Booqable is an online rental software that assists small business owners in launching their digital rental stores. With focus on sustainability and local entrepreneurship, Booqable fulfills all primary requirements a rental business owner may require for a digital transformation. The solution is also available as a SaaS software, supports integrations and has a 14-days free trial.
However, the rental industry is so vast that even with so many pros, there are a plethora of things that Booqable users reportedly miss. In this blog, we will try to cover some of those things while highlighting the top-most alternative for Booqable, which in our opinion is Yo!Rent rental software.
Meet YoRent – Booqable Alternative for SMBs, Startups and Enterprise-level Businesses
Launched in the year 2015, approximately 6 years after the launch of Booqable, YoRent is a readymade self-hosted online rental software. Even though it was launched much later than Booqable, the team behind Yo!Rent has done a magnificent job in identifying the true rental business requirements and helping business owners come over multiple bottlenecks.
Not only Yo!Rent is more feature-packed than Booqable but is also quite a formidable offering with enterprise level support. All in a single software. See below how Yo!Rent holds up with Booqable.
A Much Secure Self-Hosted Solution
Booqable is a SaaS software, which comes at a monthly recurring cost. While there are several debates on the cost effectiveness of monthly-recurring vs one-time cost payment models, we want to talk about a rather more serious issue, which is security.
Being a SaaS software, Booqable does not leave the choice of server to the business owner. Meaning, he cannot select a faster or dedicated server for his business. Instead, his online rental store will be hosted on a shared server with several other stores, which is not only less secure, but can also have space or speed issues from time to time.
YoRent on the other hand leaves the server choice to the business owner. The owner can host the solution on his own server or opt for any hosting service provider of his choice.
Studded with Features that Matter
Booqable has an impressive range of feature offerings, but still Yo!Rent triumphs over with use-case-focused features. In its development, Yo!Rent’s team has taken into consideration from simple day-to-day use cases to most complex business problems. The features comparison table between Yo!Rent and Booqable will provide you complete info.
| Yo!Rent | Booqable (Premium Package) |
| Rental security management | Manual order creation |
| Agreement management and eSign | Barcode and QR code support |
| Request for Quote | Request for Quote |
| Bulk volume discounts | Contract management |
| Late cancellations | Bulk inventory management |
| Late returns | Rental add-ons |
| Multicurrency | Analytics and reports |
| Multilingual | Booking calendar |
| Rental add-ons | Inventory management |
| Product inspection | Tax management |
| Document verification | Discount management |
| Seller map view | User management |
| Tiered pricing | Admin account management |
| Price surge | |
| Manual order creation | |
| Analytics and reports | |
| Booking calendar | |
| Custom filters | |
| Order management | |
| Inventory management | |
| Tax management | |
| Discount management | |
| User management | |
| Admin account management |
Note that all aforementioned features in Booqable are only available in its premium package. Smaller packages such as essential and pro don’t have these many features.
A Software that Supports Business Growth
Unlike other SaaS solutions, Booqable supports unlimited listings and transactions. This in itself is a good deal but could have been better if Booqable supported more staff admin accounts. Currently, it only supports 2 staff accounts in its base package and 15 in the premium one. The latter sounds good but it also costs $250 per month.
In comparison, Yo!Rent supports unlimited listings, transactions, user profiles and admin accounts. This solution perfectly scales with your business and accommodates business growth without requiring you to upgrade any package. With time, when your business grows, you will require to add more admin accounts. On Yo!Rent, you can not only create unlimited sub-admin accounts but also assign them up to 90 roles and permissions. This means that on Yo!Rent, you can create dedicated teams for order management, inventory management, customer support, payments, shipping and more.
Fully Customizable for Your Needs
In terms of customizability, Booqable severely lacks. Unfortunately, it is a templatized solution that business owners need to use as provided by the company. They cannot add much features or ask for changes in the front end design. Luckily, Booqable does support some third party integrations, due to which business owners can add their favorite business tools but that’s where Booqable’s all customization option ends.
Yo!Rent, on the other hand, is fully customizable. Based on your requirements, Yo!Rent’s team can add more features or revamp its themes on an hourly development basis. Moreover, Yo!Rent already comes with 20 pre-integrated payment gateways and supports renowned third party integrations as well. With this much flexibility, Yo!Rent is an impressive off-the-shelf rental software in the market that entrepreneurs can easily rely on to fulfill any requirements.
From Cost Point of View and Vendor Lock-in Period
Booqable’s cost starts at $35 per month and goes up to $299 per month. It also has annually billed plans starting at $29 per month (billed as $348 for a year) and reaching up to $249 per month (billed as $2988 for a year). However, while the annually billed plans do look comparatively cheaper, they come with a vendor lock-in period.
Meaning, business owners going for the annually billed plans won’t get their money back in case they want to migrate to another software before the completion of 12 months. Thus, they will be stuck with any problems that they may face in the software for a year. Additionally, as Booqable comes with limited scalability and never ending monthly recurring costs, at some point in future, business owners are bound to migrate to a permanent self-hosted software.
In contrast, Yo!Rent’s pricing is not publicly available. Business owners first need to share their requirements with Yo!Rent and then its team provides an appropriate quote. While a declared pricing is not available in Yo!Rent, it is stated as a one-time cost. Business owners will obtain a lifetime usage license for Yo!Rent after a one-time payment. As the business owners own the software for a lifetime, there is no vendor lock-in period. They can migrate to any other software anytime they want.
The Crux
Booqable is a great software for beginners and startups. It comes with very useful features and is quite affordable. Nevertheless, this is where its usability ends. By lacking important features and a customizable design, it pretty much restricts several rental business operations that business owners will be required to manage on their own.
Being an alternative solution, YoRent does a great job at being more secure, feature-packed and worth the money business owners pay for. With free public demos to explore before purchasing and no vendor lock-in periods, Yo!Rent should be on every rental business owner’s trial list.
