Cabinly is for sale
What is Cabinly ?
From the same team that brought you Hotel Haiku and Go Glamping, the first and original website dedicated to glamping, Cabinly is dedicated to helping you discover the best cabin holiday rentals in Britain.
Cabinly was designed and built using cutting-edge cloud technology giving it the responsive, fast and snappy feel of a native mobile app but in an accessible format openly viewable in any browser, device or platform.
Dare we say it, but we think it’s probably the fastest cabin website on the internet.
It’s also worth noting that Cabinly is an excellent brand name with feedback being super-positive from hosts, guests and travel journalists who pretty much all said the same thing: it does what it says on the tin!
Coming soon… we will write up our observations on competitor websites such as CoolStays and the equally generic Host Unusual and how they are using outdated technologies which will hinder their progression, plus a look at Canopy & Stars and how there’s an opportunity to dominate this popular niche with Cabinly.
There a few similar generic sites like the ones singled out above and they all share the same characteristics: their designs are based on previous now old iterations of Airbnb, and they are running on WordPress. We see this as a major weakness and a massive opportunity for Cabinly.
We will explain this in more depth to whoever purchases Cabinly.
What are the running costs for the website ?
- Google Workspace: £4.60 pm for Gmail including 15GB storage which is more than enough to host the Google Sheet data powering the listings
- Website Hosting: $13 pm or $156 pa
- Domain names: £34 pa
That’s it!
How much money has the website made ?
That’s easy: nothing.
None of the cabin owners have paid to be listed on our website.
Although we had many cabin owners asking to be listed, we made no serious attempt to promote the website as we were planning to re-launch it as an Airbnb-style booking platform.
Why are you selling Cabinly ?
For a couple of reasons:
- We no longer have the passion or interest to take it forward.
- We need to focus on our ecommerce businesses.
Unlike in 2015 when we originally launched Cabinly, viable technology is now available at reasonable costs to turn the website into a booking platform.
Unfortantely, the arrival of that technology has come too late for us as our inrerests now lie elsewhere.
But anyone with the drive and passion should be able to take Cabinly forward and dominate this growing and popular niche.
It’s a ‘built for you’ brand, already established and with media exposure.
What’s for sale ?
The whole website as it currently stands:
- Domain names: cabinly.co.uk & cabinly.co
- Database: the listings are all in a Google Sheet, which is powering this website
- Logo: goes without saying!
- Transfer of all relevant accounts for the services running the website
In addition:
- Free consultation on available technologies to transition Cabinly into a booking platform like Airbnb
- Introduction to developers capable of delivering that transition for reasonable costs.
- And why you should avoid using WordPress to build platforms these days.
How much would it cost to transition into an Airbnb-style platform ?
Here are some of the most important running costs…
- Booking platform: $299 pm (if paid yearly)
- Front-end hosting: $15 - $50 pm for React.js
- Content management: $0 (we would use the free version of Prismic for example, or any other ‘headless’ cms such as Statamic)
- CDN: $9.50 pm + 0.01c per GB
- Maps: $20 pm
- Payment gateway: we would use Stripe as their basic fees are reasonable at 1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards. No monthly fees!
The afforementioned booking platform will enable you to onboard hosts, where they will be able to create an account and list their cabins, add their rates and availability synched with their own calendars and/or 3rd party systems.
It offers various different transaction models but essentially you will be able to control the flow and earn commission by way of a booking fee to the guests and owners.
Anyone with a basic understanding of front end development should be comfortable in getting a minimal viable product up and running quickly.
If you’re not a developer then the minimum budget for hiring one to develop a booking platform like Airbnb is typically starts around $5K, depending on your platform’s requirements.
We can advise on all of this after the sale of the website and will hand-over a detailed document outlining the technologies and processes required, along with contact and introduction to our recommended developers.
Are you interested in acquiring Cabinly ?
We are now inviting reasonable offers for Cabinly in its current format.
Any interested parties should simply click the button below to send us an email…
Cabinly in the press
From the moment we unveiled the first version of Cabinly, the reaction from the press was very encouraging with The Guardian dedicating an article to our site’s launch in August 2015.
From then on, Cabinly quickly established itself as the ‘go to’ website for unusual cabin rentals and was featured in many print publications such as Sainsbury’s Magazine, The Metro, various tabloids, Elle Magazine and even the in-flight magazine for Norwegian Airlines…
Here’s a collection of some of the best features…
Five great cabins to rent in the UK
“Whether its cabins, huts, pods or even yabins (yurt + cabin), small is currently beautiful when it comes to glamping rentals. As the site cabinly.co.uk prepares to launch we pick five little joints where you can try out the downsizing dream”
THE GUARDIAN
Escape to a cabin in New Hampshire
“This year I was determined we would find a dream cabin and actually holiday in it. I’m not the only one with a thing about cabins, a growing number of travel agents and holiday rental companies now specialise in them such as Cabinly.co.uk”
FINANCIAL TIMES
Get packing: a guide for your winter breaks
“From shepherd’s huts to yurts and snow domes, there’s always some wacky new accommodation to try but this one is something else.”
THE EXPRESS
Northern Lights holiday guide
“For independent northern lights hunters, a quirky and surprisingly cosy converted oil tank on Skrova island, off Svolvaer, is available through Cabinly.”
THE GUARDIAN
Cool camping: 20 best in Europe
“Cabanas No Rio in Portugal featured in The Times along with a photo.”
THE TIMES
15 magical UK cabins to retreat to this winter
“The Black Shed is featured in this collection of winter retreat cabins.”