WP Hotelier vs MotoPress Hotel Booking Plugin: Choosing the Best Solution for Hospitality Website
Table of Contents
In order to create a direct booking website on WordPress for your hotel or vacation rental, you need a booking plugin. Both plugins in today’s comparison, WP Hotelier and MotoPress Hotel Booking, can perfectly deal with the task.
They are great solutions that differ in features and pricing models. We’re digging deeper into their settings and capabilities to help you compare the most fundamental and prominent features.
Compared versions:
- Hotel Booking Plugin 5.0.4
- WP Hotelier 2.14.3
WP Hotelier vs MotoPress Hotel Booking: Cost
WP Hotelier’s pricing system is based on charging you for specific features through add-ons, most of which are bare-bone (e.g. seasonal pricing, syncing to OTAs, or discounts). Luckily, the pricing of add-ons is relatively affordable, and you can even buy all of them in a single bundle for 125,00€ (1 site/annually). The core plugin is free, those add-ons I mentioned are also optional.
MotoPress Hotel Booking also offers a range of optional add-ons, which are rather advanced functionality like automated payment requests or integration with PriceLabs. As for the core plugin, its price is based on how many sites you have and whether you want to pay once or every year. The free version of the plugin is also available.
| Feature | WP Hotelier | MotoPress Hotel Booking |
|---|---|---|
| Free core plugin | Yes | Yes |
| Premium core plugin | No | 1 Site – $139.00 Up to 25 Sites – $249.00 1 Site – Lifetime – $549.00 |
| Premium add-ons | Cost of individual addons varies All add-ons bundle/annual cost:
| Cost of individual addons varies |
This suggests that if your hotel site has no special requirements, you can easily use the free version of MotoPress. With WP Hotelier, however, you’ll likely need a few add-ons to get everything running smoothly.
Working with seasons, rates, and rules
So, how can you adjust rates based on various factors in these plugins?
Both Hotel Booking and WP Hotelier software can manage complex pricing. Take a look at their features to see your price creation options:
- Set minimum and maximum nights of the overnight stay.
- Add a minimum number of nights before arrival.
- Set up discounts for longer stays.
- Weekly and monthly price.
- Extra guest fee.
- Last-minute booking.
- Early booking.
However, on WP Hotelier, advanced pricing (basically the vast majority of features above), requires purchasing the Advanced Pricing System add-on, which is 95,00€ /1 site. You get the same functionality for free in Hotel Booking (premium); the free version limits only rate customization based on the number of nights and guests.
The WP Hotelier WordPress hotel booking plugin offers a smooth room editing interface, where pricing is one of the setups (‘Price type’). Since you can easily switch between setting up different prices per day of the week, regular, or seasonal, it’s easy to have a clear and flexible pricing for every accommodation.
However, it might be too time-consuming if you need to set the same setting for multiple rooms of the same type (for example, in a big hotel). MotoPress Hotel Booking, on the contrary, allows you to automatically generate the needed number of the same room types that will have the same settings.
In Hotel Booking, you create various periods for price fluctuations (‘seasons’), and then add the actual prices for these periods and variations based on the number of people staying, length of stay, or extra guests.
On the plus side of WP Hotelier, they offer a so-called “Price Calculator”, which is an internal debugging tool designed for advanced configurations and seasonal setups. It helps test room pricing and provides an overview of your setup.
Booking forms
WP Hotelier prioritizes the global search form (one form across all your properties) and doesn’t offer an individual available calendar for rooms/properties.
| Feature | WP Hotelier | MotoPress Hotel Booking |
|---|---|---|
| Book several items/properties at one go | yes | yes |
| Availability calendar with color-coded booked and available dates | no | yes |
| Global search form across rooms |
|
|
| Custom search filters for the search form | no | yes |
| Edit checkout page | Using code | Paid add-on |
Payment processing and configuration
Are you looking to take payments online to allow guests to secure their bookings? Here is a quick comparison of WP Hotelier vs MotoPress Hotel Booking features available.
| Feature | WP Hotelier | MotoPress Hotel Booking |
|---|---|---|
| Payment gateways | PayPal – in free version Stripe – 75,00€ /1 site | PayPal – in free version 2Checkout, Braintree, Stripe, Beanstream/Bambora – built-in (in paid version) |
| Direct bank transfer | Add-on 45,00€ / 1 site | Built-in |
| Flat deposit | Add-on 45,00€ / 1 site | Built-in |
| Percentage deposit | Built-in | Built-in |
| Take booking payments with WooCommerce | No | With paid WooCommerce add-on – 1 Site: $99.00 |
| Coupons | 45,00€ /1 site | Built-in |
| Taxes and fees | Limited | Advanced |
| Invoices | Standard email content | Printable PDF (paid add-on) |
| Multi-currency | No | Paid add-on |
| Edit checkout page | Using code | Paid add-on |
| Upsell extra facilities or services at checkout | Built-in | Built-in |
WP Hotelier has a rather limited number of payment processors, which might not be sustainable for many hotels or vacation rentals across the globe. However, it’s easy to set up any other essentials for online payments and upsell services.
The MotoPress Hotel Booking WordPress plugin offers all the professional payment management tools in the premium plugin version; the free one is limited to PayPal only.
Sync your site to external platforms (iCal)
The ability to sync your bookings to external platforms is a great way to diversify your booking channels. For instance, you can sync accommodations on your WordPress site (using either WP Hotelier or MotoPress Hotel Booking) with those on Airbnb or Booking.com.
In both plugins, there is the iCalendar Importer/Exporter option, which helps you exchange iCal links – between your WordPress site and external sites.
And not just this. These links work for the sync with popular calendar apps like Google Calendar or Apple Calendar as well, letting you get instant reservation notifications there too.
| Feature | WP Hotelier | MotoPress Hotel Booking |
|---|---|---|
| iCal import/export | 75,00€ / 1 site | Built-in (in paid version) |
Managing bookings
As a website administrator, you will have a lot of tools to manage bookings, clients, and payment info.
| Feature | WP Hotelier | MotoPress Hotel Booking |
|---|---|---|
| Add bookings manually | In free version | In Pro version |
| Easily search bookings | Yes | Yes |
| Manually approve or decline bookings | Yes | Yes |
| Automatically approve bookings | Yes | Yes |
| Edit bookings | Yes | Yes |
| Adding booking notes | Yes | Yes |
| Export bookings to CSV | No | Yes |
| Cancel bookings | By guest/by admin | By guest/by admin |
| Support for WordPress User Roles (for creating client and staff accounts) | No | Yes |
| Revenue charts and analysis | No | Yes |
| Booking email notifications | Yes | Yes |
| Customizable email templates | No | Yes |
| Booking logs | Yes | Yes |
| Mark booking as paid manually | Yes | Yes |
The admin booking calendar is much more robust in MotoPress Hotel Booking. You can see upcoming or past booking for the needed range, filter them by statuses, search customers by names, etc. Here is a preview:
In WP Hotelier, the admin calendar is rather very simple and gives you a preview of your bookings for ‘today’, a week, or month; the latter is not perfectly optimized for smaller screens, I must say.
Integrations with third-party services
WP Hotelier integrates with Mailchimp only, offering you simple email marketing capabilities for 45,00 € / 1 site.
MotoPress Hotel Booking offers a longer list of integrations via paid extensions:
Moreover, Hotel Booking comes with even more add-ons for sending payment requests, collecting hotel reviews, or sending more custom-triggered emails.
Dedicated WordPress themes
Don’t trust plugin providers that don’t offer professionally designed themes to complement their plugins. 😄
In this time and date, there is still a big need for designer-made themes crafted specifically for the plugin to look well. Both hotel booking plugins in our review do that.
WP Hotelier recommends Hello Elementor and also provides a free Manila theme to get you started.
MotoPress provides a whole bunch of suitable themes, from hotels to vacation rentals and camping sites:
- Aquentro for apartments or single properties (Elementor-based).
- Mountainview – a lightweight theme for a single property or vacation rental.
- Ciestra for a beachfront resort (Elementor-based).
- Luviana is a rather classic hotel design.
- Albatross is the free Elementor hotel theme.
Integration with WordPress page builders
It’s much easier for many users to manipulate plugin content using popular page builders – like Elementor or even the native block editor by WordPress.
Both plugins offer dedicated widgets for Elementor (with extra free extensions), but unlike MotoPress, WP Hotelier doesn’t provide dedicated blocks for the native block editor.
Shortcodes are of course supported by both plugins.
Mobile app
A mobile app for managing booking on the go is a necessity. The MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin provides a free mobile app, for Android and iOS, which allows you to view bookings and payments, client arrival and check-in info, payments, etc.
As far as I know, a mobile app is not provided by WP Hotelier. A missed opportunity.
Free versions compared
I’m sure many people firstly discover the free versions of both hotel booking WordPress plugins. More than that, WP Hotelier is known as a free-only plugin with paid extensions.
So, how functional are these free hotel booking plugin versions? Can you run a fully-functioning hotel site with a free WP Hotelier or MotoPress Hotel Booking Lite? Let’s visualize our answer.
| Feature | WP Hotelier | MotoPress Hotel Booking |
|---|---|---|
| PayPal | Yes | Yes |
| Email notifications | Yes | Yes |
| Variable rooms | Yes | Yes |
| Seasonal prices | Yes | Yes |
| Extras (fees) | Yes | Yes |
| Coupons | Limited | Yes |
| Advanced seasonal prices | No | Yes |
| Stripe | No | No |
| Block dates | No | Yes |
| Advanced pricing system | No | No |
| Seasonal week/monthly prices | No | No |
| Fees for extra persons | No | No |
| Custom check-in/check-out days | No | Yes |
| Discounts for long bookings | No | Yes |
| iCalendar import/export for Airbnb and Booking.com sync | No | No |
| Minimum nights by arriving day | No | Yes |
| Add bookings as admin | Yes | No |
| Edit existing bookings | Yes | No |
Hotel Booking Lite WP Hotelier Free
- The free version of MotoPress solution provides more options setting custom check-in/check-out days and managing block dates for unavailable periods.
- MotoPress Hotel Booking Lite offers advanced seasonal pricing, the ability to set discounts for long bookings, and minimum night rules based on arrival days, which means you can set up dynamic pricing strategies even with a free version. WP Hotelier lacks these advanced pricing capabilities on the free version.
- WP Hotelier’s core plugin allows admins to add and edit bookings directly, which is particularly useful for manual adjustments or handling reservations over the phone. MotoPress blocks these features on the free version.
- Both platforms support PayPal, but neither includes any other payment gateways in their free versions. Moreover, neither plugin includes iCalendar import/export for synchronizing bookings with platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com in their free versions.
Even with these limitations, why not try free versions? They give you almost everything, not losing you a dime.
Conclusion & Final takeaways
I like both plugins: MotoPress Hotel Booking is more feature-rich, flexible, and powerful, while WP Hotelier also offers a solid range of features and is more affordable, especially if you purchase the entire bundle of premium add-ons.
For me, the biggest downside of the WP Hotelier plugin is the lack of customization for the accommodation search form (you can’t add custom filters) and the absence of commonly used, client-friendly availability calendars with color-coded dates. With MotoPress, you can create a search form with any number of custom filters and display interactive availability calendars for individual properties.
The WP Hotelier’s admin calendar with bookings is also cumbersome to use since previews for longer periods are not comfortable. I also expected to see more user-friendly integration with the block editor but there are no custom blocks, just shortcodes, while MotoPress Hotel Booking offers smoother experiences with dedicated blocks.
WP Hotelier fails to bridge the gap when it comes to payment processing online; it won’t work for regions or businesses that don’t use PayPal or Stripe. MotoPress Hotel Booking enables you to take payments with almost any gateway (especially with WooCommerce). Unlike its competitor, the MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin offers the built-in stats charts to help you analyze your business.
However, setting prices in WP Hotelier might be easier and more flexible, since you can easily switch between setting up different prices per day of the week or global pricing.
Last but not least, MotoPress has more tools for developers, such as REST API and Style Kit, as well as the plugin installation and configuration service for non-tech customers.
All in all, WP Hotelier is a pretty reliable free hotel booking plugin for WordPress, which lacks some advanced functionality and design/customization capabilities. MotoPress Hotel Booking is made to deliver a full-scale set of tools for hotel sites, from powerful rates management to a mobile app and beautiful designs.
