Through a booking portal
Booking value$600.00
Portal commission (15 %)−$90.00
Card payment (2.9 % + $0.30)−$17.70
You receive$492.30
Direct booking websites for vacation rentals
The 15 % you hand to the portals could stay in your account.
We build the booking website for your rental — on your own domain, with your own dashboard and your own payment account — and we keep it running every day. The guest pays straight into your bank: that money never passes through us.
Rather see it first? Open a finished example — it's exactly the demo you would receive, notice and expiration date included.
The same $600 booking, two different routes
Through your own website
Booking value$600.00
Website commission$0.00
Card payment (2.9 % + $0.30)−$17.70
You receive$582.30
+$90.00
difference on every $600 booking. One direct booking a month and the website and its upkeep are paid for several times over.
Which portal you're on changes the number, not the direction. Booking.com takes 15 %. Vrbo takes 8 % commission plus about 3 % on the card. Airbnb charges roughly 3 % to you and around 14 % to the guest — money that still comes out of what your listing can charge. Card processing is billed by the payment provider, never by us. These figures are an example: your own math depends on your rates and your occupancy.
It's yours, not ours
Not a profile inside a platform. Your own website.
You are not joining a portal and we are not giving you a corner of a site of ours. You choose your domain — .com, .co or whatever you prefer — and the website lives there, in your name, as if you had commissioned it outright.
Your address
gulfshorestays.com
Never this
gulfshorestays.someplatform.com
Your domain, in your name
You buy it with your own card, for around $12 a year. We tell you exactly which two settings to change and that's it. It is never registered in our name, which is precisely why we could not hold on to it.
Your dashboard, your login
You sign in with your email and run the whole website: calendar, availability, seasonal rates, bookings, confirmations and cancellations, photos and text. It's yours, not a trimmed-down view of something shared.
Your payment account
You register with Stripe yourself, under your own tax ID and bank account. You are the merchant: receipts, refunds and 1099-K reporting are in your name. We never ask for banking credentials.
Your guest data
The booking list and your guests' contact details are yours and you can export them whenever you like. We don't use them for anything else and they are never mixed with anyone else's.
Your content
Photos, text and descriptions remain yours. If you leave, you take them exactly as they are, along with the domain and the booking history.
No lock-in
There is no contract tying you down. We invoice up to the current month and that's the end of it. If you had to be forced to stay, the service wouldn't be worth what it costs.
The money
From the guest to your bank, in a straight line
- The guest Pays by card on your website, for your dates and at your price.
- Your Stripe account Registered under your own tax ID. The charge is made against your merchant account, not ours.
- Your bank The amount lands in your account on your own payout schedule.
We do not appear anywhere on that line. Your guests' money never passes through our accounts — not for a second, not in transit. We take no commission per booking and have no technical way of doing so: we invoice you the monthly fee, and nothing else.
What's included
A website that takes bookings, not a brochure
Everything a guest needs in order to find your property, see the real price for their dates and book without calling you.
Calendar and real prices
Seasons, minimum stays, weekend rates, weekly or monthly discounts, cleaning fee and lodging tax. The guest sees the full total before booking, not an estimate.
Payment straight to your account
You are the merchant, not us. The money goes into your bank account, and receipts, refunds and tax reporting are in your name.
Synced with your portals
Calendars sync both ways with Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com. If a night is booked there, it's blocked here, and the other way round.
Visible on Google
Pages are delivered ready-made from the server rather than assembled in the visitor's browser. That's what Google needs in order to index you, with structured data, sitemap and descriptions already in place.
Several languages
English, Spanish, German or whatever you need, each with its own address so it ranks separately.
Booking without friction
Guests pick dates in a calendar that already knows which nights are free and what they cost. No forms asking for the same detail twice.
Built to be readable
Real headings, keyboard navigation, alt text on every photo and text that passes contrast checks. It helps guests using a screen reader and it keeps you off the wrong end of an accessibility demand letter.
Fast from anywhere
Served from a network with locations all over the world, so it loads just as fast for someone opening it in Chicago as in London.
Inquiries from day one
Even if you don't want to take payments online yet, the inquiry form works from the moment we publish. Plenty of owners start that way.
Local rules
What your city asks of you, put where it belongs
Short-term rental rules change fast and differ from one county to the next. We are not attorneys and we don't replace your CPA, but the website comes ready for what has to be shown to the guest.
Rental license
Your permit number, on every listing
Cities that license short-term rentals — Nashville, New Orleans, Austin, San Diego and a growing list — require the permit number to appear wherever you offer the booking. You give us the number for each property and the website places it on the listing, in the footer and in the structured data. If it ever changes, you change it in the dashboard.
Lodging tax
Calculated automatically, as a percentage of the rent
State sales tax plus the county tourist development or occupancy tax, set once per property and added to the total without you having to remember. The guest sees it itemized before paying, which is how they should see it. Filing it is still yours or your CPA's job — the website collects and totals, it does not file.
Guest details
Every booking, exportable
Name, contact details, dates and amounts are stored per booking and export to a spreadsheet whenever you want it — for your bookkeeping, for a tax return, or for handing to whoever asks. Nothing is filed with any authority on your behalf.
Personal data
Your guests' data belongs to you
Limited to what the booking requires, deletable and exportable on request. You are the controller of that data and we are the processor — the split that state privacy laws and, for UK owners, the UK GDPR expect.
How it compares
Where we fit, without the spin
We are not competing with the portals or with property management software: each does a different job. Here is what each option saves you and what it costs you.
| Booking portals | Management software | Web agency | Own Your Guests | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | 8–17 % of every booking | From $20–50/month | $3,000–8,000 and up | $499 setup and from $49/month |
| Commission per booking | Included in that 8–17 % | Entry plans often charge ~1.9 %; it goes away on the higher tier | No | None, and there is no technical way for there to be one |
| Who sets it up | They do, but it's their site | You do, 15–20 hours of configuration | They do, and every change is quoted | We build it; after that you run it |
| Whose guest is it | Theirs. They rent them to you per booking | Yours | Yours | Yours |
| Booking engine | Yes, theirs | Yes | Rarely, or as an expensive extra | Yes, included |
| If you stop paying | You disappear from the portal | You lose the site and the setup | The site stays, unmaintained | You keep domain, content and bookings |
Keep listing on the portals. They bring you guests who have never heard of you, and that is worth paying for. Your own website is the channel for the guest who returns, the one who searches for you by name and the one who was recommended — precisely the guests you shouldn't be paying 15 % for.
Maintenance
The monthly fee is not "web hosting"
A site that takes bookings and payments isn't a brochure you upload and forget: it's a system that has to be standing on the day the booking comes in. This is what you pay for each month.
- Servers and network
- Infrastructure spread across hundreds of cities, with the security certificate renewed automatically and no outages when a peak of visitors arrives in high season.
- Monitoring
- We check that the site responds and that payments complete. When something fails, we usually fix it before you notice.
- Backups and versions
- Every time a change is published the previous version is kept. If something goes wrong, we roll back in seconds.
- Calendars kept in sync
- The sync with your portals runs every day. That's what stops two guests booking the same night.
- Updates
- Security, changes at Stripe and at the portals, browser changes. It happens underneath, with nothing for you to approve and nothing extra to pay.
- The dashboard kept working
- Photos, text, prices, seasons and policies you change yourself, whenever you like and without asking anyone. We keep the dashboard working and make sure what you change gets published properly.
- Support
- You write to a person, not to a ticket form, and we reply the same business day. If something won't go your way, or you would rather we did it that once, we just do it.
Pricing
Based on how many properties you have
A single condo is far less work than fifteen. That's why the fee goes in bands, and there are no surprises: this is everything you pay.
Band 1
1 to 3 properties
$490/ year
or $49 a month
2 months free paying yearly
- Every feature in the list above
- Payment straight to your account
- Calendar synchronization
- Full dashboard for you to run it
Band 2
4 to 9 properties
$890/ year
or $89 a month
2 months free paying yearly
- Everything in the previous band
- 4 to 9 properties on the same website
- Quarterly report of visits and bookings
- Season and rate changes handled by us
Band 3
10 properties or more
$1,490/ year
or $149 a month
2 months free paying yearly
- Everything in the previous band
- Adding new properties included
- Priority on changes and support
- More than 25 properties: let's talk
$499
One-time setup fee. Covers the design, loading your properties, prices and seasons, configuring the domain and the payment account, and two rounds of changes. Up to 10 properties; beyond that we quote. The setup fee is invoiced once you have approved the website and is non-refundable; the subscription can be canceled at any time and is invoiced up to the current month.
The headline price is the annual one: you pay for ten months instead of twelve. Monthly exists for those who prefer it, and over a year works out 20 % more because it carries a good deal more admin. No minimum term either way — if you leave, we invoice up to the current month. Prices are in US dollars and are what you are invoiced: we add no sales tax and no VAT. UK businesses: services bought from outside the UK fall under the reverse charge, which you handle in your own return as usual. The domain (about $12 a year) you pay directly to the registrar, in your own name. Stripe's processing fees are charged by Stripe and never pass through us.
What you need
Three things, about forty-five minutes
We do the rest. These three we cannot do in your name, because by definition they are yours.
-
A domain in your name
About $12 a year. You buy it with your own card so that it is registered to you, and we tell you exactly which two settings to change. If you'd rather not wrestle with the registrar, we'll do it together on a call in five minutes — but always with you as the registered holder.
-
A Stripe account
Registered in your name, with your SSN or EIN and your bank account. You get a link and Stripe itself walks you through it: identity, business activity and bank account. It's usually approved the same day. We never see or store any of it.
-
The content
Photos, a description of each property, seasonal rates, minimum stay, cancellation policy and your rental license number if your city issues one. This is the part that really sets the pace: the website takes two days, the photos usually take three weeks. If they're already on a portal, we take them from there and you don't have to look for anything.
How it works
First you see it working. Then you decide.
Nothing has to be set up in advance. The order is deliberate, so that you never have to take a promise on trust.
No commitment
You send the content and we publish it
Photos, descriptions and seasonal rates. Within a couple of days your website is live at a temporary address of ours, with the inquiry form working. No domain to buy yet and no payment account to open. You look at it, ask for whatever changes you want, and see whether inquiries come in.
Once you've seen it
Your domain and your payments
You buy your domain, register the Stripe account — about forty-five minutes for both — and we move the website to its final address. From then on guests book and pay you directly, and the monthly fee begins.
Questions
What people usually ask
Do I have to leave Airbnb and Vrbo?
No, and we don't recommend it. The portals bring you guests who have never heard of you, and that's worth what it costs. Your website is one more channel — yours, with no commission — for the guest who comes back, the one who finds you on Google and the one who was recommended. Calendars stay in sync so nothing overlaps.
What if I'm no good with the dashboard?
It's built for someone who runs rentals, not for a developer: changing a price is two clicks. On top of that we hand it over already set up with your properties, your photos and your seasons, so you start with everything in place. And if you get stuck one day, or would rather we touched it, you write to us and we sort it.
Who charges the guests?
You do, directly. The Stripe account is registered in your name and the money arrives in your bank account without passing through ours. We are not a party to the transaction between you and the guest: receipts, refunds and cancellations are yours.
What if a guest asks for a refund?
You handle it from the dashboard and the refund comes out of your Stripe balance, according to the cancellation policy you've set. Two things worth knowing in advance: when you refund, Stripe does not return its processing fee, and if a guest disputes a charge with their bank there is a $15 fee regardless of who is right. That isn't our doing — it's the same with any provider — but we'd rather tell you before than after.
Can I get double bookings with the portals?
That's exactly what the two-way calendar sync is for: when a night is taken on a portal it's blocked on your site, and the other way round. On top of that, while a guest is paying, those nights are held for fifteen minutes so nobody else can take them. It's the point we're most careful about, because it's the failure that really does damage.
What about lodging tax and my rental permit?
Lodging tax is configured per property as a percentage and added to every booking total, itemized for the guest. Your permit number is shown on the website, which is where most city ordinances require it when you offer direct booking. We are not attorneys or accountants: for your filing and licensing obligations, speak to your CPA.
How long does it take?
Two days from the moment we have the photos and the text. What usually causes delay isn't the website — it's the photos. If you have them to hand, it moves fast.
Is there a minimum term?
No. We invoice up to the current month and you take the domain, the content and the booking list with you. If you have to be tied down to stop you leaving, something isn't working.
You're based in Europe — does that matter?
For the website, no: it runs on infrastructure with locations across the United States, so your guests load it from the nearest one. For you, it means email rather than a phone call at 9 a.m. Eastern — we reply the same business day and we schedule calls in your time zone, not ours. Everything we build is in English, priced in dollars, and set up for US payments and taxes.
What happens if you disappear?
It's the right question and it deserves a straight answer. The domain is in your name, so nobody can take it from you. The content and the bookings can be exported at any time and we hand them over without conditions if you ask. The site runs on a major provider's infrastructure, not on a server under a desk. We can't promise we'll be here forever, but we can promise that if we're not, you won't be locked in.
Why is this cheaper than an agency?
Because we don't start from scratch for every client. The booking engine, the calendars and the payments are already built and are the same for everyone; what changes is the design, the content and the configuration. What takes an agency forty hours of programming takes us two days of setting up.
Get in touch
We'll build a demo of your property
Send us the link to your listing or your current website and we'll build a demo with your photos and your details, so you can see how it would look before deciding anything. No commitment and no cost.