Compare Keydesk and Bedful on published prices, which tier you would actually need, and what connecting a channel costs. Several rows below conclude against us.
Disclosure: this page is published by Keydesk, a Bedful alternative. Bedful is not affiliated with Keydesk. Every claim about it is taken from its own public pages on and linked below.
A decision, not a leaderboard
Priced per unit, or priced per site.
Bedful
An established supplier with a widget that sits on your own website, a wider set of property types including hotels and cottages, and a free trial. Priced in three tiers with a charge per unit on top, so the bill grows as your site does.
Cheapest when you are small
Keydesk
One flat £49 per site with every feature, unlimited users and channel connections in it, billed monthly with no set-up fee. Outdoor accommodation only, and the booking journey is hosted rather than embedded.
Flat cost as you grow
No points are awarded for a roadmap item. If a required connection is not live and demonstrated, treat it as unavailable.
Job by job
What each one does, on the evidence.
Each row states what Bedful’s own pages claimed on 20 September 2026, what Keydesk currently does, and which product the row favours. Where it favours them, we say so.
Pricing model
Does the bill grow every time you add a pitch?
Depends on you
Bedful
A base fee plus a charge per unit. Light is published as £20 per month plus £1 per camping pitch and £3 per glamping unit, room or holiday home. Plus starts at £30 and Pro at £52, before unit charges. Figures exclude VAT, assume payment annually in advance, and carry a 15% surcharge if you pay quarterly.
£49 per month, per site, flat, billed monthly. One subscription covers one trading site whatever it contains, so a five-pod glamping site and a sixty-pitch touring park pay the same. No per-unit charge, no commission, no per-user fee and no tier above it.
Where the booking journey lives
Does the guest stay on your own domain to the end?
Bedful
Bedful
A calendar widget you place on your own website, carrying your logo throughout the booking flow, with customisable widget colours. Its FAQ says it takes a few minutes to add and that you do not need to change your current website. A hosted webpage for an instant website is available at £10 per month.
Keydesk Direct is a booking journey hosted for you at your own Keydesk web address, in the form yourpark.keydesk.co.uk rather than your own domain. You add a Book Now button to your existing site and guests move into a mobile-first journey on live Keydesk pricing and availability. It is not an embedded widget.
Users and seats
What happens to the bill when more of the team need access?
Keydesk
Bedful
Tiered. Light includes one login. Plus includes up to five logins with different access levels for owners, managers and front of house. Unlimited users appear only on Pro, the £52 package.
Unlimited users on every account, with no per-seat charge, each invited with the role you choose. There is no tier to move up to in order to add your warden, your cleaner or your bookkeeper.
Channel connections
What is live, and what does connecting cost?
Depends on you
Bedful
Its FAQ says Bedful is one of the only UK booking systems with an instant API integration with Hipcamp, and shares availability with Airbnb, Booking.com and TripAdvisor by iCal. The pricing page names Hipcamp, Airbnb, Booking.com, PitchUp and Campsites.co.uk, listed under Plus and charged as an extra £10 per month for up to 10 units, plus £1 per month for each additional unit.
Included in the £49 with no per-channel fee. Two-way calendar sync connects each unit to Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Pitchup, Hipcamp, Agoda or any channel publishing a feed, with watch-only mode before a feed is allowed to block. Pitchup has a full two-way API integration covering availability, rates, stay rules, extras and returned bookings. Rates and listing content are not pushed to channels other than Pitchup.
Deposits, balances and instalments
Is chasing money automated, and at which price?
Keydesk
Bedful
Stripe payments with a deposit amount you set, a scheduled automatic balance payment a chosen time before arrival, security deposits, refunds through Stripe and manual tracking of cash and bank transfers. Its package comparison places easy balance payments and security deposits in Plus, and a Pay In Instalments option in Pro.
Standard in the £49. Deposit or payment in full, automatic balance collection on the due date from a saved Stripe card under separate explicit guest consent, and weekly, fortnightly or monthly instalments with operator-set minimums. Guests get a Manage Payments area, and payment links can be sent by email or text with optional auto-cancel.
Running the site day to day
Does the system tell you what needs doing this morning?
Depends on you
Bedful
A Daily Diary showing arrivals, departures and stayovers with special requests, outstanding balances, same-day changeover flags and a summary of the extras due that day, viewable on an iPad on site. An interactive availability grid supports drag-to-move, blocking dates and starting a booking from the grid, plus an occupancy heatmap and downloadable reports.
A bookings workspace with views for needs-attention, arrivals, in-house, balances and provisional, and a select-and-work-through queue. A continuous booking calendar with drag-to-create and manual blocks, a customer directory with account-wide search, repeat and high-value segments, tags and duplicate detection, plus returning-guest badges and lifetime value.
Business types covered
Does the supplier cover everything you run?
Bedful
Bedful
Its FAQ covers campsites, glamping sites, holiday parks, self-catering, holiday cottages, B&Bs, hotels and hostels, with dedicated pages for camping, glamping, hotels and B&Bs, and self-catering. It also sells a Xero accounting integration at £10 per month and a hosted webpage at £10 per month.
Campsites, touring parks, caravan parks, holiday parks and glamping sites. Hotels, B&Bs, hostels and single holiday cottages are not the product this is built for. Accounting integrations and a website product are not offered.
Support and onboarding
Who picks up the phone in August?
Bedful
Bedful
A published phone number, a support team stated to be based in Birmingham and an office in London, email support during office hours, help documentation, a dedicated account manager and set-up training. Its FAQ offers a low-cost fast-track set-up quoted upfront.
Guided onboarding and support are included in the £49, with no separate set-up, migration or training fee. We help set up accommodation, pricing and booking rules and bring existing and future-dated bookings across. Direct founder and product access, but no published phone support line.
Trying before you commit
Can you run it against your own inventory before paying?
Bedful
Bedful
A risk-free 30-day free trial in which you can set up accommodation, seasons, rates, extras and messages and make dashboard bookings, with a free guided tour of the system. Its FAQ confirms there is no free version and that you can cancel any time.
No free trial. You can create an account and configure accommodation, pricing and booking rules at no cost before taking live bookings, which is a smaller commitment but not a trial. Billing is monthly with no long-term contract.
Maturity and operating proof
How much installed-base evidence does your decision need?
Bedful
Bedful
Its homepage publishes 1.2 million-plus bookings taken, £200 million-plus of revenue for property owners and 2 million-plus nights, and its FAQ says hundreds of accommodation providers across the UK already use it. Named customer testimonials appear across glamping, camping and self-catering.
A newer product with no equivalent installed base and no published case study yet. It offers direct founder and product access with hands-on onboarding instead. If a long operating record is a requirement rather than a preference, this row should weigh heavily.
The number that actually decides it
Compare the right package, then the right number.
Bedful publishes three packages and charges per unit on top of each. Only one of those packages is a fair comparison with Keydesk, and it is not the cheap one. Work out which tier you would actually need before comparing any price.
Light is the narrower product
Light genuinely covers a lot: commission-free bookings on your own website, upsell extras in the booking flow, your logo throughout, a responsive display, automatic confirmation emails and reporting on revenue, occupancy and payments. For one small site run by one person, that may be all you need.
But their own package comparison shows Light does not include:
More than one login or user
Access levels for owners, managers and front of house
Custom email messages, including pre-arrival and review requests
Easy balance payments
Holding security deposits
Channel integrations (a paid add-on, listed from Plus)
Automated cart-abandonment messages (Pro only)
Pay in instalments (Pro only)
Extras Hub for upselling after booking (Pro only)
White label and multi-site agency options (Pro only)
Keydesk has one plan. Unlimited users and roles, custom guest messaging, automatic balance collection, instalments, abandoned-booking recovery and channel connections are all in the £49, because there is no tier above it to move them into.
So the honest comparison is against Bedful’s Pro package, not Light. Pro is published at £52 per month before any per-unit charge, and channel connections are a further £10 per month for up to 10 units, plus £1 per month for each unit above that. On those published figures, Pro is dearer than £49 before you add a single pitch.
If Light really does cover you
Then it is a price per unit, against a price per site.
For a genuinely small single site with one login, Light is the comparison. Bedful publishes it as £20 a month plus £1 per camping pitch and £3 per glamping unit, room or holiday home. Keydesk is £49 a month whatever you have, so there is a crossover worth knowing.
Illustrative monthly software cost by site size, using published headline prices on 20 September 2026
Your site
Bedful Light (£20 + per unit)
Keydesk (£49 flat)
Cheaper
5 glamping pods
£35
£49
Bedful
9 glamping pods
£47
£49
Bedful
10 glamping pods
£50
£49
Keydesk
20 camping pitches
£40
£49
Bedful
29 camping pitches
£49
£49
Level
40 camping pitches
£60
£49
Keydesk
60 pitches and 10 pods
£110
£49
Keydesk
Where the line falls
On the published Light formula the two land level at 29 camping pitches, and Keydesk becomes cheaper from the tenth glamping unit. Below those points Bedful Light costs less. Above them Keydesk does, and the gap widens with every unit you add, because £49 does not move.
What this table does not include
Bedful’s figures exclude VAT and assume payment annually in advance, with a 15% surcharge for quarterly payment, and its pricing page states a one-off set-up and training fee of £100 + VAT for new hosts with five or fewer units, or £180 + VAT above that. Its self-catering and hotels pages say there is no set-up fee, so ask them which applies to you. Keydesk is billed monthly with no set-up fee. Confirm VAT treatment for both.
It also excludes the channel add-on, which Light does not carry at all, and Stripe card-processing fees, which both products incur and neither figure covers. If you need anything in the Light exclusions above, this table is not your comparison: ask Bedful for your actual Pro price at your unit count, with channels and set-up included, and compare that with £49.
Choosing between them
Pick the one that matches how you sell.
These are not close calls. If you are in the left-hand column, Bedful is the better answer and we would rather you bought it than churned off us in month three.
Choose Bedful if
You want the whole booking journey embedded on your own domain
You run a hotel, B&B, hostel or single holiday cottage
You have fewer than about 29 pitches, or fewer than 10 glamping units
Hipcamp is the marketplace that matters most to you
You need a Xero accounting connection
You want to trial a system free before paying
A long operating record and phone support are requirements, not preferences
Choose Keydesk if
You are big enough that a per-unit price starts to bite
You want one flat price that does not move as you add pitches
Several of your team need access without moving up a tier
You want instalments and balance chasing in the base price
You would rather pay monthly than a year in advance
You do not want a separate monthly fee to connect channels
Pitchup is the marketplace that matters to you
Where Keydesk does not fit
The rows we lose, stated plainly.
Bedful is an established supplier with a long operating record, a wider set of property types and a booking widget that lives on your own site. On several of the questions that matter most, it is the better product today.
A booking widget on your own domain, where ours is a hosted journey
Hotels, B&Bs, hostels and single cottages, which we do not cover
A cheaper price for small sites under about 29 pitches or 10 units
An instant API integration with Hipcamp, which we do not have
A Xero accounting connection, which we do not offer
A website product, which we do not offer
A published phone support line and a dedicated account manager
A free 30-day trial, which we do not offer
Over a million bookings taken and hundreds of UK customers
Test both properly
Give each supplier the same seven jobs.
Feature lists do not settle this. Watching both systems attempt your actual work does, and it exposes the gap between what is live and what is described.
Task 01
Build your actual inventory, including the awkward unit
Task 02
Price a bank holiday weekend with your real restrictions
Task 03
Take a booking, then amend it after payment
Task 04
Collect a deposit and show the balance, due date and instalment options
Task 05
Demonstrate every channel connection you need, live
Task 06
Export your bookings and guest data to a file you keep
Task 07
Confirm in writing which tier your requirements need, at your unit count, including set-up
Common questions
Keydesk vs Bedful FAQ
How much does Bedful cost?
It depends on how many units you have, because the price is a base fee plus a charge per unit. Bedful’s pricing page publishes three packages — Light at £20 per month, Plus at £30 and Pro at £52 — and states that Light is “£20/month plus £1 per camping pitch, £3 per glamping unit, room or holiday home”. Those figures exclude VAT and apply to plans paid annually in advance, with a 15% surcharge for quarterly payment, plus a one-off set-up and training fee of £100 + VAT for new hosts with five or fewer units, or £180 + VAT above that. Keydesk is £49 per month, per site, billed monthly, whatever your unit count.
Is Keydesk cheaper than Bedful?
Below about 29 camping pitches or 10 glamping units, Bedful Light is cheaper. Above that, Keydesk is, and the gap widens with every unit you add, because Keydesk’s £49 does not move with unit count. That comparison is against Light, which is the narrower package. Against Bedful Pro, the tier that actually matches what Keydesk includes as standard, Keydesk is cheaper from the first unit: Pro starts at £52 before any per-unit charge.
Which Bedful package compares with Keydesk?
Pro, not Light. Keydesk includes unlimited users, automatic balance collection, instalments, custom guest messaging and abandoned-booking recovery as standard. Bedful’s own package comparison puts balance payments, custom messages and multiple logins in Plus, and instalments and cart-abandonment messaging in Pro. Light is capped at one login. Comparing £49 with the £20 Light headline is not comparing the same product.
Does Bedful charge commission on bookings?
No. Its FAQ states that your monthly fee is all you pay to take bookings on your own website, and every package includes unlimited commission-free bookings. Keydesk charges no commission either. On this row the two products agree, and both are a genuine improvement on paying a percentage of your own direct business.
Do channel connections cost extra with Bedful?
Yes. Its pricing page lists integrations with Hipcamp, Airbnb, Booking.com, PitchUp, Campsites.co.uk and other sales channels as an additional £10 per month for up to 10 units, plus £1 per month for each additional unit, and lists them under Plus rather than Light. Keydesk includes calendar sync and the Pitchup API in the £49 with no per-channel connection fee. For a 40-unit site the Bedful channel add-on alone is £40 per month on their published rates.
Which has better channel connections, Keydesk or Bedful?
It depends which marketplace matters to you. Bedful’s FAQ says it is one of the only UK booking systems with an instant API integration with Hipcamp, and shares availability with Airbnb, Booking.com, TripAdvisor and others by iCal. Keydesk has a full two-way API integration with Pitchup covering availability, rates, stay rules and extras, and two-way calendar sync with Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Hipcamp, Agoda, Pitchup or any channel publishing a feed. Both are deep on one marketplace and calendar-level on the rest. The difference is which one, and that Keydesk does not charge separately for it.
Is there a free trial of either system?
Bedful advertises a risk-free 30-day trial with a free guided tour of the system, and states there is no free version. Keydesk does not offer a free trial. You can create a Keydesk account and set up your accommodation, pricing and booking rules at no cost before taking live bookings, but that is not the same thing and we would rather not blur it.
Can guests book on my own website with each one?
With Bedful, yes: its FAQ describes a calendar widget you place on your own website, carrying your logo, with customisable colours. Keydesk Direct is a booking journey hosted for you at your own Keydesk web address, in the form yourpark.keydesk.co.uk, reached from a Book Now button on your site rather than embedded in it. If keeping the whole journey on your own domain matters to you, Bedful is the better answer today.
What does Keydesk do better?
One flat published price that does not grow with your unit count, everything in a single plan with no tiers to unlock, unlimited users on every account, no set-up fee, monthly billing rather than a year paid in advance, and no separate charge for channel connections. It also puts instalments, automatic balance collection and abandoned-booking recovery in the base price rather than the top tier. It is a narrower product covering outdoor accommodation only, and that is the trade.
Is this an independent comparison?
No. This page is written and published by Keydesk, a Bedful alternative. To keep that conflict visible, every Bedful statement is taken from its own public pages on 20 September 2026 and linked, several rows conclude against Keydesk, and no review scores or unsourced competitor gaps are used.
Evidence register
Everything above, sourced and dated.
Each Bedful claim on this page comes from one of these pages, read on 20 September 2026. Products change. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.