Can your own site create the booking on either one?
Yes, on both, as of October 2026. Both now let a booking made on your own website land straight on the same calendar your front desk works from. ThinkReservations only opened that door this year. A page it published, dated 9 October 2026, confirms that a booking made from outside now shows up on the same calendar, at the same rates, with the same rooms and room types your staff already see. Cloudbeds has shown that kind of booking clearly on the front desk screen, labeled as a website booking, for years, per its reservation FAQs.
Getting permission to build that connection works differently on each system, and it only matters if you are hiring someone to do the building. ThinkReservations lets you grant yourself that access from a settings page in your own account, limited to that one hotel, the same day. Cloudbeds asks you to request it instead: a six step approval process before the connection goes live, which at a small property is the step that costs weeks. Still choosing the system itself? Twelve of them, priced at this size, are in what a small hotel, inn or serviced apartment can build on its PMS.
|
Cloudbeds |
ThinkReservations |
| Price on its own site |
Four plans, every one routed to a sales quote |
No plan names, no tiers, no figures |
| How you get permission |
Six step approval process to a live account, plus certification for a build aimed at other properties |
Grant yourself access from your own settings page |
| Can your own site create the booking |
Yes, clearly labeled on your front desk screen |
Yes, since this year |
| The guest's card at that moment |
Your choice: a deposit is one of five documented options, and the example booking asks for nothing |
The rate type's deposit is charged as the booking is created |
| Money on your own processor |
A card can be saved with no payment processor hooked up; charging it needs one connected |
ThinkPayments takes the card at booking, no redirect out |
| How fast a custom site finds out about a cancellation |
Pushes the update right away, and keeps trying for a few minutes if your site is slow to answer |
Nothing equivalent in the reference we read |
| Channel manager and booking engine |
Not on Flex, the entry plan |
Not published |
Checked on October 2026, each vendor's own pages: Cloudbeds pricing, API, reservations, webhooks, payments; ThinkReservations pricing, developer reference, ThinkPayments.
Ask about two things on those quote calls: ThinkReservations' pricing page carries no numbers, and Cloudbeds routes all four of its plans to a quote. Flex, the Cloudbeds entry plan, is the property system, Payments and the Marketplace, so the channel manager and the booking engine arrive a plan higher. And neither publishes a card fee, Cloudbeds Payments offering a blended or a cost plus structure with no figure against either, where Stripe publishes 2.9% plus 30 cents per domestic card and nothing monthly.
Room counts, deposit timing and after-the-fact updates
You will not find any of this on a pricing page. A pricing page describes the plan. These sections describe what actually happens when a real guest's reservation hits your calendar.
When identical rooms get counted as one
Most small properties sell identical rooms as one type, three queen rooms or five one bedroom apartments, tracked as a count of how many are free that night. Cloudbeds groups those rooms into one pool and keeps your website's running count of how many are left to sell, for any date, updated automatically.
Maxine and I own MINT @Naschmarkt in Vienna, where 18 serviced apartments go on sale as five apartment types, and for part of last year our page was quietly refusing money. On one June calendar, 5 of 30 nights showed as bookable; after the fix, 26 of 30 did. The cause was how the property system counted the apartments: it reported a whole apartment type unavailable if any one physical unit inside it was booked, so identical apartments sitting empty never came up for sale. I run Fullstreak, so my own team rebuilt the count, and the page now works out from the reservations themselves which units are genuinely occupied. What the fix was worth is on our results page with its caveats.
When the card gets charged
On ThinkReservations, creating the booking charges the deposit in the same instant, so if there is a problem with the guest's card, you find out only after the charge has already gone through. Cloudbeds does not force that: the booking can go on the calendar first, with the payment sorted out afterward, whenever you are ready for it.
A test you can run this week, on either system:
- Pick the rate type with the smallest deposit you sell.
- Have whoever maintains your website create one booking through the connection rather than the vendor's own checkout, on your own card.
- Check that card the same afternoon. On ThinkReservations the deposit will have gone already; on Cloudbeds it is there only if your site asked for it. Refund it and write the answer down: that is what every real guest meets.
What each one tells your site afterwards
If you are running a custom booking page on your own site, Cloudbeds updates it the moment a booking changes, so a canceled room shows up as free again within moments instead of sitting wrong until someone catches it. ThinkReservations' own site says nothing of the kind, so a custom site built on it learns about a cancellation only the next time it checks. If Cloudbeds is where you land, here is what its connection hands your checkout. We cover the same ground for Guesty and Hostaway.
Which one is right for your property?
If you are choosing between these two for the first time and you plan to build your own booking connection, when the deposit gets charged is the thing that should decide it. Most operators are not building that connection, and for them support, pricing and the channel manager are the real decision; this piece stays with the technical side because that is the part neither vendor's own pages spell out. Already running one of them and wondering whether to switch? For most operators asking that, the answer is to stay.
| Your property |
What I would do |
| 8 to 15 units, nearly everything through the platforms, nobody technical on staff |
Stay where you are and keep the vendor's checkout. None of this matters until somebody is building |
| 15 to 25 units, already taking some money on your own domain |
Cloudbeds, if you are picking fresh, because a booking can exist before the card is charged. On ThinkReservations, design around a deposit taken at the moment of booking |
| Already on one of the two, wondering whether to move |
Stay. Both now take a booking created outside their own checkout, so the difference left is not worth months of migration |
Cloudbeds' own research answers whether this work is worth doing at all. Its 2026 State of Independent Hotels, built from 90 million bookings across 180 countries, puts United States independents at 53.3% of bookings direct and Canada at 49.8%, against 36.6% worldwide. Cloudbeds lets a booking sit on the calendar before anything is charged. Getting there means requesting access, and certification on top of that if the build reaches other properties. ThinkReservations hands you access from your own settings page the same day, and it takes the deposit the moment the booking is created.
If you are still not sure
Most operators asking this question want to know whether either system would stop them from building the booking page they want later. For almost everyone at this size, neither one does.
ThinkReservations' own Director of Product Advocacy, E Scot Fuller, put it this way in the vendor's July 2026 update: "You don't have to adopt everything at once. Just take the next step that solves your next problem." Applied to this pair, that argues against changing systems for a capability you have no plan to use.
Our own part of this is the direct booking side, built over whichever of the two you keep, and three weeks is the usual gap between a start and the first booking arriving on your own domain. The commission only pays for that work from somewhere around $350,000 a year of bookings upward, and I would rather say so now than after a quote.
Bring the system you are leaning toward, and we will tell you plainly what it will not do for your checkout. Twenty minutes, and we will have read your booking page first. Book a call.
