Almost every rental booking platform on the market is rented, not bought. You pay every month, forever; the software runs on the vendor’s servers; your customers, orders and contracts live in the vendor’s database; and if you ever stop paying, you stop trading. Sales Igniter is built the other way round.
You buy it once. You get the source code. It runs on your hosting, inside a store you already own. There is no monthly fee, no commission on your bookings, no charge per user and no charge per location. This page explains what that actually means in practice — including the parts that are genuinely harder than SaaS.
What “open source rental software” actually means
Open source means the complete source code ships with the product. Sales Igniter is readable PHP, JavaScript and MySQL — you can open it in any text editor, and any developer you hire can read it, extend it or fix it. There is no compiled binary, no obfuscation, no phoning home for permission to run.
You can read how it is put together before you buy: the programming notes and the multi-inventory setup guide are public documentation, not a sales brochure.
Open source does not mean free. We charge for the plugin and the extension, and we think that is the honest arrangement: you pay a fair one-time price, we fund development and support, and in return you get the code rather than a rental agreement. What you are buying is ownership, not access.
You own the code
Readable PHP, JavaScript and MySQL. Customise it, audit it, or hand it to any developer. You are never blocked waiting for a vendor roadmap.
You own the data
Customers, orders, contracts and payment tokens sit in your own MySQL database. Nothing to export, nothing held hostage, nothing to negotiate if you leave.
You own the storefront
The booking calendar lives on your domain, in your theme, feeding your SEO and your analytics — not a subdomain of somebody else’s platform.
The real cost of subscription rental software
Monthly pricing is easy to underestimate because each individual number is small. Here is the same set of decisions expressed as a five-year total, using each vendor’s published list price as of August 2026.
| Option | Five-year total | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|
| Sales Igniter for WooCommerce — Regular | $279 | One-time licence, never renewed |
| Sales Igniter for WooCommerce — Pro, renewed annually | $1,615 | $419 once + $299/year optional support |
| Booqable Grow | $4,140 | $69/month billed annually, before add-ons |
| Checkfront | $5,940 + 3% of bookings | $99/month plus a percentage of every online booking |
| Goodshuffle Pro Standard + website | ~$10,680 | Per-user subscription plus a monthly website add-on |
| EZRentOut Growth | ~$23,940 | $399/month for the tier that includes an online store |
| Twice Commerce Standard | ~€35,880 + commission | €399/location/month plus 0.9% of every payment |
The gap is not a rounding error. Against the mid-tier plan most growing rental businesses actually end up on, owning the software costs somewhere between a fifth and a twentieth of renting it — and at the end of five years you still have it.
No commission. Not now, not at scale.
Several rental platforms take a percentage of what your customers pay you — 0.5% to 3% is typical, and some charge it even on a “free” tier. It is the most expensive pricing model there is, because it grows precisely as you succeed.
| Your annual online rental revenue | At 1.5% commission | At 3% commission | Sales Igniter |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100,000 | $1,500/year | $3,000/year | $0 |
| $250,000 | $3,750/year | $7,500/year | $0 |
| $500,000 | $7,500/year | $15,000/year | $0 |
| $1,000,000 | $15,000/year | $30,000/year | $0 |
What self-hosting actually asks of you
This is the part most open-source marketing skips, so let us be straight about it. Self-hosted is not free of effort — it trades a monthly fee for a small amount of responsibility:
- You need hosting. A standard WordPress host is typically $10–$40 a month. Magento 2 needs more — budget accordingly.
- You (or your host) apply updates. WordPress, WooCommerce and the plugin all get updates. Most managed hosts handle this; it is not onerous, but it is yours.
- You are responsible for backups. Again, most decent hosts do this automatically, but the accountability sits with you.
- Deep customisation needs a developer. The settings cover a great deal, but if you want behaviour nobody else has, you will need someone who writes PHP. The upside is that anyone who writes PHP can do it — you are not locked to one vendor’s professional services team.
If none of that is welcome — if you have no website, no host and no wish to acquire either — a hosted SaaS product is genuinely the better buy, and we would rather tell you that now. The Pro licence does include free installation and a training session, which covers most of the initial hurdle.
What you actually pay
| Licence | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Sales Igniter for WooCommerce — Regular | $279 one-time | The full rental booking engine; unlimited products, customers, orders and admin users |
| Sales Igniter for WooCommerce — Pro | $419 one-time | Adds refundable security deposits, PDF contract signing, subscriptions & memberships, free installation and a training session |
| Sales Igniter for Magento 2 / Adobe Commerce | See pricing page | Multi-Source Inventory, multi-store and multi-language |
| Support & updates after year one | $299/year — optional | The software keeps working indefinitely if you never renew |
There is no per-user fee, no per-location fee, no per-booking fee and no percentage of revenue. Add staff, add depots, add a hundred thousand bookings — the price does not move.
Two platforms, one rental engine
WooCommerce & WordPress
The right fit for most rental businesses. Installs into a WordPress site you already own, keeps your theme and your search rankings, and is usually live within days.
Magento 2 & Adobe Commerce
The right fit once you are running several depots or countries, need real per-warehouse stock, B2B account pricing, or a catalogue in the tens of thousands of SKUs.
Not sure which? The Magento vs WordPress / WooCommerce comparison covers cost, scale and what each platform is genuinely good at.
What you get for your one-off licence
There are no feature tiers and no per-module upsells. The rental engine below is the same on every licence — and every part of it arrives as source code you can open, read and change.
Rental dates & times
- Start and end date rentals, priced by the day, week, month or year.
- Time-of-day rentals for hourly hire and same-day turnarounds.
- Fixed-period rentals — the customer picks a start date and the period is set for them.
- Fixed date and time products for tours and scheduled experiences.
Product types
- Simple, variable, composite (package) and bundled rental products.
- Variations such as size and colour, each with its own availability.
- Rental products and ordinary sale products in the same catalogue and the same cart.
- Deposits, extras and add-ons attached to a rental line.
Availability, pricing & inventory
- Availability calendar with per-date stock, so two customers cannot book the last item.
- Turnover and buffer time reserved automatically between bookings.
- Date-based price adjustments for peak periods, holidays and off-season.
- Inventory and booking reports, plus a calendar widget you can place anywhere with a shortcode.
Subscriptions, memberships & queues
- Subscription products with recurring billing on any cycle you define.
- Memberships that carry store credit or a rental queue allowance.
- Rental queues: customers line items up, set the priority, and receive them as their allowance frees up.
- Automatic renewals through Stripe, Braintree, PayPal and Authorize.Net, with a renewals log and manual renewal processing.
- Customers pause or cancel their own subscriptions from their account.
Deposits, contracts & documents
- Refundable security deposits, set store-wide or per product, refunded from the order screen.
- Rental contracts generated as PDFs and signed by the customer.
- Contract terms per product, so a vehicle and a marquee can carry different conditions.
Fulfilment & operations
- Send and return workflows with pick lists and full history.
- Serial number tracking, so you know which unit went to which customer.
- Order and booking management from the WordPress or Magento admin you already use.
- A multi-vendor option if you run a marketplace rather than a single fleet.
Open source here means the source is visible, not that the software is free. You pay once for the licence; what that buys is the complete, unencrypted, unobfuscated code sitting on your own server. You can read it, audit it before you trust it with customer data, hand it to your own developer, or change how any part of it behaves — none of which is possible with a hosted platform where the rental engine is someone else’s private property.
How we compare with the subscription platforms
We have written an honest, sourced comparison against each of the major rental platforms — including the parts where they are the better choice. Vendor pricing is cited from their own pricing pages with the date it was read:
- Booqable alternative — the category leader; strong UX, but the bill never ends and add-ons stack up
- Checkfront alternative — $99/month plus 3% of every online booking — success is taxed
- EZRentOut alternative — excellent maintenance tracking, but the online store sits behind a $399/month tier
- Goodshuffle Pro alternative — great quoting workflow; your website is a paid monthly add-on
- Twice Commerce alternative — formerly Rentle; commission on every payment plus per-location fees
- Point of Rental alternative — long-established, but no public pricing and a long sales process
- Rentman alternative — capable crew and equipment scheduling, subscription-priced
Frequently asked questions
Is open source rental software free?
No, and be wary of anything that claims otherwise. Open source describes the licence on the code, not the price. Sales Igniter costs $279 or $419 once for WooCommerce. What open source buys you is the source code, the freedom to modify it and the absence of lock-in — not a zero invoice.
What happens if I stop paying?
Nothing. The software carries on running on your site indefinitely. The only thing an expired renewal costs you is access to new versions and to our support desk. There is no licence check, no kill switch and no degradation — which is precisely the difference between owning software and renting it.
Can I really modify the code?
Yes. It is plain PHP, JavaScript and MySQL, and there is a documented API and developer documentation. Many customers make small changes themselves; larger operations hand it to their own development team. Nothing about the licence prevents it.
Do you take a percentage of my bookings?
No. Never, at any volume. You choose your own payment gateway — Stripe, PayPal, Braintree and Authorize.net are all supported — and the gateway’s own fee is the only per-transaction cost in the system.
Is my customer and payment data safe if I host it myself?
Card numbers, expiry dates and security codes are never stored on your server. Payments and stored cards are handled as tokens by your payment gateway, which is the same mechanism hosted platforms use. What sits in your database is your order, customer and contract history — which is exactly the data you want to keep hold of.
How many sites does a licence cover?
Licensing is per site. If you run several storefronts or brands, talk to us — multi-site arrangements are straightforward, and Magento 2’s multi-store support covers many cases within a single install.
Open source rental software by industry
The licence and the engine are the same whichever trade you are in, but the operational detail differs a great deal — sizing and cleaning in one, serial numbers and deposits in another, delivery crews and turnaround in a third. These pages go into what each vertical actually needs:
- Open source car rental software — multi-location fleets, mileage and deposit handling for car, motorcycle and vehicle hire
- Equipment and AV rental software — serial-numbered kit, barcode check-in and check-out, damage deposits
- Party and event rental software — bulk quantities, package bundles, setup and breakdown days, delivery windows
- Bounce house and inflatable rental software — cleaning turnaround, signed safety waivers, weather cancellations
- Construction and tool hire software — long-duration hires, serial tracking, condition reporting
See it working before you decide
The quickest way to judge any rental system is to book something in it. Our free live demo is a real store with real inventory — pick your dates and watch availability, deposits and contract generation work end to end. No signup, no card, no sales call.
Prefer to talk it through? Contact us and describe your inventory, your locations and how you price — we will tell you honestly whether Sales Igniter fits, and say so if it does not.