Our company was a long time user of Lodgix reservation software and we were very happy with them except that their public API was poor and when asked if they would be making it better they said there were no plans to improve it. It was a little disheartening and frustrating because we have some talented programmers that could have programmed some things for us to help us increase efficiency in our workflow if the API was better. A lot of the things we wanted programmed were probably very specific to us and therefore it wouldn't make sense for Lodgix to do it, so that is why we wish the API was better. So we went on the hunt for new reservation software and we basically wanted to find the one with the best API so we could customize things. That is where we met Streamline, formerly ResortPro.
Streamline Vacation Rental Software Review
The following is a review of our use of Streamline. We hope it is helpful for those that may be choosing vacation rental software. I will come back and update this post. Before we get to the review I want to say that vacation rental software is still a relatively young field. I feel like no one has delivered a really great option yet. Lodgix was super simple and intuitive and hit all the salient points that are tied to profitability but wasn't very powerful and it lacked a good API and the ability to add customization. Streamline is super powerful and flexible, but confusing, not very intuitive
Just so you know we manage about 50 homes and have been in business since 2009.
(Update: I have heard the onboarding process has improved much and you only work with 2 people during the setup. I still heard it can take up to 8 weeks from contract signed to being live and ready to take reservation, but some of that depends on your responsiveness to them and if you need to transfer a lot of reservations.)
Overall, the training went well. There were a few times we were delayed and we felt like they were trying to blame us for the delay when I actually felt like it was their fault. I definitely got the feeling they are understaffed. (Update: I don't think this is the case anymore. They seem to have sufficient staff.) But I really expected the initial training to take longer because I know how these things go, so I wasn't too bothered.
Overall, if someone was to ask for a recommendation for vacation rental software I would not recommend Streamline at this point. I do think by the end of the year most of the critical missing things will be fixed, but I am afraid we are going to lose several thousand dollars and experience more frustration versus having stuck with Lodgix. We honestly have considered switching back, but at this point we don't have time. Summer is just around the corner. I am sure if we switched back we'd find things we'd miss that were in Streamline though. There are definitely some pluses to Streamline, but the negatives are glaring right now. If Streamline would add more support staff and communicate more effectively with its customers we'd be a lot happier.
[General Update: Our relationship with Streamline has improved greatly. We did do some more research into other vacation rental software and we still feel like Lodgix and Streamline are the only solutions worth considering, at least for our situation.]
The other major system we looked at was LiveRez. It sure has a beautiful website and seems to be feature rich but holy cow would it be expensive to use and the websites they create are ugly and not intuitive either. We need more people to go back to marketing design school! So short of programming our own solution we are going to stick with Streamline for the time being. They are holding a Streamline Summit that we are hoping will be a good opportunity to interact with the people of the company and give our input.
I also had the opportunity to talk with the CEO of Streamline the other night. We talked about many of the points I covered in this blog. He admitted they were understaffed because they took on a bunch of clients all at once but that they are working on that and hope by November to have a wonderful customer support staff. I hope so too. It was nice to be able to talk to the man in charge and I am hoping to see good things come from my little input.
Update: Some issues I still have.
MAXIMIZE OCCUPANCY - I wish their was some logic that I could turn on or off that if there is a only a 2 night spot between reservations and I usually have a 3 night minimum, that the user could book for just the two nights, so that we could maximize the availability.
CHANNEL MANAGEMENT - For a lot of the channel management it seems like the best way to get our listings on a lot of sites is through BookingPal, but BookingPal has not given us a good experience and the fees are high. We are hoping for a better, simpler direct integration with the different channels soon.
OVERALL UPDATE: We are at the point that for anyone with 15 or more properties, we would recommend using Streamline (or at least taking a good look at it.) There is a steep learning curve, because I still think design-wise it is not always intuitive, but they have so many options and functionality that it fits a lot of situations. The support is good enough now, the newly re-done API is nice because of the integration you can do with other platforms. They have a new Marketplace for those that build integrations with Streamline, I am hoping to see GuestNetix (GuestComment) integrated soon, for the easy texting stuff, as we much prefer a simple texting platform rather than trying to beg our guest to download an app. Much has improved in the system, and we hope it continues that way.
Feel free to contact me if you have specific questions, I am happy to share what I know.
The Initial Setup Process
This went about how we thought, meaning it was scheduled to take 4 weeks and actually took about 8. They had told us it typically take 6 weeks but because we were in a hurry to get things switched over we were on the accelerated track. They had an initial consultation and then 8 "modules" and then a final review. There were a few extra accounting trainings done with a private accountant as well. The training was pretty decent. Each time the trainer did a screenshare and we watched as he went through different parts of the software. Just so you know they will not actually help you do most of the work, but instead will just teach you how to do it. This is good because it helps you learn how to do things yourself, but honestly I thought the initial chunk of change we paid to them was to pay them to transfer a lot of the information into the system, but that was my misunderstanding. The hardest part was figuring out who I should be talking to about what. There were 6-7 people we were in communication with at a time and it was confusing figuring out who to ask what problem to.(Update: I have heard the onboarding process has improved much and you only work with 2 people during the setup. I still heard it can take up to 8 weeks from contract signed to being live and ready to take reservation, but some of that depends on your responsiveness to them and if you need to transfer a lot of reservations.)
Overall, the training went well. There were a few times we were delayed and we felt like they were trying to blame us for the delay when I actually felt like it was their fault. I definitely got the feeling they are understaffed. (Update: I don't think this is the case anymore. They seem to have sufficient staff.) But I really expected the initial training to take longer because I know how these things go, so I wasn't too bothered.
The System
The system itself is powerful and has all the bells and whistles. It has a lot of functionality that Lodgix didn't and we love the API compared with Lodgix. (Update: In 2016 they redid their API and it is even better now. It uses JSON instead of XML.) However, the designers obviously never went to design school because they break a lot of design rules. (I only took one class but it taught some important principles that have stuck with me). The service is getting better all the time but we have had our share of really frustrating moments. Coming from someone who tries to under promise and over deliver, Streamline has done quite the opposite many times. I even try to give them a little break because I know tech things sometimes take a little longer, so something taking twice as long is acceptable, but 4 times longer is ridiculous. (Update: The service and support has improved a lot. Now when I get I told when some new functionality is done they over estimate, which is nice. They still occasionally miss a deadline, but nothing like they used to.)- Smartphone Apps - This was a huge selling point for us! We love our smartphones and thought it would be handy for our cleaners and maintenance people to use the apps to ease communication among everyone and really "Streamline" things. However, it has been 4 months and
we still don't have the apps.We keep getting promised they are almost done and should be available by the end of the week. I think someone must have quit which is part of the delay, but I wish they would have given a more realistic timeline of when we can expect delivery.The apps are also only available for ios, which is unfortunate because about 85% of our staff uses android. They said an android version is coming but I'm not holding my breath.
[Update on Smartphone Apps: We did eventually get the smartphone apps. It was a rough start with them. There were a few sections that you could put in notes in the app, but those notes basically went no where. It was frustrating because our maintenance and cleaners were using the notes section to communicate important information to us. Eventually Streamline did fix this issue as well. However, halfway into our busy season was too late for us to train our staff on how to use the apps, so we have abandoned using them this summer. It was pretty disappointing not to be able to use them this summer. The apps are still only for ios currently, even though we were told that an android app wasn't far behind. But again, not a big deal to us because we are waiting for things to slow down before we look into using them.]
(Update: They now have an app for housekeeping, maintenance, owners, and guests. We have used them because we found our own way of doing things without them, however, my guess would be they are good and useful, we just need to switch over and test them out.)
(Update: They now have an app for housekeeping, maintenance, owners, and guests. We have used them because we found our own way of doing things without them, however, my guess would be they are good and useful, we just need to switch over and test them out.)
- All Availability Calendar -
Streamline does have a Wordpress Plugin, which is great because we use Wordpress, but the plugin could definitely be overhauled. It is getting us by for now, but that is only because we have done a lot of customizing. One glaring problem is that there is no all availability calendar. We are currently trying to use the API and develop our own because if we don't have one by Memorial Day this will cost of thousands of dollars this summer as people will often fill in the gaps between reservations but they don't want to spend all day going into each property to look at the single calendar for that property.
(Update: They are no longer offering the WordPress Plugin publicly. I think they discovered they can serve people better by helping build out the website for them using a combination of the plugin and some custom tweaks. plus I am sure it is a little bit of a money maker. We are tech savvy enough that we built our or website, but for most companies it probably nice not to have to worry about the website. They make some really good looking websites. Some of them are a little "cookie-cutterish" for my taste, but sometimes that is good for the users because things are familiar for them.)
- General Bugs - Compared to Lodgix the Streamline system has had quite a few bugs. I submitted more support tickets to Streamline in the first two months of using them then I did the entire time I used Lodgix (four years). (Update: This is much improved. I probably send a support ticket every other month and it is usually for clarification on a new feature.)
- Digital Signatures - We were told they had a nice, tight integration with Echosign (Adobe) for digital signatures of rental agreements, but Echosign changed their policy and it would be prohibitively expensive to use. Streamline replaced Echosign with a new system called ASignatureAway.com, but the system seems new and I am worried about its security and the enforce-ability of the contracts, so we are holding off. I trusted that Adobe had everything in place, but this no name system is hard to trust. (Update: ASignatureAway.com seems to work well now and I trust it a lot more. This is no longer an issue for us.)
- Trigger emails -
Lodgix has a wonderfully designed trigger email system that was useful for all kinds of things: sending emails to cleaners when guests checkout, sending emails to guest to give them info about checking in, sending emails 8 days before guests arrival to remind them of important info, sending guests emails after checkout to leave a review, etc. Streamline has a very similar system with one HUGE drawback. If you don't setup all the triggers you ever plan to use before you put reservations into the system then plan on the triggers to not work correctly. For some reason the triggers only work if the reservation was entered after the trigger was created. I have no idea why Streamline thought this was a good idea. I could maybe see this being an optional thing to only apply to reservations made after the creation of the trigger, but by default it should be the opposite. This is a HUGE issue for us right now. We have sent guests to a dirty home because the cleaners never got the trigger email telling them to go clean it. We transferred our reservations over from our old system and then we setup the triggers, so now 95% of our reservations this summer will not get set off if this isn't fixed. Evidently we were informed that we should setup the triggers before entering reservations, but I was told a lot of things I was trying to remember during training, so I missed this. I having been nagging one of their support guys to get this fixed pronto. My support tickets and emails were ignored so I finally called him and he made it sound like he'll figure out a quick fix that day, or by the end of the week, and then I talk to him the next week and he acted like he told me it would be a while before it is fixed. This is the stuff that I find TOTALLY unacceptable. With the issue this important to us we expect a a fast fix. To date I have been waiting a month. I understand it could be a complicated thing to fix. but he keeps leading me to believe he has some sort of temporary patch that he can apply that day, but then I never hear anything from him until I contact him. Again, I think this kid is overworked due to a lack of sufficient staff at the company.
[Update on Trigger emails: This issue is now completely fixed.]
- Tapechart and Availability Calendar -
The Streamline tapechart does not use a half slash to show checking in and checking out. Most other major vacation rental availability calendars use these half slashes as they are a lot more intuitive. Lodgix used them and we never had people calling us wondering which days they could check-in and out, but now every other day I get a call from someone confused by the availability calendar on our website. Lodgix's availability calendar is light years ahead of Streamlines in others way too. For example you can hover over a date to see the nightly rate for that date and the minimum stay required and most importantly you can click right on the calendar to begin making a reservation.(Update: This is fixed, however, I still like the way Lodgix's calendar looks and acts a little better. It is more informative, like showing the minimum nights required, etc.)
[General Update: Our relationship with Streamline has improved greatly. We did do some more research into other vacation rental software and we still feel like Lodgix and Streamline are the only solutions worth considering, at least for our situation.]
The other major system we looked at was LiveRez. It sure has a beautiful website and seems to be feature rich but holy cow would it be expensive to use and the websites they create are ugly and not intuitive either. We need more people to go back to marketing design school! So short of programming our own solution we are going to stick with Streamline for the time being. They are holding a Streamline Summit that we are hoping will be a good opportunity to interact with the people of the company and give our input.
I also had the opportunity to talk with the CEO of Streamline the other night. We talked about many of the points I covered in this blog. He admitted they were understaffed because they took on a bunch of clients all at once but that they are working on that and hope by November to have a wonderful customer support staff. I hope so too. It was nice to be able to talk to the man in charge and I am hoping to see good things come from my little input.
Update: Some issues I still have.
MAXIMIZE OCCUPANCY - I wish their was some logic that I could turn on or off that if there is a only a 2 night spot between reservations and I usually have a 3 night minimum, that the user could book for just the two nights, so that we could maximize the availability.
CHANNEL MANAGEMENT - For a lot of the channel management it seems like the best way to get our listings on a lot of sites is through BookingPal, but BookingPal has not given us a good experience and the fees are high. We are hoping for a better, simpler direct integration with the different channels soon.
OVERALL UPDATE: We are at the point that for anyone with 15 or more properties, we would recommend using Streamline (or at least taking a good look at it.) There is a steep learning curve, because I still think design-wise it is not always intuitive, but they have so many options and functionality that it fits a lot of situations. The support is good enough now, the newly re-done API is nice because of the integration you can do with other platforms. They have a new Marketplace for those that build integrations with Streamline, I am hoping to see GuestNetix (GuestComment) integrated soon, for the easy texting stuff, as we much prefer a simple texting platform rather than trying to beg our guest to download an app. Much has improved in the system, and we hope it continues that way.
Feel free to contact me if you have specific questions, I am happy to share what I know.
