Self-hosted WordPress plugin
Sitified vs HBook
HBook is the best-liked hotel plugin on the market, at 4.88/5 across 519 reviews. It's also $99 a year before hosting, and you still build and maintain the whole site yourself. Sitified is $120 a year, finished.
A long-running, well-liked hotel booking plugin from Maestrel. Shortcode-driven, cheaper than MotoPress, and the best-reviewed product in this comparison. Still self-hosted, still do-it-yourself.
Sitified
- Pricing
- $10/month, all-in. Hosting included.
- You maintain
- Nothing. We host it, update it and keep it live.
HBook
- Pricing
- $99/yr direct (renews $55–$65) · $129 on CodeCanyon · extra payment gateways $50 each · theme bundles $119. Plus your own hosting.
- Hosting
- Not included. Your own WordPress hosting.
- Reputation
- The best-reviewed product in this comparison: 4.88/5 across 519 reviews and 11,567 sales on CodeCanyon, with Elite Author status. [3]
Feature by feature
The 11 things that decide whether a hotel website wins direct bookings, and how each product handles them.
| Criterion | Sitified | HBook |
|---|---|---|
| Page load speedHow fast your site loads on a phone. Measured with Google's own yardstick, Core Web Vitals: main content up within 2.5 seconds. | Pre-built HTML served from a CDN. There's no page-builder code to download before your photos appear, which is the usual reason a builder site fails Core Web Vitals.[S3] | Theme and host dependent, like any WordPress plugin.[1] |
| Responsive designLooks and works right on phone, tablet and desktop, where most guests actually browse. | A responsive, per-hotel design system. Every layout is built to work from phone to desktop. | Inherits your theme; companion themes (Adomus, Lavilla) exist to guarantee the styling.[1] |
| What it costs, all inThe real price. Most builders quote a low number, then charge again for hosting, booking and the add-ons you actually need. | $10/month, all-in. Hosting, content, live rates and the booking engine are in the one price. Your card processor still takes its own cut, as it does everywhere. | $99/yr, and renewals drop to $55–$65, the cheapest licence of the three. Hosting is still extra, putting the real total near $460–$690 a year.[2] |
| Who writes the contentWho writes the words and picks the photos. Most tools hand you an empty template to fill in yourself. | Your site arrives written. We read your real reviews, amenities and photos, then write every page and every room from them. You start from a finished site, not a blank page. | You define every accommodation, season, rate, deposit and tax by hand, then drop shortcodes onto your own pages. It does generate the guest invoices for you.[1] |
| Who keeps it up to dateWhen search rules change or a new page type ships, does it reach your site on its own, or does someone have to go and do it? | Because we host your site, SEO improvements, new sections and fixes reach it automatically. No admin, no plugin updates. | Updates are downloaded and applied by you. There's a documentation page devoted to doing it.[1] |
| Live rates and direct bookingCan a guest pick real dates, see your real price and book on your own site, without you paying an OTA commission? | Open-API channel-manager integration. Your rooms, rates and availability come from Effective Tours, so the guest books with you, not with Booking.com.[S1] | Two-way iCal sync with Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, HomeAway and Google Calendar. Customers praise its reliability, but it's still a calendar exchange, not a live API.[1] |
| Payment providersCan you connect your own payment account, or are you locked into the platform's own processor and its cut? | Connect your own account from 150+ payment providers. No proprietary lock-in, no forced processor.[S2] | Stripe and PayPal included, with 45 more country-specific gateways at $50 each.[1] |
| Social-media managementCan you write and schedule posts to Instagram or Facebook from the same tool that runs your site? | Not yet. It's being built, and we'd rather say that than pretend. | Not offered.[1] |
| Keeping the words freshDoes someone keep rewriting your copy as the hotel changes, or does the site slowly go stale? | A content-refresh subscription on top of the $10. We rewrite your copy as the hotel changes, in all your languages, so you never hire a copywriter. | None. A Google Hotels listing-sync subscription is coming at $90/yr, but that's listings, not content.[2] |
| Languages, built inMulti-language for international guests, included rather than a paid add-on plugin. | Any language, with up to 10 live on the site at once. The list isn't fixed: ask for Portuguese and Spanish and we add them. Each gets its own pages and URLs, so search engines index them properly, and you can edit any of it. | The most flexible of the three: WPML, Polylang or qTranslateX, and Polylang is free. Ships with translations for eight languages.[1] |
| SEO, done for youSearch-engine structure and metadata, handled for you rather than a separate plugin to configure. | SEO is wired in, not a plugin you configure. Sitemap, hreflang for every language, and structured data for the hotel and each room. | No built-in SEO anywhere in the plugin or its docs. Yoast or RankMath goes on top.[1] |
✓ Yes~ Partial– Limited✕ No◔ Coming soon
Why hoteliers choose Sitified over HBook
- 01
$99 a year is only the licence. Add hosting and you're near $460–$690, against our $120 all-in.
- 02
It gives you shortcodes and an empty database. Sitified hands over a written, photographed, bookable site.
- 03
You keep WordPress, the theme and the plugin patched yourself. We do that for you.
- 04
Its OTA sync is iCal on a timer. Ours reads live rates through Effective Tours.
What HBook does better
No product wins on everything. These are the places HBook has us beaten.
It's the best-liked product in this entire comparison, at 4.88/5 from 519 reviews. That's earned, not marketing.
Renewals drop to $55–$65, so year two onward is cheaper than almost anything here.
It works with free Polylang, so multi-language doesn't have to mean buying WPML.
45 regional payment gateways are available, including ones most platforms ignore, like Iyzico, PayFast and Xendit.
In fairness — HBook is the one product here whose users genuinely love it, at 4.88/5 on an independent marketplace rather than its own site. Owners praise its channel sync unprompted too. If you want to own a WordPress booking system and have someone to run it, it's an excellent pick.
Find your hotel and see what Sitified builds for it
Pick your region, search for your property, and we’ll put together a booking-ready site from your reviews, photos and live rates. It takes a few minutes, and you can look before you decide anything.
Choose your regionHow we compared
- Every claim about HBook is sourced and linked below, usually to their own pricing page or documentation.
- Prices move. We checked these in July 2026, so treat any figure as a starting point and check it yourself before you buy.
- Where we couldn’t verify something, the page says so instead of guessing.
- If we’ve got something wrong or out of date, tell us and we’ll correct it.
Sources
Our own claims
- [S1]Effective Tours — channel-manager open API
- [S2]Effective Tours — secure payment gateway (the 150+ provider count is Sitified's own figure, not one Effective Tours publishes)
- [S3]Google — Core Web Vitals thresholds
Competitor details reflect publicly available information at the time of writing and may change. Comparisons are Sitified’s assessment for hotel use. Product names and marks belong to their respective owners.