PA PMS vs Little Hotelier: Free Plan vs Monthly Fee and Booking Commission

Little Hotelier is one of the best-known systems for small properties, so PA PMS vs Little Hotelier is a fair comparison to make. Both are cloud software for running a hotel, B&B or guesthouse without an IT department. The difference is mostly in how you pay and in how much comes in the box. We make PA PMS; everything said here about Little Hotelier comes from its own pricing page, linked at the bottom.

Pricing: what each one charges

Little Hotelier publishes prices, which is more than most PMS vendors do. On its pricing page (shown in euros to a visitor from Spain, excluding tax), the Basics plan starts from €29 per month plus a 1% booking fee, and Pro starts from €119 per month. Its FAQ says the price mostly depends on your number of rooms, that you can pay month-to-month with no contract (or annually with a discount), and that self-onboarded plans have no setup fee while plans with an onboarding specialist may carry a small one. There is a free period to try it.

PA PMS has a free plan with no time limit: reservations (including group bookings), check-in/check-out and no-shows, guest folios and charges, housekeeping status, night audit and reports (revenue, occupancy, ADR, RevPAR), with Booking.com/Expedia bookings brought in by importing their XLS/CSV export. No per-room fee, no booking fee and no setup fee. The paid plan adds live two-way sync with Booking.com and Expedia and is set up with each hotel on request, with no fixed public price.

Where Little Hotelier is the stronger choice

Little Hotelier comes with more around the PMS: its plans and add-ons include a channel manager, a booking engine for your own website, a mobile app, payments, metasearch, revenue tools and a website builder, plus 24/7 chat and email support. If you want a single small-property package that also sells your rooms online and you're happy with a monthly fee, it covers more ground than PA PMS, which focuses on front-desk operations only.

Where PA PMS is the better fit

A booking fee grows with your bookings: in a busy season you pay more for the same software. PA PMS has no booking fee and no monthly fee on the free plan, whatever your size. If your OTA listings and your own website already bring in the bookings and what you need is a clean way to run reservations, guest folios, housekeeping and the night audit, you can do that for free and keep the extranets you already use. When importing reservation exports stops being practical, the paid plan adds live channel sync.

How to decide

• Choose Little Hotelier if you want the PMS, channel manager and a booking engine for your website in one package, with round-the-clock support.
• Choose PA PMS if you want the day-to-day PMS without a monthly fee or a commission on every booking.
• Worried about overbooking while you import bookings by hand? That article explains when manual imports are fine and when live sync is worth paying for.
• Also compared: PA PMS vs Cloudbeds and PA PMS vs eZee Absolute.