Smoobu is an all-in-one SaaS platform designed to help vacation rental hosts and property managers streamline their operations, increase bookings, and enhance the guest experience. By centralizing and automating essential tasks, Smoobu saves users time, reduces manual work, and enables them to grow their rental business efficiently and sustainably.
Key to the platform’s offering are features like a Channel Manager, Property Management System (PMS), Booking Engine, automated communications, Guest Guide, online check-in portal, and a website builder, which is now powered by Duda—but it wasn’t always.
“We previously had a website builder solution that we built on our own,” said Jannik Abraham, Managing Director of Smoobu. “The main problem was that it was a big legacy solution. We had no way to properly maintain it, and the functionality was... suboptimal. I'm trying not to swear here.”
He continued, “It was very rigid. You only had one very basic template that looked like it was from Windows 98 and it was unmaintainable. We couldn’t scale it.”
The team at Smoobu knew they needed a better option if they were going to keep up with other competitors in the space and provide their users with the powerful, but simple tools required to grow a unique brand online and increase direct bookings.
Upleveling Smoobu’s website builder experience
”From the start, I honestly can say our experience with Duda was very good,” said Abrahm. “I felt that Smoobu as a company was in very good hands and was impressed with the Duda platform’s capabilities.
Features that Smoobu’s Managing Director pointed to as significant advantages for hosts and property managers using their platform included:
The ability to create websites in a single click by pulling existing data in Smoobu’s platform
Duda’s advanced AI Stack that provides a wide range of design and development tools to users
Out-of-the-box optimizations for both traditional and AI-powered search
The Duda editor’s flexibility and fully integrated experience with Smoobu’s platform
A streamlined transition from old to new
With thousands of users on its existing website builder, Abraham realized that bringing the Duda platform to market could come with some high hurdles. Migrating legacy users to a new platform is rarely simple. But with Duda, it surprisingly was.
“Duda’s customer success team worked with us to find a trusted third-party company that could help us seamlessly and quickly move websites off of our old builder and onto the Duda platform,” said Abraham. “They worked hand-in-hand with our team to make sure the platform integration and user transition went smoothly, so we could start showing both existing and new customers real value as quickly as possible.”
He and the rest of the Smoobu team were delighted with how quickly everything was up and running. “We knew that the faster we could get users onto Duda, the better it would be for Smoobu,” he said. “The website builder is a key part of our offering and how we wanted to position the company. We were betting that once people interacted with what Duda had to offer they would be much more likely to use other aspects of Smoobu’s platform and much less likely to churn. That bet has certainly paid off big time and we were very happy to get to see the results so soon after partnering with Duda.”
Ongoing support & a deep partnership
Since releasing Duda’s site builder to their customer base, Smoobu has seen nothing but success for its web design users and the team is highly motivated to explore new features and products released by Duda.
“Working with Duda’s team has been fantastic,” said Abraham. “Their customer success and development teams really seem to understand our user base and are always happy to help us improve the experience we provide.”
He continued, “I've very rarely had such an open and transparent partnership. We regularly talk with our contacts at Duda about what we need commercially and technically. They have moved mountains to help us and we feel very valued.”
The results: stronger retention & long-term growth
Since launching the Duda-powered website builder, Smoobu has seen measurable gains in customer engagement and satisfaction, including a more than 10% increase in website creation among its users. Beyond the numbers, the partnership has strengthened Smoobu’s ability to deliver a unified, high-quality experience across its entire platform—helping rental hosts and property managers grow their brands, increase direct bookings, and stay ahead in a competitive market. Together, Duda and Smoobu continue to innovate and expand, proving the power of collaboration in driving long-term customer success.
