The short version

Campstead is a newer booking tool aimed at small UK sites. CampSuite™ does more than take bookings, it runs the whole site, bookings, payments, guest messages, arrivals and the daily jobs, from your phone. Both replace the paper diary, but only CampSuite™ carries the rest of the running day too.

CampSuite™ is completely free for up to 100 pitches, with no card required, no trial that ends, and no hidden fees. For the country's thousands of Certificated Locations and Certificated Sites, that's hard to beat. It's backed by an established UK company, WorkBee Limited, and it gets more powerful every month.

If you're comparing the two, install CampSuite™ in 15 minutes, see how it feels, and decide for yourself. For most CLs, CS sites and small touring sites, it's the better fit and the better value.

Who each one suits best

Choose CampSuite™ if

  • You run a CL or CS and want genuinely free software, not a teaser trial
  • You want a mobile-first diary you can check from the yard, not just a desk
  • You'd like card payments and a booking page included on the free tier
  • You value a simple setup wizard over a configurable system
  • You want the option to scale up gracefully as you grow

Choose Campstead if

  • You're already set up on Campstead and it's working for you
  • You prefer its specific workflow or interface
  • You have a feature need that Campstead's product specifically covers
  • You've built internal processes around how it presents data

Pricing, side by side

Pricing changes over time. Always check current rates on each website before choosing. As a guide:

If you run a CL or CS, the free plan, free for up to 100 pitches, is the biggest practical difference. If you cover the guest fee yourself, monthly cost becomes a smaller factor than fit and features.

Feature comparison

Both tools cover the day-to-day basics. Where CampSuite™ pulls ahead is breadth and pace, it runs more of your site and ships new features every month:

Mobile experience

This is one of the places CampSuite™ deliberately differs. The interface was designed mobile-first. If you're walking across your paddock with a guest enquiry on the phone, you can take the booking there and then without needing to get back to a desk. The whole diary works on a phone at normal tap sizes, not a pinched-down desktop version.

If you run your site from a reception desk with a PC, mobile-first doesn't matter much. If you're more likely to be outside or in a shed, it matters a lot.

Setup and switching

CampSuite™ is built to be set up in about 15 minutes without a call, training session, or onboarding project. The wizard asks for your pitches, prices, policies and contact details, and you're live. The philosophy is that if you can use a smartphone, you can use CampSuite™.

If you're already on Campstead and considering moving, the safe approach is to run the two in parallel for a couple of weeks. Enter new bookings into CampSuite™ as they come in. Copy across your future bookings from Campstead. Once you trust the new tool, stop entering bookings on the old one. Your data ends up cleanly on CampSuite™ without a risky weekend cutover.

Support

Both companies are UK-based and offer real human support. CampSuite™'s comes straight from me, Rob, and the small team at WorkBee Limited. I'm a motorhomer myself, so I've stayed on the kind of sites we build for, and you're talking to the people who build it, not logging a ticket into a queue.

What you give up with each

Honest trade-offs:

With CampSuite™, you give up: any specific workflows unique to Campstead, and the comfort of sticking with what you already know. Most of what sites ask for, we already do or we're building right now.

With Campstead, you give up: the free plan for CL and CS sites, a genuinely mobile-first system, the room to grow from a small site up to a large park on one tool, and the reassurance of an established UK company shipping new features every month.

A practical decision framework

  1. Are you a CL or CS? Try CampSuite™ first. The free plan covers up to 100 pitches, with no expiry.
  2. Are you a growing touring site? CampSuite™ is still free for up to 100 pitches, the full product, a genuine step up from a paper diary, with no contract.
  3. Are you over 100 pitches? CampSuite™ scales with you on a tailored larger-park plan, so you won't outgrow it. Compare feature-by-feature and choose the tool that matches how you run your site.
  4. Are you already on Campstead? There's no risky cutover. Run CampSuite™ alongside it for free for a fortnight, then keep whichever you trust more.

Being straight with you

Campstead is a newer name in this market, and this page exists because people search for a Campstead alternative and deserve a straight answer. We're not here to knock them. We're here to show you there's a more complete, better-value way to run your site, free for up to 100 pitches, mobile-first, from an established UK company that ships something new every month. Try both if you like. We're quietly confident which one you'll keep.