Unclaimed: Are you working at Checkfront?
Checkfront Reviews: 4.5/5 — Highly Rated
Checkfront is a cloud-based booking and reservation platform for tour, activity, rental and accommodation operators. It provides 24/7 online booking and payments, inventory and resource scheduling, multi-channel distribution (OTAs/resellers), automated communications (email/SMS), guest forms and waivers, reporting and analytics, and website integration via widgets and plugins. Checkfront is offered as a SaaS product with mobile apps for staff, a RESTful API (v4.0, beta) for integrations, and multiple pricing models including free/Starter, subscription tiers and a Flex (zero-subscription + booking-fee) option.
| Company | Checkfront Inc. |
|---|---|
| Year founded | 2010 |
| Company size | 51-200 employees |
| Headquarters | Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
| Capabilities |
API
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
Enterprise
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Mobile Android, Mobile iPhone |
| Support | Chat, Email/Help Desk, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation, Live Online, Videos |
| Languages | English |
Checkfront Pros and Cons
- Very flexible booking types (hour, day, night, timeslot, multi-day)
- Strong inventory and resource management to avoid overbookings
- Integrated waivers, guest forms and gift certificates
- Rich integrations with payment gateways, OTAs and marketing tools
- Free Starter and Flex (no-subscription) options reduce barrier to entry
- Support and documentation primarily in English; multilingual staff support limited
- Unclear/no evidence of physical POS hardware integrations
- Booking/transaction fees on some plans (Growth, Flex) can increase costs
- Some features (multi-site, waitlist) are not clearly advertised and need verification
- API is in beta; access may be limited for trial accounts
Compare Checkfront with other popular tools in the same category.
Gives clients an easy experience when they’re booking appointments online or making online payments.
Nothing to dislike, no complaints so far.
Clients avoid calling in to make appointments or process payment over the phone, everything is now done online for their convenience.
I can add my "products", set the prices, and I'm ready to go! It walks you through set up so it's really easy. You put in the price and taxes and any parameters that you want that item to have.
Some things are a little confusing. If you are not sure what it is talking about or meaning it doesn't explain it very well.
With this program you can literately set up and start booking. It keeps track of everything. All of the reports are in one place. You can see all the booking and such on one page. It is super easy and super beneficial.
Fully customizable, always updating with new features, extensions to link to services such as mail chimp, waivers etc
Checkfront can be quite complicated for the new user, or if you have complicated product offerings, that said, the customer support works with you to ensure that you get it right.
Checkfront was great for one of my clients who ran the largest paintball operation on the west coast of the united states. We were able to set up a bespoke system across 4 different business units, all with different tax rates and product offerings. Having a robust booking and payment system increased bookings and reduced no shows at the parks.
I book over a hundred volunteers each year and it's a one-person show here. I don't know how I did it before CheckFront, I really don't. So many steps are now automated for me and it's a breeze to keep track of bookings. I use notifications a lot to send volunteer handbooks, orientation videos and other important documents that I used to have to track and send manually. What a relief to be done with that and to be using notifications instead.
Nothing. It works just as expected and if I don't understand something there's great support.
As I said under what I like best. I used to have to keep track of emails I'd sent, or not sent, and due dates for contacts as well. Now it's simple, I use notifications. At each step in the booking process from reservation to final payment I have automatically generated notifications that contain all the information my customers need and I don't have to manage it anymore. For a small volunteer organization, that's so valuable.
Checkfront is constantly updated. Being able to connect with major OTAs like Viator and GetYourGuide is a basic feature. It also helps our business by offering webhook which we use to make our original calendar management system. Reasonable monthly fee is what I like about Checkfront too.
I wish it offered API with KLOOK, auto cancel system with Viator/TripAdvisor etc.
We receive 20 to 30 bookings per day on average, at multiple locations. Using Checkfront solves all the mess that can occur if we do not use the software. Some other competitors charge per booking fee but Checkfront does not, and that is also what I feel assured about using Checkfront.
I like the ease of use and price for the service.
I dislike the ability to easily edit bookings. More specifically, it is difficult to add days to the guest's stay if there is a gap in their occupancy. Or, if the guest switches from a small campsite to a large campsite.
Reservations and web interface with our guests.
The price is good and competitive. There are always updates and willing to consider system changes for custom use.
It isnt possible to be able to speak to customer help unless you pay for a high end package which looses its personal feel that it had when we first signed up.
an increase in bookings
I like the reservation part best. It is very easy to make and import new reservations.
I wish Checkfront had a way of marking rooms yet to be cleaned and rooms that have already been cleaned for the day.
Checkfront helps us eliminate double bookings. It benefits us by not having to contact a guest regarding a double booking.
It is easy to use and most of what we want is already in place
Lack of knowledge base to enable a deeper understanding of all functionalities
Planning tours and tour events
Very powerful software that allows you to create all sorts of products and offers with different pricing flexibility.
Upgrade was available but looked like a lot of rework on items to products. No ability to waitlist specific items.
Enables our customers to see real time availability and book immediately. Huge reduction in the number of emails before a sale. Also love the automated notifications.
It cost way less than the competitor keeping a good level of features
Unfortunately, there are some limitations, especially depending on which kind of business you run.
Having an automatic invoice creator is vital if you want to make your company grow.
The ease of booking for customers has been great and freed up staff time from having to field phone calls and balance multiple calendars. Booking time is just as easy.
I would like a little more control over how the embed presents on my website. It is mobile optimized however being able to set the number of columns would be great.
Booking multiple rooms with variable lengths of time. Some sessions are 1 hour and others are 90 minutes. This platform shows options to the customer to best accommodate them.
There are endless ways you can use checkfront! IT has adapted well to our business over 4 years. Keeping track of bookings is a breeze!
Getting help over email can be a bit of a challenge would be nice to chat with someone sometimes!
Keeping bookings organized and guest info etc.
Easy to use and easy for customers to use! We have used other booking platforms and struggled to find something that works for our rental business. Payment at the time of booking is another bonus!
A few snags that I have found that only impact closures / availability because we have multi-day rentals that cross a midnight. When I have a closure such as Christmas Day I want rentals to span that date, but not start or end on that date. The software is currently carrying the closure over a extra day.
Our rentals cross a midnight which was a problem with our last booking software. Checkfront allows customers to view the calendar availability more easily than others.
Checkfront is really comprehensive - it has layers of depth for pretty much any enterprise requirement. Love the support team - they're a notch over their competition and really care for your business.
Their built-in integrations are extensive, but make sure you check that all that you need to integrate to are fully supported first. Having said that, their support team have always helped us when we ran into roadblocks
Best in class bookings management, reliable, rock steady and has helped us grow!
Complete one stop application for your booking system. Good customization for booking simple transactions and reporting. I also liked the robust site builder supported by Checkfront.
The product does not have too many options for inventory management. Some features required the help of support team which could have been featured better.
We can develop a great reservation system to help our customers do online booking and make payments through internet.
User friendly interface makes for easy training when short on time to train
Not many options for activities/inventory. Also the inability to change some features and settings without support
Lower call volumes for rentals as guests find it easy to use right from their devices
THe product itself offer very nice features, but my review won't be about them. Explore by yourself and you'll see. What it TRULY makes the difference are the people behind this company: I've been client with them for a compnay first and then I turned to be a "prospect customer" anonymously for another company, and I have always been surprised by the customer service quality. - fast responses - qualify responses (they are the only one in between so many companies that understood my business needs, even if I copy-pasted the same text to them and all their competitors --> means BRAIN ACTIVATED while reading - flexibility in customizing the configuration and even their product to suite your needs - smart and nice people I would love to see this approach in building a company and creating this excellent sense of customer caring in so many other sw companies around the web. I can only highly suggest them and their product
for vacation rental channels manager only1 connection is available at the moment. That's a pity, as there is such a huge offer out there and therefore it is really limiting the possibility to interact with them with the infrastructure you already have (beside being a developer and creating your own interface trough api, but that's not so easy for all).
Vacation Rentals for rooms AND apartments. THe main big issue for me was renting both of them (rent single rooms within apartments or rent the entire apartment) and managing automatically availability, and checkfront do so smothly! Plus, I sell as well additional activities for my clients and they can shop everything in one place with checkfront. So easy, it's amazing
Many of our sales related points of action can be automated with Checkfront which makes our job a lot easier and gives us time to focus on making sales instead of spending a lot of time on operational points of actions. We also appreciate the integrated payment system and have only experienced very few issues regarding this function. We are huge fans of the support-team - they always ready to help as much as they are capable of and they are very skilled at conveying information and solutions to problems.
It is a huge task every time we want to make changes in our opening hours, timeslots and pricing as our setup requires many different products, for us to be able to have products for both B2C and B2B customers. We also need product for staff override. Furthermore we have some very specific needs in regards to availability with some products., which makes it even more complicated every time we wish to make changes in availability. We have requested some translations, which are not possible at the present moment, which causes an unprofessional and dodgy appearance to our customers on our webpage. We hope that the bug can be fixed as soon as possible.
Checkfront provides an accessible and simple solution to our booking needs. We spend a lot less time on different aspects of the bookingprices than we did before because Checkfront is very intuitive and effective when everything has been set up correctly.
Booking process is seamless, and customer service is very helpful.
There are a few features that are missing
It's not actually for Tours, but for Birthday parties at our restaurant.
Ease of use, customer calendar screen, guests booking experience and ease of use when booking. Responsiveness, iPhone support.
I have asked for eight years for ability to give our brides the ability to book into a block of rooms set aside (locked) for them. I have asked for years for guests to be able to use their resort square gift cards to book then use my square based resort gift card to pay for the room. I don't think my requirements ever make it to the top of the list for development. Square is a Checkfront partner. Too many button clicks to manually process OTA payments from Booking com and Expedia, compared to Cloudbeds software. Booking com zip codes is a postal code from Europe which does not work with Checkfronts integration with Square.
Entering room bookings both at our front desk and through guests booking directly which save us time. Except when they have a square gift card issued by the resort that they can't enter online. Integration of third party (OTA) bookings requires way to many clicks to process paymensts
how resposnsove customer service team can be
Would not really call it user friendly .
maanging our calendar
The automatic sending of emails, payment processing, good reports, reasonable integration with Viator (see later for limitations) , inventory hosting.
The VERY slow roll out of inventory control - I know this has been possiable for a few years now (I tried it as soon as I could) BUT its dosent work ith Viator.
payment processing, online booking system with automatic email facility.
Have been using Checkfront for six years and have found the system easy to use and comprehensive. However, with flexibility can come ambiguity which is where the excellent customer support proves invaluable. Most difficulties are resolved within a couple of days. The support team often goes the extra mile and creates a step-by-step instructional video explaining how to implement a particular solution.
The inflexible pricing model. It's not possible to add functionality to the lowest pricing tier. For example, we would like to use digital waivers and gift certificates however the licensing of these features requires subscribing to a more expensive plan that does not reflect the business activity we pass through the system. A more flexible licensing model would help.
We are a small Bed & Breakfast that provides cycle hire, local excursions and accommodation. Checkfront is our booking management platform integrated into our website and a channel manager for integration with multiple Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). It ensures we never double-book rooms and keeps pricing and availability up to date.
Easy to use ! Multiple options to personalise the shopping experience ! Reliability !
Lack of training online ! I believe there are many functionalities I'm not using at its full extend because of lack of knowledge. Some knowledge base or forum within the comunity would very appreciated.
We do off-road tours on motorbikes and everything around creating the tour, its items and add on's, as well as the tour dates ... everything is solved by checkfront.
Liking the Website, the automatic e-mails
The difficulty in figuring out the program and how it will react. The rule should be set first, not Events, then rules. Payment can not be may by e-Transfer Support is great if you want to wait. When you have a problem, you want help; otherwise, you keep trying without the desired result; I am not a computer programmer. Scared to try any add on's
Pricing in 2022, we got it working how we wanted. Now for 2023, we need better pricing, which has been challenging to change.
Es muy fácil de usar y desde el primer día puedes comenzar a vender tus actividades, se puede personalizar para cualquier actividad y solicitar la información de los clientes.
No me agrada que para tener pagos en la moneda de cada país se deba crear una cuenta para cada moneda, es decir, por políticas nosotros manejamos un tipo de cambio definido en pesos y otro en dólares, no tenemos tipo de cambio variable.
El poder incorporar a cualquier sitio web y que sea responsivo ha ayudado mucho a la experiencia de compra, siendo de manera ágil y segura con cualquier tarjeta.
It is actually a quite capable platform, but what I like the most about it is that you get a response from a customer support member very quickly. . . even for silly and obvious questions!
I wish it had another asset management feature or two to further streamlining my work flow for my small business.
It is very easy for my customers to purchase my products. It is also easy for me to collect and deliver necessary information to and from my customers.
the speed at witch things can be updated in the system
Checkfront's only down side in our application is some double entry into or DMS
Checkfront allows us to have less front end staff tied up in booking and managing our rental fleet