Question 1

What does the Founding Engagement actually include?

Accepted Answer

It’s a strategic consulting engagement led personally by me — not a junior implementation team, not an offshore delivery shop. I audit your business, design the system around it, author your content, configure your integrations, and train your team. The working platform is delivered at the end, but you’re hiring the brain, not just the build. Compare against $20K/month for a fractional CTO with no platform deliverable, $150K–$500K at a boutique consulting firm with 18-month timelines, or 18 months of DIY pain. The number is honestly low for what you get.

Question 2

Who is the lead architect on my engagement?

Accepted Answer

You work with me directly throughout the engagement. I run your discovery call, design your architecture, author your content, configure your integrations, and stay directly available throughout your build. StayOps is pressure-tested daily at Wizard’s Way House — a Forbes-featured 9-bedroom Harry Potter–themed estate near Universal Orlando — where I help run the daily operations. No handoff to junior staff. No offshore delivery team. The person who designs your build is the person who built the platform.

Question 3

Are the Founding Engagement prices really fixed?

Accepted Answer

Yes — once you complete the audit call and we agree on which package fits your scope, the price is locked. No hourly overruns, no surprise change orders. If something genuinely changes scope mid-engagement, we’ll discuss it openly and either absorb it or quote a clean change order in writing. You will not get surprised by an invoice. Period. And to be clear: yes, $55,000 for Boutique Core is fixed. Not ‘starts at.’ Fixed. We don’t quote $55K and surprise you with $80K at month 8.

Question 4

Why only six add-ons? Why not modular everything?

Accepted Answer

Because the operators we talk to are running away from nickel-and-dime billing — Enso Connect is the cautionary tale we hear most often. Tiers should be predictable. The six add-ons that exist are the ones with real per-customer costs: vision AI, hardware, ad management, content authoring, multi-language ops. Everything else is bundled into your tier. No surprises on your invoice.

Question 5

Why three Boutique packages instead of one with a price range?

Accepted Answer

Because honest scope variability deserves honest pricing variability. A 6-property single-brand engagement and a 22-property multi-brand engagement are not the same amount of work. Three fixed-fee Boutique packages let you pick the one that genuinely fits your scope — no guessing, no negotiating. The scope wizard on the /engagement page helps you self-classify before the audit call.

Question 6

Why flat platform fees instead of per-property pricing?

Accepted Answer

Because per-property pricing with minimums is exactly the nickel-and-diming operators are running away from. Flat bundles make your monthly cost predictable, reward portfolio growth, and remove the awkwardness of “minimum monthly” math. When you outgrow your tier, you upgrade — straightforwardly priced, never punished.

Question 7

What if I only need three or four of the products?

Accepted Answer

Then you use three or four. All 12 are included in every tier, but nobody’s forced to deploy everything. Wizard’s Way House uses every single product on the StayOps platform — that’s where the pain points came from and that’s where the system gets pressure-tested daily. Start with what hurts most. Add more when your operation is ready. Most modules don’t even require a PMS connection to deliver value on day one.

Question 8

Can I bring my own PMS?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We’re building OwnerRez first, then Hostaway, then Guesty. If you’re on a different PMS, we’ll work alongside it via webhook + iCal at minimum, and we’ll add your PMS to the integration roadmap if there’s customer demand.

Question 9

How does vendor coordination work if my vendors aren’t tech-savvy?

Accepted Answer

That’s exactly why we went SMS-first. Your pool guy doesn’t install an app. He gets a text: “Wizard’s Way pool service Tuesday 10am — reply YES to confirm, NO to decline, or RESCHEDULE with a new time.” That’s it. Works on the dumbest flip phone. The dashboard, photo documentation, and tracking is for you, not him. We built it because every vendor we know hates apps and lives on SMS.

Question 10

How does the Blog Platform AI work? Are you charging me for it?

Accepted Answer

The Blog Platform includes an “Improve with AI” editing assistant — but you bring your own AI API key (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, others). We don’t take a cut, we don’t pass through inflated costs, we don’t bundle AI into your platform fee. Your AI usage is billed directly by the AI provider you pick. We just provide the integration. Same principle as everything else: we don’t make a dime on your operating costs.

Question 11

How does the damage documentation actually help me win disputes?

Accepted Answer

Most damage disputes are lost on documentation, not on facts. Guests claim “the lamp was already broken when we arrived.” You have a vague memory and some photos in your camera roll. With our vault, every cleaner photo is timestamped, geotagged, and auto-tied to the booking before and after. Pre-stay reference photos sit next to post-stay photos in the same view. You pull a complete evidence packet — photos, vendor receipts, repair invoices — in under 60 seconds. We can’t promise you’ll win every dispute, but we can promise you’ll never lose one because you couldn’t find your evidence.

Question 12

How does the loyalty engine know what to send to which guest?

Accepted Answer

It uses real reservation history, not guesses. We know which family stayed, which property, when, for how long, and what they paid. We know what’s seasonal at your location, what events are coming up, and when your booking calendar has gaps. Combine those signals and you get something Mailchimp can’t do: “Hey Smith family, fall break is six weeks away — the pool’s heated October through November and we have your favorite room available.” It’s not magic. It’s just connecting the data your PMS already has to the guests who already know they love your place.

Question 13

I already have a company site. Do I have to use yours?

Accepted Answer

No. The company site is included in the engagement if you want it, but it’s not mandatory. Some operators have a perfectly good company site already — we’ll leave it alone and focus the engagement on the direct booking site, guidebooks, turnover, comms, and the rest of the platform. If your current company site hasn’t generated a lead since 2019, or you don’t have one at all, we’ll build the one you actually need. Either way, the engagement fee is the same — we don’t discount for skipping deliverables you don’t want.

Question 14

Is there a contract?

Accepted Answer

Showcase is month-to-month after setup. Boutique is a 12-month initial term, then 30-day rolling. Portfolio is annual. Enterprise is custom. We don’t lock anyone in beyond what’s needed to recoup the build cost on our side.

Question 15

What if I want to cancel?

Accepted Answer

After your initial term, 30 or 60 days notice. We give you exports of your guidebook content, turnover content, and guest data. Your custom-built website code is yours — we’ll hand it over so you can host it elsewhere if you want. We’re not in the business of holding operators hostage.

Question 16

Do you take affiliate commissions or kickbacks from integrated vendors?

Accepted Answer

No. We don’t accept payment from any vendor we list or integrate with. Operators decide what tools they use. If we ever do offer optional affiliate revenue share on something like local concierge bookings, it’ll be explicit, opt-in, and operator-curated only.

Question 17

Will my pricing go up over time?

Accepted Answer

Locked tiers stay flat for the duration of your contract. New add-ons are optional. We’d rather grow with you by helping you add doors than by raising your rate.

Question 18

How is this different from hiring a fractional CTO?

Accepted Answer

A fractional CTO charges $300–500/hr × 50 hours/month = $15–25K/month for advice with no platform deliverable. After 12 months you’ve paid $200K+ and you have meeting notes. A Boutique Core Founding Engagement is $55K one-time. After three weeks you have a working 12-product multi-tenant platform deployed under your brand. The economics aren’t close. Fractional CTOs are useful when you genuinely need ongoing advice. Most operators need someone to ship — not someone to advise.

Question 19

How is this different from hiring a boutique tech consulting firm like ThoughtBot or Pivotal?

Accepted Answer

Three things. First, scope and price: those firms quote $300K–$500K for a multi-product custom build of this scope. StayOps delivers the same scope for $55K–$210K. Second, team: they assign 4–6 people you’ve never met, with a partner you’ll see twice a quarter. With StayOps, you work directly with the lead architect, every meeting, every decision. Third, overhead: their pricing includes 30–40% firm markup for offices, account managers, and bench engineers. StayOps has no firm to feed. The deliverable is comparable. The math isn’t.

Question 20

What happens to my reviews when I switch property managers?

Accepted Answer

That’s exactly why we built the Reputation Vault. Every review your property has ever received — Airbnb, Vrbo, Google, Booking.com, all of them — is archived daily in a permanent vault tied to the property, not the PM. When you leave a manager, the reviews the property earned stay with the property. When you take over a new property, you inherit its full review history on day one — not the blank slate every other platform gives you. The vault is the operator’s asset, not ours.

Question 21

How is the Reputation Vault different from Revyoos or Reva?

Accepted Answer

The competition pulls reviews via API and calls it a feature. We archive every word as evidence and call it ownership. Revyoos and Reva display your reviews in a widget on your site — useful, and we do that too. But when Airbnb silently removes a review, their widget just goes dark. They don’t detect it, they don’t alert you, and they don’t have proof it ever existed. Our vault captures every review the day it appears, stores it permanently, detects erosion within 24 hours, and generates legal-grade exports if you need to dispute a removal. They’re display tools. We’re a permanent record.

Question 22

How does the Reputation Vault help me win new management contracts?

Accepted Answer

When you’re pitching a property owner whose last PM had the listing under their own account, the owner has nothing — no review history, no proof of performance, no leverage. With the vault, you pull a complete cross-platform review archive for any property you’ve managed, show sentiment trends, and demonstrate exactly what the property earned under your management. For property takeovers, you inherit the incoming property’s full review history instantly. Either way, you walk into the conversation with evidence, not claims.

Simple pricing for serious operators.

The Founding Engagement is consulting, not implementation.

Showcase

Boutique

Portfolio

Enterprise

Why this is the cheapest option, not the most expensive.

What you're actually paying for.

What we don't charge.

A few add-ons.

You'll keep most of your stack. We replace the parts that suck.

Pricing questions.