Guide · Smoobu

Smoobu booking engine add-ons: which extensions, third party providers and upgrades exist

Updated 18 September 2026 · Approx. 22 min read · every claim about Smoobu with a source

What is an add-on for the Smoobu booking engine?

An add-on is a service that runs alongside Smoobu and talks to your account through the Smoobu API. It does not replace Smoobu, it hangs off it. The word itself is blurry, and that is why searching for it so often leads nowhere. In practice it means two quite different things:

• Getting more out of Smoobu. A second booking engine for a second website, a booking engine for a selection of properties only, your own colours in the CSS field, different ways of embedding it. Those are settings in Smoobu, not other companies' products. Most people who search for a Smoobu extension end up here.
• Putting something next to it or in front of it. A third party service that takes over a job Smoobu has no depth of its own for, for example automated pricing, guest registration, cleaning schedules or the booking flow on your own website.

This article is about the second case. For the first one we have a guide of its own: customise the Smoobu booking engine to match your design. Both routes are legitimate, and the first one is the cheaper. Check it first.

Which add-ons does Smoobu already include itself?

Quite a few, and that is the first question to ask before you look for a third party provider at all. According to its own dated help pages Smoobu offers, among other things, dynamic pricing as a built-in add-on (as of 21 August 2026), an online check-in that collects and stores guest data but files nothing with an authority (as of 24 August 2026), a website builder that puts a page per property online with the booking engine already embedded in it (retrieved on 9 September 2026), its own handling of door locks under the name Smart Devices, which according to Smoobu is still being rolled out step by step and is not yet on every account (as of 2 September 2026), and e-invoicing for Germany, Spain and Italy as a paid add-on (as of 21 August 2026).

This matters because the boundary keeps moving. Areas that used to be covered only by partners are now partly occupied by Smoobu itself. Before you pay for something, look in your own account to see whether it is already there.

Which third party providers exist, and what does each one do?

The honest answer: quite a lot of them, sorted by job, but for the booking flow of all things there is no category. Smoobu runs its directory under the name integrations in English and marketplace in German, and sorts it into nine categories: Dynamic Pricing, Payments, Online Check-in, "Task, Cleaning & Maintenance" (one category, not two), Smart Home, Guest Experience, Marketing & Communication, Website, Insurance. That is how the English and the German overview pages read on 18 September 2026. One thing worth knowing before you start looking: the two pages do not list the same partners. Several providers appear only in the English list and several only in the German one, so a name you read about in one language can be missing in the other.

The table below does not reproduce Smoobu's categories. It sorts the landscape by the job a service does for you, and by the question that actually decides things: does the service extend Smoobu, or does it replace it? The names in the middle column come from the marketplace and from Smoobu's help articles, the job each one is filed under is ours.

Smoobu booking engine alternative: which question are you actually asking?

In this search the word alternative almost always means one of two very different things, and confusing them leads to the wrong decision. Separate them before you compare anything:

1. An alternative to Smoobu. You want the channel connections, the calendar, the messaging and the reports with a different provider. That is a move of the whole property management system, with every channel set up again. We have a separate article for it: booking engines compared.
2. An alternative to the Smoobu booking engine. The sync works fine, what bothers you is only what the guest sees on your website: how the price is presented, the design, the missing rules. Then you are not looking for an alternative to Smoobu but for an extension on the same account.

The second case is the more common and the cheaper one, and in English it borrows the words of the first, which is why searches for an alternative keep landing on lists of full system changes. There is also the reverse case, and it should not be talked away: if your problem sits in the channel connection, in the reports or in how tasks are shared in a team, no extension to the booking flow will help you. Then a real change of system is the right and the more honest answer.

Can I replace the booking engine and keep the channel manager?

Yes, and that is the heart of this whole category. The booking engine is only one of Smoobu's building blocks. It sits on your own website, and what stands there does not decide how Smoobu talks to Booking.com or Airbnb.

Technically this works because Smoobu explicitly provides for bookings from outside. Its developer documentation states that partners and customers of Smoobu can send bookings to Smoobu and that the application receives them like a booking from a booking channel and synchronises them into every other channel, retrieved on 18 September 2026. We measured it ourselves on 12 August 2026: the booking created through the API was in the Smoobu calendar afterwards, like any other.

In practice that means your guests book on your website in a flow you design, and your calendar stays the single source of truth it was before. Double bookings do not arise from this, as long as the booking is created immediately and the calendar is blocked in the same second.

The mistake almost everyone makes once

Swapping the embed code on your own website is not the same as switching Smoobu's booking engine off. Smoobu's help describes three separate tools, retrieved on 9 September 2026: the booking engine, which every account also has as a standalone booking page with an address of its own at booking.smoobu.com; the website builder, which puts up a complete site with one page per property and the booking engine already embedded in it; and the calendar iframe, which only shows free and booked days. On top of that the embed code can be used as often as you like, for instance all properties on the home page and a single one on each property page.

All of those pages stay reachable if you swap the code in one place only. That is not a fault of Smoobu's, it follows from the three tools being free to combine. For you it means: before you go live, walk through every place an embed code sits, check your property pages one by one, and decide deliberately what happens to the booking page at booking.smoobu.com and to the pages from the site builder. Otherwise two booking flows run side by side, two pricing logics next to each other, and a guest who arrives from Google, from a portal profile or from an old newsletter link keeps booking through the old one. What that looks like in the site builder is in the article on embedding a booking engine in a Smoobu website.

How does a third party provider connect to Smoobu?

Through an API key that you generate yourself. On its help page about the API, as of 11 September 2026, Smoobu explicitly distinguishes two routes: if the tool you want is already a marketplace partner, you connect it through the marketplace and hand over no key at all. For a tool or a script that is not listed there, you generate a key yourself. Smoobu names three things every host should know before connecting anything:

• It takes a paid Smoobu account. During the free trial no keys can be generated.
• Every key gives full access to the entire account and cannot currently be limited to part of the data. Smoobu's own recommendation: a separate key per integration. The secret is shown only once.
• Support helps with marketplace partners. For a self-built integration, Smoobu writes, the support team cannot help.

That last point concerns us directly, so we say it plainly: BineBoost takes the second route, the key you generate yourself. We are not listed in the Smoobu marketplace. In practice that means Smoobu's support answers questions about Smoobu, and questions about our booking flow come to us. If something between the two is unclear, write to us first: we can see what we sent and what Smoobu stored, and Smoobu cannot see our side at all.

After that the sequence is the same whichever provider you pick: generate a key, enter it in the other tool, properties and calendar are read, you enter the rules there, you embed a code snippet on your website, and a booking is written back to Smoobu through the same API. In our case it is seven kinds of call, and it is worth knowing which, because every one of them is a place where your data moves: a connection test against your account, reading the property list, reading rates and availability, creating a booking, reading that booking back, changing it, and cancelling it. The booking is read back because Smoobu's answer to creating one does not say what it actually stored, which is how we catch a down payment that has been overwritten, see below. Changing is needed for the payment status, because with card payment the money is only certain once it has been captured. Cancelling is needed when a booking across two properties fails on the second one and the first must not stay in the calendar. More than that a booking flow does not need.

What can an add-on not do, because the API does not expose it?

More than most people expect, and it applies to every third party provider alike, not only to us. We run a booking flow on this API ourselves and therefore see exactly which fields arrive. Measured on 9 September 2026, it delivers exactly three pieces of information per calendar day: the price, the minimum stay and whether the day is available. Why a day is closed is not part of it, so a booking, a manual block and a buffer day look identical to anything sitting on top.

Three things follow from that, and you should ask every provider about them:

• The minimum lead time before arrival does not come through. Smoobu knows the setting, it is called "Minimum days between Booking and Arrival" in the configuration of the booking engine, but it does not come out through the API (measured on 9 September 2026). You enter it once more in the other tool.
• Closed arrival and departure days do not come through (measured on 9 September 2026). Whether and how Smoobu offers such restrictions in its interface is something we have not checked, and our evidence says nothing about it.
• A down payment that is passed along is replaced. If a third party service creates a booking with a down payment amount, Smoobu puts its own rule in its place. Measured twice: on 12 August 2026 we sent 4.56 euros and 86.00 euros stood in the calendar afterwards, and on 18 September 2026 we sent 161.31 euros and Smoobu set it to 48.39 euros. A security deposit amount that is passed along does stay as it is. That is a design decision by Smoobu and not a fault, and it is not an immovable limit either: a provider can read the booking back afterwards, compare it with what it sent and set the amount again. That is exactly what we do, and where it cannot be corrected the host gets told with the two figures in hand. So the question worth asking any provider is this one: after you create a booking, do you read it back, and what happens when Smoobu has stored something else? Aligning your Smoobu down payment rule with the rule in the other tool is still the tidiest answer.

In the other direction there is a freedom many do not expect: the minimum stay that Smoobu reports is, according to Smoobu's own help, global and applies to all connected channels at once (retrieved on 18 September 2026). A third party booking flow can go below it for your own website. We checked that on 18 September 2026 with a real test booking: Smoobu reported a minimum of three nights for the arrival day, and the one night booking was still created through the API. Those two minimum stay findings are the newest, they are ours and dated 18 September 2026, and they stand here. The remaining limits, each with its source, are written up in the German guide on what the Smoobu booking engine can and cannot do (in German).

Extension, plugin or customisation: where is the difference?

Three words that get mixed up in forums and search boxes, although they describe quite different work. Sorted briefly:

• Customisation means colour in practice. Smoobu's help describes a CSS field pre-filled with colour values and refers you to a web developer for anything beyond it (retrieved on 9 September 2026). Anyone searching for child rates or tourist tax who types the word customise therefore lands on a colour guide. The details are in the article on customising.
• Plugin usually means WordPress, and there it is almost always about embedding only. For embedding, Smoobu itself names the custom HTML block and no plugin (retrieved on 9 September 2026). In the official WordPress directory a search for Smoobu on 18 September 2026 finds exactly one entry. It has not been updated for about six years, the directory lists it as tested up to WordPress 5.5, and it shows an availability calendar, not a booking flow. That one entry is what the search returned on that day, not proof that no other plugin exists. The route for WordPress is in our WordPress article.
• Extension or add-on means a service of its own, with its own interface, its own price and its own connection to your account. This is the only one of the three where functions arrive that were not there before.

How do you spot a serious third party provider?

By six points you can clear up in ten minutes, in a conversation or on the provider's website. This list applies to every provider, us included.

1. Data flow. Which data is read, which is written, and where does it live? A provider who cannot say that in two sentences has not thought it through.
2. The key. Does the service get a key of its own that you can revoke separately? Because a Smoobu key, by Smoobu's own description, gives full account access, this is the single most important point.
3. Signed requests. From 25 September 2026 Smoobu requires signed requests for self-built integrations and rejects unsigned ones after that date (help page as of 11 September 2026). Ask whether the provider has implemented it.
4. What happens to the bookings. Does every booking land in your Smoobu calendar immediately, or only later through a buffer of its own? Anything that is not synced instantly is a risk of double bookings.
5. GDPR and location. A data processing agreement in place, the server location named, and for guest payments the question of whose account receives the money.
6. Lock-in and exit. Can you export your settings? Does your website keep working if the service goes down? And what does leaving cost you in work, not in money?

A seventh point that almost nobody thinks of, but that counts for the visibility of your website: an embedded booking flow is usually not in the delivered source code of your page, neither in an iframe nor in a block inserted by script. Search engines cope with that, but many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript. So ask whether the provider supplies structured data for the source code of your own page. More on this is in the article on more direct bookings.

When is an upgrade of your booking flow worth it, and when not?

It is worth it when your pricing or your presentation demands more than a standard flow can show. It is not worth it when your problem sits somewhere else. Sorted honestly:

What speaks for it

• You charge by age band, you have a tiered tourist tax, or you have surcharges that differ from property to property.
• Guests call you because they do not understand what their price is made of. Hosts have been writing exactly that publicly for years under Smoobu's own help article on the booking engine (German page, that is the one we checked), in October 2022 for instance and confirmed in February 2023. Those are user opinions, not product statements, but they show where practice rubs.
• The booking flow should look like your website, and not only in its colours.
• You manage several Smoobu accounts and want one shared booking page.

What speaks against it

• Your price is a nightly rate, your website is plain, and the colours fit. Then the standard is the right choice and costs you nothing extra.
• Your real problem is visibility. A better booking flow improves how many visitors turn into bookers, it does not bring visitors.
• You want fewer tools, not more. Every extension is another contract, another login and another place where something can break.

Where BineBoost sits in this landscape

In exactly one row of the table above, the booking flow itself. BineBoost is an extension for the Smoobu booking engine: a booking flow of its own that sits on an existing Smoobu account through the official Smoobu API. Smoobu stays your channel manager and your property management system, every booking lands in the Smoobu calendar, and without an active Smoobu account BineBoost does not run at all.

What comes with it are pricing rules that can be overridden per property: child rates with up to four age bands per rule, tourist tax with tiers and exemptions, an occupancy surcharge with seasonal periods, pets, a short stay surcharge including an override of the minimum stay, long stay and early bird discounts with conditions, a down payment based on length of stay, cancellation tiers, a security deposit, a minimum lead time, a non-refundable rate, vouchers and closed arrival and departure days. On top of that, card payment through Stripe straight into the host's own account, where the amount is first only held and is captured once the booking really exists in Smoobu. The guest view speaks German, English, Dutch, Italian and French. Personal offers come as a page and as a PDF. The price is public on the pricing page: 9.00 euros per month for the first property and 5.25 euros for each additional one, plus VAT, with no commission per booking.

And the limits, so that the picture is right: BineBoost does not register guests with any authority, it does not schedule cleanings, it does not open doors and it does not replace a channel connection. Bookings across two properties in one go are possible, but capped at two units and switched off by default, because two bookings are created in Smoobu in that case. And BineBoost is not listed in the Smoobu marketplace: the connection runs through a key that you generate yourself and can revoke at any time.

The seven checks, answered for ourselves

The list further up applies to every provider, us included, so here are our own answers in the same order. Ask any other provider for theirs and compare.

1. Data flow. We read your properties, the daily rates, the minimum stay and the availability from Smoobu. We write one booking, and we read that same booking back once afterwards. Guest data, your pricing rules and your bookings live in our database; processing takes place in the European Union, server location Amsterdam. The booking flow itself sets no cookies and loads no trackers.
2. The key. You generate the key yourself in your Smoobu account and enter it with us. It serves this one connection, it is stored encrypted, and you can revoke it in Smoobu at any moment without touching your other connections. From that second on we can no longer reach your account.
3. Signed requests. Implemented. Every call we make to Smoobu carries a signature, so the change of 25 September 2026 costs you nothing and requires nothing from you.
4. What happens to the bookings. The booking is created in Smoobu during the booking, not later through a queue of our own. If Smoobu does not accept it, the guest does not get a confirmation, because a confirmation for a booking that is not in the calendar is the worst of both worlds. After creating it we read it back and compare it with what we sent.
5. GDPR and location. A data processing agreement is ready to sign, our sub-processors are listed in it, and the server location is named above. The technical detail is on our security page. For guest card payments the money goes into your own Stripe account, not into ours, and there your contract is with Stripe.
6. Lock-in and exit. The weakest answer of the seven, and we would rather write it down: there is no export button in the interface today, ask and you get your settings as a file. Your website keeps running if BineBoost goes down, because only the embedded block is affected. Getting out itself takes minutes: put the Smoobu snippet back on your website and revoke the key. What you do not get back is the work you put into the rules, and that is true of every tool in this article.
7. Structured data for your own source code. Yes. We generate a ready made block from your properties that you paste into the page the booking flow sits on, so the data stands in your own source code and on your own domain, not on ours.

Frequently asked questions

Is there an alternative to the Smoobu booking engine without leaving Smoobu?

Yes. The booking engine is only one of Smoobu's building blocks, and on your own website it can be replaced by a different booking flow while channel sync, calendar and messaging stay in Smoobu. The route for that is the official Smoobu API. If you want to replace the channel connection itself, you are not looking for an extension but for a different property management system, and that is a far bigger decision.

Do bookings from a third party booking flow still land in the Smoobu calendar?

Yes, if the booking flow creates them through the Smoobu API. Smoobu's developer documentation describes it that way: partners and customers of Smoobu can send bookings to Smoobu, the application receives them like a booking from a booking channel and synchronises them into every other channel, retrieved on 18 September 2026. We measured it ourselves on 12 August 2026: the booking created through the API was in the Smoobu calendar afterwards.

Do I still need a Smoobu subscription?

Yes. An extension sits on an existing Smoobu account and reads properties, rates and availability from there. Without an active Smoobu account it has nothing to build on. Smoobu's help page on the API also names a paid account as a requirement, no keys could be generated during the free trial, as of 11 September 2026.

What does an add-on for the Smoobu booking engine cost on top of Smoobu?

That depends on the provider and always comes on top of the Smoobu fee. We do not quote other companies' prices here, because they change and because marketing figures go stale quickly. For BineBoost the numbers are public on the pricing page: 9.00 euros per month for the first property and 5.25 euros for each additional one, plus VAT in each case and with no commission per booking. With any provider, check whether there is a commission per booking, because that is the item that grows with your revenue.

How safe is it to hand out a Smoobu API key?

Treat it like a password to your whole account. On its help page about the API, as of 11 September 2026, Smoobu writes that every key gives full access to the entire account and cannot currently be limited to part of the data, and it therefore recommends a separate key per integration. That is the practical protection: a key of its own per service can be revoked on its own, without the other connections going down.

Can I undo an extension later?

As a rule yes, and you should think it through before you start. You revoke the key in Smoobu, remove the embed code from your website and switch the old booking flow back on. What does not come back are the rules you maintained in the other tool, and bookings that are already in the Smoobu calendar stay there anyway. Before you start, ask whether you can export your settings.

Do I need WordPress for an add-on?

No. A booking flow is embedded with a code snippet, and that works in any system with an HTML block, so in Wix, Squarespace, Jimdo or the Smoobu website builder as well; for the Smoobu site builder we have a step by step guide on embedding a booking engine in a Smoobu website. For embedding its own booking engine Smoobu itself names the custom HTML block and no plugin, retrieved on 9 September 2026. In the official WordPress directory a search for Smoobu on 18 September 2026 finds exactly one plugin. It has not been updated for about six years, the directory lists it as tested up to WordPress 5.5, and it shows an availability calendar, not a booking flow. That is what the search returned on that day, not proof that no other plugin exists.

Is BineBoost an add-on for Smoobu?

BineBoost is an extension for the Smoobu booking engine: a booking flow of its own that sits on an existing Smoobu account through the official Smoobu API. It does not replace Smoobu and does not run at all without an active Smoobu account. One point that belongs in the picture: BineBoost is not listed in the Smoobu marketplace, the connection runs through an API key that you generate yourself and can revoke at any time.