Getting started: from sign-up to your first booking

Most campsites go from sign-up to taking a real booking in an afternoon. This guide walks through it in the order that works best, says what each step is for, and points out the two or three things people most often miss.

What sign-up sets up for you

Sign-up is at campiamo.com/onboarding. It asks for the type of site you run, the campsite's name, address and currency, optionally your first pitch types with a price per night, and a login. Nothing is saved until the last step, so finish it in one sitting.

When you press Complete Setup you get:

• A campsite on the free Starter plan, with its contact email set to the address you signed up with and its language taken from your browser.
• A timezone and currency. The timezone is guessed from the currency, so a eurozone site is set to Paris time. Check it (see below) if that is not where you are.
• The pitch types you entered, each with its quantity, base price and minimum stay.
• A booking link and the embeddable widgets, ready to use once you tell us where they will live.
• A welcome email, and a floating Setup Guide on the dashboard that ticks off the remaining steps as you do them.

You are logged in straight away; there is no verification email to wait for. The wizard cannot be run again, so everything it set is edited afterwards under Settings and Pitch Types.

If you chose a paid plan on the way in you are sent to the card form right after this. Nothing is lost if you close it: the account exists on Starter and you can upgrade later under Settings → Subscription.

Step 1: check the campsite's details

Open Settings (bottom of the left menu). It lands on Details, which is where everything about the site itself lives:

• Property information: name, type, the contact email and phone guests will see, and a description.
• Address: the postal address, with an optional map pin, and the timezone. The timezone decides what "today" means for arrivals, reminders and reception, so get it right before anything else.
• Operations: check-in and check-out times, currency, and the language guests see. Prices are entered and charged in the currency set here, and it cannot be changed once bookings exist without confusing everyone, so settle it now.
• Operating season: open all year, or opening and closing dates. Guests cannot book nights outside the season.
• Online bookings: a switch that pauses all online booking without changing anything else. It is on by default.

The Amenities tab is where you say what the site has (showers, electric hook-up, dogs welcome, and so on). Each item can be shown as available, shown as not available, or hidden. These appear on your website, in the directory and on the booking form.

Step 2: pitch types and prices

Guests book a pitch type, not a numbered pitch: "Grass pitch with hook-up, 12 of them", "Bell tent, 3 of them". Open Pitch Types in the left menu to add or edit them. Each needs at least a name, a quantity and a base price per night, and the pitch types guide explains the rest: categories, sleeps and equipment, per-person charges and packages.

Seasonal prices, minimum stays and everything else about how a price is worked out are in Prices and seasons. You can go live on base prices alone and add seasons later.

Starter allows three pitch types, Growth ten, Professional and Enterprise as many as you like. Three is enough for most small sites: a type can hold any number of pitches.

Step 3: connect payments (or decide not to yet)

Open Settings → Payments. There are three ways to take money online, all on every plan with no commission:

• Your own Stripe keys (recommended): paste your Stripe secret key and a webhook signing secret. Connecting Stripe walks through it in five steps.
• Stripe Connect: a guided sign-up with Stripe that we start for you, if you do not have a Stripe account yet.
• PayPal: a client ID and secret from your PayPal business account. See Connecting PayPal.

You do not have to connect anything to start taking bookings. Without a provider the booking still arrives, the guest is told to pay on arrival, and under Bookings made without payment you choose whether such bookings are confirmed automatically or held as pending until you approve them.

The same page holds the payment schedule: full payment up front, or a deposit (a percentage or a fixed amount) with the balance due a set number of days before arrival. The defaults are a 25% deposit with the balance due 30 days before. Until payments are connected these settings do nothing, but they are worth setting now so the first online booking behaves the way you want.

While payments are not connected the dashboard shows an amber reminder. It goes away on its own once a provider is ready.

Step 4: put the booking form where guests are

There are three places guests can book, and you can use any combination:

• The direct booking link, campiamo.com/book/your-site. Open Widgets, enter the address of the website where you will link to it, and save. The link appears below. Until you have saved a website address the link returns "not found", which is the single most common "my booking page doesn't work" question.
• Widgets on your existing website: a booking form, an availability search and a reviews strip you paste into WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or any site that accepts an HTML embed. The embed code is on the same Widgets page, with an "email this to my web developer" button. See Embed widgets.
• A Campiamo website, a complete site with online booking at your own address. It is part of the Growth plan and above; see Your Campiamo website.

UK campsites can also list for free in the Campiamo directory once payments are connected. The opt-in is a block on the dashboard.

Step 5: a safe test booking

There is no separate test mode on a normal account, but a test booking is easy and harmless:

1. Open your booking link in a private browser window and book a night, with your own email address as the guest. If payments are not connected yet it goes through as pay on arrival. If they are, use Stripe test mode first, as described in the Stripe guide, so no real card is charged.
2. Check your inbox. The guest gets a confirmation (or a "booking received" email if you hold bookings as pending). The campsite's contact email gets a new-booking alert.
3. Find the booking under Bookings and on the Calendar. The dashboard's "Upcoming arrivals" block shows it too.
4. Cancel or delete it from the booking page. Cancelling sends the guest a cancellation email, which is fine when the guest is you.

To see every automated email guests can receive, with sample data and nothing sent to a real guest, open Settings → Automated Emails and use Preview or Send me a test next to each one. Guest emails are covered in The emails guests receive.

Bringing in bookings you already have

Bookings from a paper diary or another system are entered by hand: Bookings → New booking takes the guest's name, dates and pitch type, and either sends a payment link or records the booking as pay on arrival. A guest email is optional on dashboard bookings.

If you move to a paid plan we will load an existing booking list for you; raise a support ticket with the file and we will tell you what we need.

Listings you keep on Booking.com, Airbnb, Pitchup and the like can share one calendar with Campiamo on the Professional plan: see How channel sync works.

Getting help

• Support in the left menu opens a ticket with us. It is available on every plan, including Starter, and you can attach screenshots.
• Help & docs in the menu under your name opens these guides.
• The floating Setup Guide lists what is still to do. "Don't show again" hides it for good on that browser.

Once the first real booking has arrived, the next guides to read are Managing bookings, The calendar and, when you are ready to add staff, Your team.