What RV park management software costs: flat fees vs per-reservation pricing

The common ways park software is priced

Vendors mix and match these, so a single quote can combine two of them. Name the model behind each part of a quote and the comparison gets much easier.

A flat monthly subscription

One price a month, sometimes with a setup fee. It is easy to budget, and it can be the cheapest model for a park that is busy all year with lots of short stays. The catch is that you pay the full amount in your quietest month, and a flat price often comes with limits — on sites, staff accounts or features — that are worth finding before you sign.

Per-site pricing

A fee for each site, every month. It scales with the size of your park rather than with how busy it is, so a 40-site park pays for 40 sites in February whether anyone is staying or not. Check whether cabins, tent sites and seasonal sites count the same as RV sites.

Tiered plans

A basic plan, a middle plan and a top plan, with features spread between them. Online booking, a camp store register, accounting or extra staff logins sometimes sit only in a higher tier, so the honest comparison is the price of the tier that has everything on your checklist, not the price at the top of the page.

Per-reservation pricing

A small base fee plus a fee for each reservation. The bill follows your season: low in the quiet months, higher in the busy ones. It suits parks with a real off-season, long or seasonal stays, or a modest number of bookings, and it can cost more than a flat fee for a park that makes a great many short reservations every month. This is how Lime Reservations is priced.

Booking fees added to your guests' totals

Some booking systems add a fee to what the guest pays at checkout. That keeps the price you are quoted down, but raises the price your guests see next to the park down the road. Ask whether anything is added to a guest's total, and who keeps it.

Costs that don't appear on the price sheet

• Card processing. Every system that takes cards pays a processor. Find out which one, whose merchant account the money lands in, and whether the software adds a percentage of its own.
• Setup, onboarding and training. One-off fees are easy to miss in a monthly comparison; spread them over the years you expect to stay.
• Hardware. Some systems want a particular computer, card reader or receipt printer.
• Your website. A separate booking site, an embedded widget or a plugin may each carry its own cost, or need your web person's time.
• Modules. A point of sale, accounting or long-term leases are sometimes priced separately.
• Your own time. Entering existing bookings, setting up rates and training staff are real hours, and they cost most in the middle of a season.

How Lime's price works

Lime Reservations has one plan: $19 a month plus $1 for each reservation created. Every feature is included, sites and staff accounts are unlimited, and each month's invoice is simply the base fee plus the reservation fee. The details that matter for a budget:

• A reservation counts whether a guest made it online or your staff entered it at the desk.
• Cancelled reservations are not charged.
• The fee is per reservation, not per night: a guest who books a whole season as one reservation is one fee.
• A reservation counts in the month it is made, not the month of the stay, so a spring rush of summer bookings shows up on spring's invoices.
• Card payments run through your own Square account at Square's rates. Lime adds no percentage, and no fee to your guests' totals.
• The free trial runs 60 days, with every feature and no credit card.

A worked year for a 40-site park

Here is an illustration. The numbers are an example, not an average of real parks: a 40-site park makes about 20 reservations in a quiet month, 70 in a steady month and 160 in a busy one, with 5 quiet, 4 steady and 3 busy months a year.

That is $1,088 for the year: $90.67 a month on average, or $2.27 per site per month.

When a flat fee costs less

Per-reservation pricing has a crossover point. Against a flat quote, take the monthly price, subtract $19, and divide what's left by the $1 reservation fee. In any month you make fewer reservations than that, Lime costs less; in any month you make more, the flat price does.

Compare over a year, not a month. In the example above, a busy month costs $179, so a flat price below that beats Lime in that month — but the flat price is charged in all twelve. To beat the example park's $1,088 year, a flat subscription would have to cost less than $90.67 a month, with its setup fees spread in.

The pattern that falls out: a flat fee tends to win for a park that is busy all year with many short stays. Per-reservation pricing tends to win for a park with a real off-season, plenty of long or seasonal stays, or a modest number of bookings.

Comparing quotes side by side

1. 1Get every quote for the plan that includes everything on your checklist, not the cheapest plan on offer.
2. 2Work out a year at your park: twelve months of your own booking numbers through each price.
3. 3Add the one-off fees, spread over the years you expect to stay.
4. 4Note card processing separately: whose account, what rate, and any percentage on top.
5. 5Read the contract for its length, its notice period and how you get your data out.

The rest of the decision — whether a system actually does what your park needs — is in our checklist for choosing RV park reservation software, and Lime's own price is on one card on the RV park software pricing page.