Checkfront vs Ovatu

Booqable

Lodgify

Hostaway

Booqable is equipment rental software for small and medium-sized businesses. It enables companies from various industries to manage inventory, schedule equipment, and accept online bookings.

Lodgify simplifies the process of managing a vacation rental by enabling anyone to create a bookable website, sync your listings data across channels, and manage tasks in one place. 

Trusted by 20,000+ property managers worldwide, Hostaway is the industry leading, AI-powered vacation rental management platform designed for professional short-term rental operators.

Director

Customer support wasn't great (aside from having to wait til the end of the day (GMT) before they we're available) with workarounds for bugs being the order of the day.

As bad as it is for the customers and guides, the backend administrative side is even worse.

Director 

Initially it took ages to get support on how to perform certain tasks but that has been rectified by the online guide.

sole proprietor

Checkfront is an online booking system that enables businesses to handle their inventories, centralize reservations, & process payments. Checkfront manages tours, activities, & rentals. 
Checkfront offers plugins to popular CMS products like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla! & Movable Type.

Access Controls/Permissions

Accounting

Activities Booking

Activity Dashboard

Alerts/Notifications

Appointment Management

Attendee Management

Availability Indicator

Availability Management

Billing & Invoicing

Billing Rate Management

Booking Management

Booking Notes

Calendar Management

Calendar Sync

Central Reservation System

Channel Management

Client Management

Communication Management

Confirmations/Reminders

Contact Management

Credit Card Processing

Customer Accounts

Customer Database

Customer History

Customer Support

Customizable Branding

Customizable Forms

Customizable Reports

Customizable Templates

Data Import/Export

Data Synchronization

Discount Management

Document Management

Drag & Drop

Dynamic Pricing

Electronic Payments

Email Marketing

Email Templates

Employee Management

Event Calendar

Event Scheduling

For Vacation Rentals

Front Desk Management

GDS/OTA Integration

Geographic Maps

Group Reservations

Guest Check-in/Check-out

Guest Communications

Historical Reporting

Inventory Management

Invoice Management

Itinerary Creation

Maintenance Management

Mobile Access

Multi-Currency

Multi-Day Booking

Multi-Language

Online Booking

Online Payments

Online Registration

Online Reservations

Online Signing

Package Creation

Payment Processing

Permit Management

Point of Sale (POS)

Pricing Management

Promotions Management

Quotes/Estimates

Rate Management

Real-Time Data

Real-Time Updates

Registration Management

Reminders

Rental Management

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Reservations Management

Resource Management

Revenue Management

Room Booking

Search/Filter

Site Reservation Management

SMS Messaging

Social Media Integration

Supplier Management

Third Party Booking

Third-Party Integrations

Transaction History

User Management

Vendor Management

Waiver Management

Website Integration

Website Management

By industry, Checkfront reviewers are most commonly professionals in hospitality (25%). The most frequent use case for Checkfront cited by reviewers is reservations (68% of reviewers).

Users and use cases

Most users consider Checkfront to provide good value for money, appreciating the lack of extra fees and flexible pricing. Some reviewers feel pricing tiers are confusing, and some users mention recent price increases and unnecessary features.

Value for money

Checkfront is a reservations program offering key features such as payment processing and online booking, among others.

Checkfront

Android

Windows

iPad

iPhone

Web-based

FareHarbor

Peek Pro

TrekkSoft

Rezdy

Mindbody

Little Hotelier

Bookeo

ResNexus

Bókun

Cloudbeds

Managed

 Growth

Recurring bugs and reliability concerns

I can't risk the key element of my booking system failing so had to pull the plug on Checkfront and return to my previous provider.

Owner

Integrations would sometimes break, causing errors on the booking page.

62% of reviewers feel negative about Checkfront’s bugs and issues. Reviewers report frequent bugs in both the back office and booking widgets, sometimes causing booking failures or incorrect pricing. They indicate that technical glitches can disrupt business operations, such as integrations breaking or payment processing being unavailable. Some users say that fixes can be slow, especially for those outside North America due to time zone differences, and that minor but persistent bugs create ongoing frustration and require workarounds.

Seamless website integrations

91% of reviewers feel positive about Checkfront’s integrations. Reviewers appreciate how easily the software connects with existing websites, especially WordPress, and mention that setup is straightforward even for non-developers. They indicate that a wide range of add-ons and integrations, such as Stripe, PayPal, and Google Analytics, are available and simple to implement. Some users say the integration process is smooth and allows for a professional appearance, while others highlight the flexibility to adapt the booking engine to complex site structures as a key benefit.

Responsive and helpful support

89% of reviewers feel positive about Checkfront’s customer support. Reviewers indicate that support staff are responsive, knowledgeable, and provide clear, step-by-step assistance, often through multiple channels like email and chat. They appreciate that support is available during onboarding and for ongoing questions, helping them resolve setup challenges and technical issues. Some users say the support team listens to feedback and works to find solutions, making them feel more confident in managing their business and reducing stress during implementation.

For instance, if you used Square instead of Stripe, customer were not able to book directly from the Google search results page.

The email suite lacks any organizational capability I have created so many that it is nearly impossible to figure out what triggers them and we run many different trips to many different locations and it creates choas when I don't know if clients are getting the correct emails about those trips.

I had to export all the data to a database daily in order to see everything.

With a little coding expertise you can make the booking process for clients very easy and reduces the friction toward payment, so you can concentrate on operations.

It is the one that consistently comes out on top, but it seems it's moving more and more to %fee option which is what we were avoiding with competitors.  

We have two separate components to our business and whilst Checkfront works seamlessly for the standard rental letting element, it does require some manual manipulation for the other components.

Reporting was also very difficult to deal with and lacked the ability to customize it.

Owner Manager

No warning, just a revised invoice for the next 12 months.

Once it's working it is a pretty stable product, and works well on the user side.   Once it's set it's mostly set it and forget it.

Guest Relations and Digital Media Systems Lead

Sales, Digital Marketing, Web Content and Systems Manager

For the moment we will stick with the API integration, however this is also not particularly great with no updates made to the API for years now (which our web developer mentions frequently).Checkfront's new prices raised an eyebrow - Their previous pricing felt very competitive however the new pricing tiers have made us really question whether Checkfront is value for money

Associate General Manager

The amount of information I have access to viewing is definitely a plus.

I have to create email templates in Mailchimp and then export them and import them into checkfront.

There are a lot of integrations, and the product is always evolving.

The reservation management feature is excellent as is the in-built facility to collect waivers from guests.

I just received an invoice for next year, 2026.

Actual solutions or fixes were a rare thing.

it's somewhat costly in a numerical value

Business Analyst

Resources cannot be recursively booked in different features if they are more than two levels down..

Real Estate Broker

It makes booking convenient even for older people. And I love that I can use Apple pay as a mode of payment.

Limited items unless you upgrade which doesn’t make sense for small seasonal businesses.

The glitches of trying to change a reservation and sometimes it just won't.  

It works well once set but isn't super easy to set up.

founder and brand manager

Integration with websites is somewhat limited.  

It feels a bit clunky and dated with some features.

FishingLodge Owner

It's an affordable booking system for our small business.

I was being billed for users i did  not require but the team have now resolved that issue.

Owner 

Reports are helpful when reviewing my business

That's a little time consuming and annoying but it doesn't happen that often.  

Optimizing for marketing and conversion rate optimization seems to be at the back burner and does not take priority at their company.

We find it hard to change due to its value for money.

Online booking, automated inventory control, powerful and flexible customer communications, plug-ins to enable integration with a wide range of other systems

manager animal husbandry

Systems Administrator

Flexibility to meet our business processes, automated customer communications via "Notifications" (which you can tailor to your needs), calendar functions, ability to specify requirements for the booking page and guest lists.

It does the job for bookings and storing information.

The most basic, basic thing a guide needs is to check in guests on a tour.

Many guides in our company have refused to use Checkfront at all, and simply don't check in the guests.

Checkfront doesn't even show the guide how many people are on the tour.

The booking interface is ugly and not well optimized.

Ease of use and excellent customer service

It is quite user friendly and has intuitive features.

This product was easy to set up and is very intuitive to use.  

Executive Director

Functionality to set different price categories but not have these completely integrated within the calendar.

Checkfront vs Ovatu Comparison (2026)

Checkfront

Ovatu

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives