CiiRUS

Great Over All Product

Comments: I cant say anything negative about CiiRUS to be honest. I have spent a year going through two different software providers to be left 20 units down and on the verge of dropping another 5. I had lodgify and cant complain except their accounting was not strong enough for us and there is a fee i had to pay for a foreign transaction to pay for their service. I felt that was ridiculous even though the fee was small.... Why do i have to pay that?!?! Escapia was supposed to be the best thing for us and it turned into the worst possible scenario. We lost 20 properties due to our direct bookings completely falling off and non existent practically over night when we connected with their channel manager. The accounting piece was excellent but we struggled with every other aspect and it was catastrophic for us. We researched and demoed a dozen software companies and decided on Cirrus. Not only are they a local company, they have a solid all in one solution that includes the channel manager, inbox, and accounting pieces.... I honestly don't think you can go wrong. Not to mention they are budget conscious and their insurance helps pay for the software!

Pros:

I love that the customer service is by far the best ive witnessed. When using lodgify, they are fast but foreign which creates a bit of a challenge on a phone call. I had a horrible time with escapia customer support. They email back a day or so later and never have a resolution.... Ciirus has been quick to respond and being in the states, makes it easy for us! I would highly recommend them simply for this.

Cons:

So far the only thing im not loving is the lack of a mobile app for my team etc and the channel manager not being the strongest ive seen. Although i dont think connecting to all possible channels is conducive to the best traffic either.

Ciirus made us happier

Comments: Overall I am happy with Ciirus. Implementation was a bit rocky- but the team pulled together and really helped us to get it going. I enjoy the fact that we can easily reach out to the team about features we would like to see changed and that our concerns/ critiques are taking seriously as we are the ones utilizing the software on the daily. Everyone is really pleasant to work with.

Pros:

I am really enjoying all of the new updates- I like that the reservation calendar and payments are easy to use and view- the software makes it so that we can easily track our income

Cons:

Some features are clunky- I would love to see the rate sets made easier to implement more dynamic pricing (i.e. allow me to set week days at different rates than weekends etc. for instance if I could select all M-Th bookings for a certain date range to be a certain price). I would love to avoid having to pay for an additional service to come in and price my properties.

Failed Implementation - Know what you are buying

Comments: Overall it was an extremely expensive learning exercise for us. Their onboarding fee is quite high and I'm still not sure what we paid for. Basic implementation training can be achieved with their video training, they scrape the websites of existing bookings on HA to build properties, they use pretty basic templates for websites. As I said we were 5 weeks into implementation. Go Live Day we only had 1 channel semi operational. AirBnB and it was not collecting taxes correctly. TripAdvisor and Home Away followed about a week later but we learned what we thought was their responsibility was really our responsibility to work with the channels to get the changes done. Booking.com was never implemented and it represents 30% of our business so in reality I would say we never really were live. We had many software issue/problems and honestly I expected we would have some. It is software. It was very concerning though when core functionality just didn't seem to work correctly. They advertised on their website an integration with a smartlock company that didn't exist and of course it was the one that we needed. Automated payments weren't very automated... automated emails worked as long as the booking occurred prior to your automated send times otherwise you had to force them to go manually. We found that we were ultimately having to touch ever booking to post payments for AirBnB, to put in door lock codes, to make sure emails were sent and to resend etc.

Pros:

We originally chose Ciirus because we were told they were fully integrated with the channels we did business with and they have features and functionality to support our electronic doorlocks, revenue management, housekeeping and guest portal. Unfortunately, we couldn't get it all working and after about 5 weeks of trying pulled the plug.

Cons:

There are two versions of the software... the SAAS version that they call ONE and a Windows version. ONE supposedly is their go forward platform but it is difficult to use from a booking/reservation management standpoint and while the Windows version does a pretty good job for callin reservations it lacks all of the functionality of One. We found ourselves bouncing from screen to screen to find reservations and manage the components of the reservation that are needed. The user experience has you opening lots of different modules to be able to get details you need. Very disjointed. Guest communication is a big deal for us... SMS we never could get working and were told it only works with their CRM for automated messaging... you can't send an SMS on the fly if you needed to quickly reach out to a guest. None of the messaging is connected to the booking itself so you don't know what is scheduled to go out or what has been sent without jumping through hoops to get it. They have integrated the AirBnB messaging but again it is separate, not part of the booking and you have to jump to a different module and filter things to get what you need. Ask they why you have to use Mailchimp. Taxing for ABB does not work if you have ABB remit only a portion of the taxes and pass the remaining taxes onto the property manager to file. Booking.com has to have a very specific setup (if you use Group Home in Booking.com you will need to change) that we found at the last minute.

Ciirus

Pros:

Ciirus is a great software for vacation homes rental and property management. It is easy to use and the customer service is good.

Cons:

It is somtimes a little slow and the website link to it should be more customizable.

Constantly improving

Comments: I like that Ciirus still feels like a family run business. They clearly care and remain approachable as they grow year on year. All the staff seem committed and passionate in working toward more innovative and better software.
In the past their enthusiasm to improve too much too quickly didn't always work out well but more recently they have grown their team and Im seeing lots of good upgrades and additions. Too many to keep up with sometimes.

Pros:

I like that I have full control and can easily correct entries and manipulate booking data. Some other softwares makes both difficult. I love useful little features like Set Booking Total. Also that there are constant improvements. Cirrus do listen and react to their clients comments.

Cons:

I'm a Mac user and Ciirus has always been PC based so the first 6 years were problematic. The long awaited Ciirus 1 has addressed that problem, but still has a way to go to be as responsive as the desktop version. I wish there was the ability to more permanently customize the booking schedule, reports, etc to my specific needs (perhaps it's a Mac trait:). Also to be able to customize the appearance and lay out of owner statements which are IMHO too long and confusing.