Beds24 WordPress plugin: a booking engine that blends into your theme

Three ways to add Beds24 booking to WordPress

• A “Book now” button to your Beds24 booking page: nothing to install, guests book on the Beds24 page.
• The official Beds24 plugin: free, based on shortcodes, one of which shows your Beds24 booking page in an iframe.
• A booking engine inside your page, not in a frame: that is what our plugin does.

The official Beds24 WordPress plugin: what you get

Beds24’s own plugin is called Beds24 Online Booking, and Beds24 states that “the plugin is free to use for all Beds24.com customers” (Beds24). It works with shortcodes: you “paste the shortcode into a post, page or sidebar”. Its [beds24-landing] shortcode “creates an embedded iframe” (wordpress.org).

At the time of writing (October 2026), its wordpress.org page shows 2,000+ active installations, version 2.0.30 and a rating of 4.3 out of 5 from 6 ratings. It also carries a notice that the plugin “hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress”.

That notice does not mean the plugin is broken: test it on a staging copy of your site first, as you should with any plugin, ours included.

If guests booking on the Beds24 page suits you, it is a sensible free choice; the trade-offs start when they should book on your page, especially on a phone.

The iframe problem: mobile, cookies and usability

An iframe is a window in your page that displays another website, here your Beds24 booking page. Beds24 is candid about its limits (Beds24 wiki):

• “Using iFrames are convenient but may have a sub optimal usability experience.”
• When a browser blocks third-party cookies, this “can also block our ability to pass data from the widget to the iFrame”.
• “iFrames on mobile devices are problematic.”

On a phone, that means scrolling inside a box inside your page, in a frame whose fixed height may not fit every step. Beds24’s own advice: “Consider opening the booking page in a new tab instead of embedding it in an iFrame.”

Install our Beds24 booking block, step by step

Our plugin places our Beds24 booking engine on any page, as a block or a shortcode. You need WordPress 6.0 or later, PHP 7.4 or later, and an account with us connected to your Beds24 account. The free trial is enough to test it.

1. Download the WordPress plugin (a zip file).
2. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin, choose the zip, click Install Now, then Activate Plugin.
3. Open Settings → Bookpage24 and enter your property identifier: the last part of your hosted booking page address, shown in your dashboard. Save once: the plugin fills in the Fallback link with your original Beds24 booking page by itself, so check it. Keep the language on automatic.
4. In your dashboard with us, add your website address to Allowed websites (with and without www if your site uses both), or the booking engine will not load.
5. Edit the page where guests should book and add the “Bookpage24 booking engine” block, or paste [bookpage24] into a Shortcode block.
6. Publish, then run a test search on your phone.

In the editor, the block only shows a placeholder: dates, rooms and prices appear on the published page. If you download the plugin from your dashboard instead, your property identifier and fallback link are already filled in.

Booking button or full booking form?

Two shortcodes cover both cases:

[bookpage24]
[bookpage24 lang="de" nights="2"]

[bookpage24_button text="Book now"]
[bookpage24_button text="Book your stay" arrival="2027-03-12" departure="2027-03-14" adults="2"]

• [bookpage24] shows the full booking engine, ideally on a dedicated “Book” page. lang forces a language (en, de, fr, it, es); nights sets the default stay length.
• [bookpage24_button] adds a button to your hosted booking page, in the visitor’s language, with optional dates and guests. Block themes style it like their other buttons. Use it in your header, on room pages or in blog posts.
• Running several properties? Both shortcodes accept tenant with another property identifier.

Make it look like your website

In your dashboard you set your colours, a corner radius and two fonts. Enter the fonts your website already uses: your theme loads them, and the booking engine picks them up.

• Real room names, beds, descriptions and photos in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish, instead of the internal codes many Beds24 accounts use, such as “XGL” or “DBLV”.
• Several rates per room, side by side and cheapest first: flexible, non-refundable, breakfast included.
• City tax shown upfront: Beds24 does not include it in offer prices, so our page adds it per person per night and shows the total before the guest books.

More in our guide to customising your Beds24 booking page.

Bookings, payments and outages

• Live Beds24 data: availability and prices are read on every search and checked again before booking, with your Beds24 discounts, minimum stays and closures.
• Bookings in Beds24: each booking is written into Beds24 like any other, and the Beds24 channel manager closes the room on Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and your other channels.
• Payments on Beds24: you choose no online payment, a deposit, full payment or a card guarantee without charge. Payments go through the Beds24 payment page with your own Stripe or PayPal; card data never touches WordPress or us.
• Nothing stored in WordPress: no database tables, just one settings entry, deleted when you uninstall the plugin.
• Never an empty block: the block always contains a “Book now” link to your fallback page, which the engine replaces once it loads. Even if our server is down, guests can still book on your Beds24 page.

Not ready to edit pages? Start with your hosted page link behind your “Book now” buttons. For Wix, Squarespace or Webflow, see our Beds24 booking widget guide.

Frequently asked questions