Task management for a vacation rental is two jobs sharing one word. A turnover is scheduled work that repeats on every checkout. A repair is unscheduled work that starts the moment something breaks. Different trigger, different person, different deadline, and in practice different software bought at different moments.
MaintainX appears below as one option among several. For the product on its own — what it costs, on what basis, and where its user reviews live — read our MaintainX review.
The map before the detail. Checkout-driven turnovers are what rental-specific turnover software is built for: Turno publishes $0 for one property, $0 at any property count when every cleaner comes from its marketplace, and $10 per property a month otherwise. Unscheduled repairs are what work-order software is built for: MaintainX publishes a free Basic plan and prices the tiers above it per user. A general list carries both while the team is tiny, and Asana Personal is free for up to 2 users. I work on the part of BnBGenius that opens a cleaning or repair task after a checkout, so the disclosure goes at the top rather than the bottom: our Pro plan is $10 per unit per month, we open the task, and we do not schedule cleaners, pay anybody or keep two calendars in step.
It is turning both kinds of work into a record somebody else can act on: what the job is, which unit it belongs to, who accepted it, and what counts as finished. The rental version is harder than the office version for three reasons that have nothing to do with features. The person doing the job does not work for you. You are not at the address. The deadline is set by a stranger's arrival time.
Here is the example I will keep consistent for the rest of the page. Renske runs 3 rentals in Bend, Oregon. Two are listed on Airbnb and VRBO, the third on Airbnb only, which is 5 listings over 3 rentable homes. She works with 1 cleaner and 1 contractor, and neither is her employee. In July her 3 units had 19 checkouts and 2 reported faults, and that ratio is the reason most hosts buy the turnover tool first: the turnover happened 19 times and she knew the date of each one a week ahead, while the faults happened twice, announced by nobody, each needing a different person.
| Turnover | Repair | |
|---|---|---|
| What opens the job | An 11:00 checkout, on the calendar for weeks | A guest message, or the cleaner walking into it |
| How often, in Renske's July | 19 times | 2 times |
| Who carries it out | Her cleaner, on a standing arrangement | Her contractor, negotiated job by job |
| The deadline | The 5 hours before a 16:00 check-in | Before the fault reaches a guest or blocks a night |
| What proof looks like | The unit is ready for the named arrival | The right fault is gone, on the right unit, on a date |
| What is sold for it | Turnover scheduling, usually priced per property | Work orders, usually priced per user |
The split decides what you buy. A host whose cleaner arrangement already works and whose faults keep getting lost does not need turnover scheduling. A host who spends Sunday evening texting checkout dates does not need a work-order platform. The field-by-field design of a repair record is in the maintenance-tracking guide, and the habit that gets a cleaning crew off a group text is in managing a cleaning team without text chains. Neither is repeated here. What is left for this page is the choice between a rental-specific tool and a general one, and what happens to a job once it leaves your hands.
The best turnover software is the one that matches how you already hire the cleaner, because that, and not the feature list, is what sets the price. Turno is the clearest rental-specific case in this comparison, and its pricing page carries 3 separate cases that get flattened into one number constantly.
Turno lists $0 for a single property. Turno also lists $0 at any property count when every cleaner is hired through its marketplace. Outside those two cases Turno lists $10 per property a month, or $96 per property billed annually. For Renske, with her own cleaner and 3 properties, the monthly Turno case applies: 3 × $10 = $30. On Turno's annual figure that is 3 × $96 = $288 for the year, which works out at $24 a month. If she moved all 3 properties to marketplace cleaners, the Turno subscription would be the $0 case, and what the cleaners charge for the work is a separate bill that no subscription ever covered.
A cleaner who photographs a cracked hob at 11:20 has produced a fault that outlives the turnover it was found in, and Turno does keep it: its own features page has a Report Problems in Real Time section — the cleaner flags it, Turno alerts the host, and the report goes on with its photographs to whoever handles the repair. What a turnover record does not settle by itself is when that repair was accepted and closed against a named unit and a date, which is the maintenance side.
| Product | Built around | What the bill counts | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turno | The checkout | Properties, in the case that applies to you | Its features page lists problem reports with photographs, forwarded to whoever handles the issue; the product is still built around the turnover |
| MaintainX | The work order | Paid users, and its page says requester accounts are free | Nothing opens because a guest left — its own integrations page lists no booking source |
| Asana | A list you build and maintain | Seats, free up to 2 on Personal | No reservation feed, and no proof tied to a unit and a date |
| BnBGenius | The checkout and the guest message | Units, at $10 per unit per month on Pro | We open the task; we do not schedule the cleaner, pay the contractor or sync calendars |
I would not pick between these by counting checklist features, but by asking which of the 2 jobs is the one failing. Product-by-product detail on the turnover side is in the cleaning-app comparison and the Turno alternatives, and the narrower question of how a cleaning marketplace differs from what we do is answered in Turno against BnBGenius.
Answering guests at 11pm is the part software should do.
Start free — first 500 messagesOr book a demo callPer property, per user and per unit are three prices that look comparable and are not. The unit of sale decides the bill, so the only honest way to compare is to cost one real setup on each basis and say every time who counts as a paid seat. Renske's setup: 3 properties, 5 listings, 1 cleaner, 1 contractor, neither of them an employee.
Billed per property. Turno counts doors, so her cleaner and her contractor cost nothing to add: 3 × $10 = $30 a month in the case that fits her, or $0 if every cleaner came from its marketplace. The people are free because the people are not what is being counted.
Billed per user. MaintainX lists Essential at $25 per user a month billed monthly and $20 billed annually, and Premium at $75 or $65 on the same two bases. Its own footnote says requester accounts are free, and that single line changes the arithmetic for a host: Renske's cleaner and contractor only file reports, so they are requesters rather than seats. One paid MaintainX seat on Essential is 1 × $25 = $25 a month. If her contractor has to work inside MaintainX rather than report into it, it is 2 × $25 = $50. Counting all 3 of her people as paid users and calling $75 the cost of her setup would overstate MaintainX by $50 a month, and overstating a competitor is exactly as dishonest as understating one.
Billed per seat, with a free cap. Asana Personal is free for up to 2 users, so Renske plus her cleaner is $0. Her contractor is the third person, and the Asana free plan ends there rather than degrading.
Billed per unit. BnBGenius Pro is $10 per unit per month, and for Renske the count is 3 and not 5, because the same home listed on Airbnb and VRBO is one unit: 3 units × $10 = $30 a month on BnBGenius Pro. Before that, the free tier is the first 500 messages with every feature and no card.
| Basis | What the bill counts | Renske's monthly total | Who is not counted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per property | 3 properties on Turno | 3 × $10 = $30, or $0 on its marketplace case | Cleaner, contractor, listings |
| Per paid user | 1 seat on Essential from MaintainX | 1 × $25 = $25 billed monthly | Requesters, per its own footnote, and properties |
| Per paid user | 2 seats on Essential from MaintainX | 2 × $25 = $50 billed monthly | A third person who only files reports |
| Free seat cap | 2 users on Personal from Asana | $0 until a third person joins | Properties, which the plan never counts |
| Per unit | 3 units on BnBGenius Pro | 3 units × $10 = $30 | Her 2 extra listings, and both of her people |
Turno's bill counts her 3 properties and ours counts her 3 units; neither counts the money. Her 3 units grossed $7,400 in July and $2,100 in November, and both bills read the same in both months: $30 from Turno on the case that fits her, and 3 units on BnBGenius Pro at $10 each, which is $30. A fee set as a share of the rent moves with the good month and the bad one, which is the one comparison where a fixed per-unit price is simply a different kind of number.
None of this is an accounting system, and I would rather say so here than let a table imply it. We do not produce owner statements, we are not a dynamic pricing tool, and we are not a channel manager. Those are three separate purchases, covered in the accounting and tax software guide, the pricing-tools comparison and channel managers for small hosts.
Yes, and the point where it stops working is a number you can count rather than a judgement. On Asana Personal, free for up to 2 users, Renske and her cleaner fit. Her contractor is person number 3. That is the crossover, and it arrives long before her property count becomes interesting.
A general app is good at the part hosts assume is the whole job: a list, an owner, a due date, a status, and work that is no longer buried in a thread. Three things it does not know:
Two of those are survivable with discipline. Renske can build a naming convention, put the unit in every title, and check acceptance by hand. What discipline cannot do is create the trigger: if the reason for buying software is that she no longer wants to be the process, a list she has to feed is not that. The calendar half of the problem, which is how reservation dates reach the person holding the mop at all, is worked through in sharing a booking calendar with a cleaner and, across platforms, in syncing Airbnb and VRBO.
A task opens by itself only when the software already watches something that changes state, and in this category there are 2 such events: a checkout, and a guest saying something. BnBGenius uses both. After a checkout we open the cleaning or repair task. Around the clock, on Airbnb and VRBO, we answer guest messages, so when Renske's departing guest writes that the second burner will not light in the fourth message of a six-message thread at 23:40, the fault becomes a task instead of scrolling out of view by breakfast.
The boundary, in the same breath, because a comparison page that only lists what a product does is an advert. We do not schedule the cleaner and we do not pay anyone. We do not sync calendars, we are not a channel manager, and we do not sell direct bookings. We do not run on SMS, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, and we do not support Booking.com or Expedia. A task that opens itself still needs a person who has agreed to be reachable somewhere we do not operate.
The install is a Chrome extension, about 5 minutes, no API keys and no password sharing: it reads the dashboard Renske is already logged into, in her own browser, and it is run from Telegram. BnBGenius Pro is $10 per unit per month, and the free tier is the first 500 messages with every feature and no card, which in a 19-checkout month is enough to find out whether a task opening itself changes anything before any money moves.
What it does not change is who does the work. The burner task exists at 23:41; her contractor still has to be asked, still has to say yes, and still has to be paid. The wider view of which parts of a host's week can be automated at all is in the automation-software comparison, and the messaging half of it in the automated-messages guide.
Response speed and calendar hygiene, handled for you.
Start free — first 500 messagesOr book a demo callThis is the failure the whole category exists for, and it is not about lists. A job dies at one of 3 crossings: reported but not recorded, assigned but not accepted, done but not confirmed. Each has the same shape in a vacation rental, which is that the person on the far side of it does not work for you, cannot be reached on a company system, and has no reason to open your software.
Reported but not recorded. The burner message arrives at 23:40 and nobody turns it into a task. Renske reads it, means to act, and 19 checkouts later it is 40 messages up the thread. The fault surfaces again when the next guest finds it, which is the expensive version: a complaint instead of an empty house and a free afternoon. Say Renske refunds 1 night at her $180 rate. The control costs nothing and is not software: every actionable report becomes exactly 1 record, because a conversation is evidence that somebody spoke, not a job anybody owns.
Assigned but not accepted. Renske texts her contractor on Thursday; he reads it on Monday. In those 4 days the unit takes a booking, so a repair that had an open week now has to fit the 5 hours between an 11:00 checkout and a 16:00 check-in. Her contractor charges $95 to come at short notice against the $60 he charges when a job can wait for his Tuesday route, so the silence cost $35, and that is the cheap outcome. The control is an explicit state change from assigned to accepted, which is the only thing that separates "I sent it" from "someone owns it".
Done but not confirmed. "Fixed" arrives with no unit and no date. With 2 of her 3 units carrying identical fixtures, Renske cannot tell which one was done, so she pays for a second $60 visit to find out, and one repair has cost $120. The control is that a completion closes a specific task, on a named unit, on a date, with the photo attached to that task rather than dropped into a chat.
| Crossing | What the record shows | What it costs Renske in the example |
|---|---|---|
| Reported but not recorded | 1 report, 0 tasks | 1 refunded night at $180 |
| Assigned but not accepted | 1 assignee, 0 acceptances | $95 instead of $60, so $35 for 4 days of silence |
| Done but not confirmed | 1 completion message, 0 closed tasks | A second $60 visit, so $120 for one repair |
The vacation-rental twist sits on top of all three. Two of Renske's 3 units sell on 2 platforms, so a fault that blocks a night is not blocked until it is blocked in 2 places, and that is a calendar action rather than a task action. We do not do it for her: we open the task, and the night stays sellable on both channels until she or a channel manager takes it off. Whether a host at this size needs a full system for that is argued in do you need a PMS.
None of the 3 crossings is fixed by buying something, and I would not claim otherwise about our own product. Software only makes the state visible: whether a report became a record, whether an assignment was accepted, whether a completion closed the job it claimed to. A host standing in the hallway sees all three for free. A host 200 miles away, which is the normal case once a second property arrives, sees none of them, and that is what is actually being bought. The remote version of the same problem is worked through in managing several rentals remotely.
No, and both get searched as though they were this category. Reviews run on their own clock: BnBGenius asks the guest for a review and publishes the host's, which has nothing to do with whether a task closed. One checkout can produce 2 follow-ups, a cleaning task and a review request, and finishing the clean proves nothing about the review. If that is the actual problem, compare it directly in the review-management tools and the review-automation workflow.
Portfolio reporting is a separate product again, and this page does not compare those tools. A list showing 6 open repairs across 3 units is a workload count; it says nothing about revenue, occupancy or what a night is worth. Start from the question you want answered, in the analytics-tools comparison, rather than hoping a task tool grows a reporting tab.
At 1 property, 1 cleaner you have used for years and 1 contractor who answers, a shared note is enough, and I would not sell anyone out of it. The address is never ambiguous, there is rarely more than 1 job in flight, and you notice silence yourself because there is only one thing to listen to. Renske was there 2 years ago with 1 unit.
Four things break it, and each is countable rather than a feeling:
Then the arithmetic for the first paid month, which I would rather a host ran than take my word for it. Renske's exposure in the examples above is 1 night at her stated $180 rate, plus $35 of short-notice premium on a $60 repair. Her cheapest fix on the turnover side is the case that applies to her on Turno, at 3 × $10 = $30 a month. On our side, 3 units on BnBGenius Pro is $10 each, so $30 a month, and 6 months of that is what one blocked night costs her.
So the test is not whether the software is cheap. It is whether you can name one failure from the past year that a visible state would have caught. If you cannot, the shared note is genuinely the cheaper tool and I would keep it. If you can name two, you already know which of the 2 jobs you are buying for, and that is the only decision on this page that matters.