eviivo Reviews

Pros

Simplicity.
There is a free trial!!

Their preauthorisation of credit cards is a key feature leading to us staying with them. It will flag failed cards I your booking calendar allowing you to cancel via booking.com if card not update within 24 hours. This feature saves money and offsets the cost of the software as failed cards have a much higher no show rate.

Cons

Outages - system has had a number of outages I last two years one of which lasted over 12 hours making processing payments for departing guests impossible via the system. Bookings received via OTAs impacted and needed to be verified. Outages are a concern and have triggered my review if alternative platforms.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to eviivo

Pros

Training videos were effective.
Product is web based so can be accessed on the go.
Product enables hosting of our hotels rooms on multiple websites without having to enter information individually for each vendor. Can view and manage bookings across multiple booking platforms in one place.

Cons

I haven't had any issues really so far and I hope this continues

Pros

It accurately keeps bookings and I don't have to be concerned about double-booking units.

Cons

- It doesn't track returning guests.
- When quoting someone a price I have to manually add the room charge + tax to give them a quote from the Eviivo booking page.
- Guests often miss the "guests" number when making their own reservations.
- The program doesn't ask for "City" or "State" of guests so we have no idea where they are from. This has been a problem during the Covid-19 crisis.
- It's nearly impossible to find a cancelled reservation. We have to know the guest's name. Please give an option to show a list of "Cancellation" to us with units, dates and names to choose from.
- Room night charges are not shown on the "Charges" page. There is no way to see our guests' charges for each night in their reservation detail.
- Our booking email sent from Eviivo when a guest books needs to show the unit at the top. Besides the date, the UNIT is the second most important piece of information we need.-
- When a reservation is modified the guest needs an email confirmation. Eviivo should give us that option rather than make us manually find the email section and send one out.
- The previous program, Webervations, allowed us to put a complete availability calendar in our website for each unit so guests could see when that cottage was available before going to the booking platform.
- IN WEBERVATIONS GUESTS COULD BOOK THE SPECIFIC UNIT THEY WANTED WITHOUT SORTING THROUGH OTHER UNITS. MANY OF OUR GUESTS KNOW WHAT UNIT THEY WANT BUT NOW THEY CAN'T FIND OUT WHEN IT'S AVAILABLE.

Pros

I like the cost-effectiveness, the ease of use, the many various changes I can make to my system, including pricing, notes to myself in the calendar, and the financial reports which help me keep my accounting books and also greatly helps when I have to pay montly sales tax and lodging tax to authorities.

Cons

I had some trouble with my mobile app at first, but I think the kinks are worked out now.

Pros

User friendly, support in chat is handy.

Cons

Love everything the daily planner is super helpful and the calendar view.

Pros

I like that it managed by bookings on multiple OTA's

Cons

I found it difficult to use. The functions were not easy to find and making updates was confusing.

Pros

I did not like much of it . I am glad I have not continued to use it

Cons

I was hooked into this Eviivo as I had to move on from Xotelia, company purchased by them.
Everything was bad.
The main issue is that they charge by ROOM!!! Non-sense. If you have a vacation rental property with 5 rooms, they calculate as if you have 5 units!!!

Pros

It provides the basic needs of any reservation software system. Being able to record gift certificates is a plus and the overall interface of it is pretty simple to understand and navigate for the most part. You're able to adjust room prices and minimum night stays and the reports aspect of it is decent too. You can customize the colors to differentiate payment statuses which always helps as well as customize and label colored flags to tag specific reservations all on the occupancy map.

Cons

The system is sluggish and very slow at loading anything. I've logged in from different computers and laptops, but it's not my personal laptop or desktop at work or my friends desktop that is making the system slow, it's the system itself. There is an update always going on and every update so far has not made the system more functional in any way or improved it by any means. I believe at one point that one of their updates had actually made the software worse. I don't like how it saves the same guest information over and over if that particular guest uses an outside third party website to make their reservations. It should be able to recognize the information and pull up that guest. It just makes it difficult to see thousands of names under the Guests Tab if you're wanting to search for a particular guest and it pulls up 10 duplicates of the same person with the same last name of the person you are looking for but with a different first name. That duplicate basically takes up the whole screen making you have to scroll until you find the guest name you're actually looking for.

Pros

I like everything about Eviivo especially the monthly rate, very much afordable.

Cons

to many pop up messages and changes in the system

Pros

channel integration within Google, Hotels.Com, Expedia, VRBO, etc.

Cons

software glitches in rate plan management and screens. Would also be great to activate and deactivate a plan (vs delete and recreate only)

Pros

It does what you need it to do and the service teams are always very helpful in filling in any gaps. I've used the software in my Guesthouse for 6 years and I'd have no hesitation in using Eviivo in my next business

Cons

The RATES section always seemed to confuse me ... luckily the helpline was always there to put me right.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to eviivo

Pros

Absolutely nothing.

Booking engine is NOT working.

Their customer service is NON EXISTENT. Phone calls go to voice mail, emails unanswered, support tickets unanswered, online chat spotty at best.

Cons

This booking engine is unreliable at best. Since going "live" 2 weeks ago I have not received a reservation thru eviivo because it doesn't work.

I have received calls from guests who were unable to complete their booking online which was exactly my experience after I conducted my own test to ensure their system was actually functioning. My test booking never went thru...just kept cycling back to the reservation page. I am 2 weeks into this and have not even received a phone call back from eviivo and the booking engine is still NOT working.

The customer service is NON EXISTENT. No one answers the phone, their online chat support is not staffed and most often is unavailable, email and support tickets go unanswered.

I have a small lodging property and pride myself on being responsive to the requests of my guests. I am dumbfounded by the total lack of regard eviivo has for their customers. Each day that goes by without the booking engine working properly is costing my business revenue and disservicing my guests.

Here are more negatives:
1. The address field asks only for a zip code and not the guests full address. Why?

2. The Discover card and Amex logos do not appear as accepted forms of payment even if your business accepts them.

3. The confirmation letter generated is poorly worded, is largely not customizable and is confusing for a guest to understand.

4. The booking page uses language native to the UK but not the US. Ex: Forename and Surname vs First and Last name.

Pros

As with their old desktop version, this system does great when it comes to features like: moving or resizing reservations with a drag of the mouse, producing housekeeping and revenue reports, ability to add rooms to an existing reservation, changing the price of any or all rooms. Technical support is quite phenomenal during business hours. Very responsive via phone. Less so via email.

Cons

As compared to their just retired desktop version, this new system has several problems.
1. We can now no longer see all of our rooms in a single screen shot. Of our 40 rooms, over a 1/3 require scrolling up.
2. Choosing rooms for a reservation takes more care and attention because the room order for the reservation window is ordered differently than for our occupancy map. Also, it now shows all rooms whether available for the selected dates or not (before it only showed available rooms with an option to show "all rooms."
3. In the process of entering a guest, if upon first entry there is no existing guest, it is cumbersome to get out of that screen to add a guest. Before if we entered the name and it didn't exist it was a single click to add the new guest.
4. Increased clicks to accomplish almost everything compared to the old system.

Pros

I liked the ease of use of this software. All the answers to the guest bookings are at our "fingertips" with a click or two on the computer. Ease of finding the guest on the calendar, ease of running their deposit, ease of running their check-in and balance due, ease of identifying their booking agency, ease of finding their phone number. Also easy to enter manually a reservation we take over the phone or by email.

Cons

There wasn't anything I didn't like about this software!

Pros

Very user friendly and always available. Easy to check bookings and add my own bookings. Compared to what I used in the past, this is a breeze. Glad we were able to find out about eviivo.

Cons

We pay with our credit card and the credit card renewed with a new expiry date and code and I could not see any place on the site to add this info so I called the help line and ended up talking to [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]. She took the new information and processed it and then it happened the next month and I had to call back and then it happened again the 3rd month. She had not updated the ongoing information. I think it is finally corrected but it would have been nice if I could have updated on line and did not have to call back 3 months in a row to get it fixed. Also I wonder, if I did not call how long would it have been before someone tried to call me to find out why they were not getting the payment??

Pros

We have used many channels managers, we have been most satisfied with Eviivo. Friendly team always willing to help. We love how easy Eviivo is to use and the many upgrades over the years. If I had to pick one thing I like the most besides the team, it is the depndable and easy to use calendar.

Cons

I wish I could think of something to be critical of but there is nothing.

Pros

People professional, helpful. Channel master does it's job. They are small and we are small, Gives a personal touch. Most of our guests from Europe, think a UK company works well.

Cons

Small, computer can sometimes lag real time, We are across many time zones so it's important to respond to guests , quickly.
Small , not many people , no gaint resource think tank to draw upon.
Small works both ways. Hours of operation can be hard since we are in middle of Pacific ocean, We are 5 or 6 hours off Austin. Things get pushed to tomorrow,

Pros

It looks like the software could have potential if they were able to fix issues in a timely manner. While they have some good pieces of functionality, they get lost amongst all the other bugs and lack of functionality.

Cons

I want to start by saying we were patient for over 4 months understanding that Eviivo was managing many migrations from rezovation and issues would arise, but after 6 months we have run out of patience!
The customer services organization is terrible! It is not the agents fault but any contact always leads to a dead end and we cannot get any manager to contact us. The software has constant outages that are never mentioned and they cannot fix basic but critical issues as getting accurate time stamps for reporting. Currently since their servers are in the UK all our transactions are logged 8 hours later than the actual time making our financials all wrong. This issues has been going on for about 5 months with no fix.
Sales also was deceitful during our migration process resulting in us paying over 3 times more than we did prior to our migration from Rezovation due to hidden processing fees. More expense for less functionality! Also, nobody from their team will bother calling us to discuss the concern.
This list can go on for quite a while unfortunately. As a small business owner I feel powerless and get a clear sense Eviivo coyuld care less about us and our business.
Stay away from this software!!

Pros

This platform was adaptable to my unique island location and the demands I put on it to deliver. It has provided a quality interface with multiple gateways and creative ways to advance my offering as 4-star guest house and garden restaurant. Integration was expertly handled and continues to be so with new features evolving.

Cons

Creating group quotations and associated features would be useful at present screen shots are used but a bug bear but it's a small thing.

Pros

Easy to use. Customer service generally helpful.

Cons

When first joined through European group was supposed to have a tutorial for discount but they were always at 3 or 4 in morning. Very impratical. Still no follow-up to this complaint. Finally told I was to call London, Engl. Not likely.
Other item was transferring Excel info from your summary to mine. When I delete so many unneces columns I should be able to save so I don't have to reinvent wheel each time.
Finally, trying to figure out how to get larger font on summary sheets so can see customers name easier.

Pros

We own and run a very successful small award winning Bed & Breakfast in Northamptonshire and Eviivo was initially recommended to us by a close friend who could not recommend them highly enough. Our experience with Eviivo was nothing less than totally professional at all times, their software has been so well developed and it took us no time at all to to feel we had been using it for years - their training was second to non and really helped when starting to get to grips with the software and what we particularly liked was how flexible it was towards our business. I really cannot recommend Eviivo highly enough you made was was initially a minefield a complete pleasure.

Cons

I have none at all, everything was so well thought out and there was always someone on the end of a telephone to help out if needed.

Pros

We were a new start in this business. We were aware of Free to Book and Queensborough but opted for Eviivo and they have assisted us throughout. I only have to deal with Eviivo who manage the critical process of dealing with 3rd party OTA's and reconciling revenue take and commissions which is so efficient.

Cons

Nothing specific. In general I find the system relatively straightforward for my needs

Pros

Easy to use, not complicated. Does not require a lot of IT skills

Cons

Not sure why Eviivo does not have its own 'merchant payment' system (i.e. FirstData).
It would be nice if we do not need to have a separate service provider for payment like FirstData.

Pros

The Eviivo diary and booking procedure are very easy to use and have improved with additional options especially making group bookings. I can see at a glance what rooms I have available and bookings I have.

Cons

The area I find harder to use is setting up special offers, discounts etc. I have done it but often have to get help from chat room or phone. This tends to put me off setting these up.