Four ways to run
the same hotel.
Every vendor's site says it is the calm one. The useful comparison is not a feature matrix — it is what each way costs when the month is busy, and what happens when something goes wrong at 9pm.
Not software versus software.
Most Nigerian properties are choosing between these four, and the first one is still the most common.
| Spreadsheets & WhatsApp | International PMS | Local PMS quote | NiroStay | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | “Free”, paid in staff hours | Usually USD, rises with room count and add-ons | Quoted per property, often plus setup | ₦35,000–₦165,000 flat, no setup fee |
| Billing currency | — | USD: a devaluation is a price rise | Usually naira | Naira, invoiced with VAT |
| Commission on a direct booking | None | Usually none, but revenue-based plans exist | Varies; ask before signing | None, on any plan |
| Double-booking protection | A careful person | Yes | Yes | A database constraint, not a warning |
| Housekeeping on a weak signal | A phone call | Varies; often needs a connection | Varies | Queued and retried with idempotency keys |
| Your data on the way out | It is already yours | Usually an export, sometimes a fee | Ask in writing | CSV export, 30-day window after termination |
| Who supports you | The owner, at 11pm | A ticket queue in another timezone | Often a reseller or an account manager | The Lagos team that onboarded you |
| Direct bookings | A phone and a notebook | Booking engine, sometimes extra | Often an add-on | Included, at your own address |
“International PMS” is not one product. The table describes the category's common shape; the next section uses the published tariffs of specific vendors.
The tariffs, as we found them.
Most vendors quote privately. These are the figures they publish, or the most credible published estimates where they do not. Treat this as a map, not a quote.
| Vendor | Pricing model | Published figure | What it means for a Nigerian property |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudbeds | Tiered, quote-based; cost rises with rooms and add-ons | No public rate card. A 2025 estimate puts Flex around $180/month, One $220, Experience $320 | Around ₦260,000–₦460,000 a month before add-ons at ₦1,450/$, and quoted in dollars. No commission on its booking engine. |
| Little Hotelier | Room-count subscription; Basic adds a share of booking value | Basics from about $39/month + 1% of booking value; built for 1–30 rooms | The 1% applies to reservations, so a busy month costs more. Above 30 rooms it stops being the right product. |
| eZee / YCS | Band by room count | $80/month Essential and $148 Growth for 1–5 rooms; larger bands by selector or quote | Entry price is high for a small property; the band you need is not visible without a quote. |
| Hotelogix | Per booked room-night, billed annually | $0.55 per booked room-night with a 60% occupancy assumption, or $1 pay-later | Costs move with occupancy. A good month is a bigger bill, and the floor is a booking assumption you may not hit. |
| HotelRunner | Revenue share with a monthly minimum | 0.75%, 1.0% or 1.25% of realised booking revenue; minimum $19.95–$39.95 | The percentage is on all-channel revenue, so direct bookings are not exempt. It is a partner, not a fixed cost. |
| Venus (Nigeria) | Quoted per property; modules priced separately | Quote required. Direct-booking engine listed at ₦200,000, key cards ₦300,000, training ₦100,000 | A local option with local support; ask which of those are one-off, recurring or optional in the proposal. |
Public tariffs and published estimates checked in October 2026. Vendors change prices and most quote privately; naira equivalents at about ₦1,450/$ are indicative. Sources are linked in the vendor column. Nothing here is an offer from those vendors, and none of them reviewed this page.
A busy month should not cost more in software.
Take a 20-unit property at 60% occupancy and an average night of ₦60,000. That is 360 room-nights and ₦21.6m of room revenue in a month.
₦216,000–₦270,000
HotelRunner's published 1–1.25% on that revenue, with Little Hotelier's 1% on top of a subscription in the same territory. At full occupancy the figure grows with the hotel.
₦287,100
Hotelogix's $0.55 per booked room-night on the same 360 nights — about $198 — before a subscription or add-ons, and billed annually against an occupancy assumption.
₦85,000
Flat, for up to 40 units and three properties, with unlimited staff. It is the same figure in a quiet month and a sold-out one, and it does not move with the exchange rate.
An illustration, not a quotation of any vendor: what each plan includes differs, and fees may apply to different revenue. The point is structural — a percentage of bookings rewards the vendor when you succeed, and a flat naira price does not.
We would rather lose the deal than the reference.
These are real limits, not modesty. If one of them is your requirement today, the honest answer is another product.
A chain with central reservations
Hundreds of rooms, a central reservations office and complex yield rules need an enterprise PMS with a services team. We are built for one to a few buildings, not a group with its own IT department.
A live OTA connection today
The Channex adapter is built and tested against a stub; live channels are onboarded property by property. If you need Booking.com switched on tomorrow, we are not there yet and will say so on the call.
A native staff app
Housekeeping is touch-first in a phone browser and works offline. There is no App Store download yet; if a native app is a hard requirement, this is not the build for you.
A SOC 2 certificate
There is no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification and no third-party penetration test yet. The security page says exactly what is and is not claimed.
A direct QuickBooks or Xero sync
Exports are the bridge today. A direct sync is on the roadmap and is deliberately not sold before it exists.
Restaurants and event venues
NiroStay is built around rooms and stays. A restaurant POS or an events business is a different product with a different day.
What a careful operator asks next.
Why not charge a percentage like everyone else?
Because it makes the bill unpredictable in exactly the month you can least afford it, and because it turns the vendor into a partner in your distribution rather than a tool. A flat naira price keeps the incentive simple: we earn the subscription by being useful, not by taking a cut of a booking you made yourself.
Are you cheaper than Cloudbeds?
Usually, at the sizes we serve, and more importantly the bill is in naira and does not rise with room count inside a band. But Cloudbeds is a mature product with capabilities we do not have. The right question is which gaps matter for your property, not which logo is cheaper.
What if we outgrow a band?
You move up one band, and the console warns you before it becomes a problem. Nothing stops working mid-shift. A change during a paid period starts when that period ends, so you keep what you have paid for.
Do you charge for onboarding or migration?
On Growth and Portfolio, mapping units, rate plans and the team is included. A large migration from another system can be a scoped piece of work on Enterprise; it is agreed in writing before it starts, not added to the first invoice.
What happens if we leave?
Export is a button. Reservations, guests, folios and reports leave as CSV, and the terms include a 30-day export window after termination. There is no exit fee and no data hostage.
Put your own numbers in the table.
Tell us the unit count, the average night and how you take money. We will tell you which plan fits — including when it is the smaller one, or when another product is the better answer.
No slideware: the walkthrough runs on the same build linked across this site.