A Hostfully Guidebooks alternative with no ads in your book
Hostfully Guidebooks has a free tier: one guidebook, with sponsored recommendations placed in it. Their own help center explains that removing or tuning those recommendations requires a paid plan. On the free plan, your guests see ads chosen by Hostfully, not by you.
Review sites list Hostfully’s cheapest paid plan at around $120 a year, covering one guidebook, with higher tiers priced by guidebook count. FreshLinen is $49.99 a year for your whole account, every property included, and the guest’s screen never shows anything for sale. Building is free; you pay when you publish.
What the free tier really costs
Free guidebooks are the flank Hostfully leads with, so it is worth being precise about the trade. The sponsored recommendations on a free book are Viator listings placed in the Attractions and Activities sections, and only a paid subscriber can remove or tune them. If a guest books one, Hostfully earns on it.
On paid plans, Hostfully takes a 1 percent commission on upsells sold through the guidebook marketplace. Their help center describes this as Hostfully’s own commission, separate from the Stripe processing fees. Either way, the guest’s screen is a place the product earns money. FreshLinen earns from the host, once, and from nothing on the guest side, which is why a published FreshLinen book has nothing for a guest to buy.
Side by side
| Point of comparison | Hostfully Guidebooks | FreshLinen |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | One guidebook, with sponsored ads | Free build mode; publish for $49.99 a year |
| Ads on the guest's screen | Sponsored recommendations on free books | Never |
| Removing the ads | Requires a paid plan | There are no ads to remove |
| Upsell commissions | 1 percent commission on marketplace upsells | None |
| Cheapest book with no ads | About $120 a year for one guidebook | $49.99 a year for every property |
| Price for all your properties | Per-guidebook tiers | $49.99 a year, flat |
Where Hostfully is ahead
Hostfully offers email capture, translation into more languages (16+ against FreshLinen’s 12), and a larger platform that includes property management products. If your operation needs those, Hostfully is worth a look. FreshLinen translates your book into 12 languages, keeps the translations in sync when you edit, and does one job: a welcome book with nothing for sale in it.
Hostfully details checked July 2026 from their public pricing page and help center; paid-tier prices are review-site sourced and approximate.
Switching from Hostfully
Paste your Airbnb listing link and FreshLinen drafts the book for you, or paste in what you already wrote, then preview it exactly as guests will see it before you pay anything. When you publish, you get fresh per-section QR codes and a wifi fridge card to print. There is no plan tier to pick and no book count to watch: one price covers every property.
See what $49.99 covers on the pricing page, or open the example book to see exactly what your guests would get.