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Your tech support alone is worth the increase. Best PMS out there. I respect and admire your culture. Kudos to you.
Great company, people, software and customer service 2nd to none. I've been here since nearly the beginning and watched this grow and expand capabilities. I had a wish list of features when I came on board. This product has become so much more than I ever wished for. I tried other PMS that claimed to be superior than OR and 4 months later I was back on OR. You folks are awesome and I tell anyone that will listen that you're the best at an amazing price to boot.
I’m thrilled to hear you aren’t taking on investors. I love all your updates and am willing to pay more for the time it saves my entire team. Thanks for the detailed explanation. Here’s to many more years!
Thanks for all you do. I could not do this without you all, with over 40 properties, it would be awful without ownerrez, so I understand the price increase.
Beth
Hi Paul & Chris-
I am truly terrible with software. You took the time to onboard me a long time ago, and Ken is holding my hand through ICal, Channel Bridge, and (gulp) API integration. Your product is worth every nickel.
Alice
I have always thought that your price was beyond belief at the very low price point you were at currently. I haven’t fully taking a look at how your increase as well affect me directly but I can tell you that I am more than satisfied and recommend you every time I get a chance to people who are struggling to manage their vacation rental and to deal with companies like VRBO. The change to put all of my properties with you last October was the best decision of my life. I was with you for a couple of years before with just one property. The learning curve is steep but your concierge service Saved my life. I am grateful for the service you provide and I am happy to pay you for it. Good luck to you and I look forward to many years of a profitable relationship.
Worth it! Your responsiveness alone is worth it, but the platform is really fantastic.
Ella, thanks for your many years of being a great customer (I see your history and recognize you by name). I'm truly sorry that you're disappointed. I hope you had a chance to read the Why We Did This section above. I look forward to your email - please send when you can. ❤️️
Yes! It’s worth every dime even with an increase. Will continue to use it. Love every part of it!
Your product and service are far and above all the others.
I especially support your decision to remain independent and to not get taken over by some investors, angels, vulture capitalists, IPOs, etc.
Thank you!
I will write up more complete email for you guys when I get a chance and have more time. However, not only some of the changes that you've made recently such as forcing us to change to a different pricing model for our properties has proven to be very frustrating, and not user-friendly, not just for me but many other users that I have spoke with, you're now doubling the price. I'm very disappointed in these changes. I've been with you for many years, back when you were in your early beginnings and I'm sad to see the direction that this is heading and no one was grandfathered in to anything, including how things were working, not to mention the prices.
Ella
We appreciate all you do, and especially the thoughtful communication regarding the need to increase the rate to stay healthy and relevant.
We agree!
Your service is still well worth the fee, I am glad to pay it and keep your business structure the way it is.
Worth every penny. Thanks guys.
Hi everyone, Paul here from OwnerRez! As we reach the end of 2020, I wanted to reach out to everyone and explain some changes we're making to our pricing. Yes, that pricing - the monthly fee you pay to use our awesome software.
Some of you have already seen the updated pricing calculator or new Costs & Fees article. Others may be reading this because of an email blast I sent out earlier.
Please note that if you joined OwnerRez before November 2020, the new pricing you see on the website will not affect you for 5 more months. Until March 31 of 2021, pricing will stay the same as before for all pre-existing accounts. If you did just join OwnerRez right now (hey, welcome aboard!) the new pricing model will affect you immediately.
Here at OwnerRez, we believe deeply in providing a quality product that focuses on customer success. As part of that, we have created a "People First" culture, and we believe in having honest transparent conversations with our team (ie. those that work here) and our customers. In fact, as we fill out our new website with Feature and Why pages, we are highlighting our story, team and philosophy as a company, and we hope you take note of those pages as we flesh them out over the coming month.
There are a variety of things we've tweaked, but here's the main differences:
The price for nearly every user will increase. There are a couple of rare scenarios where the price might remain the same or decrease, but those are extremely rare and typically only affect single property homeowners with many premium features turned on.
Simply put - you should expect that your base service fee will increase, typically in the range of 15 - 30%, depending on your number of properties and the features you use.
You can find out the exact amount right now now by going to our pricing calculator and putting in your number of properties and selecting your premium features. Keep in mind that any discounts on your account would not be picked up by the pricing calculator, so your invoice might be less after discounts kick in. Same thing with Add-On's like Damage Protection or SMS usage - those items would not show on the pricing calculator. But you can compare your main service charges to a previous invoice from your billing history.
I know that there will be OwnerRez users who are frustrated by these price increases, and there's only so much I can say to assuage that anger, but I hope that you take a second to read and understand how we came to this decision and why it's necessary from our standpoint.
This is not a naked money grab, and this was not decided overnight. After carefully watching our costs and growth for about a year, we planned on announcing this back in April (to go into effect at the beginning of summer) but COVID forced us to wait.
There is never a good time to raise prices, but they do need to be raised. Here is a peek behind the curtain on our thought process...
Chris and I strongly believe that OwnerRez is better off in our hands than outside investors. As they grow and succeed, it's common for small businesses to approach (or be approached by) outside investors who want to invest. Whatever the investment is called - seed funding, capital call, angel investment - the outside investor gives the company money in exchange for ownership. The company gets the money they need to hire more employees, increase marketing, and become a more-mature company. The investor gets a seat at the table and a share of the profits and..... has a say in what the company does.
For years, we've watched as companies have grown and died around this model, or - worse yet - lost focus on their product and customers. This is not what we want for OwnerRez. As a People First company, we want our customers and team to be the sole focus of our attention, not the demands of outside investors and banks.
OwnerRez has been profitable and debt free for several years. As we grow - adding team members and corporate overhead - it's hard to maintain that without compromising quality in our product, pushing our team members beyond a healthy work/life balance or by trading ownership and control for outside investment. We aren't willing to do any of those things, so we realized that we need to increase our prices so that we can continue building a sustainable company, happy team and awesome product.
(Side note: If we did get outside investment, the same type of price increase would happen immediately - and much larger - because that's the first thing investors demand: higher profit margins. Outside investors focus entirely on ROI and profit margins, not the people who use (or are behind) the product.)
Given the state of the vacation rental industry, it doesn't make sense for a Channel Management feature to be an add-on with a separate price. We spent years beating down doors so that all users - both small homeowners and large PMs - can equally use our Channel Manager settings. We lobbied hard on behalf of small homeowners so that Vrbo would allow them to use their own credit card processing and were instrumental in piloting that program for Vrbo, which became a massive success.
All users, regardless of size, can now automatically distribute their listing content, rates, rules, availability on Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com, and the vast majority of OwnerRez users already do (or have told us they are planning to soon). Those users that don't use API integrations typically use our Channel Bridge tool to crawl and download data for their platform bookings. Channel Bridge is part of Channel Management so the cost to those users is the same.
You may not use every API integration or every channel, but Channel Management as a concept has become the default way of life for vacation rental homeowners and PMs. You rely on listing platforms to send you bookings, and you need your vacation rental software to manage that as a serious first-class part of the system in one way or another. And we've done exactly that - invested massive amounts of time into making Channel Management a fast, flexible experience that works really really well. As I write this, we are finishing up testing on new channel integrations that are coming soon, and we remain committed to partnering with others in 2021.
As we considered how much we needed to increase pricing, we realized at the same time that Channel Management should be included by default for everyone.
OwnerRez is more than just an app with features and settings. It's also about quality support. Our support - both what you read online and the responses you get from us directly - is a large part of what makes OwnerRez OwnerRez. We actively spend a good chunk of our engineering time on updating, changing and evolving our support - video libraries, accurate search functionality, careful messaging about updates. We've built systems under the covers that track our call logs, tickets and notes with you, and the problems you're facing, so that we can establish a rapport with users that lives across team members. Being People First means not giving in to "script robot" support systems or paying minimum-wage CSRs to copy/paste answers that you already found yourself.
Quality support has a cost and, as mentioned above, is not something we are willing to sacrifice as we grow. In fact, we're doubling down by adding more support and sales engineers so that our phone support can get better.
Our commitment to quality is also shown in how we monitor and update our system. Every week, we release dozens of updates (some of which are publicly documented) but many aren't documented because they involve infrastructure, networking or background work that would not make sense as a public update for users to read. As an engineer-led company, quality and attention to detail is in our DNA and the reason we want to maintain control of the OwnerRez path long into the future.
Quality and attention to detail has a cost. We know that most of you already pay more than the 20/month minimum, but we have many users that still hover around that price point. Even without Channel Management, that 20/month price point gives you tons of stuff - the world's best calendar import/export engine, widgets, triggers, messaging, CRM, reporting and much much more. But at 20/month.... quality is not sustainable. We are not willing to sacrifice quality, so the minimum has to go up.
One of the interesting things we noticed when analyzing our pricing was how we are, even after the price increases, still significantly cheaper than most of our competitors - many of whom have weaker products. Flashy designs notwithstanding, most of our competitors have clearly inferior products - the options are limited, the settings are buggy, updates take months to come out and support is nowhere to be found. We know this because we've tested their products ourselves and because we have a constant stream of new users telling us this, having left them behind. Why then, are those competitors charging 2-3 times as much as we are?
To be clear, we did not increase our prices to match competitors. That's not how we roll. But we feel strongly that OwnerRez is more than the "value product" in the industry and should not be selected because it's a bargain. These price increases allow us to comfortably take care of all the issues above while still being 25-30% less expensive than our competitors.
As we continue working on numerous partnerships, integrations, unified inbox, hosted website pages, PM overhauls, QuickBooks overhauls and other powerful updates, we will continue to outshine our competitors while leaving you satisfied that you're not over-paying and that your software is in the hands of a happy team that is focused on your success.
That's the position we want OwnerRez to be in.
As always, feel free to reach out and comment (here below the blog post) or send us an email with your thoughts. We will do our best to explain our viewpoint if something is unclear. Thanks for being an OwnerRez customer!
Unfortunately, I agree with Jason, also. Hard to do when you have weekly rates for a property. Is there a way to put something on that page that you can just enter a weekly rate, without calculations and discounts?
Thanks, Claudia
Happy Halloween everyone!👻
We'd like to start this week off by congratulating Wildbit on 20 years of business. If you don't know who Wildbit is, then maybe you know some of the products they've created. One of their most prominent products, which OwnerRez uses for it's email system, is Postmark. We love Postmark and have used it for a long time. If you've ever set up a "verified sender email address" in OwnerRez, that's the same Postmark that sends the yellow instructions with DNS instructions.
But beyond the Postmark product specifically, we love Wildbit as a company because of the culture they've created. For 20 years, they've maintained the perspective that companies should prioritize people first - not just "customer" people but also "employee" people. They started out as a small startup in Philadelphia and have grown to a team of more than 30 and over 100,000 customers.
Here at OwnerRez, we partner with many companies and use lots of products to power our software, but Wildbit stands out as a great example of what businesses should strive to be. So congrats on the 20 years, Wildbit!
In other not-so-fun news, we're getting reports that some OwnerRez users have had their Vrbo accounts compromised through successful phishing attacks. Hackers will send a targeted link that looks like it's a Vrbo booking request, which leads you to a Vrbo-looking website, which leads you to input your username and password, which allows them to record and use to access your real Vrbo account,
Needless to say, make sure that the links you click on from Vrbo are actually from Vrbo. Also, this is another great reason you should move to using the Vrbo API connection we offer. Having an API connection makes it much harder for hackers to do anything with your listings. Even if they successfully gain access to your Vrbo account, they can't change your listings, rates, availability and so on. All of that is driven from OwnerRez. In fact, even you yourself cannot change that stuff from the Vrbo dashboard because of how the API mode operates. So just a reminder here to stop using iCal and switch to API!
Airbnb is gearing up to list its shares on the Nasdaq. Earlier this month they aimed to raise $3 billion in IPO, giving Airbnb a valuation of over $30 billion! We heard about the plans to go public earlier this year, but now it's reported that Airbnb wants to do this before the end of the year. While COVID may have put a dent in the vacation rental industry earlier in the year, things are very much up for Airbnb which has recorded record booking days ever since. As of right now there is no official date when the IPO will take place, but we'll be sure to let you know.
Our CEO, Paul Waldschmidt, has been featured in PropTech magazine, a magazine devoted to real estate news, technology and software! He was interviewed a few weeks back, where he gave insight into OwnerRez's goals and how we try to achieve them. The article and profile will be included in an upcoming magazine issue, but you can read an advanced copy here.
Where can we find info about what you write under "As for the Host & Guest Reliability Standards, Airbnb has added new criteria in the following areas"? Meaning, is there anything we can adjust in regards to Unauthorized late checkouts, Unauthorized pets etc?
I'm with Jason, I don't like the change and think it's a step backwards. We are being forced to figure out discounts as oppose to a flat rate for a month or week. I spent days doing this, and now have a multitude of discounts, and none really works 100% as I would want it to, which was VERY simple to accomplish before
mixture of full time and 1099 contractors.
It's Hump Day, so time to talk OwnerRez updates! 🐫 This week, we only have a few enhancements and bug fixes (about 9) to talk about, so it should only take a couple minutes to plow through it!
After rolling out Tag Groups last week, we noticed some tweaks that needed to be made. You can now see tags grouped by group name when setting or removing tags and select entire tag groups at once. We also remove tags from mutual blocks to reduce confusion.
The rate table widget also got some updates. If a property has a 7 night minimum rule, we are no longer showing the nightly rate column, and we're always calculating a week rate even if there's no LOS (length of stay) discount. That being said, we noticed after pushing this release that some users still want to show nightly rates, between properties, even if a particular property has a 7 night minimum, so we're going to add settings to the rate table widget to make this explicit. Look for that update to be out in the next few weeks.
The "Use Template" drop-down list on guest conversation threads was being cut off on the right side of the screen, so we are now right-aligning the Use Template drop-down so that it expands towards the left side of the page. Some of you like to use really-descriptive (ie. really long) template names! 🤨
Quick bit of news on HomeToGo... We are close to wrapping up the beta period for HomeToGo users and making this available to everyone. Please note that "Request To Book" mode will not be an option for HomeToGo. Only "Instant Book" will be available up front. However, if there is a large amount of demand for Request To Book, let us know, and we'll try to get that in later.
Seasons without arrival/departure days. Believe it or not, you can configure seasons in OwnerRez to not allow arrivals or departures. In other words, the guest has to arrive before the season and depart after. There are good reasons for this. However, our validation logic showed a whacky message like "Winter requires arrival day to be on___" with no day of the week showing. We fixed this. The same validation message now shows "Winter does not allow arrivals".
Identifier Mappings broken links. A recent update made it so that you could not create new settings in the Identifier Mappings area. If you don't know what what I'm talking about, check out this article on Identifier Mappings. If you had existing mappings in place, you could change them, but you couldn't create or set new ones. This is now fixed.
SMS message guest matching. When matching guests to inbound SMS messages, we were sometimes using the wrong guest record. This is because you can have many guest records in OwnerRez for the same physical person. You might have created the same "Joe Blow" guest record five times when Joe booked your cabin 5 times, and all 5 records have the same phone number. By the way, if that's the case, you can find and merge guest records together, so do that from time to time to keep your CRM clean. At any rate, we are now using the last updated or created dates on guest records to find the latest guest and match inbound SMS messages to that conversation instead of the older ones.
No Airbnb guest conversation. There are situations in which an Airbnb booking is made (and pushed to OwnerRez) but no conversation or message thread is included. This is the result of (a) the guest booking without saying anything and (b) Airbnb changing some things in their API without mentioning it to their hapless partners. We fixed this so that a conversation is now started and you can say something to the guest even if no message thread was started on the Airbnb side.
I miss the ability to adjust the particular unsigned rental agreement with additional details. Something like an edit functionality before send the agreement to the guest for signing.
If you've got a weekly or monthly discount -- https://www.ownerrez.com/support/articles/length-of-stay-discounts -- the rate table will show that weekly rate column. It will also show a weekly rate column for seasons or properties with a 7 night min rule set.
I'm not really liking the new rate system. We need monthly rates and weekly rates as we had it before. I'll do my best with it now, but will need another alternative if this is the best it will have available. I honestly feel like this was a step backwards. Now it doesn't even show up on my website and most guests wanted the weekly rate or monthly rate for off season.
Good news it’s Friday!
Airbnb has recently released a couple of important host updates. The two key topics are COVID-19 Safety Practices and Host & Guest Reliability Standards. We mentioned this two weeks ago, but we wanted to make sure this has been brought to your attention. For the COVID-19 Safety Practices, hosts will need to log in to Airbnb in order to attest. You can do so right now by going to the attestation page. Hosts that don’t agree to these requirements by November 20 may have their calendars blocked from future bookings. So go do it now!
As for the Host & Guest Reliability Standards, Airbnb has added new criteria in the following areas:
Cook County, Minnesota passed a new tax bill that applies to all vacation rental properties. For the estimated 600 properties in Cook County, a 15 to 20 percent increase in taxes will be applied. Along with the tax increase the properties will no longer be classified with their original tax designation as ‘seasonal rec’ properties, according to Jim Boyd, the director of the Cook County Chamber of Commerce. Due to this, these properties are liable for school levy override tax burdens, which they were formerly exempt. Yay taxes…
The Florida Supreme Court has finally made up it’s mind on who remits the Florida “bed tax”. Owners must now be the ones to collect and remit taxes. This legal feud has gone back and forth on whether or not vacation rental sites can be the ones to collect and remit taxes on behalf of the owner. In a 2-1 decision, the court determined that a dealer is “one who can grant a possessory interest in the property,” which only owners can do. That being said listing sites no longer have the power to collect and remit taxes for owners, even though back in 2015 they were okay with that...
The island of O'ahu is once again allowed to operate short term vacation rentals. It has been seven long months since these vacation rentals were forced to convert to long term rentals. Owners were left desperate, having to drop their monthly rates which were only generating about half of what they make with short term renters. Hopefully the 8,000 passengers that landed on the 1st day of the new pre-travel testing policy can help with this.
Yep. Branson (my market) isn't exactly party-central, but even so, when I tested allowing one-night stays during gap periods, I found that a good quarter to third of them left the place relatively trashed. That was an experiment I put to an end quickly.
Even in the off-season when I lower my rates to "stupid cheap" levels, the cleaning fee makes my place more expensive than the equivalent number of hotel rooms to my bedrooms. Someone arriving in the evening and departing in the morning really isn't there to take advantage of the benefits of a vacation rental (e.g. cooking meals, using resort amenities, etc.), so why else would they be interested in renting but for a place to treat as a place to engage in too much, er, revelry?
"But some would ask, won’t this hurt my business?". No. In my market there is no restrictions on one night stays but I would never do them anyway. One night stays in traditional tourist/resort destination scream "party" and invite trashing of the property by a party goers. I do not know why would anyone even consider one night stays and for what purpose. They need one night - they can book a hotel room.
Tracy P said:
Thank you for the response. I will price myself out of my market by raising 15% when people search by nightly rate. Just thought if there was a surcharge only for AirBNB that might be a way to do it so I at least get people looking at my property vs. others.
Chris L said:
I followed Airbnb's directions and sent the cleaning checklists to my housekeepers. We'll see what they say.
Love using the Bad Guest Tag to not send review and future promotional requests.
