Docspell vs Guesty

Docspell and Guesty solve different jobs, so their feature lists do not overlap. Docspell is a self-hosted document management system: it OCRs scanned documents, automatically extracts metadata like correspondent, date, and tags using NLP, and makes everything full-text searchable via Apache Solr or PostgreSQL. It ingests documents by scanning a mailbox and importing email, supports custom fields, folders, notes, bookmarks, shareable document links, and an addon system for custom processing. Multi-user with two-factor auth and a REST API make it scriptable and integration-friendly (ClamAV, Docker, Kubernetes, Nix, Raspberry Pi, Emacs, Exim). It is explicitly not for teams wanting AI summarization or chat with documents, and there is no native mobile app. Guesty is a cloud PMS for short-term rentals: real-time listing sync across Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and 60+ channels, a Unified Inbox for guest conversations, Multi-Calendar for reservations and group bookings, agentic AI agents that act on your behalf, ReplyAI personalized guest replies, PriceOptimizer machine-learning dynamic pricing, Guesty Pay payments, Guest CRM, owners portal with statements, workflow automation, guest app/portal, and a mobile app with task management. Its buyer is a property manager or host, not a document archivist. The only surface-level resemblance is "AI does work for you," but the work is categorically different: metadata tagging on household PDFs versus messaging guests, pricing rooms, and syncing channels.

Docspell is free and open source under AGPLv3+. You pay in infrastructure and time: you host it yourself on Docker, Kubernetes, a Raspberry Pi, or Nix/NixOS, and you provide PostgreSQL and optionally Apache Solr for search. There is no license fee, no per-seat charge, and no official paid support contract — which the product itself lists as a limitation for enterprises that want one. Guesty is freemium in the sense that it starts from a base subscription and then scopes the quote, with add-ons; the product is explicitly not for "buyers who want every feature in one published price rather than a scoped quote plus add-ons." So the pricing models are not comparable in structure either: Docspell is zero-cost software with self-hosting overhead, while Guesty is a commercial SaaS priced by listing volume, modules, and integrations such as Stripe, Merchant Warrior, and Hyp for payments. A small host evaluating Guesty should expect a sales conversation, not a checkout page. A Docspell user should budget server time, storage, and configuration effort instead of dollars. Comparing the two on price is meaningless because the cost drivers do not line up — one is measured in ops hours, the other in subscription and add-on fees. Use the pricing page of whichever problem you actually have, not a side-by-side.