Happy Guest handles the guest side of a short-term rental: automated check-in, a digital guidebook for the property and the area, and paid upsells such as early check-in and late checkout.

Its pricing is built around not charging a monthly fee. There is a free tier, and the paid plan is billed yearly at around $99 rather than month to month.

The yearly fee can be waived once enough reservations run through the upsell features, at which point Happy Guest earns a commission on those sales instead. So it is not simply free — the cost moves from a subscription to a share of what you sell.