What the season costs
Every platform publishes one number. The number that leaves your business is a different one, and it is the only one worth comparing.
The headline booking fee is the one on the pricing page. Underneath it sit card processing, reseller and OTA commission, paid modules, and seat licences for the staff who need a login.
Add them and you get the effective take: the share of everything a guest pays that ends up somewhere other than your bank account. It is the only figure that compares two platforms honestly, and almost nobody publishes it.
A platform advertising about 6% added to the guest's checkout total also bills you roughly 3% in card processing, because it runs the payments and sets that rate. That is about 9% all in. FareHarbor also charges an offline booking fee on manual, phone and walk-up entries, and a 2% channel fee on OTA bookings on top of the OTA's own commission.
At about 8% on the guest, the same shape comes to around 11%. That is Peek Pro.
Bike Rental Manager is different again: an annual subscription by fleet size, from $859 for up to 50 items to $3,769 at the top tier, or a usage-based plan at 4% per booking with no subscription. A subscription is a fixed cost that does not move when February is quiet, which is the thing to weigh if your season is short.
Take 3,120 reservations a year at a $225 average order value, which is $702,000 through the platform. At 4.5% the fee is $31,590. At about 9% all in it is $63,180.
That gap is roughly $31,000 a year on one mid-sized operation, and on the guest-paid model it is a point and a half off what your customer pays at checkout rather than a line on your own invoice.
Substitute your own numbers. The calculator takes units, reservations, order value, margin and your own contract terms, including reseller commission and paid modules.
6% of that is added to your guest's checkout. The other 3% is card processing, billed by the platform that runs the payments. With Bodhisys you keep your own processor and pay them directly, so the only rate beside our name is the one at checkout.
Pull twelve months of statements and count every line rather than the headline. Booking fees, processing, chargeback fees, module charges, per-seat charges, offline booking fees, channel fees.
Then check who pays each one. A fee added to the guest's checkout total and a fee deducted from your settlement behave differently in your accounts and in your pricing, and mixing them is how comparisons go wrong.
The last question is the elastic one: what a lower checkout total does to your booking count. A guest comparing two operators sees the total, and a point and a half is visible on a $225 order.
No monthly fee. A 4.5% charge is added to each reservation and paid by your customer at checkout, so you receive your list price. There are no feature tiers, no seat licences, no per-location fees, no implementation fee and no migration charge.
Card processing stays between you and your own payment processor at the rate you negotiated, because the platform does not run the payments and does not set that number.
The consequence worth naming is that a quiet February costs you nothing, which is the opposite of how a subscription behaves for a seasonal operator.
Against Bike Rental Manager's usage plan at 4%, the difference is half a point, which on a $225 reservation is $1.13. If your operation needs none of the delivery, proof and messaging side, their subscription at high volume can come out cheaper than any percentage.
And if a meaningful share of your bookings arrives through OTA and reseller distribution, an incumbent brings volume that no fee comparison captures.
Compare the all-in effective take rather than the headline booking fee. A platform adding about 6% to the guest total and billing about 3% card processing to the operator is about 9% all in; at 8% on the guest it is about 11%. Reseller commission, paid modules, seat licences and offline booking fees go on top where they apply.
Bodhisys adds 4.5% at checkout, paid by the customer, with no monthly fee, no seat licences and no per-location charges, and card processing stays between you and your own processor at your own rate.
Your customer, as a visible line at checkout. You receive your list price.
No, and that is the point. Your payment processor bills it directly at their published rate rather than the platform setting it.
No. With no monthly fee there is nothing to commit to, and the charge exists only when a reservation does.
A demo takes six fields and someone who understands rental operations calls you back. Where Bodhisys is the wrong fit you will hear it on that call rather than after three meetings.
