WP Booking Calendar vs MotoPress.

WP Booking Calendar vs. Hotel Booking: Detailed Comparison

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When you need to rent out accommodation or provide a service on WordPress, you naturally want clients to know its availability. Availability calendars are so far the best invention for this purpose.

In a nutshell, these calendars allow you to:

  • Display color-coded calendars with the item/service availability updated in real time, upon a booking, without manual control.
  • Enable people to make a booking right from the calendar or on the associated page.
  • Enable clients to pay for such a booking.
  • Manage bookings and clients.

A few of the best WordPress calendar plugins that provide you with such calendars are WP Booking Calendar (v. 10.5.1) and MotoPress Hotel Booking (v. 5.0.3), which I’m comparing in this article.

I’ll introduce you to specific features of them both in the comparison table, but more than that, cover real scenarios of how these plugins are used by real business owners and web agencies.

Hotel Booking Plugin WP Booking Calendar

Cost

The pricing offered by WP Booking Calendar is highly differentiated by the use case, for example, a single license for a personal site is just $39. When you need to build a multi-vendor directory like Airbnb, you need to purchase the $349 plan. Also, it’s a bit too time-consuming to analyze whether the feature you need is available in the plan you choose. Moreover, I’d cautiously call the ‘one-time cost’ phrase used by WP Booking Calendar misleading, because to get the plugin updates, meaning, to have an always up-to-date fully-functional product, you actually have to pay that price every 6 six months (possibly with 50% discount).

MotoPress offers flexible and clear pricing options. You can purchase the plugin only and extra add-ons if you need (annual payment), or save money by purchasing a membership package (the plugin + all addons), either for a one-time payment (actual one-time, with lifetime updates and support included) or annual subscription.

FeatureWP Booking CalendarMotoPress Hotel Booking
Pay every yearOne site:
Pay every 6 months to get updates:
$39 – Personal
$79 – Business Small
$139 – Business Medium
$179 – Business Large
$349 – MultiUser
$139 – one site
$249.00 – multiple sites
Hotel Booking + all addons + all themes – $299 (annual membership)
One-time cost$799 – Hotel Booking + all addons + all themes (lifetime membership)
AddonsNo, features differ by plans and the number of websitesFree-$99
View add-ons
ServicesPlugin installation and configuration service

Rental duration

WP Booking Calendar: hourly and daily
The flexibility of a rental period makes this plugin completely suitable for various short and long-term rental businesses, including clinic appointments, item rentals, hotels, boat tour businesses, and events.

MotoPress Hotel Booking: daily
With check-in and check-out days clearly marked on hotel booking calendars, this plugin offers convenient daily rental periods only. It’s used to rent out trailers, hotel rooms, vacation rentals, boats, campings and glampings.
Tip: another booking plugin from the MotoPress family for hourly bookings is Appointment Booking.

To conclude this part, both plugins are perfectly suitable for accommodation and hotel business, while the WP Booking Calendar plugin also works for hourly scheduled services and rental items.

How real customers use these WP calendar plugins

Let’s dig into customer reviews to understand real-life scenarios of how these plugins are used.

From the WP Booking calendar reviews:

“Love using this plugin for our B&B site”.

“I purchased this plugin because I’m building a website with appartment rentals, and wanted to do it on my own via WordPress and not paying a third party to do it for me”.

“I am using multiuser version for a portuguese tourism website since two years and the plugin absolutely meets all needs”.

“i like that this plugin allows me to schedule my clients by hour”.

“Very good plugin. I use it to rent a fishing boat and book a clubhouse.”

“I just need a simple scheduling system for my parent teacher conferences, and this is great”.

All from wp.org

From the MotoPress Hotel Booking reviews:

“We are a greener camping club site located on the river Thames”. Read the full story.

– “If you are building a property rental website, this plugin is a must-have!”. Lite version

“I have purchased the license of Booklium, theme for WordPress, and must say that it has fitted my needs like a glove for my Airbnb like website”. All reviews.

“We now own 5 units (3 condos and 2 houses) and manage over 25. We are adding new units almost weekly as partner owner/investors purchase units which they wish to use at their convenience and have us manage their short term rental business the remaining times”. Read full story.

How they work

What’s the main difference in how you configure and manage these booking calendars? You need a little more patience here if you want to understand the details.

WP Booking Calendar
A booking calendar is a central thing to this plugin. Whether you create a page with your hotel room details or service you sell, you will need to ‘generate’ and place a booking calendar on it. If you need a booking form (aka global search form or search availability form) too, not just a WordPress availability calendar, the plugin can do that. This is how it is mostly used, by the way, a calendar + a booking form for instant reservations. For example:

WordPress booking calendar example.

When you have multiple properties or things you rent out and want to have one global search through them, this plugin is capable of adding such. You have the arrival, departure, and guests fields by default, plus the ability to add more filters (e.g. ‘location’, ‘property type’, etc.). Like in this video.

Creating a form in WP Booking Calendar.
Creating a form in WP Booking Calendar.

As for availability, you set it manually for every item: you select a range of days on the calendar, choose ‘available’ or ‘unavailable’ status, and then apply it.

Availability in WP booking system
Availability in WP Booking Calendar.

In the global settings, you can set up which days are unavailable.

Overall, you can create all types of forms in the plugin settings and then place them as traditional WordPress shortcodes to the needed pages. To some extent, the plugin also supports widgets in Elementor and blocks in the block editor, but it’s not a completely native integration but rather a more user-friendly shortcode generator.

MotoPress Hotel Booking
This plugin puts the accommodation as a central item, for which you customize availability through seasons and prices through rates. Based on these settings and booked dates, the calendar displays available and unavailable dates.

Seasonal pricing in Hotel Booking plugin.

You will also have ‘booking rules’ to take exact properties out of booking when needed:

booking rules in hotel booking availability.
Setting up booking rules in MotoPress Hotel Booking.

A single accommodation page can be featured with or without a WordPress availability calendar. You can control whether to give more weight to the calendar or not – for example, enable or display daily rates displayed and the option to pick and book dates right from the calendar. You can have a calendar just for the availability display or totally remove it, leaving just a booking form. Here is an example of a single accommodation page with a WordPress availability calendar:

single accommodation page hotel booking.
Single accommodation page created with Hotel Booking.

There is a global search form that searches through all the properties that you can also place on the site. It can be as basic as check-in and check-out dates or fully custom with any number of extra search filters that work for your business.

Custom search form.
A search form with custom added filters in MotoPress Hotel Booking.

The awesomeness of the plugin for non-tech users is how smoothly it integrates with the block editor and other commercial WordPress page builders. All the fields, calendars, and other details can be configured visually:

Block settings in MotoPress Hotel Booking.
Block settings in the MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin.

Moreover, there is a block/widget for every need, such as creating a good-looking list or grid layout of rental items, placing a global search form, or adding an availability calendar only:

All Hotel Booking blocks.

So let’s put more differences into the comparison table.

FeatureMotoPress Hotel BookingWP Booking Calendar
Availability calendars setupVia accommodation, seasons, rates and booking rulesManual for individual calendars and global for all
Global search formyesBusiness Large plan and higher
Custom search filters for the search formyesyes
Adding forms to the websiteEqual support for shortcodes, block editor blocks, Elementor widgets, and Divi modulesFocus on shortcodes
Booking calendar legendTooltipsColor-coded legend
Daily prices displayed in the calendaryesyes
Custom search form field labelsyesyes
Book directly from availability calendaryesyes
Unavailable time before or after a booking (buffer)yesBusiness Medium plan and higher
Capacity (multiple bookings per day)noBusiness Large plan and higher
Check out and check in on the same dateyesBusiness Small plan and higher
Set the number of months in the calendaryesyes
Select calendar skinsyesyes
Set specific weekdays as unavailableyesyes
Add/remove search form fieldsyesyes
CAPTCHA supportnoyes
Terms and Condition fieldyesyes
Book several items/properties at one goyesno
Edit checkout fieldsPaid add-onyes

Rates and pricing customization

Setting up pricing and rates for a rental space or item can be a complex task without enough flexibility. Rest assured, both WordPress calendar and booking plugins we’re reviewing are doing a great job here.

WP Booking Calendar
Since it’s a multipurpose plugin, it offers a huge set of settings to help you tailor prices for your rentals. From seasonal pricing to based on the number of people/booking days, the pricing strategy is easily customizable.

MotoPress Hotel Booking
In this plugin, you firstly need to create a season (a period of time) to indicate when the prices must apply. Then set up a rate and add price variables based on various conditions, such as the number of people, stay-in days, or the number of extra people.

FeatureMotoPress Hotel BookingWP Booking Calendar
Seasonal pricingyesBusiness Medium plan and higher
Multi-day pricingyesBusiness Medium plan and higher
Different cost based on the number of selected daysyesBusiness Medium plan and higher
Different cost based on the number of peopleyesyes
TaxesyesBusiness Medium plan and higher
Coupon codesyesBusiness Large plan and higher
Early-Bird DiscountsyesBusiness Medium plan and higher
Last-minute DiscountsyesBusiness Medium plan and higher
DepositsyesBusiness Medium plan and higher
Sell extrayesBusiness Medium plan and higher

Payment gateways & payment processing

There are multiple payment gateways you can provide your clients with as well as payment-related flexibility, such as deposits, coupons, extras (extra services), and more.

FeatureMotoPress Hotel BookingWP Booking Calendar
Payment methodsPayPal, 2Checkout, Braintree, Stripe, and Beanstream/Bambora gateways. Stripe (Bancontact, iDEAL, Giropay, SEPA Direct Debit, and Klarna). Pay after arrival, Direct bank transfer.Payment gateways available in Business Small plan and higher
Stripe, PayPal Standard and PayPal Pro Hosted Solution (it is not the PayPal Pro), Authorize.Net, Sage Pay, iDEAL Buckaroo (former Sisow), iPay88, Pay in Cash and Bank Transfer
Auto approval by paymentyesBusiness Small plan and higher
Auto cancellation if not paidyesBusiness Large plan and higher
PDF invoicespaid add-onno
Sending payment request by email manually and automaticallypaid add-onBusiness Small plan and higher
Multi-currency on the sitepaid add-onno

Syncing of bookings with external sites

This is a crucial feature for booking websites because it allows businesses to get bookings from different channels at the same time, with the availability automatically updated.

In the lodging and real estate business world, this is commonly referred to as a channel manager.

Both plugins support import and export of ‘events’ via .ics feeds, which means you can use either with external platforms, which allow data exchange using this file format, including Google Calendar and Apple Calendar.

Managing bookings and resources

Both plugins allow you view all your bookings in a calendar and table, add and edit bookings, and export data into portable file formats.

FeatureMotoPress Hotel BookingWP Booking Calendar
Add bookings manuallyyesyes
Easily search bookingsyesyes
Manually approve or decline bookingsyesyes
Edit bookingsyesyes
Adding booking notesyesyes
Export bookings to CSVyesyes
Cancel bookingsBy guest/by adminBy guest/by admin
Advanced resource management (for services and rentals)noyes
Support for WordPress User Roles (for creating client and staff accounts)yesOnly in MultiUser plan
Revenue charts and analysisyesno
Booking email notificationsyesyes
Customizable email templatesyesyes

Integrations and apps

The MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin provides a wider range of integrations with external apps, which give various opportunities for hotels, for example, the ability to use Pricelabs for dynamic pricing or WooCommerce for connecting even more gateways.

FeatureMotoPress Hotel BookingWP Booking Calendar
Dynamic pricingPricelabsno
TranslationsWPML, Weglot, Locoyes
WooCommercePaid addonno
REST APIyesno
Mobile app for site owners to manage bookingsyesno
EmailsMailchimpno

Free versions – What is not available?

One thing is without a doubt – the free version of the WP Booking Calendar plugin is very limited compared to MotoPress Hotel Booking Lite.

While the latter limits more advanced features, such as automatic bookings synchronization with external channels, with the former you can’t even set the currency format, add a terms and conditions checkbox to the form, or export bookings data to CSV. With the WP Booking Calendar, you can’t also add a global search form to the site, which means you can work only with individual availability calendars.

Crucial features are limited in free versions of both calendar WordPress plugins.

Unavailable in MotoPress Hotel Booking Lite
Download
Unavailable in WP Booking Calendar Free
Download
Synchronization with OTAs via iCalTerms and Condition field
Payment gateways beyond PayPalPayment gateways
Rates based on the number of guestsAdding booking notes
Prices based on the length of stayGuest can cancel their bookings
Adding reservations from the backendGlobal search form widget
The ability to edit original booking detailsThe ability to edit original booking details
Add extra filters to the search formExport bookings to CSV
Set Day, Week, Month or 2 Months View Mode for the calendar
Import of Google Calendar Events
Advanced email template customization
Set cost of the booking per days/nights/hour or fixed cost
Deposits and discounts
Set currency format
Auto approve booking… and more

Conclusions: WP Booking Calendar vs. Hotel Booking

  1. WP Booking Calendar also supports hourly bookings in addition to daily ones, unlike MotoPress. This makes the former suitable for more businesses in addition to accommodation rentals, such as events, appointments, and equipment rental.
  2. Unlike MotoPress Hotel Booking, which offers a comprehensive feature set in one premium plan, WP Booking Calendar has a more complicated pricing structure with five tiers, making it challenging to identify which features are available at each level. A prominent example: a global search form, which allows clients to perform a search through all rentals, is available only on the Business Large plan or higher with WP Booking Calendar.
  3. With MotoPress Hotel Booking, you can add a booking form via any preferred builder, the block editor, Elementor or Divi more smoothly than in WP Booking Calendar.
  4. The biggest advantage of the WP Booking Calendar over MotoPress Hotel Booking is the multi-vendor functionality, available in the most expensive Multi-User plan ($349). Even though it’s not a must for the vast property-by-owner businesses, this feature satisfies the need of companies that want to build multi-owner portals like Airbnb. Worth mentioning, I don’t know how it works in terms of design.
  5. The WP Booking Calendar provides a so-called ‘Plug-n-play’ feature, which allows you to get started quickly with pre-defined plugin settings. In MotoPress, you can get a similar functionality with the one-click demo data installation feature, available with any hotel WordPress theme by MotoPress. Moreover, the MotoPress Hotel Booking provides an affordable service of the plugin installation and configuration.
  6. While WP Booking Calendar uses broader terms like ‘Resources,’ MotoPress, designed specifically for lodging businesses, provides a more precise menu option with ‘Accommodation types.’
  7. Unlike WP Booking Calendar, MotoPress Hotel Booking allows for currency conversions on the site with the dedicated add-on.
  8. You can take online bookings with payments using either WordPress plugin, choosing from a variety of payment gateways.
  9. The MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin provides a handy mobile app for managing bookings, while there is no such thing for on-the-go management provided in WP Booking Calendar.
  10. MotoPress allows customers to book several items/properties at one go (in one transaction), which is not possible with the WP Booking Calendar.
  11. The MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin offers the built-in stats charts to help you analyze your business.

Hotel Booking Plugin WP Booking Calendar


Disclosure: this article may contain affiliate links for third-party products. If you click a link and later make a purchase, we may earn an affiliate commission that doesn’t result in additional charges to you.

WP Booking Calendar FAQ

I want my customers to be able to book multiple properties at once. Which plugin allows that?

MotoPress Hotel Booking. This feature is not available with WP Booking Calendar.

Which plugin has a clearer pricing structure?

MotoPress Hotel Booking comes with a single premium plan with all features or membership packages (plugin + add-ons) with one-time payment or subscription options. WP Booking Calendar has a more complex structure with five tiers and features different for each level.

Which plugin is better for rentals besides accommodation?

WP Booking Calendar offers features like “resource management” which is suitable for equipment rental, appointments, and similar businesses. Additionally, it supports hourly bookings unlike MotoPress.

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