FareHarbor is a booking and business-management platform for businesses offering tours, activities, rentals, attractions, and other experiences. It serves a wide range of operators, from local businesses to larger, multi-location operations. On the other hand, Guidesly Pro is a business-in-a-box built specifically for outdoor businesses like dive shops. It's a complete ecosystem of connected tools that helps grow your business and run it completely from one platform. No more juggling a handful of tools and platforms.

FareHarbor and GuideslyPro at a glance

How does a diver find your shop?

Guidesly Pro includes a free website built for outdoor and dive businesses, with SEO built in to help you rank higher on Google. Our AI keeps your SEO on track and keeps you ranking higher on Google. FareHarbor offers a similar website option through FareHarbor Sites, a paid product built with its own SEO. Guidesly Network lets you drive more bookings from a network of businesses that you trust.

What's included on each website?

A website powered by Guidesly gives you everything you need to get your business online at no extra cost. You can highlight your business, list your trips, accept bookings and payments, display photos and customer reviews, collect digital waivers, and give customers a mobile-friendly experience. Hosting and security are already included, so you don't pay for anything.

FareHarbor Sites offers many of the same features as its standard website. However, you may need to pay extra for hosting, online payments, and additional features designed to help your website rank better in search results.

What do booking fees look like?

Both Guidesly Pro and FareHarbor don’t charge a monthly subscription. Instead, you pay a fee when you get a booking. FareHarbor charges a 6% fee per booking, but this does not include the payment processing fee, which is at least 3%. If you want to improve your website’s visibility and search rankings, you may also need to move to a different pricing tier since bookings rely on their website and booking widgets.

With Guidesly Pro, you get a website, hosting, and ongoing online visibility support at no upfront cost. For onsite bookings, you only pay the basic 3% payment processing fee that you would with any other POS. Bookings made through your website powered by Guidesly are charged 10%, while Marketplace bookings are charged 15%. The 10% and 15% fees already include payment processing. Hosting, SEO support, and automated marketing are all included, so you’re not paying separate fees for these services.

How do they book and pay?

Both platforms support online booking and payment, including cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Guidesly Pro goes beyond online payments with a built-in POS that lets operators accept in-person payments, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, Tap to Pay and Text to Pay while managing bookings and payments in the same system. FareHarbor supports online and in-person payments through its booking and Desk tools, but Guidesly Pro brings these payment options together in one system.

What happens once someone books?

You get an email and a text notification on Guidesly Pro as soon as a booking comes in, and the booking appears in your Bookings section and calendar right away. FareHarbor similarly notifies you the same way and updates its calendar automatically. You can sync Guidesly Pro's calendar with your own calendar whether you use Google or Apple Calendar.

How do you know your capacity? 

FareHarbor has a complex capacity and resource management system with multiple calendar views designed for large tourist operations. Because of its complex setup, the system can have a steep learning curve, especially for businesses who are looking for a simple way to manage their day-to-day trips.

Guidesly Pro 's capacity and resource management is an intuitive user-friendly interface. It keeps things simple and focuses on the guide’s actual trip schedule, showing dates, times, bookings, and guest counts in one straightforward view.

How do you know who's coming on a trip?

Due to FareHarbor catering to large tourist operations, they have a customizable manifest with filters, custom fields, check-in statuses, saved views, and detailed operational information. This flexibility comes with a steep learning curve which means complex configurations, setup, and management. 

Guidesly Pro takes a simpler approach, automatically generating passenger manifests for each departure and connecting them with the calendar and digital check-in, so that businesses can focus on the information they need for the trip without building out complex manifest views.

What about certification courses for a dive shop?

Guidesly Pro has native certification integration with PADI, so a course maps directly to the agency's requirements. A student enrolls once and is scheduled for every session automatically, with manifests, instructor assignments, and waivers tracked across the whole course, and individual sessions can be adjusted as needed. Once in the system, you can track the progress of their certifications through the CRM tool.

FareHarbor handles single bookings and general scheduling well, but it doesn't include a native certification integration or session-based class scheduling, so shops running courses typically manage that part outside the platform on either spreadsheets or paper.

What happens after the trip ends? 

Both platforms can use customer and booking data to support automated marketing, helping you create targeted campaigns, follow-ups, seasonal promotions, and re-engagement emails.

Guidesly Pro takes it a step further with built-in AI-powered tools for no touch social media, SEO, and email marketing. This gives outdoor operators market their business without having to use multiple tools or hiring marketing agencies.

Why does this matter? 

FareHarbor’s strength is its booking infrastructure and capacity management, making it a good fit for tours like bus tours or walking tours in tourist destinations. It is a more complex system which means a steeper learning curve, especially for businesses looking to simplify their day-to-day and grow. It can also get pretty expensive when you start adding extra services like SEO and payment processors.

Guidesly Pro is built around how a dive shop or fishing charter actually operates day to day. It gives you a free website that helps you sell trips, classes, and certifications online. Simple scheduling, built-in certification tracking, automatically generated manifests, and marketing tools help you not only manage your daily tasks with ease but also help you keep old customers engaged and find new ones to grow.

Ready to grow your bookings or your business? 

If your business goal is to just manage your bookings, FareHarbor is a good choice for you. But if your goal goes beyond bookings and you want to grow your business and simplify your operations, Guidesly Pro is the better solution. It's a business in a box, built specifically for outdoor recreation businesses. 

Ready to take your business to the next level? Contact us for more details.