There are a lot of tools that call themselves a digital welcome book or a digital guidebook, and most of them do the same core job: put your wifi, your check-in steps, and your local picks behind a link a guest can open. Where they differ is the part you find out after you have signed up. How the price scales when you add a second property. Whether anything gets sold to your guests while they read. Whether the book works when the phone has no signal at your front door. This is a ranked look at five of them, with what each is best for and where it falls short. Prices below were checked in July 2026 against each company's own pricing page.
One thing up front, since we make one of these: FreshLinen publishes this list, so you should read it with that in mind. We have kept every competitor claim to facts you can check on their own sites, and we say where they beat us. The pricing and the trade-offs are the same whether or not you ever sign up with us.
1. FreshLinen, if you want a flat price and nothing sold to guests
Best for hosts with one to ten properties who want a single yearly price and a guest page with no ads on it.
FreshLinen is a digital welcome book for short-term rentals. Building is free, and publishing is $49.99 a year, flat, for every property on the account. That is not per property. Whether you have one cabin or ten, the price is the same, which is unusual in this category; every other tool here charges per property or per guidebook. Guests scan a QR code or tap a link, there is no app to download, and once a book is opened it works offline, so the arrival page and door code load even when a guest has one bar at the door.
The part that is hardest for a competitor to match is the constraint: nothing is ever sold to your guests. No ads, no sponsored picks, no upsell store, no guest fees. FreshLinen also has no guest identity. It never emails your guests, so you share the book yourself by pasting the link in your check-in message or leaving a printed QR at the property.
Where it falls short: that self-share is the honest weak point. Some tools can send the book to a guest before check-in on a schedule; FreshLinen leaves that to you. It also has no PMS integrations and no smart-lock automation, on purpose, and it is younger than Touch Stay, so it has a shorter track record. If your whole workflow lives inside a property manager and you want the guidebook wired into it, that is a real gap. You can open a real example book before deciding, and see exactly what the $49.99 covers.
2. Touch Stay, if you want the most mature product and can pay per property
Best for hosts who want a long-established tool with the deepest feature set and do not mind paying by the property.
Touch Stay is the closest true competitor and, in fairness, the most mature. It has guidebooks with topics and categories, QR codes, sharing by link, email, and SMS, scheduled “Memo” messages that send the guide before check-in, branding, and PMS integrations with OwnerRez and BookingSync. If you want the tool with the longest history and the widest set of options, this is it, and its guests are generally happy.
Where it falls short is price and model. Touch Stay is per property and volume-graduated: about $99 a year for the first property, around $195 for three, and $450 or more for ten. Even with volume discounts it never approaches a flat account price. Two things most hosts assume are standard, offline access and performance analytics, are not in the cheapest Starter tier; they start at the Growth tier around $139 a year per property. And the upsell Store, which sells products and services to guests with card and Apple Pay and Google Pay, is included on every tier, so guest commerce is part of the product direction. That is host-optional, but it is built in. If the per-property math and the upsell surface are the sticking points, the FreshLinen and Touch Stay comparison lays the two side by side.
3. Hostfully Guidebooks, if you want a free tier and can live with ads on it
Best for hosts who want to start at zero dollars and are fine with sponsored recommendations shown to their guests.
Hostfully genuinely has a free tier, and that is worth conceding plainly: you can publish one guidebook without paying. The paid tiers go deep, with up to 199 guidebooks, custom branding, domains and themes, draft mode, bulk editing, and instant translation into 16 or more languages. For a host who wants to try a guidebook before spending anything, the free option is a real front door.
The catch is what the free tier does to your guest's screen. Free guidebooks carry sponsored Viator recommendations injected into the Attractions and Activities sections, and only paid subscribers can remove or tune them, per Hostfully's own help center. The paid tiers are positioned around revenue-generating features, including a guidebook marketplace that takes a 1% Hostfully commission on upsells. So both the free and paid products monetize the guest surface, one with ads, the other with upsell commissions. On price, the cheapest ad-free plan is around $120 a year for a single guidebook, which is more than FreshLinen's flat $49.99 for the whole account. The FreshLinen and Hostfully comparison covers the free-tier trade-off in detail.
4. YourWelcome, if you want a physical tablet in the property
Best for hosts who specifically want an in-room tablet and are willing to buy, charge, clean, and replace hardware.
YourWelcome is a different kind of product. It is built around an 8-inch tablet that sits in the property, and the single tier is $449.99 a year per property, which includes the tablet, a stand, and breakage or theft replacement, on a one-year contract. There is no software-only option. If you want a screen a guest walks up to and taps, rather than a link they open on their own phone, this is the one tool here that gives you that.
Where it falls short is everything that comes with hardware. At around nine times FreshLinen's price per property, the economics assume the tablet earns its keep through guest-facing services and upsells. And a tablet is a physical thing you have to buy, charge, clean, and replace when a guest walks off with it or drops it. A phone-based welcome book has none of that. If the appeal is the in-room screen but the hardware overhead gives you pause, the FreshLinen and YourWelcome comparison walks through the difference.
5. Airbnb's built-in guidebook, if all your guests book on Airbnb and you only need local picks
Best for Airbnb-only hosts who just want to hand guests a list of nearby recommendations and nothing more.
Airbnb's guidebook is free and it is already there, which is a fair reason to use it. If all you want is a list of nearby restaurants and things to do, it does that at zero cost with no extra tool to manage.
Where it falls short is that it is a local recommendations list, not a welcome book. It does not hold your wifi password, your check-in instructions, or your house rules. It is easy for a guest to miss inside the Airbnb app, it has no offline mode and no analytics, and it only exists for guests who booked on Airbnb, so a Vrbo or direct-booking guest never sees it. Most hosts who care end up running Airbnb's guidebook for recommendations plus a real welcome book for the practical half. If that is you, our guide for Airbnb hosts explains the split, and what to put in a welcome book covers the sections Airbnb's version leaves out.
A note on the ones without public prices
Two other tools come up often, Guidey and StayTap. We are not putting a dollar figure on either because neither publishes a verified public price, and we would rather leave it out than guess. On model, both are per-guidebook rather than flat, which is the same structural difference that separates FreshLinen from most of this list. If you are weighing StayTap specifically, the FreshLinen and StayTap comparison and the FreshLinen and Guidey comparison stick to what each publishes.
How to choose
The choice comes down to three questions. How does the price scale when you add properties, flat or per property? Does anything get sold to your guests while they read, ads or upsells or fees? And does the book work offline at the door, where a guest actually needs the code? If you want the most mature tool and can pay per property, Touch Stay. If you want to start free and can live with ads on the guest page, Hostfully. If you want an in-room tablet, YourWelcome. If your guests are all on Airbnb and you only need local picks, Airbnb's own guidebook. And if you want a flat yearly price for every property with nothing ever sold to your guests, that is the case for FreshLinen. You can start building one free, or see the whole set laid out on the guidebook comparison page.