Every door now has a toll booth.
Somewhere in the last fifteen years, a middleman was installed between every small business and its own customers. You want somewhere to stay, there is a platform. You want dinner, there is a platform. Each one arrived promising to find you customers, and stayed to own them.
The deal is always the same. They bring the demand, they set the rules, they take a cut of every transaction for as long as you exist — and the moment you stop paying, the relationship you built with your own guest goes with them.
Rouge Media builds the tools that give it back.
We stopped at the pretty part for too long.
Rouge Media started as a camera. We shot the film, graded it, cut it, handed it over — and watched clients upload our work to a platform that charged them for the privilege of being seen. The best film in the world does not help if the only place to put it is somebody else’s storefront.
So the studio grew an engineering half. We build the thing the work actually lives on: the site, the booking engine, the payments, the whole machine underneath. Hearth is the first of those tools we are selling on its own.
It is the same idea as the production work, pointed one step further down the line. Make the thing beautiful, then make sure the person who paid for it owns it.
Run your own numbers.
The honest case for going direct is not that fees vanish — a card processor still takes its cut. It is that the fee your guest pays disappears, and that is the larger number.
What you charge for the nights themselves, before any platform fee is added on top.
You pay about 3%. Your guest pays about 14% on top of your rate. The common default.
Illustrative, not a quote. Assumes a 3% host / 14.2% guest split fee or a 15% host-only fee, Stripe at 2.9% + 30¢ per booking, an average booking of $1,500, and the annual plan. Your platform’s actual rates and your mix of bookings will move these numbers.
A booking site that does the whole job.
Not a link tree with a contact form. A real direct-booking operation, built and run for you.
Taking the booking
- Live availability calendar with per-night pricing
- Book one room or the whole property
- Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link
- The full total shown before anyone pays
- Seasonal rates, minimum stays, turnover rules
- Quotes that hold their price while the guest decides
Getting paid
- Your own Stripe account — money never sits with us
- Deposit by saved card, hold, or invoice
- Pay-by-invoice and links for phone bookings
- Damage claims charged against the deposit
- Cancellation policies calculated and refunded
- Card details never touch a server of ours
Running the place
- Two-way calendar sync with Airbnb and the rest
- Automatic pre-arrival, check-in and review emails
- Guest inbox that works by plain email reply
- Door codes and wifi encrypted on the trip page
- Trip page still works with no signal at the door
- Turnover and cleaning tasks per booking
Looking like yourself
- Your own domain and your own name
- A theme tuned to the property, not a template
- Full-bleed photography, room by room
- A click-through walkthrough with notes
- Your story in your words
- House FAQs and area guides you control
Being found
- Structured data so search reads it as a real property
- Sitemap, canonical URLs and link previews handled
- Fast on a phone on a bad connection
- Guides and articles you publish yourself
- Installable to a guest’s home screen
Not losing a night
- Double bookings prevented in the database itself
- Every payment and state change recorded permanently
- A failed email never blocks a confirmed booking
- Accessibility and speed held to a standard, and tested
One plan. No commission, ever.
We are not a marketplace, so we have no reason to take a cut of your nights. You pay for the site and the running of it. That is the whole model.
or $550 a year — two months back if you pay annually.
Talk to JeanCard payments are processed by Stripe at their published rate, billed to you directly. We never take a percentage of a booking.
- Your own domain — pointed, secured and renewed
- Design and build — around your property, not a template
- Photography ingested — and prepared for every screen
- Hosting, updates and backups — nothing for you to maintain
- Every feature listed above — on every plan
- New features as they ship — at no extra cost
- Support — from the people who built it
Three days from yes to live.
You send us the property. We build the site. You approve it and it opens for bookings.
Tell us about the place
Photos, the rooms, your rates and rules, and the story of why the place is what it is. If the photography is not there yet, we shoot it — that is the other half of the studio.
We build it
The site is designed around your property, your calendar and pricing are loaded, payments are connected to your Stripe account, and your domain is pointed at it.
You approve, it goes live
You walk through it, we change whatever you want changed, and it opens for bookings. Your first direct guest can book that day.
Both columns have things the other does not.
| Comparison | Hearth | A listing platform |
|---|---|---|
| Commission on a booking | None | 3–15% from you, ~14% from your guest |
| Who the guest belongs to | You — name, email, history | The platform |
| Where the money lands | Your Stripe account, directly | Their account, then paid out to you |
| What it looks like | Your property, your domain | Their template, their domain |
| New guests who have never heard of you | You bring them — search, social, word of mouth | Millions, already searching |
| Rules can change under you | No ranking, no delisting | Yes, and they do |
| Cost when a past guest rebooks | Nothing | Full commission, every time |
The things people actually ask.
Where do the guests come from?
Not from us. We are not a marketplace and we will not pretend to send you traffic.
A direct site earns its keep three ways. Guests who already found you book direct the second time and cost you nothing. People searching for your area or your kind of place find a real site with real content, which a listing profile can never be. And you finally have somewhere to send anyone who asks, instead of a link that charges them to arrive.
Most owners run both for a while. That is the sensible way to do it.
Do I have to leave Airbnb?
No, and we would usually advise against it at the start. Your calendars sync both ways, so a booking taken on either side blocks the dates on the other.
Run them together, watch where your bookings actually come from, and shift the balance when the numbers tell you to.
How do I get paid?
Through your own Stripe account, connected to your site. Guests pay you, and the money goes to your bank on your schedule. It never passes through us and we never hold it.
You are the one selling the stay. That is the entire point of the arrangement.
What does it really cost?
$50 a month, or $550 a year. Stripe charges their standard processing rate on each payment, billed to you by them directly — roughly 2.9% and 30¢ in Canada at the time of writing.
No commission, no booking fee, no per-property surcharge, and nothing added to your guest’s total.
Can I use my own domain?
Yes, and you should. If you own one already we will point it at your site and handle the certificate. If you do not, we will help you choose and register one. It stays in your name.
Do I need to be technical?
No. You get an admin console for the things owners actually change — rates, availability, bookings, photos, your story, FAQs, automated messages. Everything else is our job.
What happens if two people book the same night?
They cannot. The guarantee is enforced in the database itself, not in the interface — two simultaneous bookings for overlapping nights end with exactly one confirmation and one clean, immediate decline.
It is the most heavily tested behaviour in the platform, because it is the one failure a guest never forgives.
What can a listing platform do that this cannot?
Discovery, first and foremost — millions of people browsing with intent to book, which no independent site replicates. Their review history and brand trust also carry weight with a guest who has never heard of you.
On the product itself: calendar sync runs on the open iCal standard rather than a private API, so it refreshes periodically rather than instantly. One currency per property. No guest ID verification, no smart-lock integration, no automated price-setting. Those are on the list, not in the box.
Do I get the code?
No. Hearth is a hosted service — you are buying a site that works and keeps working, not a codebase to maintain or a developer to keep on retainer.
What is yours is the part that matters: your domain, your content and photography, and your guest and booking data, exportable whenever you want it.
What if I have more than one property?
That works. The platform was built multi-property from the start, including buildings where rooms book independently or together as a whole. Tell us how you want them arranged and we will price it.
What if I want to leave?
Cancel and we will help you go. Your domain is already yours, your guest and booking records export, and your photography is your own. Nothing is held hostage.
Some places deserve a front door.
If your property is the reason people come — not the price, not the postcode — it should not be living inside somebody else’s search results. Tell us about it and we will tell you honestly whether Hearth is worth it for you.