Checkfront

Avantages

After years of use, my favorite thing about Checkfront is the helpful support team. They always provide detailed, competent and helpful answers.

Inconvénients

Our only real issue is that they seem to be falling behind on channel integration (especially OTA's) compared to other reservation systems. But the functionality and usability of existing features is very good.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Checkfront 

Logiciel antérieur 

Pourquoi passer à Checkfront

Avantages

There are many things that I love about Checkfront. It's online booking capability and ease of use when training employees how to use it once it is setup. With a little coding expertise you can make the booking process for clients very easy and reduces the friction toward payment, so you can concentrate on operations.

Inconvénients

The Guest form and Guest information are essentially useless and would be better if it was removed altogether. I have been hoping that over the last 2 years since its implementation there would have been improvements to this portion of checkfront, but it has not been improved. There are no triggers if guest have not filled out the info, nor is there anyway to use the information in dashboard or organize it using the daily manifest or send the information somewhere else to be used in another program via automation.The email suite lacks any organizational capability I have created so many that it is nearly impossible to figure out what triggers them and we run many different trips to many different locations and it creates choas when I don't know if clients are getting the correct emails about those trips. Then you get into the creation of emails, there is no way to send test emails to check your formatting. Also you cannot create html emails in the notifications editor. I have to create email templates in Mailchimp and then export them and import them into checkfront. this might be the most ridiculous thing that I can think of. There should be a way to catogorize your emails into folders, and there should be email templates that allow you to design emails in checkfront that have mobile friendly options. If there was a way to see all the triggers without having to open every email to see that would be amazing.

Avantages

Clean design, apparently smooth booking flow, low fees.

Inconvénients

Bugs. Bugs in the backoffice and bugs in the booking widgets.
If you're Europe-based you need to know that Tech Support are in British Columbia so are 8 hours behind Europe and they work 9-5 Pacific Time... They're only available at night!

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Checkfront 

Logiciel antérieur 

Pourquoi passer à Checkfront

Avantages

The booking management was easy and the customer storefront to book flowed nicely. There are a lot of integrations, and the product is always evolving. The price was actually pretty good compared to other products.

Inconvénients

Some complex booking processes were difficult to set up and felt "hacky" where we had to make dummy products to act as in-between triggers. The system was not designed for what we were looking to do, but it was still able to do it.
Integrations would sometimes break, causing errors on the booking page.
Some features were blocked behind using their payment provider tool instead of an alternative they allowed. For instance, if you used Square instead of Stripe, customer were not able to book directly from the Google search results page.
Reporting was also very difficult to deal with and lacked the ability to customize it. I had to export all the data to a database daily in order to see everything.

Avantages

I liked that it was easy to use, back office is ok but website integration needs work

Inconvénients

I didnt like the website provided and if you added Checkfront to your own website it didnt intergrate well.

Avantages

It's an affordable booking system for our small business. The PC version of Checkfront is very easy to use.

Inconvénients

The mobile/app for checkfront. Difficult to use and navigate.

Avantages

Checkfront offers a number of key features that make it fully customisable and suitable for a range of businesses including activity companies, rental companies and hotels. If you run a combination of things, then it is the perfect solution as you can adapt different parts of the system to the needs of your staff and guests.

Inconvénients

Checkfront's front-end booking portal plug-in is fairly ugly and is not particularly customisable (even with the new upgrade to this). If there was greater customisation to this, we would likely look to use the booking page option. For the moment we will stick with the API integration, however this is also not particularly great with no updates made to the API for years now (which our web developer mentions frequently).Checkfront's new prices raised an eyebrow - Their previous pricing felt very competitive however the new pricing tiers have made us really question whether Checkfront is value for money

Avantages

Checkfront has been a game changer for our industry and especially the company. The online booking has freed up time to focus on other necessary duties and the price allows us to run our business more effectively and efficiently.

Inconvénients

The glitches of trying to change a reservation and sometimes it just won't. That's a little time consuming and annoying but it doesn't happen that often. Sometimes the reports can be cumbersome.

Avantages

As someone who makes decision on the last minute, i like to have the option to book last minute or probably make a booking in advance if we have planned everything early. Checkfront offers that and I love that. It makes booking convenient even for older people. And I love that I can use Apple pay as a mode of payment.

Inconvénients

So far Im enjoying using it, couldnt think of anything that I dont like.

Avantages

At first it took some time to understand the platform, but their people made that process easier with various videos and instructions

Inconvénients

Kinda expensive on a monthly basis, and oftentimes I'll have no tours, but still have to pay Checkfront

Avantages

Ease of use and excellent customer service

Inconvénients

Integration with websites is somewhat limited. WOuld love to have it be a bit more customizable.

Avantages

Easy-to-use. Reports are helpful when reviewing my business

Inconvénients

Changing an inventory item when aliased . It takes a long time to set up inventory items. If the parent number is changed, it would be good if aliased would automatically change.

Avantages

User friendly, more information than other software

Inconvénients

We have no dislikes about this software.

Avantages

This product was easy to set up and is very intuitive to use. The customer service is excellent.

Inconvénients

I don't really have any cons to add.Integrating Checkfront into my website was very easy.

Avantages

First and foremost, Checkfront is affordable for a small business our size, and even though they are much more affordable than the high-cost competition, Checkfront doesn't scrimp on features and functionality. Checkfront takes a day or two to get used to but that's only because it's jam-packed full of useful and necessary features. Checkfront is a fully functional and complete booking system that won't leave you feeling like there's always something missing, as is the case with so many other low-cost providers.

Inconvénients

I can't complain about a system that does everything the big high-cost alternatives do for a price that's affordable and cost-effective for small businesses like mine.

Avantages

Checkfront is very affordable relative to other tour booking platforms (they charge a flat annual fee rather than a percentage of sales - which I believe is the fair way to operate), and it works great for many purposes. There are lots of options for customization, and it is easy to learn how to configure and manage the platform using Checkfront's tutorials and documentation. There are lots of helpful integrations (Stripe, PayPal, Google Analytics, etc.) that are easy to set up. Checkfront support is always very responsive and helpful.

Inconvénients

Checkfront is designed to work across many types of booking environments including hotels, hourly tours, daily tours, weekly tours, etc. Because these types of businesses have different needs, Checkfront balances those but, in my experience, isn't perfect for any one type of business. As a tour operator, sometimes we have needed to come up with workarounds to meet our specific needs or live with certain shortcomings. Checkfront support is always helpful, but if there is a feature that you need, the best you can do is submit a "feature request" and hope that enough other people request the same feature for development.

Avantages

I have used Checkfront for five years and the service has always been outstanding. They always reply very quickly to my emails. I've phoned them a couple of times but really there's no need to phone as their email response is so good. It also means you have a record of what's discussed. Having an inventory based rental system that allows my customers to book online and keep stock updated keeps me ahead of the competition. I love the customised notifications that are specific to the items booked. The free add-ons are amazing. Being able to link to my accounting software makes life simple.

Inconvénients

You have to keep a very close eye on products being returned. If something isn't returned it's very easy for it to "fall off the system" if it's not noticed on the due date. It would be good to be able to scan items back in or at the very least for the item to remain on the desktop until it's been checked off. I understand Checkfront are working on this. The only other concern for us has been that delivery and collection has to be booked as an actual item and not offered at Checkout. Our customers are confused by this no matter how many prompts we add. I believe it's because customers are used to an online retails experience where it is common practice for Delivery to offered after items have been selected and you are at the final stages before payment.

Avantages

Basically Checkfront is fairly easy to use. As a tour operator, there is a lot of flexibility given to obtain the information we need from our passengers. We feel it is easy to maintain and fits our needs. For our guests using the software, we have never received any negative comments and feel it is user friendly. We like that we were able to link our liability waivers for the guests to complete ahead of time which saves a lot of time and paper. Another timesaver is the way the bookings are linked directly to our Quickbooks account. Overall, we are very satisfied with everything that Checkfront does for us.

Inconvénients

Reporting seems to have a fair amount of issues. We have contacted support about this and they are aware of the problem but just haven't figured out a solution yet. This is very time consuming to manually calculate monthly and yearly sales totals which are definitely incorrect in the Checkfront system.

Avantages

It's got it all.. from booking setup to distribution channels.

Inconvénients

Not easy to integrate and display various currencies. Or take payments in different currencies, but hey - they are working on that.
Also not easy to hide certain products from the public and only allow access with an URL for special events or products that may only be viewed by some customers.
Resource management feature is not live yet, but it sounds like this will be a complete game-changer; making it possible to manage all guides, transport, the hiring of equipment and even activities and accommodation required for trips and tours.

Avantages

Easy to use, easy to create items. The support team helps a lot with videos and availability

Inconvénients

The info of an item, dates and everything about an item it doesn't look good in mobile, it didn't show a lot of info. Also you can't have two discounts in the same booking page

Avantages

Seamless integration with our website. Easy to streamline with our credit card processor. Powerful Reports at our fingertips. Customer Service if there is an occasional snafu. Helpful community and tutorial videos when setting up new accounts, items, events, etc.

Inconvénients

This was tough, but of course there is a bit of a learning curve when you are first setting up all the parameters that are right for you business. Plenty of customer service and a large community support to post your questions, or search for an answer because someone has already crossed that bridge successfully. Also loved that once I set up my "Item Event" (think: 3 day minimum stay for Labor Day) then I can easily use a copy button to make each subsequent year's Item Event. So I do not have to recreate the wheel.

Avantages

Checkfront is easy to use for our customers, extremely reliable on the back-end, provides amazing value for our business at its cost, is continually improving their product, and provides fast and clear-cut support for any issues. It is easy to integrate with our existing services and online presentation, giving our customers a seamless and easy-to-use experience when ordering through our website.

Inconvénients

Sometimes I wish the customizations for automated email communications were more granular in terms of controlling what information goes out and comes in based on product types.

Avantages

Online reservations showing availability

Inconvénients

Don't have any issues at all with the product works great for us.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir Checkfront 

Pourquoi passer à Checkfront

Avantages

Online live inventory control and cash collection on bookings helped us manage our business far more efficiently than we ever could in the past.

Inconvénients

Nothing comes to mind, there are features we don't use, but that is more likely because it is irrelevant to the way we use Checkfront, not necessarily a con.

Avantages

Checkfront allows you to set up a tour guide website relatively quickly without the hassle of knowing how to code. Although the designs are limited they are perfect for displaying tours available for your clients and making it easy for them to check availability and book tours. The backend system is what makes this powerful, allowing me to manage my tours whether they were booked through the site or via agents.

Inconvénients

Some of the set-up if requiring special options is rather complicated but the help notes are clear and comprehensive. It is just a matter of persevering and checking to make sure you've got it set up right.