Thank you everyone for the great feedback. It is great to see that our system is working well for most of the people that have made the switch.
To Don Draper, we are sorry that it did not work out, but our product is constantly evolving. Regarding the price, we are pretty sure our price remains very competitive. I believe for the $89 on Webervations that only includes the online portion and not the full featured back end that we include in our price. With our system you basically only need one system. If you are looking for ONLY an online calendar, then there are less expensive alternatives.
With Gift Certificates we went with only online payments (for now at least) in order to streamline and modernize the process. I am pretty sure the way Webervations does it, you have to manually run the card after the order comes through (by email?). We are trying to make the process entirely automatic from purchase to use. And you can use Authorize.net as your payment method instead of PayPal if you like. With this method, the credit card fields are right with the rest of the purchase fields so there is no redirect for payment. The only option we are not currently supporting with Gift Certificates is the ability to manually collect credit card numbers and run them offline.
Regarding packages, as we say, our system is constantly evolving. So far we have had very few requests to limit packages by date, but it certainly seems doable. The reason packages all show on one page is that we are limiting the guest experience to navigating only one page when making a reservation. Everything they need is on one page instead or requiring navigating multiple pages before finally completing their reservation.
I hopes this helps clear up some of these points. Thanks!.
Thanks John for your responses. I do appreciate that your product is one that is constantly evolving and you have a limited amount of personnel resources to work on these issues, and I do appreciate your general responses to questions, both with me personally and here on the forum. However, you and I first discussed these issues (GC's and packages) back in August of 2010 and at that time you said these were "being worked on". Today you are saying the same, while there is a GC model in place it does not suit my needs and I'm sure those of many others, and there are no options are available on the packages. The answer you give above regarding packages, "Not enough people are looking for that", just does not fly with me...I take that as my problems are not important to you or your company, so that's the lasting impression I get, just FYI.
To be fair, the $89 yearly fee for Webervations is strictly for online availability and bookings, no PMS. But even at 9 rooms (fairly large as far as the "average" US b&b), I don't NEED all the very intricate PMS features which cost so much more. I can simply export my Webervations data to an excel spreadsheet and everything I need is right there. Perhaps it's because we are fairly savvy with Excel, but I don't need the reports and all the extras that cost so much more with a PMS. I can do it myself for free.
WHY can gift certificate orders not be made using the same interface as a room booking? This is the format Webervations uses and it is seamless with the rest of our website. You're still inputting a cc number, just like when you make a reservation. And yes, I manually run the cc for ALL of my transactions (reservations and gc's) because there is no way I'm letting Intuit/QuickBooks into ANY of my personal or business info. I understand that some here use that service and are happy with it, but I have had nothing but HORRIFIC interactions with that company.
.