Get started with Kipdown

To start, you give Kipdown your business’s name and a link to your website, or to your page on Hipcamp, Pitchup or Airbnb. Kipdown reads it, fills in your stays, prices and open dates wherever your pages give them, and opens your booking page for you to check. Once you’ve checked the details, chosen how guests pay and switched on online booking, guests can book. Kipdown is free until your first online booking, and you can read more on the pricing page.

Signing up with your link

1. On the “Tell us about your business” form, type your “Business name”.
2. In “Website or listing”, paste the address of your own website, or of your page on Hipcamp, Pitchup or Airbnb.
3. Press “Continue”.

Kipdown reads your page and up to eight more, such as your booking, prices and terms pages, and shows what it finds as it goes. For a listing, it reads only that listing’s pages. When it’s done, it opens a preview of your booking page with the button “Check the details”. The preview works like the real page right up to booking, but it never makes a booking.

If Kipdown can’t read your website, it tells you, and “Add your stays and prices” takes you to fill them in yourself. If you have no website or listing, email hello@kipdown.com. Each login holds one business, so if you’d like bookings for a second one, email hello@kipdown.com too.

What Kipdown fills in and what to check

Kipdown fills in only what your pages state, and never guesses a price. It can fill in your contact details, arrival and leaving times, how guests pay, terms, photos, logo and colour. For each kind of stay it can add the name, description, how many you have, prices, the most guests and the shortest stay, along with your open dates, seasonal prices and any extras with a published price.

When you check the details, look out for these:

• A stay whose price wasn’t on your pages is £0 until you set one.
• If no opening dates were found, everything is open for the next year until you set your own.
• Open dates that had already passed are moved on a year. Seasons that had passed are left out, so add this year’s.
• Kipdown never fills in extra-guest prices, whole-stay prices, arrival days, a people limit, key facts, arrival details, questions for guests, discount codes, card payments, bank transfer or VAT. The longest stay starts at 14 nights.
• Bank holidays follow your region, which is set from your address. If it’s wrong, email hello@kipdown.com.

Everything you change saves itself. Setting up your stays and prices explains each setting.

Steps to your first booking

1. Check your stays and prices in “Stays and prices”.
2. Check when you’re open in “Stays and prices” → “Your place” → “When you’re open”. With no open dates, nothing can be booked online.
3. Add the email address guests’ replies should go to in Settings → “Your business” → “Email”. Booking emails aren’t sent until there’s an address there, or one in “Tell me about new bookings at” under Settings → Bookings → “Booking emails”.
4. Choose how guests pay in Settings → Bookings → “Payments”. “In full” is the starting choice unless your website said otherwise, and it needs card payments. Without them, a guest who has to pay by card is asked to get in touch instead, so either set up card payments or choose “When they arrive”.
5. Add or check your terms in Settings → Bookings → “Booking terms”. Guests agree to them before they book.
6. Switch on “Taking bookings online” in Settings → Bookings → “Where guests book”. Until it’s on, your booking page tells guests to get in touch, though you can add bookings yourself either way.
7. Put booking on your website, or share your booking page’s link.

If you’re moving from another booking system

You can bring your existing bookings across from a CSV file and connect your calendars with Hipcamp, Pitchup, Airbnb and Booking.com so nothing is booked twice. Our guide to switching booking system goes through the move in order.

Can't find what you need? Email hello@kipdown.com and a person will reply.