Good, but make sure you know it’s limitations before you invest a lot of time..

Good, but make sure you know it’s limitations before you invest a lot of time into it.

I’ve tested VikRentCar plugin for my motorbike rental website, and while it’s a decent solution overall, there are a few significant issues that hold it back, and ultimately the reason why we cannot use it.

Positives:
• The plugin is well-suited for a motorbike rental business as it doesn’t require extensive form building. It simplifies the process and automates much of the administrative work, like sending out automated emails.
• I appreciate the ability to customize email templates, which allows for a personalized touch when communicating with customers. This feature adds professionalism and flexibility.
• One of the standout features is the ability to set variable pricing based on the rental duration. For example, renting a Honda for one day might cost $20 per day, but renting for a month could reduce the daily price to $10. This is incredibly helpful for businesses with dynamic pricing models.
• Support was responsive, and suggested some possible solutions and alternatives.

Negatives:
• Bulk Price Uploading: While variable pricing is great, uploading these prices manually is very tedious. I have all the pricing data in a spreadsheet provided by my client, but I have to enter them manually into the plugin. A feature to bulk upload prices using a CSV file would save significant time and effort.
• Multiple Bike Bookings: There is no option for customers to book multiple bikes in a single transaction. This is a significant drawback, especially for businesses catering to group bookings.
(This is the main reason why we decided not to use this plugin. We had spent hours adding products and variable pricing, only to realize that the is no cart option to book multiple motorbikes.)

• Customization Limitations: While the plugin works, there are restrictions on customizing the search form. For instance, fields like pickup and drop-off times and the location map are unnecessary for my business but cannot be easily removed or disabled. I’m using the Divi page builder, which doesn’t have a dedicated VikRentCar module. There is one for Elementor, which might offer more flexibility for customizing form input fields, but I can’t confirm this as I don’t use Elementor.

• Vague Options in the Dashboard: Some of the options in the plugin’s dashboard are somewhat vague. It would be very helpful if there were clickable tooltips beside each option that explain what they do in a small pop-out. Ideally, the tooltip could also include a link to more detailed documentation. This is something I appreciate about Divi, as their page builder includes helpful tooltips for most options.

• Homepage Search Form Issue: The search form doesn’t work correctly when placed on the homepage (root directory), requiring a workaround involving page redirection and additional troubleshooting. This issue is a major problem for user interaction design, as it forces users to navigate to a separate page to book a vehicle. This can potentially result in higher bounce rates and fewer leads or revenue for the business.

• Auto-Confirmation of Bookings: In the free version, and possibly the pro version, bookings are auto-confirmed as soon as they are made. As far as I can see, there’s no way for the website administrator to set bookings to “pending” for review and later confirm or deny them based on product stock. This is a significant limitation for rental businesses that require manual approval.


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Overall, the VikRentCar plugin is a good starting point for a motorbike rental business, especially with its variable pricing functionality and email automation. However, it needs better flexibility, the ability to book multiple vehicles, improved explanations for dashboard options, a bulk upload feature, a manual booking confirmation system, and more robust support to become a top-tier solution. I’ll be keeping an eye on future updates to see if these issues are addressed.