You are not choosing a demo. You are choosing the system your front desk will use every day for years. Ask every vendor the same twelve questions, ask to see the proof on screen, and keep the answers in writing. Ours sit under each question, so you can hold us to the same standard.
The money questions
1. “What is my exact monthly bill, all in?”
Ask for one number: the per-room price times your room count, plus every add-on, connection charge, one-time fee and minimum bill.
Our answer: the price is ₹199, ₹299 or ₹499 per room per month, with a five-room minimum, so the smallest possible bill is ₹995 a month. There is no setup fee, no per-user fee and no connection charge. The whole table is printed here.
2. “What does my rate become at renewal?”
Ask for the year-two number inside the agreement, then ask what happened to existing customers the last time the list price changed.
Our answer: your per-room rate is locked for as long as you stay subscribed, so if our list price rises later, yours does not. Monthly plans can be cancelled in any month.
3. “Does the booking engine take a commission?”
Ask for three numbers in writing: commission on bookings from your own website, fee per booking, and what “payment handling” means on the invoice. Our pricing checklist covers the rest of the bill.
Our answer: the commission is zero and the per-booking fee is zero, on every plan. Payments are recorded in ZimmerStack, not processed by us, so your own payment provider charges its standard fee and is paid directly by you.
The operations questions
4. “Show me a check-in from start to finish, on my own room types.”
Ask for an unrehearsed run on a board loaded with your rooms: a walk-in guest, a rate change and a payment entry. Time it yourself.
Our answer: we will run exactly that in the demo, on your room types, and you can time it. Check-in happens on the booking board, the guest profile updates, and the folio opens with the stay.
5. “What happens at day close, and does anyone have to stay awake for it?”
The night audit posts room charges and closes the day's accounts. Ask whether it runs on its own or waits for a person to start it.
Our answer: the night audit closes itself, so nobody has to sit up for it. The flash report and the owner's daily numbers on WhatsApp are in every plan.
6. “When a booking lands on one channel, what happens to the others?”
Make a test booking on one OTA and watch availability drop on the rest. Ask whether anyone has to open an extranet afterwards.
Our answer: one inventory feeds every connected channel, so a booking on any of the 170+ channels lowers availability on the others by itself. Changes leave ZimmerStack immediately, with no extranet to open and nothing re-typed. The channel manager ships in Growth and Scale.
7. “Does the restaurant bill reach the room folio on its own?”
If rooms and the restaurant run on two systems, ask how a guest's dinner reaches the folio and who types it in. Re-typed bills are where charges go missing at check-out.
Our answer: the restaurant POS and the front desk are one system, so a guest's dinner posts to the room folio by itself: one folio, one night audit, one GST register. The POS ships in Growth and Scale.
8. “Is the GST invoice correct from the first day?”
Ask to see a real tax invoice with CGST and SGST split by slab, and a sales register export. Send both to your accountant before you sign.
Our answer: GST invoices, filing-ready registers and a Tally export are in every plan, Essential included.
The data questions
9. “What format does my data leave in, and how soon?”
Ask for a sample export during the trial — bookings, guests, folios and rates — in files your accountant or your next system can open. An export you have already opened is the only one you can count on.
Our answer: you can export your data in full, on any day, on every plan.
10. “Who else can see my rates and guest data?”
Ask who outside your hotel can open your data, what is encrypted, whether staff access follows each person's role, and how often backups run.
Our answer: each property is strictly isolated, so no other hotel ever sees your data. Backups are encrypted and run daily, and what a staff member can see follows the role you give them.
The support questions
11. “Check-in is stuck in the middle of the night. Who answers?”
Hotels do not close, so ask for the channel, the hours, and whether the promise is the same on the cheapest plan as on the most expensive.
Our answer: support is the same on every plan, 24/7, on WhatsApp and on the phone, and a person answers. Those people have worked hotel desks. Support is not a tier.
12. “Who does the migration, what moves, and what does it cost?”
List what has to move — room types, rate plans, seasons, future bookings, guest history, company accounts, OTA connections — then ask who does the work and how long you run on two systems.
Our answer: we do the migration, it is free, and all of that moves, including re-pointing your OTA connections. A typical cutover takes 48 hours with a parallel-run window, so the desk is never without a system. Here is how a switch actually runs.
Scoring it
Twelve questions, twelve written answers, from every vendor including us. Anything vague counts as a no. Bring the list to a demo and we will answer all twelve on a live screen, with your own room types on the board — book one here.