All guide chapters
Start here
Everyday running
- Residents
- Rent and payments
- Dues and reminders
- Deposits and advances
- Expenses and profit
- Mess and meals
- Reports and dashboard
- Laundry and food for residents
- Importing residents safely
- Room changes, checkout and resident requests
- Payment approvals
- Billing periods, installments and rent reviews
- Room electricity and resident charges
- Utility connections and bills
- Inventory and room assets
- Bank accounts and wallets
Filling your beds
Your team and residents
The free plan, the trial and what plans cost
You can run a hostel of up to 20 living residents free, for as long as you like. Above that you need a plan, and every plan starts with a 30-day free trial.
Step by step
Where to go: My Hostel → Subscription
Who can use it: The hostel owner, or staff with access to this feature. Some actions need additional permission.
-
Read the current offer
Open Subscription and check the plan, included features, resident allowance, trial or expiry date and the amount due.
Read the current offer · Example with dummy data. Select the image to enlarge. -
Verify activation
Follow the payment instructions shown, keep the reference, then check the active plan. Ask support if an actual payment has not been reconciled.
Before you finish, and when something goes wrong
- The plan screen is the source for current prices and eligibility. A pending payment does not mean a plan has been activated.
- A featured ad on houstel.pk is bought separately from a plan, under My Hostel → Featured Ads. Paying for a plan does not feature your hostel. The Subscription page shows the featured ad on its own line.
If a save times out, check the record before repeating it. If access is denied, ask the owner to review your hostel assignment and permissions. Never share your login to work around an access restriction.
Related help
There are three things to understand here, and they are simpler than most software pricing: the free plan, the trial, and the paid plans. Your public listing is free under all three. What you are paying for is the software that runs the hostel.
The free plan
If 20 or fewer residents are living in your hostel, you pay nothing. Not for a trial period, but permanently. You get the rooms, the residents, the rent and receipts, the map, the expenses, your free listing and your enquiries.
The count is people currently living with you, and only those. It is not:
- everyone you have ever had, so a hostel with 300 past residents and 18 living in it today is free
- the number of rooms or beds you have, which are unlimited on the free plan
- enquiries, visitors or people who reserved and never arrived
So the number goes down on its own when somebody checks out, and a hostel that shrinks back under 20 goes back to free without asking anyone.
The 30-day trial
Every paid plan starts with a 30-day free trial. Full features, no payment up front. Use it on your real hostel with your real residents, because that is the only way to find out whether it fits the way you work.
We remind you 7, 3 and 1 days before it ends. If you do nothing, you are not cut off on the day. A lapsed trial keeps working for a further week, and if you are under 20 living residents you simply return to the free plan.
What the plans cost
Prices are in Pakistani Rupees, and none of the plans takes any commission on your rent.
Monthly
- Up to 50 living residents
- Up to 25 rooms
- Up to 5 staff logins
- Residents, bookings, rent and reminders
- Free listing, 0% commission
- Up to 100 living residents
- Up to 50 rooms
- Up to 10 staff logins
- Everything in Basic, plus mess management
- Several branches on one plan
- Up to 200 living residents
- Up to 100 rooms
- Unlimited staff logins
- Everything in Standard
- Your own branding on receipts and emails
Yearly: the same plans, paid once
Count the beds you expect to have full, not the beds you own. Under 20, stay free. Up to 50, Basic. Up to 100 or if you want mess management and several branches, Standard. Above that, Premium. You can move up or down later, and prices shown in your dashboard are always the current ones.
What a paid plan adds
Beyond the higher limits, paying unlocks the things that involve reaching people:
- Every lead's contact details. Without a plan you get a lifetime allowance of 5 visit enquiries and 5 reservations to unlock, chosen by you. On a plan you see them all. More on leads →
- Automatic payment reminders and monthly statements to your residents.
- Your logo and colours on the receipts and emails your residents get.
- The AI assistant, which answers questions about your own hostel in plain language.
- Mess management from Standard upwards.
The featured ad, a separate choice
Your listing is free and stays free. A featured ad is something you can add to it: your hostel is shown before the other hostels in its city and area, it carries a Featured mark, and customers get a View WhatsApp button that shows your own number.
It is bought on its own, from Rs 5,000 a month. No plan includes it, and it does not depend on a plan: you can have it with any paid plan, on the free plan, or without using the software at all. Your own price and the packages on offer are under My Hostel → Featured Ads, and your Subscription page shows it on its own line. How the featured ad works →
Paying
Open My Hostel → Subscription, choose a plan and follow the instructions to pay. Once your payment is confirmed the plan activates and the new limits apply immediately. You will see your renewal date on the same page.
If you run several branches, one plan can cover them together rather than paying separately for each. Ask support to set it up.
If a plan runs out
Nothing is deleted, and nothing switches off on the day. The sequence is deliberate and slow, because a hostel losing access mid-month is a real problem for real people:
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| 10, 7, 3 and 1 days before | Email reminders that your plan is about to renew, and a notice in your dashboard. |
| The renewal date | The plan expires. Nothing is blocked. Your grace period starts. |
| During the grace period | 10 days on most plans, 14 on Premium and yearly. Full access, with a few email reminders. |
| 5 days, then 1 day, before it ends | A WhatsApp message. We use WhatsApp only at this point, because it is the one people actually read. |
| After the grace period | Access is limited, unless you are back under 20 living residents, in which case you fall to the free plan and carry on. |
Paying at any point in that sequence stops it, and the reminders reset with the new renewal date. Your data is never removed for non-payment.
What you are not charged
- No commission on rent. 0% on every plan, including free.
- No charge for listing your hostel or for the enquiries it brings.
- No per-resident fee, no setup fee, no charge for adding staff logins within your plan.
In short
- Free forever while 20 or fewer residents are living with you. Rooms are unlimited on free.
- Only people living in the hostel today count, not past residents and not enquiries.
- Paid plans: Rs 4,500, Rs 6,000 and Rs 8,500 a month, each after a 30-day free trial. Paying yearly takes 10% to 30% off.
- 0% commission on rent, on every plan.
- A featured ad, which puts your hostel first on houstel.pk, is separate: from Rs 5,000 a month, with or without a plan.
- An expired plan gets a 10 to 14 day grace period with reminders, and falls back to free if you are under 20 residents. Nothing is deleted.
Common questions
What exactly counts towards the 20 free residents?
Only people living in your hostel today. Past residents who have checked out, and enquiries who never moved in, do not count. So a hostel that has had 200 residents over three years but has 18 living in it now is still on the free plan.
What happens when my plan expires?
Nothing immediately. Your hostel keeps working through a grace period of 10 days on most plans, with reminders by email and, near the end, WhatsApp. Only after that is access suspended, and if you are back under 20 living residents you simply fall back to the free plan.
Do you take a commission on rent?
No. Every plan is 0% booking commission. You pay the plan fee and nothing else.
Is being shown first on Houstel.pk part of a plan?
Your listing is free on every plan. Being shown first is a featured ad, which is bought separately from Rs 5,000 a month, with or without a plan. No plan includes it: paying for the software does not feature your hostel.
Still stuck?
Tell us the screen name, what you tried and what happened. Remove personal details, passwords and private links from any screenshot.