Safely Review
Safely bundles guest screening with up to $1,000,000 in short-term-rental damage and liability coverage, billed per occupied night — but the price of the insurance itself stays behind a quote form, not published anywhere on the site.
Pros
- Bundles guest identity verification with insurance under one provider: screening checks county & court records, national and criminal databases, Europol, Interpol, sex-offender lists and other international watchlists, plus SafelyScore, Safely's own proprietary database of guests who have previously caused damage to a rental
- Real, named coverage limits rather than vague language: up to $1,000,000 for guest-caused structural damage and liability, plus up to $1,000,000 in separate homeowner/property-manager liability coverage for guest injury, per Safely's property-managers page
- States two concrete claims-speed figures on its own site: "most payments as fast as three business days" on the homepage, and "80% of claims paid in a week" on the property-managers page, both built around a simple photograph-and-submit claims flow
- No PMS required to use it: Safely's homepage states it works with "all booking sites, including Airbnb, Vrbo, OTAs, and direct booking sites," while a separate integrations page also lists 28 named PMS partners (Guesty, Hostaway, Lodgify, OwnerRez, Hospitable and more) for portfolios that run one
- Guest screening itself is one of the few genuinely published numbers in this category: $5 per screening standalone, or $0.50 per occupied night when bundled with the Protection Policy, with no sales call required for that specific figure
- Established operator with real third-party credentials: operating since 2015, BBB-accredited with an A+ rating, a VRMA Gold Sponsor, and a Techstars alum, with insurance underwritten through a licensed excess & surplus lines agency active in all 50 states plus DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
Cons
- The actual insurance price — what you would pay for the Protection Policy itself — is never published: both /pricing/ and /pricing return a 404 on safely.com, and the only path to a number is a "Get a Quote" lead form; the ~$4-$10-per-occupied-night figure that circulates for this category comes from Safely's own blog post about industry-wide STR insurance costs, not a stated Safely rate
- Safely's own site is internally inconsistent on a core coverage number: its short-term-rental-insurance page states "up to $25,000 for property contents and belongings" in its main features section, but a lower section on that same page — plus Safely's FAQ and its own cost-guide article — puts the identical coverage at "up to $10,000," with nothing on the site explaining which figure is current
- Coverage is sold as excess & surplus lines insurance through a licensed affiliate rather than an admitted carrier, and Safely states plainly it will not sell "outside of the states in which it is licensed" — worth confirming your specific state rather than assuming standard admitted-insurance protections apply
- The dedicated property-managers page frames the product around "a professional Property Management Company using a property management system to oversee a portfolio of 10 or more rentals," so a solo single-listing host may find the marketing — and possibly the underwriting appetite — skewed toward larger operators, even though per-night billing and the standalone screening product don't advertise a hard minimum
- Independent review verification was largely blocked: Safely's G2 product page and Trustpilot review page both returned HTTP 403 to direct access, and no Capterra listing could be found for the company; the one outside page we could open, a BBB profile, showed only a single visible review, and it was a guest's complaint about the screening process, not a property owner's account of pricing or claims
Safely is a guest-screening and short-term-rental insurance provider, not a messaging or PMS tool. It sells two things side by side: identity and background verification on incoming guests, and a damage-and-liability insurance policy — the Safely Protection Policy — sold through its affiliated agency, On Demand Insurance Agency, LLC. Both are billed per occupied night rather than as a flat monthly subscription, and the company states it has been operating since 2015. If you're an owner weighing whether to add a dedicated screening-and-insurance layer instead of relying on a security deposit, here's what we verified directly on Safely's own site, and where the real gaps are.
Pricing
Safely runs two products with two different pricing pictures. Guest screening is genuinely published on its guest-screening page: $5 per screening standalone, or $0.50 per occupied night when bundled with the Protection Policy. The Protection Policy itself — the actual insurance, covering up to $1,000,000 in guest-caused structural damage and liability — has no published rate anywhere on the site: both the /pricing/ and /pricing URLs 404, and the only path to a number is the "Get a Quote" lead form at safely.com/quote, which collects your details before a specialist follows up — there's no self-serve calculator. Safely's own blog puts general short-term-rental insurance costs at $4–$10 per occupied night for a single-family home, illustrated with a worked example (a $2,400 annual premium at 300 occupied nights works out to $8.00/night) — but that figure is framed as industry-wide cost guidance in an educational article, not a rate Safely states it charges. Coverage is underwritten as excess & surplus lines insurance: per Safely's own licensing page, its affiliate On Demand Insurance Agency, LLC is licensed across all 50 states plus DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands — though Safely states it will not sell "outside of the states in which it is licensed," so it's worth confirming your own state rather than assuming a quote is automatic.
Who it's for
Safely fits an owner or property manager who wants guest identity verification and a damage/liability policy from a single provider, instead of stitching together a security deposit, a separate screening tool, and a homeowners policy that likely excludes short-term-rental use. Screening cross-references county and court records, national and criminal databases, Europol, Interpol, sex-offender lists and other international watchlists, plus SafelyScore — Safely's own proprietary database of guests who have previously caused damage to a rental — and runs automatically once connected to your PMS. Its dedicated property-managers page is explicitly built around "a professional Property Management Company using a property management system to oversee a portfolio of 10 or more rentals," with named testimonials from portfolio operators like White Sail Realty and Monarch Luxury Villas — so a solo single-listing host isn't the primary audience the marketing (or possibly the underwriting) is built for, even though the per-night billing model and the standalone screening product don't advertise a hard minimum. It's a weaker fit if you need an instant, self-serve price before you'll evaluate a vendor, since Safely, like most STR insurance providers, routes every prospective buyer through a quote request.
What we could verify
Most of the above came directly from Safely's own site: the homepage, the short-term-rental-insurance and guest-screening product pages, the FAQ, the about page, the property-managers page, the licensing page, and two of its own blog articles on insurance cost. One inconsistency is worth flagging: Safely's own short-term-rental-insurance page states "up to $25,000 for property contents and belongings" in its main features section, but a lower section on that same page — plus Safely's FAQ and its own cost-guide article — puts the identical coverage at "up to $10,000." Nothing on the site explains whether these refer to different plan tiers, or one figure is simply outdated; we're reporting both numbers with where each appears rather than guessing which is current. Claims-speed is also stated twice, differently but not necessarily contradictorily: "most payments as fast as three business days" on the homepage, versus "80% of claims paid in a week" on the property-managers page.
We tried to independently verify customer sentiment beyond Safely's own site and hit real walls. Safely's G2 product page returned an HTTP 403 to our direct request, as did Trustpilot's review page for safely.com. We could not find an active Capterra listing for Safely under either "Safely" or "SafelyStay." The one outside page we could open, Safely's BBB profile, shows an A+ rating, but the single review visible there is a guest's complaint about being asked for ID during screening, not a property owner's account of pricing, claims, or coverage. That leaves a genuine gap in independently verified owner-side sentiment for this review; we're flagging it rather than filling it with Safely's own testimonials, which we saw referenced on its property-managers page but are treating as marketing copy, not neutral evidence.
How it compares to our top pick
BnBGenius and Safely aren't competing for the same budget line. BnBGenius is a flat $10/month AI layer (free for your first 500 messages) built around guest messaging, an AI phone concierge, task automation, review generation and gap-night upsells — no PMS required. Safely doesn't talk to guests, answer the phone, or pitch an upsell; it decides whether to trust a booking in the first place and pays out if something goes wrong afterward. The two are complementary rather than competing: an owner could run BnBGenius for the day-to-day guest conversation and revenue side, and Safely for pre-arrival screening plus the damage-and-liability backstop if a stay goes bad. If you're specifically shopping for a screening-and-insurance combo, Safely's real coverage limits and published screening price make it a credible name to request a quote from — just budget time for that quote, since the core insurance price isn't available any other way. See how it stacks up against every other tool we've evaluated in our best Airbnb host software ranking.