Booking.com and the other portals take a commission on every reservation they send you – typically 15 to 18 percent. A booking taken on your own website costs you nothing.
The catch has always been double bookings. Sell a room on your site and on Booking.com and sooner or later two guests arrive for the same room.
WebBox Booking Expert is a standalone room booking engine that solves both halves. Guests see real-time availability and book directly on your site, paying by card through Stripe or PayPal – and Pro keeps your calendar synchronised with Booking.com in both directions, so a booking on either side blocks the room on the other.
No WooCommerce. No monthly fee. No commission on anything you sell yourself.
Key features
- Room types with price per night, capacity, unit count, photo gallery, and amenities
- A click-to-select availability calendar guests use to choose their dates
- Payments via Stripe and PayPal (worldwide), an optional Macedonia-specific processor (CaSys/cPay), bank transfer, and pay-at-hotel
- Full admin control: view every booking, confirm or cancel, mark as paid
- A currency selector with 35+ world currencies
- Shortcodes:
[hbmk_rooms]for the room grid,[hbmk_booking]for the booking page,[hbmk_calendar room_id="X"]for a standalone availability calendar - Two-way Booking.com availability sync (iCal) per room type – a Pro add-on
Free vs. Pro
Every feature above is free. The only Pro-only feature is two-way Booking.com iCal sync: your site’s bookings block the room on Booking.com automatically, and reservations made on Booking.com block the room on your site.
Pro is licensed per site: one purchase covers one live site. Local, staging and development copies don’t count against it.
Support
WebBox Booking Expert is built and maintained by Slave Tanushev (WebBox). For support, email slavetanusev@gmail.com.
Pro adds two-way Booking.com availability sync and is available at https://webboxapps.com/booking-expert/ – everything else in this plugin is free and always will be.
Every setting lives in your own site’s database. A fresh install starts with your site name, your admin email, no payment credentials, no room types and no bookings.
External services
This plugin contacts a payment provider only when the site owner has enabled that provider under WebBox Booking Expert -> Settings and entered their own account credentials, and only at the moment a guest submits a booking and chooses that payment method. Nothing is sent to a provider that has not been configured, and the plugin sends nothing anywhere on its own schedule. Card numbers are always entered on the provider’s own hosted page and never reach your site or this plugin.
Stripe
Used to take card payments when the Stripe gateway is enabled.
When a guest chooses to pay by card, the plugin calls Stripe’s API at https://api.stripe.com to create a Checkout Session, and calls it again when the guest returns in order to verify the payment server-side. Sent with each call: the booking amount and currency, the room name, the booking reference, the guest’s email address, and the success and cancel URLs on your own site.
Stripe Services Agreement: https://stripe.com/legal/ssa
Stripe Privacy Policy: https://stripe.com/privacy
PayPal
Used to take PayPal payments when the PayPal gateway is enabled.
When a guest chooses PayPal, the plugin calls PayPal’s API at https://api-m.paypal.com (or https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com when sandbox mode is switched on) to create an order, and calls it again when the guest returns in order to capture and verify that order server-side. Sent with each call: the booking amount and currency, the booking reference, and the return and cancel URLs on your own site. No guest name or email address is sent to PayPal by this plugin.
PayPal User Agreement: https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/useragreement-full
PayPal Privacy Statement: https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/privacy-full
CaSys / cPay
Used for card payments through Macedonian banks when the CaSys gateway is enabled. CaSys is the processor behind online card payments for most banks in North Macedonia.
The guest’s browser is handed over to the cPay hosted payment page at https://www.cpay.com.mk/ (the test page https://www.cpay.com.mk/Client/page/default.aspx?xml_id=/mk-MK/.TestLoginToPay/ or the live page https://www.cpay.com.mk/Client/page/default.aspx?xml_id=/mk-MK/.loginToPay/.simple/, depending on the Test mode setting; a different URL can be set in Settings if your merchant guide names one). The form sent to cPay carries the booking amount and currency, the booking reference, a short description containing your site name, your merchant ID and merchant name, the guest’s name, telephone number and email address as the cardholder billing details, the return URLs on your own site, and a checksum computed with your CaSys auth key.
cPay reports the outcome by redirecting the guest’s browser back to your site. That is not proof of payment, so this plugin never marks a booking paid from it: you confirm the transaction in the cPay merchant portal and mark the booking paid yourself.
CaSys Privacy Policy: https://casys.com.mk/privacy-policy/
CaSys merchant portal: https://merchant.cpay.com.mk/
CaSys does not publish a public terms-of-service page. Merchant terms are part of the contract you sign with your acquiring bank when that bank approves you as a merchant through the portal above.
Screenshots
The booking page a guest sees: room details, a live availability calendar, and every payment method you have switched on.
The availability calendar. Dates already booked are struck through and cannot be selected; the guest clicks a check-in date, then a check-out date, and the nights are counted for them.
Every booking in one list, with status and payment at a glance. Confirm, mark as paid, or cancel without leaving the screen.
Settings: your hotel name, currency, brand colour, and the payment methods you want to accept.
![The room grid, from the [hbmk_rooms] shortcode. Drop it on any page.](https://ps.w.org/webbox-booking-expert/assets/screenshot-5.png?rev=3693139)
The room grid, from the [hbmk_rooms] shortcode. Drop it on any page.
Adding a room type: price per night, how many rooms of that type you have, capacity, photos and amenities. The room count is what availability is checked against.
Booking.com two-way sync, set up per room type. Paste one URL into Booking.com, paste theirs back here, and the two calendars keep each other honest. This one is Pro.