PitchDesk and Pitchup
Pitchup charges 15% and brings bookings you would not otherwise have had. That part is a fair trade. Three things about how it works are not on their marketing pages, and each of them is a reason to own your own booking form as well.
One. There is no booking form you can put on your own website
This is the thing most owners assume they are getting and are not. Pitchup sells you a listing on Pitchup. It does not sell you a way to take a booking on your own site.
The address where an owner widget would live returns a 404. The widget builder Pitchup does publish is for "website and blog owners" and embeds a panel of campsites near a location, which on your own homepage means a panel of your competitors. The badges are eight static images with slogans such as "I love camping", and every one of them links to a Pitchup category page rather than to your listing.
So an owner who wants a camper to book on their own website can have a link out to Pitchup, a decorative badge that sends the visitor to Pitchup's tent page, or a directory of other campsites. That is the whole menu.
PitchDesk is the booking form. One line of HTML on your own page, your own colours, your own prices, and the payment into your own Stripe account.
What Pitchup lets an owner embed
| Thing | Where it sends your visitor |
|---|---|
| Badge images | Pitchup's tent or tourer category page |
| Widget builder panel | A list of campsites near a location, including other people's |
| Booking widget for your own listing | Does not exist |
| Availability calendar for your own site | Does not exist |
Two. Their rate parity clause binds your own website
Most owners read rate parity as "do not charge Pitchup guests more than everyone else". It is written the other way round, and it is wider than price.
Pitchup's supplier FAQ requires "the same and/or better rates" on any equivalent stay, and says the rates must carry "the same and/or better restrictions and policies such as payment, booking amendment and cancellation policy" as booking direct. It says that this "includes any bookings made via your websites, apps, phone (including call centres and customer reservation systems)".
Read plainly: you may not offer a better price on your own website. You may not offer a softer cancellation policy on your own website. You may not offer better payment terms on your own website. You may not do it over the telephone either.
They check. The same page says Pitchup "regularly performs random price comparisons", and that overcharging customers "will result in the temporary suspension of the listing".
This matters because it settles how you move bookings off commission. You are not allowed to use a lower price, so what is left is convenience: a booking form on your own website, at the same price, one click, no commission.
What you may still do
Charge the same price on your own website and keep all of it. Nothing in a parity clause obliges you to send a booking through a listing site when the camper is already looking at your own page.
Put the booking form where your own guests already are: your website, your Google Business Profile, your Facebook page, the email you send after a stay, the sign at the gate.
And one more clause worth knowing
Pitchup's professional writers own the description on your listing. Their FAQ says that text "is copyright Pitchup.com and may not be used outside the site", and that changes go through a request form rather than an edit box.
The words describing your own campsite are not yours to reuse on your own website.
Three. When a balance payment fails, that is the end of it
Payup is Pitchup's automatic balance collection. It takes the rest of the money off the guest's card on a date it works out from your settings, which is a good thing to have.
It gets one attempt. Pitchup's own FAQ says that they do not hold the card details and "we are unable to re-attempt the payment", and that "if a customer's card is declined, Stripe will not re-attempt the payment". There is no retry, no card updater and no second email sequence. Pitchup put the failure rate at "only around 2% of balance payments", and adds that "payment management ultimately remains your responsibility".
Two per cent of balances sounds small until you count it. A site taking £40,000 across 250 bookings has around five failed balances a season, each one a card that expired between February and July, each one now a telephone call you have to remember to make.
PitchDesk tries again the next day, and the day after that. The guest gets an email with a link to pay. You get an email saying which booking failed and what the bank said, and the booking sits in your dashboard flagged until it is settled.
A declined balance, side by side
| Pitchup | PitchDesk | |
|---|---|---|
| Attempts | One | Three, over three days |
| Guest told | One email with a payment link | Email with a link, each time |
| You told | Status in the bookings tab | Email, plus the reason the bank gave |
| Card updated automatically | No | No, but the guest can pay with another card |
| Whose job it is afterwards | Yours | Yours |
What Pitchup is genuinely good at
A camper who has never heard of your site types "campsites near Bala" into a search engine and lands on a listing page. Your pitches are on it with photographs, a price and a live calendar. They book. You have a guest you did not have before, and you pay 15% for the introduction.
That is a fair trade and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Building that audience took years and it is worth money. If you are a new site with no reviews, no mailing list and a website nobody visits, a listing site is the fastest way to fill a shoulder week. You pay nothing until a booking arrives, which is exactly the right deal for a site that is not sure yet.
Where it stops being a fair trade
The same 15% applies to the family who stayed last August. They know your name. They found you by typing it into Google. They would have rung you if the listing had not been there. You pay £27 on their £180 booking anyway.
It also applies to the guest who saw your sign from the road, the one your neighbour recommended and the one who came back from the Facebook post you wrote yourself. None of those bookings were introduced by anyone.
How the 15% actually reaches them
Pitchup takes it as the guest's deposit at the moment of booking, so it never passes through your account. Their FAQ is explicit that you cannot then take a deposit of your own: "we do not allow campsites/parks to take a second deposit".
If the site is UK VAT registered, 2.5 points of the 15% is VAT you can reclaim, which makes the real cost 12.5%. A site under the £90,000 threshold reclaims nothing and pays the full 15%.
Two smaller ones
If a booking is amended downwards, Pitchup keeps the commission on the original price. Their own worked example turns a £150 booking into a £100 booking and keeps the £22.50, which is 22.5% of what the guest actually paid.
If you have to cancel a booking, you refund the guest their 15% deposit out of your own pocket and then ask Pitchup to rebate it to you.
What 15% costs at different sizes
If every booking came through Pitchup. Most sites are somewhere between this and half of it.
| Bookings in a year | Pitchup at 15% | If you are VAT registered | PitchDesk | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £10,000 | £1,500 | £1,250 | £95.88 | £1,404.12 |
| £25,000 | £3,750 | £3,125 | £95.88 | £3,654.12 |
| £40,000 | £6,000 | £5,000 | £95.88 | £5,904.12 |
| £80,000 | £12,000 | £10,000 | £95.88 | £11,904.12 |
| £150,000 | £22,500 | £18,750 | £95.88 | £22,404.12 |
Pitchup's published rate is 15% of the booking value, including VAT. A VAT registered site reclaims 2.5 points of it. PitchDesk is £7.99 a month at every one of these sizes. Use your own figure.
Prices as published by each provider, checked 20 August 2026. If one of these has changed, tell us at hello@pitchdesk.co.uk and we will correct it.
How to run both without losing bookings
Nobody should switch a listing off in March and hope. Keep it, and take back the bookings that were always yours, one route at a time.
Leave the listing exactly as it is
Same prices, same availability, same photographs. You are not trying to beat it, and under the parity clause you are not allowed to.
Put a booking form on your own website
One line of HTML. The guest sees live availability and pays a deposit without leaving your page. This is the thing Pitchup does not sell.
Add the booking link where your own guests already look
Your Google Business Profile, your Facebook page, your email signature and the sign at the gate. These are the people who already know your name.
Send a note after every stay
Thank them, and give them the direct link for next year. A returning family booking direct costs you nothing in commission and pays the same price.
Look at the split at the end of the season
If the listing brought you 30 bookings you could not have found, it earned its money. If it brought you six and took commission on 40, you know what to do next year.
Side by side
| Pitchup | PitchDesk | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay | 15% of bookings | £7.99 a month |
| Brings new campers | Yes | No |
| Booking form on your own site | No | Yes |
| Rate parity on your own website | Applies | None |
| Your own cancellation policy | Must be no better than theirs | Yours |
| Who takes the deposit | Pitchup, and it is their fee | You, into your own Stripe |
| Your own deposit amount | Not allowed | Percentage, fixed or first night |
| Failed balance retried | No | Three days running |
| Payment rules per pitch type | One rule for the whole site | Per site, with per type stay rules |
| Who owns your listing text | Pitchup, by copyright | You |
| Cost on £40,000 | £6,000 | £95.88 |
Questions
Does rate parity stop me using PitchDesk?
Will my Pitchup calendar know about direct bookings?
Can I take deposits the same way?
What about reviews?
Should I leave Pitchup?
Keep the listing. Stop paying for the bookings it did not find.
Thirty days free with no card. Put the booking form on your own website and see how many of next season’s bookings never needed an introduction.
£7.99 a month
£95.88 a year. Any number of pitches. No commission on anything you take.
No card to start. Cancel from your own settings page.