Beyond vs Wheelhouse: Which One Is Better, and Why?

Managing rental properties can be a headache, and figuring out the best rates to charge and how to change them with the seasons and trends in your market can make your head spin even more.

Luckily, there are revenue management companies that make tools to help you manage your properties stress-free. Beyond and Wheelhouse are two of the most popular ones, but which one is the best?

Beyond and Wheelhouse will both help you manage and maximize the revenue for your rental properties. Although Wheelhouse has more tools for managing a larger portfolio and a reactive pricing algorithm, Beyond is more user friendly and will more likely be available in your area.

Revenue management goes beyond dynamic pricing and setting the best rates. A full-service revenue management service should help you manage your properties using information from the past to empower you for the future.

Read on to learn more about both companies and see which one is the best option for your rental business.

Beyond

Founded in 2013, Beyond is the older of the two services. It’s based out of San Francisco but works in markets across the globe. Founder David Kelso started the company as a way to provide dynamic pricing to people like him who were renting out spare rooms. Since then, the company has grown to provide multiple products and services.

How Much Does Beyond Cost?

Although their service fees are also not publicly available at the time of this writing, a free trial is available for Airbnb hosts which reveals that Beyond will take 1%-1.25% of your total revenue (plus fees).

This is a “pay-as-you-go” model where you only get charged for what you use, and is good for beginners. However, there is also no fixed fee subscription, so if you get a lot of bookings then it can be much more expensive than Wheelhouse.

Pros of Beyond

Beyond is an industry leader in revenue management largely due to the all-inclusive nature of their services. They offer dynamic pricing, market insights, professional guidance, forecasting, web-building tools, and options to sync across multiple booking websites. Since 2013, they’ve grown with the intention of being a one-stop shop for all your rental property management needs.

They‘ve also partnered with thirty other platforms for easy integration so that you can use their services to capture the best price for that particular market no matter where you’re listing your rentals.

Currently, Beyond operates in over 7,500 cities worldwide, so chances are they’re available in your area – which is a big deal.

Customer reviews show a track record of success and satisfaction with the services and products. There are also a series of blog posts on their website to help guide you through some of the trickier aspects of the rental management industry.

However, their posts aren’t always specific to their tools.

Cons of Beyond

The biggest drawback to Beyond is that the dynamic pricing model is not as reactive like Wheelhouse. It uses historical pricing data and is not as proactive at responding to sudden spikes in demand, which may leave money on the table.

The simplistic design, although good for being accessible and hands off, may become an issue for power users should you want more fine tuning control over your properties. In fact, once you have more than a few properties those limitations start becoming more noticeable.

They offer a large suite of products, but there is a large learning curve for getting acquainted to the products.

Wheelhouse

Founded in 2014, Wheelhouse is just one year younger than Beyond. It’s also based out of San Francisco and offers many of the same services that Beyond advertises, making them one of Beyonds’ biggest competitors. Despite very similar profiles, Wheelhouse has some different advantages over Beyond.

How Much Does Wheelhouse Cost?

Wheelhouse is very transparent about their pricing options, which has both a fixed fee model and a revenue based model. The revenue model is 1% of bookings with a $2.99 monthly minimum.

This is great for beginners who only have a single property and just want to try Wheelhouse.

The fixed fee subscription, on the other hand, is only $19.99 per month per property with significant discounts for multiple properties. This means if you’ll be saving money if your property does over $2,000/mo in revenue.

Pros of Wheelhouse

Wheelhouse’s biggest strength is their tool suite and reactive pricing algorithm that is able to detect sudden surges in rental demand and update your prices accordingly.

They offer a wide variety of free training courses, including video tutorials with company experts, so that you can learn how to use these tools before you decide to purchase.

They also offer three pricing tiers, including a “free forever” option for their introductory service. Their more professional service, Wheelhouse Pro, has two pricing options: flat and flex. Flat is a monthly fee that never changes, whereas flex is a percentage of each booking you receive.

Like Beyond, they offer market insights, dynamic pricing, professional guidance, and their APIs are available for purchase. They take these tools a step further, offering up to 18 months’ worth of pricing predictions, a booking score that helps you analyze how well your properties are doing, and customizable options depending on how large your business is.

Wheelhouse’s strength comes from the way they focus first on customer satisfaction and experience and build their products to reach that goal. They make recommendations and suggestions but let you customize and adjust all of the settings until you’re happy with the results.

Additionally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, they adjusted their prices and offered many of their products and services for free or at a large discount. This was a way of helping people whose businesses were hit hard by the crisis stay afloat.

Recently, they launched another new service, Compsets, to offer their customers even more information about the rest of the rental properties on their market. Wheelhouse has a consistent history of positive growth and innovative new tools for their users.

Cons of Wheelhouse

There are a few drawbacks to Wheelhouse, mostly due to their size. They operate in fewer cities than Beyond and have fewer partnerships with other rental industry platforms, which is a major issue for hosts who aren’t in large cities.

The seventeen brands they partner with are all also Beyond partners, so they don’t have a noticeable advantage in platform adoption either.

They also don’t have their own syncing feature for booking across multiple platforms like Beyond does, at least not yet.

Currently, they don’t offer products that are comparable with Beyonds’ Relay and Signal features. However, they do partner with companies that offer similar products.

Beyond vs Wheelhouse: Which One Is Better?

Beyond, in our opinion, is the better rental revenue management system.

Their focus on customer satisfaction and success has led them to develop tools and programs that set you up for long-term success. Both services will help you manage your real estate revenue, but Beyond will make it easier (and more profitable) for you to do so.

Beyond vs Wheelhouse have many features that can help your property maximize its revenue. Wheelhouse also offers a full-service approach, but they really shine once you get a large portfolio of properties.

For hosts with less than five properties, the decision is clear: Beyond has unmatched customer service and helpful tools for managing the portfolios of most rental properties.

While many of the features between these two brands are comparable, Beyond is the more user-friendly and comprehensive option.

Revenue management for short-term rentals is a complex market, and Beyond either provides the best option or partners with the best option for all aspects of the business.

Customer reviews for both products indicate high satisfaction, but if Wheelhouse isn’t available in your area then how useful will it really be?

Conclusion

Wheelhouse and Beyond are two incredibly well-developed and useful revenue management systems. However, Beyond offers a better product due to their emphasis on customer satisfaction and how that’s created more innovative and useful tools.

Additionally, their large library of free resources and tutorials means that anyone can use their products like an expert, even if you aren’t. Either service will work, but Beyond will make the experience better.

If you’re still not sure whether Wheelhouse or Beyond is best for your business, try the free trial of both services and decide which one works best for you!