Checkfront vs Xola

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.

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

Reviewers indicate Checkfront offers reasonable rates without extra fees, which they find cost-effective. Users appreciate flexible, lower-priced plans and the free trial. Some reviewers feel pricing is confusing, and recent increases reduce value. Some users say small businesses may find costs high, especially when forced to pay for unneeded features or with limited discounts.

Value for money

Checkfront is a reservations solution with key features that include payment processing, online booking, and more.

Checkfront

Android

Windows

iPad

iPhone

Web-based

FareHarbor

Peek Pro

TrekkSoft

Rezdy

Mindbody

Little Hotelier

Bookeo

ResNexus

Bókun

Cloudbeds

Managed

 Growth

Recurring bugs disrupt workflow

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. Some users report that bugs in the booking widgets, back office, and integrations can cause disruptions, such as incorrect pricing, unavailable booking widgets, or broken integrations. Reviewers indicate that these issues sometimes prevent payments or editing users, and they find it frustrating when bugs remain unresolved for extended periods. Users say that minor but persistent glitches complicate daily operations, and they express concern about the impact on customer experience and the reliability of their booking system.

Flexible website integrations

91% of reviewers feel positive about Checkfront’s integrations. Reviewers indicate that the platform is easy to connect with existing websites, especially WordPress, and appreciate the variety of available add-ons and integrations with services like Stripe, PayPal, and Google Analytics. Some users report that the seamless integration provides a smooth booking experience for their customers. They find the drag-and-drop site builder and cloud-based accessibility helpful for managing bookings. Users say the adaptability and flexibility of integrations support different business models, making it suitable for tourism and rental businesses.

Responsive and helpful support

89% of reviewers feel positive about Checkfront’s customer support. Some users say the support team is responsive, knowledgeable, and provides detailed solutions through email, chat, and onboarding calls. Reviewers appreciate that support staff help with setup, troubleshooting, and ongoing questions, often offering step-by-step guidance and screen recordings. They find that customer support is proactive in addressing unique business needs and are reassured by the availability of assistance when configuring complex features. Users feel that strong support reduces their stress and helps them get the most out of the software.

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.  

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

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.

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.

Guest Relations and Digital Media Systems Lead

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

Associate General Manager

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

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.

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.

I just received an invoice for next year, 2026.

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

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

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.

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

Actual solutions or fixes were a rare thing.

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

it's somewhat costly in a numerical value

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

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.

It does the job for bookings and storing information.

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

The booking interface is ugly and not well optimized.

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

Executive Director

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

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

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

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.

Operations Manager

I have been very impressed that Checkfront has been able to manage all aspects of our reservation system (online booking, calendar, inventory, waiver forms and integration with our POS).

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.

General Manager

Online live inventory control and cash collection on bookings helped us manage our business far more efficiently than we ever could in the past.

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

The software has many really useful functions e.g. waivers; group waivers; integration with Xero.  

Checkfront vs Xola Comparison (2026)

Checkfront

Xola

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives