 fee = ~$8,500 | $1,764 + $18,000 fee = ~$19,800 |
| CraftedStays | $153.99/mo = ~$5,500 | Institution, ~$240/mo = ~$8,600 | Institution, ~$470/mo = ~$16,900 |
| Boostly (per the independent review) | Growth: ~$9,100 | Pro: ~$13,700 | Enterprise: $17,900+ |
| Custom site and dashboard (STYLABS range) | $15,600–$55,800 | $15,600–$55,800 | $15,600–$55,800 |
| Agency site, no dashboard (CraftedStays' estimate) | $8,600–$20,800+ | $8,600–$20,800+ | $8,600–$20,800+ |
Read the table honestly. At 10 listings, custom costs several times what a subscription does and the decision is made. At 80 listings, the subscriptions land between roughly $17,000 and $20,000 over three years, and a site-only agency build sits in the same range. A custom site with an operator dashboard starts just below that and can run to nearly three times as much. Price alone still favours a template at that size. What custom buys is the two rows in the comparison table that nothing else answers: booking flow and back-office.
The break-even arithmetic on the commission side, with the OTAs' own filings, is worked in The economics of direct bookings.
A note on WordPress
Boostly runs on WordPress, and many operators run their own WordPress site with a Hostaway booking plugin. Hostaway's API changelog for 24 August 2026 says the create-reservation endpoint now rejects the deprecated WordPress channel (channelId 2017), and that reservations created on that channel were invisible to message automations (Hostaway Public API Reference, changelog, retrieved 3 October 2026). If your current site is on the legacy Hostaway WordPress channel, check with your developer or Boostly how its reservations now reach Hostaway. The detail is in Hostaway's WordPress plugin is deprecated. Nothing else on this page is affected.
By portfolio size
| Listings | Default recommendation | Consider instead when |
|---|---|---|
| 1–5 | Hostaway Standard | You want a nicer template: CraftedStays |
| 5–15 | CraftedStays or Hostaway Pro | You want coaching and a guarantee: Boostly. You want a real brand and can fund maintenance: custom is possible but rarely pays |
| 15–50 | CraftedStays Institution or Boostly | Guests find you and finish on an OTA, or a spreadsheet runs beside Hostaway: custom |
| 50+ | Custom | Your site already converts and your team is happy in Hostaway's UI: stay on a template and spend the difference on demand |
The 15-to-50 band is where the decision is genuinely hard, and it is where the two signals below decide it.
The two signals that point to custom
Guests find your brand and finish the booking somewhere else. They discover you, browse, and complete on Booking.com or Airbnb. You paid to acquire that guest and then paid commission on them. A template can reduce this. It cannot fix it, because the guest is comparing your template to Airbnb's trust signals and Airbnb is winning.
There is a spreadsheet open next to Hostaway. Amenity groups, display order, media, owner statements, the things Hostaway does not model the way you run them. That spreadsheet is a specification for a dashboard nobody has built. None of the four template options will build it. Makarska Exklusiv runs 110 properties through a dashboard covering listing order, media, reviews and amenity groups; Hireavilla runs five destinations with an ERP behind the site.
If neither signal is present, you do not need custom, whatever your inventory size.
FAQ
What is the best alternative to the Hostaway website builder? For under 15 listings, CraftedStays (from $89.99 a month) or Hostaway's own Pro tier ($49 a month plus 0.5%). For operators who want coaching and a guarantee, Boostly (priced on a call; an independent review reports $997 to $2,997 setup plus $97 to $297 a month). For 50 or more listings where the brand and back-office matter, a custom build on your own domain. All of them keep Hostaway as the PMS.
Is Hostaway Booking Website Pro worth $49 a month? For a small portfolio that wants more customisation than Standard without leaving Hostaway, yes. Watch the 0.5% reservation fee at scale: on $1.2 million of direct revenue that is $6,000 a year. Check your agreement for a Booking Website Pro Minimum, which Hostaway's terms say is charged whether or not a site is published.
How much does CraftedStays cost compared to Hostaway's builder? CraftedStays is $89.99 a month for two properties plus $8 per additional property, custom-quoted above 20, with no setup fee or booking commission. Hostaway's Standard builder is free and Pro is $49 a month plus 0.5% per booking. For 10 listings over three years that is roughly $5,500 for CraftedStays against roughly $4,000 for Hostaway Pro.
Is Boostly worth it for Hostaway users? If you want a done-for-you WordPress site with a CRM, coaching, and a quantified guarantee (65% direct bookings within 12 months, or Boostly works for free until you get there and adds $1,000, conditional on following its plan), it is the only option in the market that makes that promise. It is a template system underneath and your operations stay in Hostaway's UI.
When does a custom Hostaway booking site make sense? When two things are true: high-intent guests find your brand and still finish the booking on an OTA, and your team runs the parts Hostaway does not model in a spreadsheet beside it. Typically at 50 or more listings, sometimes from 15. Below that, a template is almost always the right call.
Do any of these options replace Hostaway? No. All five keep Hostaway as the system of record for calendars, channel connections and reservations. The choice is about the guest-facing layer and whether you get a back-office that is not Hostaway's UI. There is no migration in any of them.
What is the cheapest way to get a direct booking site on Hostaway? Hostaway's Standard Booking Website, which is included with the subscription. It is a template and it looks like one, but it syncs availability natively and costs nothing to run. For most operators under 15 listings it is the correct answer.
Sources
- Hostaway, Direct Booking feature page — https://www.hostaway.com/features/direct-booking/ (retrieved 2 September 2026). Verified: fetched and read.
- Hostaway Support, Booking Websites: Overview — https://support.hostaway.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409887050011-Booking-Websites-Overview (retrieved 2 September 2026). Verified: fetched and read.
- Hostaway Support, Booking Website Pro: Terms of Service — https://support.hostaway.com/hc/en-us/articles/47966103093787-Booking-Website-Pro-Terms-of-Service (retrieved 2 September 2026). Verified: fetched and read.
- Hostaway Support, Booking Engine Fee — https://support.hostaway.com/hc/en-us/articles/31291112769307-Booking-Engine-Booking-Engine-Fee (retrieved 2 September 2026). Verified: 1.8% guest service fee applies to US listings on Stripe only; guest- or host-paid.
- CraftedStays, Pricing — https://craftedstays.co/pricing/ (retrieved 2 September 2026). Verified: fetched and read.
- CraftedStays, Property Management Website Builder — https://craftedstays.co/property-management-website-builder/ (retrieved 2 September 2026). Verified: fetched and read.
- CraftedStays, Vacation Rental Websites — https://craftedstays.co/vacation-rental-websites/ (retrieved 4 October 2026). Verified: fetched and read; source of Institution tier figures and the agency-build cost and time estimates ($5,000–10,000+ upfront, $100–300 a month, 2–3 months).
- Boostly, Book a Call — https://boostly.co.uk/book-a-call/ (retrieved 4 October 2026). Verified: fetched and read; the guarantee and launch time. No price on the page.
- Rakidzich, Boostly Direct Booking Website 2026: An Operator's Honest Review — https://www.rakidzich.com/articles/boostly-direct-booking-website-2026 (retrieved 4 October 2026). Verified: fetched and read; the only source for Boostly's pricing.
- Hostaway API changelog, 24 August 2026 — https://api.hostaway.com/documentation (retrieved 3 October 2026). Verified: fetched and read.