CleanClac + Lodgify: direct booking site, automated cleaning

You've chosen to go direct: a polished Lodgify website, a booking widget, your Airbnb and Booking listings all synced. Bookings come in, sometimes from three channels in a single day. And cleaning becomes the weak link: a direct arrival confirmed on a Sunday evening, a cleaner notified by SMS, uncertainty about the previous guest's departure time. The PMS has done its job, but no one has organised things on the ground. This is exactly the layer CleanClac adds to Lodgify, via a direct connector.

Lodgify in brief: the PMS built for direct bookings

Lodgify's core promise is clear: reduce your dependence on platforms by growing your direct bookings. The tool is built on three pillars:

• Direct booking website builder: professional templates, custom domain, embeddable booking widget, online payments, and SEO markup. This is the product's historic core.
• Channel manager: real-time sync with Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and Expedia, plus Google Vacation Rentals listing. Lodgify is an Airbnb “Preferred” software partner.
• PMS: central calendar, unified inbox, rates, booking reports.

The target is clear: independent hosts and small managers, typically 1 to 10 properties, who want to build their own brand. As for pricing, the official page states as of 6 August 2026 that entry-level starts from around $16 per month (annual billing), with a 7-day free trial (no credit card), and four tiers (Basic, Starter, Professional, Ultimate) with prices increasing by property count. The pricing grid is dynamic, so check the Lodgify pricing page before signing up.

This positioning comes at the right time: nights booked via platforms in the EU reached 951.6 million in 2025, up +11.4% year-on-year (Eurostat). The bigger the market, the more commissions bite, and the more a well-equipped direct channel pays off.

What Lodgify does really well

Lodgify is an excellent choice for hosts wanting to professionalise their distribution. Its documented strengths:

• Turnkey booking website. Few tools let you launch a site with a booking engine, online payment, and solid SEO structure so quickly, without a developer.
• Multi-channel sync. A single calendar for direct site, Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, and Expedia, eliminating double bookings between direct and OTAs.
• Progressive upgrade path. Basic covers calendar sync and a unified inbox, Starter adds the website (with about 1.9% fee per booking), Professional brings automated messages and Google Vacation Rentals, Ultimate adds task management and check-in/out automation.
• Guest ecosystem. Centralised messaging, automated messages, mobile app: guest communication is well covered.

If you're still hesitating between a simple channel manager and a full PMS, our guide Channel manager, PMS, cleaning tool: who does what? explains the definitions. Lodgify covers both, with a clear focus on the direct channel.

Cleaning in Lodgify: a real module, but only on the Ultimate plan

Unlike some PMSs with no operational features, Lodgify offers a native task management module focused on turnover: recurring cleaning tasks automatically generated after each check-out, ad hoc maintenance tasks, assignment to a specific team member or group, push notifications in the dedicated mobile app for teams, photo evidence and checklists validated by the manager before closing (Lodgify, Task Management). This is a real strength of the product.

The catch: this module is only available on the Ultimate plan, which an independent review in 2026 put at around $59 per month per property (annual billing). In practice:

• On Basic, Starter, or Professional, there is no task management: bookings are perfectly orchestrated, but cleaning is still organised manually, via SMS or WhatsApp.
• On Ultimate, the integrated cleaning module is designed for an in-house team working on a single portfolio, within the Lodgify environment.

In both cases, there are still on-the-ground needs the PMS doesn't cover: tracking consumables stock, passing on access codes to the cleaner of the day, timestamped and geolocated proof of attendance in case of dispute, or the independent cleaner who works for several hosts using different tools.

CleanClac, the cleaning layer that plugs into Lodgify

Key message: CleanClac does not replace Lodgify. Lodgify remains in charge of bookings, rates, the direct site, and guest communication. CleanClac connects via a direct connector (as with Beds24, Smoobu, Hostaway, Guesty, and SuperHote) and handles cleaning and operations. The replacement question comes up so often there's a dedicated article: Does CleanClac replace your PMS? No, and that's intentional.

Once the connector is activated, every Lodgify booking, whether direct or OTA, is imported into CleanClac. Each guest departure automatically creates a cleaning task, scheduled at the property's default slot. From there, CleanClac does its job:

• Automatic scheduling: zero manual entry, the cleaning exists as soon as the booking does and follows any date changes.
• Illustrated checklists per property, based on a catalogue of around 200 tasks split into sections (cleaning, finishing touches, linen, restocking, comfort, extras), so the result doesn't depend on the cleaner's memory.
• End-of-clean proof: photos or video timestamped by the server, with digital file fingerprint and GPS location. Neither the cleaner nor the manager can backdate: a strong argument if a guest disputes cleanliness.
• On-site geolocated check-in, real duration measured, “Overdue” flag if the job overruns the estimate.
• Property condition rating on arrival (1 to 5 stars) given by the cleaner, useful for spotting careless guests.
• Consumables stock per property, with gauge and low-level alert.
• Access safe: key box codes and location sent to the cleaner of the day, and only to them.

This level of rigour is not a luxury: in a 2026 Vrbo survey of 1,758 travellers, 78% cited spotless cleanliness as the top sign of a quality listing, and 86% said they would pay more for a higher-quality property (Vrbo / Businesswire). For direct bookings, where Google reviews and word of mouth replace Airbnb's algorithm, cleanliness is even more directly your core asset.

The daily duo: who does what

How the roles split once both tools are connected:

• Lodgify: direct booking site, Airbnb/Booking/Vrbo/Expedia sync, rates, payments, guest messages, master calendar.
• CleanClac: turns every departure into a cleaning task, assigns to the team, checklists, photo evidence, real-time tracking, stocks, access.

For your team, a real differentiator for small portfolios: cleaners are unlimited and free, for life. You only pay per property, never per team member. Your regular cleaner, her August stand-in, and the colleague who helps out can all have an account, in any of 6 languages (FR, EN, ES, IT, PT, DE). And if you lose your cleaner mid-season, the “Find a cleaner” feature searches for profiles near the property, with a radius in km.

On the budget side, CleanClac starts at £9.99 per month for 1 property (£14.99 for 2-3 properties, £19.99 for 4-5), with a 14-day free trial, no credit card, and unlimited properties during the trial, all while providing on-the-ground features the native module doesn't cover (stocks, access safe, server timestamping, arrival condition rating).

Use case: an independent host growing direct bookings

A typical scenario. Claire lets out 3 flats in a medium-sized town. She's switched to Lodgify on the Professional plan: direct site with her own domain, automated messages, Airbnb and Booking sync. A third of her bookings now come direct, commission-free. But her cleaning organisation hasn't kept up: a shared spreadsheet, calendar screenshots sent to her two cleaners, two near-misses last month with early arrivals.

With the CleanClac connector for Lodgify, her workflow becomes:

1. ConnectHer Lodgify account to CleanClac, once, from settings.
2. Set upEach flat: default cleaning slot, tailored illustrated checklist, access codes in the safe.
3. Automatic operationEvery booking, direct or OTA, creates its cleaning task. Her cleaners see their schedule in the app, check in on site, tick off the checklist, and send timestamped end-of-clean photos.
4. Remote supervisionClaire sees in real time what's done, the actual duration of each clean, the condition rating left by the cleaner, and gets an alert when a stock runs low.

The benefit is not theoretical: it's coordination errors that cost, not execution. By removing double entry between calendar and team, Claire eliminates the most expensive error category: the guest walking into an uncleaned property. For more on this workflow, see Automatic cleaning for every booking: how it works.

Lodgify alone, or Lodgify + CleanClac: how to decide

A few honest pointers:

• Lodgify Ultimate alone may be enough if you run a small portfolio with a stable in-house team, and your cleaning needs are limited to assignment, checklists, and photo evidence.
• Lodgify (any plan) + CleanClac is the better option if you're on Basic, Starter, or Professional (no native task management at these levels), if your cleaner also works for other hosts, if you want server-timestamped photo evidence with GPS for disputes, or if stocks and access are recurring headaches.
• The decisive factor: who uses the on-the-ground tool? A PMS module is designed for the manager. CleanClac is designed first for the person doing the cleaning, with a simple interface in 6 languages.

In all cases, a golden rule: one master calendar (Lodgify), and specialist tools plugged into it, rather than double entry. That's the principle of healthy automation in short-term lets.