A 60-room hotel can start with Anny Rates for $20 a month on launch pricing. Whether that is the right plan depends on which dates you need checked and how often. That’s where I’d start, before comparing logos. Current plans

The question owners ask is some version of “do I need Lighthouse?” My question back is: what are you going to do with it?

A rate shop tells you what your competitors are charging for the dates you care about. Useful information. But somebody still has to look at it and decide what it means for their hotel.

Full disclosure: I’m joining Anny as Chief Experience Officer. I’m continuing my work at BRMS. I have a stake in this, and you should know that before I recommend anything.

Here is the deal. If you’re running a limited-service hotel and handling rates between everything else, you need to know what you’re buying and whether you’ll use it. A low monthly price doesn’t answer either question.

Take a 60-room independent with one comp set: your hotel and five competitors. Anny Rates’ Starter plan is $20 a month during launch pricing, with a regular price of $40. The published offer lets early subscribers keep the $20 monthly discount for life. That puts the base subscription at $240 over 12 months at the launch price, or $480 at the regular price.

Starter includes CSV export and email reports. There’s no implementation fee, and the subscription is month to month. Its scheduled shops cover:

• The next 7 days, three times a week.
• The next 30 days, twice a week.
• The next 60 days, once a month.

Those are the published Starter terms. Anny Rates pricing

That schedule might fit your hotel. It might not.

If you’re making decisions about arrivals three months away, Starter’s regular schedule won’t give you that coverage. If you need fresh rates across the next month every day, it won’t do that either. Price the plan that covers the work you actually do. Don’t buy the cheapest one and then get annoyed that it doesn’t do the more expensive job.

There’s also your time. The report still needs an owner. Who reads it? When? What happens if something looks wrong?

Checking the comp set doesn’t mean following it. A competitor dropping its rate is a reason to look at your own bookings, not an instruction to drop yours. Sometimes the useful decision is to leave your rate alone.

And Lighthouse? It has products specifically for independent hotels, including pricing optimization and broader operational tools. Its independent-hotel page currently lists starting prices of €99, €129, and €189 a month. Those packages include different capabilities, so I wouldn’t present those figures as the price of a standalone rate shop. Lighthouse’s published plans

You may need those capabilities. A small hotel can have a complicated pricing job. Room count alone doesn’t settle it.

Before buying, I’d check the dates and frequency first. Think about when your guests book and which arrivals you review most often. Ask how recently those dates were shopped.

Then check whether you can get the data out. CSV is my minimum. I want to be able to work with the numbers in my own spreadsheet.

Read the renewal terms, too. Know what the next bill will be and what it takes to cancel.

For the 60-room hotel in this example, the base Starter subscription is a modest expense. The more useful question is whether its coverage fits and whether somebody will read the report.

Put a name next to that job before you put a card on file.

If the report is going to sit unopened in an inbox, don’t buy it.

Buy mattresses.