A free hotel booking engine with 0% commission
For homestays, guesthouses, cottages and small hotels in India. Guests see each night’s price and the total with GST, book on your own site, and you keep the whole room price.
By Manan Agrawal, Founder · Updated October 28, 2026
A booking engine is the part of your website where guests pick dates, see the price and book a room directly with you. SitesPlaced includes one free for homestays and small hotels in India, with live nightly prices, GST worked out for you, no double bookings and 0% commission. It doesn’t sync with booking apps automatically yet; you add those bookings by hand.
What is a booking engine, and what isn’t one?
A booking engine is the calendar, the prices and the Book button on your own website. Three words get mixed up when you shop for one, so here they are in plain terms:
- ✓Booking engine: the booking part of your own website. Guests book with you, not with an app.
- ✓Channel manager: software that sends your rooms and prices to booking apps such as Booking.com, Airbnb and MakeMyTrip and pulls their bookings back, so every calendar matches.
- ✓PMS (property management system): front-desk software for check-ins, bills and payments.
SitesPlaced gives you a booking engine and a simple front desk (the owner dashboard), on a website that’s ready to publish. It doesn’t have a channel manager yet.
Live demoThe booking engine, live
Try it as a guest would
The demo is a sample family homestay, Deodar & Stone in Himachal’s Tirthan Valley. Tap Check availability, pick dates and guests, and watch each room’s total, GST included, appear before the book button.
How the free booking engine works for guests
Pick dates
The calendar shows each night’s price and greys out nights that are full or closed.
Choose guests
Adults and children, so extra-guest charges you’ve set are added.
Compare rooms with the full total
Every room shows the total for the stay, GST included, before the button.
Enter a name and phone number
The phone number is the guest’s WhatsApp, so you can reach them straight away.
Booked, or “request sent”
Instant bookings confirm on the spot. Requests wait for you, with the rooms held for the hours you set.
Each new booking reaches you by email and as a push notification on the SitesPlaced phone app. The guest gets WhatsApp chat buttons to reach you with questions.
What you control as the owner
- ✓Request to book or instant booking. With requests, you confirm each one and the rooms are held for the hours you choose.
- ✓How guests pay: at the property, a deposit percentage first, or the full amount first. You collect any advance yourself by UPI or bank transfer after confirming.
- ✓Weekday and weekend prices, and you pick which nights count as weekend.
- ✓Season and festival prices for date ranges, minimum nights, and closed dates.
- ✓Extra charges for additional adults and children.
- ✓GST, worked out automatically if you’re registered: 5% per room per night up to ₹7,500 and 18% above, the rates in force since 22 September 2025. Not registered? No GST is shown.
- ✓One calendar. Phone, WhatsApp, walk-in, Airbnb and Booking.com bookings you add by hand block the same room-nights, so nothing is sold twice.
Free vs paid booking engines in India
Most booking engines sold to Indian hotels come inside a paid monthly plan, often bundled with a front-desk system. Here’s what each one costs, from its own pricing page or a software directory listing.
| Price as listed (Oct 2026) | Fee per booking | Good to know | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SitesPlaced | ₹0 on the Free plan; ₹199/month for your own domain | 0% | Website, booking engine and dashboard together. No channel manager or online payment at booking yet. |
| eZee Absolute (Yanolja Cloud Solution) | About ₹2,250/month + GST for the booking engine; about ₹5,250 with a channel manager too (Techjockey listing, 1–5 rooms) | None listed | A full hotel system: front desk, booking engine and channel manager, sold as separate pieces. |
| Stayflexi | ₹2,500/month + 18% GST per property, up to 20 rooms (its India price calculator) | None listed | Front desk, booking engine and a channel manager in one plan. |
| Djubo | Priced for a minimum of 10 rooms, billed quarterly or yearly, plus 18% GST | None listed | Payment gateway and GST e-invoicing are paid add-ons (contact sales). |
| Hotelogix | About $3.99 per room per month (Software Advice) | None listed | A one-time $350 sign-up fee; minimum billing applies. |
| Lodgify | Paid monthly plans | About 1.9% per booking on its entry plan | Built mainly for holiday rentals. |
Prices as listed in October 2026 on each vendor’s pricing page or on Capterra, Techjockey and Software Advice; before tax. “None listed” means the listing showed no per-booking fee. Check with each vendor before you decide.
When is a paid booking engine worth it?
Paid systems are genuinely ahead in three places:
- ✓Automatic sync with booking apps. If you sell the same rooms on several apps every day, a channel manager saves typing and lowers the risk of two guests for one room. eZee sells one with its booking engine from about ₹5,250 a month (Techjockey); Djubo includes one in its Growing Hotelier plan.
- ✓Card and UPI payment on the booking page. SitesPlaced doesn’t take payment at booking yet; you collect a deposit after confirming.
- ✓Running several properties from one login. eZee’s top plan lists multi-property management.
If none of those is a daily problem for you, and for many homestays and guesthouses with a few rooms it isn’t, a paid plan means paying every month for software you won’t use. Start free on SitesPlaced, keep your listings on the apps, add their bookings to your calendar by hand, and move to a paid system only if you outgrow it. Your site, your guests’ phone numbers and your prices stay yours either way.
Booking engine for a homestay: what to look for
Whichever you choose, check it does these. SitesPlaced does all of them on the Free plan, except where noted.
- ✓The total for the stay, GST included, before the Book button.
- ✓Different prices for weekdays, weekends and festival dates, with minimum nights for peak dates.
- ✓A choice between request-to-book and instant booking.
- ✓One calendar that also holds phone, walk-in and booking-app bookings.
- ✓Rooms and prices Google can read, through structured data and a sitemap with every room page.
- ✓Your own domain, so the booking link looks like yours (Starter, ₹199 a month).
- ✓No commission on any booking.
Want the bigger picture first? Read how SitesPlaced Hospitality works or work out what booking-app commission costs you on the direct booking website page.
Add a free booking engine to your stay
Pick the Homestay & Stays template, add your rooms and prices, choose instant booking or requests, and publish. 0% commission on every booking, and ₹199 a month only when you want your own domain.
Start your stay’s website — free →The booking engine, unlimited bookings and the dashboard are all on the Free plan.
Frequently asked questions
What is a hotel booking engine?
A hotel booking engine is the part of your own website where guests pick dates, see the price and book a room directly with you. It isn’t a channel manager (which keeps your rooms in step across booking apps) or a property management system (front-desk software for check-ins and bills), though many paid products bundle all three.
Is there a free hotel booking engine in India?
Yes. SitesPlaced includes a booking engine on its Free plan (₹0), with unlimited bookings and 0% commission, for homestays, guesthouses, cottages and small hotels. Most other engines sold in India are part of a paid monthly plan; eZee Absolute’s plan with a booking engine, for example, is starts at about ₹2,250 a month plus GST on Techjockey (1–5 rooms, as listed in October 2026).
Does a booking engine charge commission?
Some do. Many are sold as a monthly subscription with no fee per booking, while some add one; Lodgify’s entry plan, for example, is listed at about 1.9% per booking. Booking apps such as Booking.com and MakeMyTrip are different again: they charge a commission on every booking they bring. SitesPlaced takes 0% on every plan.
Do I need a channel manager for my homestay?
Only if you sell the same rooms on several booking apps every day and typing their bookings in becomes a chore. A channel manager syncs rooms, prices and bookings with those apps automatically. SitesPlaced doesn’t have one yet; you add booking-app reservations to your calendar by hand, which for a few rooms takes a minute per booking.
Can guests pay online when they book?
Not on SitesPlaced yet. You choose whether guests pay at the property, pay a deposit first or pay in full first. A deposit or full payment is collected by you, by UPI or bank transfer, after you confirm the booking, and you record it against the booking in the dashboard.
How does the booking engine stop double bookings?
Each room-night can be sold only once. That covers bookings made on your site and bookings you add by hand from phone calls, WhatsApp, walk-ins, Airbnb or Booking.com. Once a night is taken, the calendar greys it out for guests.
Which is better — eZee or SitesPlaced?
eZee Absolute is a full hotel system with a channel manager on its higher plans, which suits bigger hotels that sell on many booking apps; Techjockey lists about ₹2,250 a month for its booking engine and about ₹5,250 with a channel manager (1–5 rooms, plus GST, as listed in October 2026). For a homestay or small hotel that wants a website taking direct bookings with no monthly fee and no commission, SitesPlaced is the better choice, and you can still add booking-app reservations to the same calendar by hand.
