Sharetribe Alternative Rental Software to Build a Rental Website [2024]

Sharetribe is a renowned marketplace software that helps entrepreneurs launch various types of multi-vendor stores. These stores can be both sales and rental-oriented and thus provide you with the flexibility to enter retail and sharing economy markets.

However, there has always remained some major complaints with Sharetribe. Many entrepreneurs are not happy with the software because of its exorbitant effective price.

Those who are not aware, Sharetribe is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution that comes with monthly or annually recurring costs. In addition, the number of features is limited in all base packages, so as the business grows, entrepreneurs are forced to upgrade their subscription package in order to accommodate growth. This adds up to an investment amount that is very cost-inclusive in the long run and doesn’t provide a long-term solution. The moment you stop your payments, you lose all access to the software.

Some other reported problems with Sharetribe, as observed on renowned software critic websites are:

1. For custom workflows, you need to opt for Sharetribe Flex, which is even more expensive: $299 per month + 0.3% to 1% of total monthly transaction volume (more than $3588 per year).
2. No one-click purchase option in marketplace operations. The checkout process is bulky.
3. There are many fake self-claiming Sharetribe experts on UpWork.
4. Need to hire outsider developers for customization. Sharetribe itself has an external developer directory.
5. Landing page’s interface can be improved, it looks very chunky.
6. Lacks basic customization options. For example, you can’t change the font color from black to white.

Using Sharetribe Alternatives

The only problem to get rid of all reported problems in the Sharetribe is to opt for an alternative rental software. There are many Sharetribe alternatives available in the market, for example: YoRent, Booqable, Arcadier, Rentle, HireHop, HQ Rental and Point of Rental.

However, other than YoRent, the rest are again SaaS software with monthly or annually recurring costs. While they will help you resolve some problem or the other, they cannot assist you with recurrent pricing and the limited scalability problems. This only leaves us with YoRent, let’s discuss about Yo!Rent rental software in more detail below.

Benefits of Using Yo!Rent as a Sharetribe Alternative

YoRent is a self-hosted perpetual licensed software launched in the year 2015. It primarily targets rental audiences but like Sharetribe, YoRent has sales functionalities as well. Supporting over 40+ rental niches, YoRent comes with dedicated features to help you streamline rental operations. In addition, its multi-currency support and 25+ pre-integrated payments gateway ensure that you can launch or expand your rental business in numerous geographical markets. Additionally, Yo!Rent supports all types of rental models including B2C, B2B, P2P, multi-vendor marketplaces and single vendor stores.

Some other benefits of using YoRent are:

• Next-Gen Features

Yo!Rent comes with advanced industry-specific features like rental security management, late returns management, RFQ, rental add-ons, document verification, product inspection and more to simplify all important rental processes. From taking an order to managing returns and rental security, Yo!Rent has got everything you need to conduct smooth and satisfying rental operations.

YoRent Feature Comparison Table

(Note: All Yo!Rent features mentioned in the graphic are accessible right from the start. Whereas in order to access Sharetribe features, you will either need to upgrade or directly purchase Sharetribe’s most premium package in the first place.)

• Self Hosted Software

In contrast to Sharetribe, which is hosted on the company’s servers and provided to you as a recurring service, YoRent is a self-hosted software. Meaning, you can host it on any server of your choice. It can either be an on-premise server managed by your IT team or a third party hosting service such as Amazon AWS and Hostgater. This also gives you the freedom to select a faster or more secure server and you get complete control over your marketplace.

• One-Time Cost

As YoRent is a perpetually licensed software, it is available at a one-time cost. This makes it highly cost effective in the long run. There’s no need to pay any recurring charges and as the solution provider gets zero control of your server, there can be no restriction on the number of features, transactions and listings. This also makes the solution highly scalable as you can use it from startup level to enterprise level without switching.

• Fully Customizable

YoRent is a fully customizable solution to deliver on any additional requirements. Unlike Sharetribe’s Flex version for which you need to contact external developers, Yo!Rent deploys its official team of developers to work on your customization project. To maintain quality and ensure reduced time to market, Yo!Rent follows an agile development approach, which makes the software even more resilient.

• Industry Specific Variants

Every industry has its own set of problems, so there’s no single solution that works for all rental businesses. For this reason, Yo!Rent’s experts delved into multiple rental industries to carefully study their problems and come up with industry-specific rental solutions. As the various variants of Yo!Rent are also templatized based on industry expectations, they immensely reduce your time to market and require minimum personalization.

Conclusion

While Sharetribe is a great software to build a rental website, it also comes with its own set of cons. Rental business owners who are not happy with those cons or are planning to switch, need to look for some alternative software. As other SaaS-based alternatives will provide a similar experience like Sharetribe, opting for a self-hosted solution appears to be the only choice. By investing in a self-hosted solution, not only you get to keep the solution for a lifetime but can also scale easily with no restrictions on features and listings.

Also checkout Top 5 Sharetribe Alternative Solutions.