The Host Co Review
A free-to-start, passive upsell storefront that also handles US sales tax and 1099-K reporting — real back-office value, but it waits for guests to browse rather than pitching them.
Pros
- Genuinely free entry tier (7% commission on sales, no monthly fee), so there's no upfront cost to try it
- Commission can be bought down toward 0% on paid tiers ($18/$48/$250 per month), giving hosts a choice between pay-as-you-sell and flat-fee pricing
- Handles sales-tax collection and 1099-K reporting on marketplace sales, a real back-office and compliance task most upsell tools leave entirely to the host
- Broad, credible integration list — Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Guesty, Hospitable, Lodgify, Hostaway, StayFi, Turno, Hostfully and OwnerRez — so it can likely connect to whatever a host is already running
Cons
- It's a passive storefront, not proactive outreach — the tool doesn't message guests to suggest an upsell, it relies on guests finding and browsing the storefront themselves
- Its own marketing headline ("make up to $120k more per year") is, per our research, an outlier best case rather than a typical result — treat it as a ceiling, not an expectation
- Sales-tax and 1099-K handling are US-specific, making the tool a weaker fit for a host operating outside the United States
- We could not find independent Capterra, G2 or Trustpilot review data during our research, and the company's pricing page did not fully load a tier breakdown for us to verify directly against the live site
The Host Co is an in-stay upsell storefront that lets short-term-rental hosts offer hotel-style paid amenities — things like late checkout, extra cleaning, or add-on services — through a marketplace-style link rather than a PMS module. The pitch is "add revenue to your rentals with hotel-style amenities," and the company's own marketing headline claims hosts can "make up to $120k more per year." Per our research, that specific figure is an outlier result, not a typical outcome, and should be read as a ceiling rather than a realistic expectation for most single-listing or small-portfolio hosts.
Pricing
The Host Co offers a genuinely free tier: no monthly fee, with the company taking a 7% commission on whatever guests actually purchase through the storefront. Paid tiers at $18, $48 and $250 per month buy that commission down, reducing it toward 0% at the higher tiers — effectively letting a host trade a flat monthly cost for a lower or eliminated per-sale cut as their upsell revenue grows. We weren't able to load the specific tier-by-tier commission breakdown directly from the company's live pricing page during our research (it's rendered through a separate app subdomain that didn't return full content to us), so treat the exact numbers as based on our broader research rather than something we visually confirmed on the page ourselves.
Who it's for
The Host Co is a genuinely passive tool: it doesn't message guests to pitch an upsell, generate a personalized offer, or follow up if a guest doesn't buy. It's a storefront a guest has to find (typically linked in a guidebook, welcome message, or check-in instructions) and browse on their own. That makes it a fit for a host who already has some guest-communication channel in place and just wants a place to route guests toward paid extras, rather than a host looking for something that actively drives upsell revenue on its own. One real, specific value-add: The Host Co handles sales-tax collection and 1099-K reporting on marketplace sales, a genuine back-office task that most upsell tools leave the host to sort out separately — though that also means the tool is built around the US tax system specifically, and is a weaker fit outside the United States.
Its integration list is broad and credible: Airbnb, Google, Vrbo, Booking.com, Guesty, Hospitable, Lodgify, Hostaway, StayFi, Turno, Hostfully and OwnerRez are all named directly on the company's site, suggesting it's built to slot into an existing stack rather than requiring a host to change how they already operate.
What we could verify
We could not find independent Capterra, G2 or Trustpilot review data for The Host Co during our research, and the company's own site doesn't publish a founding date, team information, or customer count. That's not unusual for a smaller, newer vendor in this space, but it means there's little outside The Host Co's own marketing to weigh its claims against.
How it compares to our top pick
BnBGenius takes the opposite approach to upselling: rather than a passive storefront waiting for a guest to browse, it proactively pitches gap-night extensions and relevant upsells as part of its AI messaging flow, for a flat $10/month after your first 500 messages free — no commission taken on what sells. If you want a free place to park hotel-style add-ons and are fine with guests finding it themselves, The Host Co's zero-upfront-cost model is worth trying. If you want upsells actively pitched as part of your guest messaging rather than left passive, BnBGenius is built around exactly that. See the full field — every PMS, channel manager, and AI messaging tool we've evaluated — in our best Airbnb host software ranking.