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Build it yourself, then add it up
Everything Staywarden does can be bought in pieces. We tried that first. Here’s how it went.
First: can you even buy it?
Before the price comes a simpler question that almost nobody asks: will they even sell to you? We asked as a four-cabin lodge. Every box below is something you can check yourself in five minutes.
| Cloudbeds | Hostaway | Staywarden | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price on their own page | no | yes | yes |
| Answered our 4-cabin lodge | no | yes | yes |
| WhatsApp on the number you already use | no | no | yes |
Every “no” in this table is a fact you can check: open their page and look for the price, or ask them for a demo. It is not an opinion about their product.
We tried. Twice.
We paid $225 a month for Hostaway, for four cabins. We never got the WhatsApp module working, and the reports did not match our own numbers. It took a week to get a meeting.
We asked Cloudbeds for a demo on August 13, and again on August 26, 2026. They never answered.
That is why Staywarden exists.
And now the money
Our own lodge, four cabins, building the stack piece by piece, with the smallest plan in each category:
Duve’s monthly minimum — just one piece of that stack — costs almost as much as all of Staywarden.
And that is the cheap version. Pay someone to wire it together instead of doing it yourself, and the bill grows before your first booking.
Run your own numbers
Not sure? The stack above is a real example — ours.
What the price does not show
The seams
When something breaks between two vendors, each blames the other, and you are stuck in the middle with the guest waiting.
We do not promise there will never be errors — there are, and we fix them as fast as we can, almost always the same day. What we do promise is one place to write to.
You can be running today
This is the difference you feel first. With the other systems, the first step is booking a meeting: Hostaway took us a week; with Cloudbeds it never happened.
Start this afternoon and your hotel or lodge is running on Staywarden tomorrow.
How day one goes3
With Staywarden there is no meeting. You sign up, and the Warden walks you through it, in your own words:
- Bring your bookings.Upload the file from your old system and watch a dry run: what goes in, what clashes, which room is not recognized. Nothing is saved until you confirm it.
- Ask in your own words.“Which cabins are free this weekend?” “Raise December 10%.” “Move Ana to cabin 2.” It answers — and it does it, after your Confirm. No manual, no training.
- You have the last word.The Warden creates and moves bookings, changes prices and writes to your guests — but anything that reaches a guest, a channel or money is shown to you first, before → after, and waits for your Confirm. It only prepares invoices — you press Issue.
Don’t take our word for it
Ask Cloudbeds for the price. Ask them for a demo. We usually answer within a day.
And if any figure on this page has changed, write to us and we will correct it — with the date, like everything else here.
Prices checked in September 2026 on each provider’s own pages. The Hostaway figure comes from our own invoice for four cabins, not an estimate. Staywarden Complete is $99 with one cabin or room type, plus $10 for each one after that.