Ask five reservation platforms what they cost and you'll get five numbers that can't be compared directly. That's not an accident — pricing models in this industry are designed around what's easy to charge, not what's easy to understand.
There are really only four models. Once you can name them, sales pages get much shorter.
Model 1: Guest booking fees
The platform is "free" or cheap for you, and every guest pays a service fee on top of your rate at checkout.
Where the cost hides: in how the fee is built. A small flat fee, shown on its own labeled line, is a knowable cost a guest can see and shrug at. A percentage of the stay — the common version — is different: it grows with your rates and your best weekends, rarely appears in one place, and lands on your guest's receipt wearing your park's name. Guests don't blame the software — they've never heard of it. They blame you, and the goodwill cost is yours.
The question to ask the sales rep: "What is the total a guest pays for a $50 site, including every fee — and does that number change for a $500 week?"
Model 2: Per-booking charges
You pay a fee on each reservation — sometimes flat, sometimes a percentage.
Where the cost hides: in your best month. Per-booking pricing means your software bill is highest exactly when you're busiest, and it scales with success you created. It also makes the real annual cost impossible to know in advance.
The question to ask: "What would we have paid you last July?"
Model 3: Revenue share
The platform takes a percentage of your booking revenue.
Where the cost hides: everywhere, forever. A percentage of revenue is the most expensive money in your business, because it grows with your rates, your occupancy, and every improvement you make — while the software stays the same software.
The question to ask: "Does your cut apply to bookings I would have gotten anyway — my regulars, my drive-bys, my repeat guests?"
Model 4: Flat monthly price
You pay a fixed amount per month. Card processing (paid to the processor, not the platform) is the only per-transaction cost.
Where the cost hides: it mostly doesn't — predictability is the appeal. The honest caveats: a flat price you don't use is still money — if a platform charges a flat rate but is too complicated to set up without an onboarding program, you're paying in weeks instead of fees. And for a seasonal park, the bill arrives in January exactly like it does in July, when no revenue is coming in behind it.
The question to ask: "Can I be live this week, by myself?"
The five-minute comparison
Take your reservation count and average nightly revenue from last season (your ledger or export is enough) and compute one number for each platform you're considering: total annual cost, including what your guests pay.
- Guest-fee model: reservations × guest fee — that's real money in your ecosystem even if it skips your bank account
- Per-booking model: reservations × fee (plus the base subscription)
- Revenue share: annual booking revenue × percentage
- Flat: monthly price × 12
Then ask the only strategic question: whose side is the pricing on? A platform paid per booking or per percentage has every incentive to insert itself between you and your guests. A platform paid a flat rate has exactly one way to keep your money: stay useful.
We're not neutral here — Bunkpost sits in the first model, done the way we'd want it done as campers: the software is free for the park, and the whole business runs on a flat $3 guest booking fee, disclosed as its own line before payment and never a percentage. We think what eventually turns on a small park isn't a guest fee itself — it's percentages, of the stay or of your revenue, and totals nobody shows in one place. But run the numbers with anyone's software, ours included: a thousand reservations is a knowable three thousand guest dollars, on receipts that say so. The math is the argument.