—PreArrive vs. Hostfully Guidebooks
If you run a portfolio and you are weighing Hostfully Guidebooks against PreArrive, the useful framing is that they are not the same category. Hostfully Guidebooks is a digital guidebook product. PreArrive is a signed acknowledgment. One informs the guest; the other produces a record.
Hostfully Guidebooks is a strong digital guidebook: it presents your rules and fees to the guest in a polished, branded book. That is disclosure. PreArrive adds the step a guidebook is not built around: each guest acknowledges every rule and fee before check-in, and you get a dated PDF certificate per reservation to attach to a claim, so the two pair rather than compete.
01At a glance
Most Hostfully Guidebooks alternative lists compare it with other guidebooks or with full property-management suites. That is the right list if you want a different guidebook. If what you need is a dated record that each guest agreed to your rules and fees, the rows that matter are these.
| Hostfully Guidebooks | PreArrive | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A digital guidebook, part of the Hostfully property-management platform | A pre-check-in signing step for your house rules and itemized fees |
| Free plan | Yes: 1 guidebook at $0 | Yes: 1 property free, no card, no expiry |
| Paid plans | Pro (up to 199 guidebooks) and Enterprise (200+); no price published on its pricing page | Published tiers from $9/mo |
| Guest acknowledges each rule and fee | Rules and fees are shown in the guidebook. Pro lists "additional term signatures" without detail on the pricing page | Guest taps through each rule and each itemized fee, then draws a signature |
| Record per reservation | Not described on its pricing page | A dated PDF certificate per stay: audit trail with IPs, timestamps, and a SHA-256 hash |
| WiFi, access, orientation, local tips | Yes, this is the core product | No. Keep a guidebook for this |
| Upsells and recommendations | Sponsored recommendations on every plan; upsells via its Guidebook Marketplace on Pro and up (1% Stripe fee) | No |
| Translations | Instant translation into 16+ languages on Pro and up | English plus host-reviewed Spanish packet terms; no automatic translation of rules or fees |
| Bookings and integrations | Built into Hostfully PMS; its site lists 100+ integrations | Calendar sync from Airbnb, VRBO, or Booking.com, plus a REST API. No PMS required |
| Best for | Operators who want a branded guest guide across many listings, especially on Hostfully PMS | Hosts and operators whose costly problem is broken rules, disputed fees, or a claim they could not document |
Hostfully Guidebooks plans and features checked on its public pricing page on November 9, 2026. Paid prices are not published there, so confirm on its site before you buy.
02What Hostfully Guidebooks is good at
Hostfully Guidebooks is a capable digital guidebook, and it is particularly comfortable for operators with several properties. You can build branded, mobile-friendly guidebooks per listing, reuse shared content across a portfolio, and give every guest a tidy place for WiFi, access details, house orientation, and local tips. For an operator who wants a consistent guest-facing experience across many units, Hostfully Guidebooks does that job well, and it sits naturally alongside the rest of the Hostfully ecosystem.
PreArrive is not a guidebook and does not try to replace one. It exists for the dispute moment, when a guest exceeded occupancy, smoked indoors, or caused damage, and you need to show they agreed to the rule and the fee. For a portfolio operator, the value is standardization: the same signed acknowledgment behind every guest, on every property, so any claim is backed the same way.
03What PreArrive is
Hostfully Guidebooks is great at giving every guest a tidy place to find the WiFi, the door code, and the orientation notes. It is not built around a per-reservation record that the guest agreed to your rules and fees. Guidebooks are designed to inform, not to record.
PreArrive does the record half: each guest taps through and signs your rules and itemized fees before check-in, and you get a PDF certificate per reservation: a drawn signature, line-by-line acknowledgment, a two-event audit trail with IPs and timestamps, and a SHA-256 content hash. Across a portfolio, that is one standardized signed record behind every guest on every property, the document an AirCover, insurance, or small-claims filing actually wants attached.
The two columns above are not a win-and-lose chart. They are two different products. Hostfully Guidebooks is built for one job; PreArrive is built for another. Reading them side by side just makes the line between the two jobs clear.
04When each is right
For a portfolio operator the two tools are complementary, not either-or. A guidebook handles the guest experience across your units; a signed acknowledgment handles the paper trail across the same units. Standardizing both is the operator-grade setup.
You want a consistent, branded guest-information experience across many listings
The right toolHostfully Guidebooks: built for exactly that, with portfolio-friendly content reuse.
You want the same defensible signed record behind every guest on every property
The right toolPreArrive: one packet standardized across the portfolio, a certificate per stay.
An owner you co-host for asks how a guest dispute on their unit is documented
The right toolPreArrive: a per-property record of signed packets is what you show the owner.
You want both a polished guest experience and portfolio-wide claim evidence
The right toolBoth: the guidebook for the stay, PreArrive for the acknowledgment, on every unit.
PreArrive is the acknowledgment layer for a portfolio, not a guidebook replacement. Free covers one property; paid tiers scale from 1 to 100 properties, with Host covering portfolios up to 25.
05FAQ
Hostfully itself has a free plan with one guidebook, and several guidebook tools offer free single-property plans. If the gap you are trying to close is a signed record rather than a guidebook, PreArrive is free for one property with no credit card and no expiry.
On November 9, 2026, Hostfully’s guidebook pricing page listed a Free plan (1 guidebook at $0), a Pro plan for up to 199 guidebooks, and an Enterprise plan for 200 or more. Only the Free plan showed a price; Pro and Enterprise pricing comes from Hostfully directly, and marketplace upsells carry a 1% Stripe fee.
A guidebook is built to present your rules, and Hostfully’s Pro plan lists “additional term signatures” without describing them on its pricing page. PreArrive is built around one thing: each guest acknowledges every rule and itemized fee before check-in, and you get a dated PDF certificate per reservation with an audit trail. If you need that record for a claim, check that whatever tool you use produces it.
No. PreArrive works on its own: sync your Airbnb, VRBO, or Booking.com calendar, or send the signing link yourself. If you already run Hostfully, keep it; PreArrive sits alongside it as the acknowledgment step.
Yes. Send the PreArrive signing link before check-in so the guest acknowledges your rules and fees, then share the Hostfully guidebook for the stay. The guidebook carries the experience across your units; the PreArrive certificates carry the paper trail for the same units.
It gives you a dated document showing the guest saw and acknowledged the specific rule or fee before arrival, which is the piece many denied claims are missing. It does not guarantee an outcome; Airbnb and insurers still weigh photos, invoices, and messages alongside it.
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