Checkfront

Pros

After years of use, my favorite thing about Checkfront is the helpful support team. They always provide detailed, competent and helpful answers.

Cons

Our only real issue is that they seem to be falling behind on channel integration (especially OTA's) compared to other reservation systems. But the functionality and usability of existing features is very good.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Checkfront

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Checkfront

Pros

There are many things that I love about Checkfront. It's online booking capability and ease of use when training employees how to use it once it is setup. 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.

Cons

The Guest form and Guest information are essentially useless and would be better if it was removed altogether. I have been hoping that over the last 2 years since its implementation there would have been improvements to this portion of checkfront, but it has not been improved. There are no triggers if guest have not filled out the info, nor is there anyway to use the information in dashboard or organize it using the daily manifest or send the information somewhere else to be used in another program via automation.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. Then you get into the creation of emails, there is no way to send test emails to check your formatting. Also you cannot create html emails in the notifications editor. I have to create email templates in Mailchimp and then export them and import them into checkfront. this might be the most ridiculous thing that I can think of. There should be a way to catogorize your emails into folders, and there should be email templates that allow you to design emails in checkfront that have mobile friendly options. If there was a way to see all the triggers without having to open every email to see that would be amazing.

Pros

Clean design, apparently smooth booking flow, low fees.

Cons

Bugs. Bugs in the backoffice and bugs in the booking widgets.
If you're Europe-based you need to know that Tech Support are in British Columbia so are 8 hours behind Europe and they work 9-5 Pacific Time... They're only available at night!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Checkfront

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Checkfront

Pros

The booking management was easy and the customer storefront to book flowed nicely. There are a lot of integrations, and the product is always evolving. The price was actually pretty good compared to other products.

Cons

Some complex booking processes were difficult to set up and felt "hacky" where we had to make dummy products to act as in-between triggers. The system was not designed for what we were looking to do, but it was still able to do it.
Integrations would sometimes break, causing errors on the booking page.
Some features were blocked behind using their payment provider tool instead of an alternative they allowed. For instance, if you used Square instead of Stripe, customer were not able to book directly from the Google search results page.
Reporting was also very difficult to deal with and lacked the ability to customize it. I had to export all the data to a database daily in order to see everything.

Pros

I liked that it was easy to use, back office is ok but website integration needs work

Cons

I didnt like the website provided and if you added Checkfront to your own website it didnt intergrate well.

Pros

It's an affordable booking system for our small business. The PC version of Checkfront is very easy to use.

Cons

The mobile/app for checkfront. Difficult to use and navigate.

Pros

As someone who makes decision on the last minute, i like to have the option to book last minute or probably make a booking in advance if we have planned everything early. Checkfront offers that and I love that. It makes booking convenient even for older people. And I love that I can use Apple pay as a mode of payment.

Cons

So far Im enjoying using it, couldnt think of anything that I dont like.

Pros

Checkfront offers a number of key features that make it fully customisable and suitable for a range of businesses including activity companies, rental companies and hotels. If you run a combination of things, then it is the perfect solution as you can adapt different parts of the system to the needs of your staff and guests.

Cons

Checkfront's front-end booking portal plug-in is fairly ugly and is not particularly customisable (even with the new upgrade to this). If there was greater customisation to this, we would likely look to use the booking page option. 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

Pros

Checkfront has been a game changer for our industry and especially the company. The online booking has freed up time to focus on other necessary duties and the price allows us to run our business more effectively and efficiently.

Cons

The glitches of trying to change a reservation and sometimes it just won't. That's a little time consuming and annoying but it doesn't happen that often. Sometimes the reports can be cumbersome.

Pros

The overall use is great. It takes time to learn and set up but pays itself back ten fold once in play making your small business run professionally.

Cons

Limited items unless you upgrade which doesn’t make sense for small seasonal businesses. We don’t run in the winter so let us keep being able to hibernate the account in the winter and not pay full price.

Pros

Easy-to-use. Reports are helpful when reviewing my business

Cons

Changing an inventory item when aliased . It takes a long time to set up inventory items. If the parent number is changed, it would be good if aliased would automatically change.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

Booking online featuresCalendar for overall management of resourcesReports but would like the customer reports of be in colourCategorising resources

Cons

Small organisation and to add more than 5 admins is a large increase in cost. Would like be able to add extra admin for a minimal fee per admin.Resources cannot be recursively booked in different features if they are more than two levels down..

Pros

This product was easy to set up and is very intuitive to use. The customer service is excellent.

Cons

I don't really have any cons to add.Integrating Checkfront into my website was very easy.

Pros

First and foremost, Checkfront is affordable for a small business our size, and even though they are much more affordable than the high-cost competition, Checkfront doesn't scrimp on features and functionality. Checkfront takes a day or two to get used to but that's only because it's jam-packed full of useful and necessary features. Checkfront is a fully functional and complete booking system that won't leave you feeling like there's always something missing, as is the case with so many other low-cost providers.

Cons

I can't complain about a system that does everything the big high-cost alternatives do for a price that's affordable and cost-effective for small businesses like mine.

Pros

Checkfront is very affordable relative to other tour booking platforms (they charge a flat annual fee rather than a percentage of sales - which I believe is the fair way to operate), and it works great for many purposes. There are lots of options for customization, and it is easy to learn how to configure and manage the platform using Checkfront's tutorials and documentation. There are lots of helpful integrations (Stripe, PayPal, Google Analytics, etc.) that are easy to set up. Checkfront support is always very responsive and helpful.

Cons

Checkfront is designed to work across many types of booking environments including hotels, hourly tours, daily tours, weekly tours, etc. Because these types of businesses have different needs, Checkfront balances those but, in my experience, isn't perfect for any one type of business. As a tour operator, sometimes we have needed to come up with workarounds to meet our specific needs or live with certain shortcomings. Checkfront support is always helpful, but if there is a feature that you need, the best you can do is submit a "feature request" and hope that enough other people request the same feature for development.

Pros

I have used Checkfront for five years and the service has always been outstanding. They always reply very quickly to my emails. I've phoned them a couple of times but really there's no need to phone as their email response is so good. It also means you have a record of what's discussed. Having an inventory based rental system that allows my customers to book online and keep stock updated keeps me ahead of the competition. I love the customised notifications that are specific to the items booked. The free add-ons are amazing. Being able to link to my accounting software makes life simple.

Cons

You have to keep a very close eye on products being returned. If something isn't returned it's very easy for it to "fall off the system" if it's not noticed on the due date. It would be good to be able to scan items back in or at the very least for the item to remain on the desktop until it's been checked off. I understand Checkfront are working on this. The only other concern for us has been that delivery and collection has to be booked as an actual item and not offered at Checkout. Our customers are confused by this no matter how many prompts we add. I believe it's because customers are used to an online retails experience where it is common practice for Delivery to offered after items have been selected and you are at the final stages before payment.

Pros

Basically Checkfront is fairly easy to use. As a tour operator, there is a lot of flexibility given to obtain the information we need from our passengers. We feel it is easy to maintain and fits our needs. For our guests using the software, we have never received any negative comments and feel it is user friendly. We like that we were able to link our liability waivers for the guests to complete ahead of time which saves a lot of time and paper. Another timesaver is the way the bookings are linked directly to our Quickbooks account. Overall, we are very satisfied with everything that Checkfront does for us.

Cons

Reporting seems to have a fair amount of issues. We have contacted support about this and they are aware of the problem but just haven't figured out a solution yet. This is very time consuming to manually calculate monthly and yearly sales totals which are definitely incorrect in the Checkfront system.

Pros

It's got it all.. from booking setup to distribution channels.

Cons

Not easy to integrate and display various currencies. Or take payments in different currencies, but hey - they are working on that.
Also not easy to hide certain products from the public and only allow access with an URL for special events or products that may only be viewed by some customers.
Resource management feature is not live yet, but it sounds like this will be a complete game-changer; making it possible to manage all guides, transport, the hiring of equipment and even activities and accommodation required for trips and tours.

Pros

Easy to use, easy to create items. The support team helps a lot with videos and availability

Cons

The info of an item, dates and everything about an item it doesn't look good in mobile, it didn't show a lot of info. Also you can't have two discounts in the same booking page

Pros

Seamless integration with our website. Easy to streamline with our credit card processor. Powerful Reports at our fingertips. Customer Service if there is an occasional snafu. Helpful community and tutorial videos when setting up new accounts, items, events, etc.

Cons

This was tough, but of course there is a bit of a learning curve when you are first setting up all the parameters that are right for you business. Plenty of customer service and a large community support to post your questions, or search for an answer because someone has already crossed that bridge successfully. Also loved that once I set up my "Item Event" (think: 3 day minimum stay for Labor Day) then I can easily use a copy button to make each subsequent year's Item Event. So I do not have to recreate the wheel.

Pros

Checkfront is easy to use for our customers, extremely reliable on the back-end, provides amazing value for our business at its cost, is continually improving their product, and provides fast and clear-cut support for any issues. It is easy to integrate with our existing services and online presentation, giving our customers a seamless and easy-to-use experience when ordering through our website.

Cons

Sometimes I wish the customizations for automated email communications were more granular in terms of controlling what information goes out and comes in based on product types.

Pros

Online reservations showing availability

Cons

Don't have any issues at all with the product works great for us.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Checkfront

Reasons for Switching to Checkfront

Pros

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

Cons

Nothing comes to mind, there are features we don't use, but that is more likely because it is irrelevant to the way we use Checkfront, not necessarily a con.

Pros

Checkfront allows you to set up a tour guide website relatively quickly without the hassle of knowing how to code. Although the designs are limited they are perfect for displaying tours available for your clients and making it easy for them to check availability and book tours. The backend system is what makes this powerful, allowing me to manage my tours whether they were booked through the site or via agents.

Cons

Some of the set-up if requiring special options is rather complicated but the help notes are clear and comprehensive. It is just a matter of persevering and checking to make sure you've got it set up right.

Pros

It is quite user friendly and has intuitive features.

Cons

It feels a bit clunky and dated with some features. It badly needs to catch up with other systems in some areas such as dashboard management, photo galleries and itinerary layouts.

Pros

simple efficient. keeps track of chats easy to cancel and make bookings. very helpful online troubleshooting the techs are very knowledgeable and easy to follow their help.i love the banners paid and unpaid or cancelled very cool.

Cons

the home page is clunky. would be better if your arrivals and departures were in list form on this page. the calendar would work better if you could drag and drop bookings to gain a day here and there.

Pros

The systems are in place to send email reminders and confirmations of items booked. The booking is easy to set up so your customers can go through the form themselves

Cons

When checking on a customer name you have to be exact - it doesn't show similar names like it use to, would love that back

Pros

At first it took some time to understand the platform, but their people made that process easier with various videos and instructions

Cons

Kinda expensive on a monthly basis, and oftentimes I'll have no tours, but still have to pay Checkfront

Pros

The many reports and options available.

Cons

Two calendars are confusing. Making changes to reservations. Difficult to figure out even with directions creating frustration and lots of time spent trying. Not user friendly- too many terms that are not easy to learn. Sorry to complain.

Pros

I like the reservation calendar and online booking the most.

Cons

I think it would be beneficial to be able to mark rooms as they're cleaned. This would enable me to when to know when the room is clean and ready to be turned over to the next guest.

Pros

Lots of great stuff about this. Pretty easy to use..

Cons

The app is awful. Kicks me out daily. Needs to be improved big time.

Pros

Ease of use and excellent customer service

Cons

Integration with websites is somewhat limited. WOuld love to have it be a bit more customizable.

Pros

I managed to build an entire booking system from scratch and can maintain it without and army of tech prople.

Cons

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

Pros

Being able to adapt for our individual needs

Cons

Our pricing plan is excellent with Checkfront. But I recently received notice it was going to increase significantly. This is very disappointing. If we utilized of the abilities of the program I would pay more but we use a very minimal amount as I do most work in house. The program is great though.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Checkfront

Pros

User friendly, more information than other software

Cons

We have no dislikes about this software.

Pros

Checkfront have now added a how to section with images so you can pretty much work everything out just by following the very easy to use online guide.

Cons

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

Pros

It does the job for bookings and storing information.

Cons

Almost zero consideration has gone into the marketing aspect of bookings.They are currently not GA4 compatible, despite being under a month out from the UA sunset.Email automations and design are abysmal. It only allows for HTML design. Poor automation and flow.The booking interface is ugly and not well optimized. This goes for the widget and booking page.

Pros

Customer service is generally helpful when the software or back end service fails. Unfortunately I need to use this a lot.

Cons

The user interface and user experience is entirely nonsensical. The most basic, basic thing a guide needs is to check in guests on a tour. Checkfront doesn't even show the guide how many people are on the tour. It doesn't alphabetize the guests, so the guide has to search through a list of randomly sorted names every time a guest comes in. Many guides in our company have refused to use Checkfront at all, and simply don't check in the guests. Many customers show up on our tour without booking, because they said they couldn't figure out the Checkfront booking system. How many customers and how much money have we lost because of the Checkfront UI? We'll never know.

Pros

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. We also like the different look and feel options for your booking page.

Cons

If I had to make a criticism, and I mean "had to", I would say that because Checkfront is so flexible in its design features, there is a learning curve to understand how the functionality works. That is why you need good customer support, which you also get with Checkfront.

Pros

We have been with check front for 7 years now and we love everything about it. It's simple to use, training new employees to use it is easy, the booking process just flows nicely so it makes sense. Customers also compliment us on how simple and straightforward it is to use. I also feel like they are there when I need them to help me out with any issues I'm having.

Cons

I would like to use the waivers section but it didn't quite work for our set up. There's a couple of little things that would be nice to be able to do with the calendar etc. I also which the app was a bit more useful. I usually always send suggestions in when I come across something that I think would be beneficial for everyone.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Checkfront

Pros

The software has many really useful functions e.g. waivers; group waivers; integration with Xero. The developements in terms of the calendar and manifest are great improvements but little tweaks in layout would declutter the view.

Some of the details functionality is brilliant - often not easy to find how to do something but just ask the Support folks and they usually have a very neat solution to offer.

The customer support is fantastic, so responsive and are very wiling to take a suggestion/issue back to the developers.

Cons

Find the Inventory calendar a bit cluttered and the mobile app could be done with a little refinement in terms of daily manifest.

Integration with Xero needs a little refinement - would be excellent if an admin could choose which Payment Methods are integrated, at the moment every transaction creates a Xero invoice which is not always appropriate (e.g. gift vouchers, cash, face-to-face card payments) so there can be quite a bit of voiding in Xero to correct position.

The Partner Accounts are too restrictive for the way we work with our partners so we had to provide User accounts to provide the functionality.

Pros

I have an IT background and was able to install and configure this system mostly on my own. I needed help with a few more complex configuration questions but pretty impressive that a system this sophisticated can be setup by the end user. It is very flexible and powerful but this also means that setup can get quite involved.

Cons

Reporting is a weakness with no custom reporting options. Ongoing development of the product is slow and currently with no transparency on the roadmap. They have promised to share more info on this though.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Checkfront

Pros

if Checkfront was not available for me, I would be drowning in a sea of paperwork. For example, I started using the documentations app two years ago. It has allowed us to develop a social distancing booking system, that is touchless and COVID approved.

After an initial setup and learning process, our customer response has been very positive because we have eliminated the paperwork "Hassel" at the boarding gate. It has cut our boarding time in half because all the insurance required documentation is now done at their home or office. It has eliminated filing of the paperwork. It has made documentation look up easier.

Cons

I have been with Checkfront for almost 10 years. They have eliminate many of my concerns. However, currently my discount codes do not work like they use to. When I use multiple discounts on the same invoice.

For example, I might have 3 or 4 rental booking on the same invoice, representing 3 to 4 days of rental for that week. We offer a 25% discount on weekday rentals and a 10% rental on weekends. I should be able to have different discount rates for each booking by using the "per item" discount code. Unfortunately, it does not work that way. The total is the same but the software prorates the discount on all items on the invoice. This is very confusing to my customer.

Pros

The invoicing and notification system is excellent. It allows for a sequence of events - the initial request and removal of item from inventory, the paying of a deposit and the sending out of a reminder for the balance. It has also allowed us to record bookings that come from another listing site. The notification system is good but , as with with all automatic sequences, you need to think carefully before setting a sequence in train because the same message notification might not be right for everyone. It takes a lot of thought to set up the generic sequence that will most often be used. However, it is very easy to make adjustments to the message before it goes out.

Cons

Checkfront may be used more for booking tours rather than holiday homes but it's flexibility allows for many different set-ups. Therein lies the problem with regard to the help pages. They are quite helpful with regard to what any particular feature is but most examples tend to be about booking tours rather than accommodation. I spent a lot of time working out what I could do and how I should do it, more or less by trial and error. In some ways that is a good thing because I learnt so much more about the system by the sheer repetition of trying so many ways to do something. However, it would have saved me a lot of time to have some real examples of how to set up and overcome particular problems.
So far, I have only two irritations with the software. One is the mobile phone app which could be much improved but is not actually a bother because I really do not need to carry my office in my pocket. The other is the Inventory calendar. I wish I could highlight the row that I am working on because it is very easy to start making alterations to the wrong row. I also wish that I could highlight a period of time to add or remove a property from inventory. You can only do that one day at a time which is tedious and non-intuitive. There are other ways round this and perhaps there is a good programming reason for the limitation.

Pros

After operating our business for years without an online, pre-paid bookings system we had no idea of the positive impact Checkfront would have, not just for our business but for our lives. Red Star Music is a recording studio and rehearsal spaces and there was initial concern that introducing this type of system would 'scare away', deter or frustrate existing customer but to our surprise, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It has been a win/win situation for everyone.

Pros for customers:

* No longer have to rely on getting in touch with us to book and check availability.
* No longer have to request invoices.
* Checkfront with the addition of digital access to the spaces means we are able to be open 24hrs a day, 7 days a week.

Pros for us:

* Protection from financial losses due to people not showing up for bookings, cancelling last minute and refusing to pay. With Checkfront's pre-paid system and our compulsory terms of agreement, the responsibility is placed entirely on the customers to organise themselves.
* Protection from human error during the bookings process (on our part).
* We are now open 24hrs/7 days a week and no longer are required to have onsite staff members collecting payment whenever there are bookings.
* We have more time to focus on other aspects of the business and our lives rather than having to be on call around the clock. Our phones are very quiet these days and we have more bookings than ever.

Cons

Understanding that our needs are fairly complicated when it comes to a customised bookings system, there are really only a few very minor things:

It'd be nice to be able to set a rule that a certain time slot booking can only be booked when another before it is in place. For example - we'd like to run a 2hr discount session from 9-11pm as a gap filler on week days but we only want customers to be able to book that session if a 5-9pm session is already booked so that we aren't blocking a potential 4hr 7-11pm, higher value session. Does that make sense? No biggie though!

There are a couple of things with the mobile app however:

1. If I'm away and I want to check tomorrow's bookings on my phone to see whether I need to be there or not, I can open the app and see in the list of customers from earliest to latest (top to bottom), but I have to tap into each individual customer to see what time they are actually booked, making it difficult for me to get and overall visual of how I'm going to organise the day, hire gear etc.
2. I often want to be able to contact customers when I'm away to give them instructions but there doesn't seem to be any way for me to access contact details, phone/email for the bookings in the mobile app. Being able to tap copy their phone numer and send a quick text would make life much easier.

Pros

This is very user friendly, both on the back end/set up side as well as the user side. The reservation system we used to use is extremely limited. We love that we can create a reservation and easily make changes. Our old system was not as user friendly and we would have to delete a reservation and re-create it even if we wanted to something as simple as change a date.

Cons

The website version is awesome, but the mobile app is not as user friendly as we would like and we are not thrilled with the reports. For the app, we are unable to check booking documents or update the reservations. That's great that we can check them in, but if they need to add a feature or change their dates at time of check in, we have to switch over to the web version, then switch back for payment. Which is another issue. We have connected checkfront with square, and a lot of the payments don't register with checkfront, so we have to first take the payment, and then record the payment. Very frustrating. We already had a few issues with the checkfront reports, which we have been able to work around, but now that we have connected to square, we are finding it extremely difficult to balance and now our bookkeeper has to refer to multiple reports, which of course does not help. One huge thing that would help is that our items in checkfront be able to communicate with square directly. Right now they convert over and say 'Custom Amount'. In one square report the booking id is referenced, but not others. Very, very frustrating. But if an item, like snowmobile passes, could actually transfer over as snowmobile passes, that would be huge. There are a few other issues, but those are the main setbacks we have currently.

Pros

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

Cons

Can’t think of any meaningful cons or problems with the software

Pros

Checkfront allows us to customize our reservation system to fit our specific business needs

Cons

There is a definite learning curve to using this product.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Checkfront

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Checkfront

Pros

The flexibility. You are in the condition to bend the software depending on your demand. And this is great!
Another GREAT quality is not the software but relate to that and is the customer service. one of the best I even dealt with. every time you have a doubt they are responsive and always will help you at the best of their abilities to achieve your goal. is this an ENORMOUS quality!

Cons

It's not totally optimized for a business like ours that sells cruise, there are software that give you the possibility to have a graphic visual of the boat with all the cabins. but Checkfront is young and I'm sure that in the future these features will be implemented!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Checkfront