Guest Communication
Chekin
Guest registration, ID verification, and EU compliance for short-term rentals
Best for Enterprise
The default guest-registration layer for EU short-term rental operators
From €3.95 • No free trial
Comparison
Chekin vs Hostfully Guidebook
Pricing, pros and cons, and buyer-fit side-by-side. Pick the one that matches your operation — or see why neither should.
Guest Communication
Hostfully Guidebook
Digital guidebooks that elevate your guest experience
Best for Small Hosts
Best free-to-start digital guidebook for small vacation rental hosts
From $0/listing • No free trial
✓Editorial verdict
Which Should You Pick: Chekin or Hostfully Guidebook?
Pick Chekin if you operate European STRs and need police/tourism authority filing, ID verification, and tourist tax collection bolted onto your PMS. Pick Hostfully Guidebook if you manage 1–20 properties and want a polished, mobile-friendly digital guidebook starting at $0 forever for the first listing — no compliance scope and no PMS dependency required.
Editorial perspective from the Chekin side; factual claims about Hostfully Guidebook are drawn from its review.
Pricing Side-by-Side
Chekin
Full pricing →From €3.95 • No free trial
Basic
€3.95/property/mo
- Online check-in and guest registration
- Police/tourism authority reporting
- Tourist tax collection
Premium
€5.95/property/mo
- Everything in Basic
- One premium feature: ID verification, virtual keys, Guest App, digital guide, unified inbox, or e-invoicing
- Payment processing 1.5% + €0.99/transaction; 1% upselling commission
Enterprise
€7.95/property/mo
- Everything in Premium
- Customized configuration ('Personalizado')
- Same 3-unit monthly / 20-unit annual minimums
Hostfully Guidebook
Full pricing →From $0/listing • No free trial
Free Forever
$0
1 guidebook
- One branded mobile-friendly digital guidebook
- Unlimited property info, house rules, local recommendations
- No credit card required
- Core feature set included
Additional Guidebooks
$7.99/mo per guidebook
$9.99/mo if billed monthly instead of annually
Unlimited (pay per additional guidebook)
- Everything in Free Forever
- Separate branded guidebook per property
- Per-property customization and content
- Volume scales linearly with portfolio size
Marketplace Add-On
1% Stripe fee on transactions
Only applies when using optional upsell marketplace
Any tier above
- Guest-facing upsell and service bookings
- Stripe-powered transactions
- Revenue share with 1% platform fee
What each tool does well — and where it falls short
What Chekin does well
Police reporting coverage spans 20+ countries
Hotel Tech Report (accessed 2026-04-25) says Chekin handles 'police reporting (20+ countries)' alongside ID verification, digital signatures, tourist tax, and deposits. Removes manual filing for operators in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, and beyond.
Slots alongside ~35+ named PMS and channel partners
The vendor integrations page lists Guesty, Hostaway, Cloudbeds, Lodgify, Smoobu, Mews, OwnerRez, Hostfully, Avantio, Hospitable, and more. Operators don't need to swap their stack to add a compliance layer.
Documented public REST API with self-serve API key generation
Chekin's public API documentation covers Reservations, Housing, Rooms, Police, and Stats endpoints with HTTPS-only access. Operators can build embedded check-in pages or pipe data into custom dashboards.
What Hostfully Guidebook does well
First guidebook is completely free with no credit card required
Hostfully states 'Your first guidebook is always free, forever,' removing cost barriers for hosts evaluating the platform or managing a single property.
Fast setup with a fill-in-the-blanks workflow
Capterra reviewers note guidebooks are 'easy to use, with everything set up for you — just fill in your information and go,' reducing onboarding friction for non-technical hosts.
Built-in analytics track how guests interact with guidebook content
Users can see how guidebooks are performing, gaining data-driven insights into which property information and local recommendations guests actually engage with.
Where Chekin falls short
Customer support repeatedly described as unresponsive in 2024–2025 reviews
A January 2025 Capterra review says 'Support is zero. We sent several emails... without success.' Capterra customer service score sits at 2.3/5 across multiple reviews — the most consistent negative signal across independent sources.
Minimums force small hosts to overpay
Vendor pricing page requires 3 units monthly or 20 units annually. A 1- or 2-property host pays for 3 units they don't have on monthly billing, and the annual discount is locked behind a 20-unit commitment.
Compliance value is overwhelmingly EU-centric
Authority connectors include Policía Nacional, Guardia Civil, SES.HOSPEDAJES, Alloggiati Web, ISTAT, SEF Portugal, eVisitor, and Feratel — with limited non-EU coverage (Dubai Police, EMAAR). US operators pay the per-property rate without the police-reporting feature that anchors the value prop.
Where Hostfully Guidebook falls short
Recommendations interface is hard to navigate
Multiple Capterra reviewers report the recommendations screen is 'a little hard to navigate' and some features are difficult to locate, creating friction when updating local tips.
Complex setup process for advanced paid features
Users describe the full paid version as 'extremely complex and challenging to get all the details put in properly' with slow email-based support responses.
Organizational structure breaks down at scale
Reviewers note the house manual section lacks subcategories, meaning 'when you get a lot of manuals, things can get lost' — a growing pain for multi-property operators.
Which Should You Pick
Pick Chekin if
European STR operators in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, and France who must submit guest data to police or tourism registries and want online check-in, ID verification, and tourist tax collection in one workflow.
Skip Chekin if
You're a sub-3-property US/non-EU host with no police-registration obligation, or you require fast, responsive customer support.
Pick Hostfully Guidebook if
Individual hosts and small property managers with 1–5 properties who want professional digital guidebooks at minimal cost, leveraging the free tier and affordable per-guidebook pricing.
Skip Hostfully Guidebook if
You manage 20+ properties and need comprehensive property management features, or you require extensive API access without a premium account.
Where Chekin and Hostfully Guidebook actually differ
- Different product scope — Chekin is a compliance-first layer handling police reporting in 20+ countries, ID verification, tourist tax, and deposit collection alongside an existing PMS; Hostfully Guidebook is a standalone digital guidebook with property info, house rules, local recommendations, and an optional upsell marketplace — no ID verification, no authority filing.
- Chekin starts at €3.95/property/mo (Basic) with a 3-unit monthly or 20-unit annual minimum; Hostfully starts at $0 forever for the first guidebook with no credit card, then $7.99/guidebook/mo billed annually ($9.99 monthly) for additional properties.
- Chekin integrates with 35+ PMS, channel, and smart-lock partners (Guesty, Hostaway, Cloudbeds, Nuki) and drives reservation-based workflows; Hostfully Guidebook is channel-agnostic via shareable link or QR code and lists 7+ verified partners (RemoteLock, PriceLabs, Turno, NoiseAware).
- Chekin charges 1.5% + €0.30 on deposit transactions and $2.50–$4 per booking for Waivo damage protection; Hostfully charges only a 1% Stripe fee on optional Marketplace upsell transactions with no other transaction costs.
- Chekin's strongest segments are mid-size EU portfolios (10–50 units) and multi-channel operators needing uniform compliance; Hostfully Guidebook's strongest segment is small portfolios (1–5 properties) and multi-channel operators wanting a single guest-info source of truth across booking platforms.
Common objections
- Hostfully's first guidebook is free forever and the rest are $7.99/mo — why pay Chekin's per-property fee with a 3-unit minimum?
- If you're a 1–2 property host outside the EU with no police-filing obligation and you only need polished guest content, you shouldn't — Chekin is explicitly a 'skip' for sub-3-property hosts. Hostfully's free tier is the right call. Chekin earns its fee when you legally must file guest data to police or tourism registries in Spain, Italy, Portugal, or similar jurisdictions — Hostfully doesn't address that obligation at all.
- Hostfully is channel-agnostic and ships in minutes with no PMS wiring — doesn't Chekin's PMS dependency make it more brittle?
- For pure guidebook delivery, Hostfully's shareable link is genuinely simpler. Chekin's PMS dependency is the feature, not a bug — it pulls reservation data automatically to drive ID verification, tourist tax calculation, and police filing without manual entry. If you don't need any of that, Hostfully is cleaner. If you're filing dozens of police reports a month, the PMS integration is what makes the workflow tractable.
- Both tools have open API access — can I just build my own integration between them?
- Both list open API access, so in principle yes. But they solve different problems — Chekin's API surface is about reservations, guest data, and compliance filings while Hostfully's is about guidebook content. Most operators pair Chekin with a PMS and send guests a Hostfully guidebook link separately rather than building a custom bridge.
Keep Digging
Chekin
The default guest-registration layer for EU short-term rental operators
Hostfully Guidebook
Best free-to-start digital guidebook for small vacation rental hosts