Enterprise architecture

Plekify Platform

Enterprise architecture for hotel groups and collections

Your PMS runs your rooms. Shopify sells them.

Plekify is the commerce and accounting layer between the two. Keep your PMS. Add Plekify. No migration, no rip-and-replace, no new front desk system.

The stack

Plekify operates as three layers. Each layer has one job.

1. Guest commerce — Shopify

Cart, checkout, payments, Shop Pay. PCI-DSS Level 1. 99.9% platform uptime.

2. Operations — your PMS (yours or partnered)

Availability, rates, folios, night audit. Plekify does not replace this layer or supply a PMS. It connects to the one you run today through an adapter.

3. Back office — ERP / GL

Revenue, tax, deposits, and cash posted nightly, per property, per account.

Guest-facing commerce sits above operations. Operations sits above the ledger. Each layer can be audited independently.

Where the money lands

Every night, Plekify runs a GL batch per property.

GL isolation preserved. Consumption-based pricing logic in the PMS is not overwritten by the batch — the posting layer reads from operations, it does not write pricing back into it.
Room revenue, F&B, and spa revenue post to their designated accounts.
Tax posts separately from revenue, by jurisdiction.
Deposits post to a liability account, not to revenue, until the stay occurs.
Payments post to cash on settlement, independent of the revenue-recognition date.

The batch runs on a queue with retries and a dead-letter path. Failed postings do not silently disappear; they are held for review. A nightly reconcile checks batch totals against source transactions.

Secrets used to connect to PMS and ERP endpoints are envelope-encrypted (AES-256-GCM).

Built for hotel accounting

Hotel revenue does not behave like generic retail revenue. Plekify's posting logic is built around four constraints specific to the sector.

Constraint	How it is handled
Deferred-deposit revenue	Deposits post as a liability, not revenue, and recognise under ASC 606 / IFRS 15 on stay completion or per contract terms.
Dated, perishable inventory	Room-nights are tracked as dated inventory; unsold nights are not carried forward as stock.
Service-date revenue recognition	Revenue recognises against the date service is delivered (check-in/stay), not the date of booking or payment.
Folio revenue split + lodging tax	A single folio splits across room, F&B, spa and tax lines, each posted to its own account, with lodging tax isolated from base revenue.

Keep your PMS

Plekify connects through an adapter framework rather than a fixed integration. The adapter is the boundary: PMS-specific logic stays on one side, Plekify's commerce and accounting logic stays on the other.

Live today: two-way sync with Apaleo — availability and rates flow into Shopify, orders write back as native bookings, on-account B2B terms and price overrides are supported.

The same adapter pattern extends to other PMS platforms as each integration is built and verified. Plekify does not ship a PMS and does not promote one. The operations layer stays yours or your partner's.

Shopify vs WordPress: the IT-buyer comparison

For groups evaluating platform risk rather than storefront aesthetics, the comparison is architectural, not visual.

#	Dimension	Shopify (with Plekify)	WordPress
1	Hosting model	Managed, multi-tenant infrastructure	Self-hosted or separately purchased managed hosting
2	Uptime	99.9% platform uptime	Dependent on hosting provider; no platform-wide SLA
3	PCI compliance	PCI-DSS Level 1, platform-wide	Merchant-managed, dependent on plugin stack
4	Security patching	Applied by platform	Core and plugin patches applied manually or via managed service
5	Checkout	Native checkout, Shop Pay accelerated option	Supplied by chosen plugin/theme
6	Payment network	Shop Pay: 250M+ shoppers with saved details	No equivalent native network
7	Checkout conversion	Shop Pay: up to 50% higher conversion vs guest checkout	No comparable published benchmark
8	Core commerce functions	Native to platform	Typically span multiple third-party plugins
9	Multi-property cart	Multiple properties in one cart, inventory held across them	Requires custom development
10	B2B terms	On-account NET 15/30/45, price override	Requires custom build
11	PMS integration	Adapter framework; keep existing PMS	Built per plugin stack; no standard adapter
12	GL/accounting posting	Nightly GL batch, account-level posting	No equivalent; requires bespoke build
13	Agent/booking-protocol readiness	UCP manifest live at /.well-known/ucp	No standard equivalent
14	Deployment	Platform provisioned; configuration-led rollout	Assembled from plugins and themes
15	Version conflicts	Single managed platform version	Plugin/core version conflicts possible
16	Data reliability	Queue with retries, dead-letter path, nightly reconcile	Dependent on individual plugin implementation
17	Total cost of ownership	Platform fee plus gateway	Hosting, plugins, maintenance, security patching sourced separately

This table settles the question boards actually ask: what happens when a plugin breaks, a patch is missed, or a booking fails to post. On Shopify with Plekify, those failure modes sit inside a managed, audited stack. On WordPress, each one is a separate procurement decision.

Made for groups

Multi-property. Several properties can sit in a single cart. Inventory is held across them at time of add-to-cart. Orders write back as native bookings to each property's PMS.

B2B terms. On-account terms — NET 15, NET 30, NET 45 — with price override, available through the live Apaleo integration. Built for corporate accounts, DMCs, and repeat trade buyers, not one-off consumer checkout.

Pricing

Starter — €99/mo (≈R1,899 / $109) — up to 10 rooms
Growth — €249/mo (≈R4,799 / $269) — up to 40 rooms
Scale — €499/mo (≈R9,599 / $549) — unlimited rooms

Billed annually = setup waived. One-time setup R9,999 / €499 / $549.

Zero commission on direct bookings. Property pays its own Shopify plan and gateway.

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The founder

Twenty-Five Years Building Direct Bookings

Matthew Swart has worked in accommodation-booking technology for more than 25 years. He got his first computer, a Commodore VIC-20, at age eight in 1981, studied survey science at the University of Cape Town, and built one of South Africa's first online accommodation-booking sites, on a 386, in 1998.

In 1999 he co-founded SafariNow.com with a R50,000 loan from his parents. The business grew to roughly 22,000 establishments across eight countries, backed by four funding rounds including Tiger Global. A 2015 SiteMinder integration added 14,000 properties, and annual booking value peaked at approximately R300 million that year. In 2017, machine-learning fraud detection cut fraud by 89%, the same year a majority sale to Travelstart closed an 18-year run.

Today Plekify is the commerce and accounting layer between your PMS and Shopify — syncing rates and reservations, taking payment on your own domain, zero commission. Matthew sets up every implementation personally, whether you run one property or forty, on Apaleo or another system entirely.

Evidence: approximately R300m peak annual booking value, 2015 · majority sale to Travelstart, 2017

1998 Built one of South Africa's first online accommodation-booking sites, on a 386.
1999 Co-founds SafariNow.com, funded by a R50,000 loan from his parents.
2011 SafariNow's annual booking value crosses R100 million (R141.8m).
2015 Peak annual booking value reaches approximately R300 million; a SiteMinder integration adds 14,000 properties.
2017 Machine-learning fraud detection cuts fraud by 89%; majority sale to Travelstart closes an 18-year run.
2026 Builds Plekify: bookings and payments on Shopify, on the operator's own domain, integrated with the PMS.