Rental marketplaces
Buyer-seller chat for peer-to-peer rental marketplaces, from booking to return
In a peer-to-peer rental, the renter and the owner talk three times: before they book, at pickup and at return. TalkJS is a chat API and SDK with a ready-made chat UI that covers all three in your web or mobile app. Each conversation belongs to one rental and stays on your platform, with its photos and its history ready for the day a camera comes back scratched.
import { Chatbox } from '@talkjs/react-components';
import '@talkjs/react-components/default.css';
// One conversation for each rental
export function RentalChat({ appId, userId, rentalId }) {
return (
<Chatbox
appId={appId}
userId={userId}
conversationId={rentalId}
style={{ width: '100%', height: 500 }}
/>
);
}
Before the booking: buyer-seller chat that stays on your rental marketplace
Rental marketplaces put a keep-it-on-the-platform rule in their terms. Turo bans using the service to find a host or guest and then completing the deal “partially or wholly independent of the Services” in its terms. Outdoorsy’s terms go further: a host or guest “who transacts any portion of the rental outside of the Services may be entirely denied excess protection coverage”. Once a renter and an owner swap phone numbers, your fee and the record of what they agreed leave with them.
So start each rental’s conversation in your app. When a renter sends a request, your server creates a conversation for it with one REST API call. The listing’s name and photo become the conversation’s subject and photo, and your rental ID goes in as custom data. TalkJS can also hide email addresses, phone numbers and links for the roles you choose. The chat shows them as “(hidden information)”, and they stay hidden in email, SMS and push notifications. Once the booking is confirmed, one REST API call per person shows the real details to that renter and owner, in that conversation only. Masking is included on every plan.
At pickup: rental marketplace chat for the handover
On pickup day, the renter and the owner need the place, the time and a way to reach each other. All of it fits in that one conversation.
- Your app posts updates such as “Rental confirmed” as system messages, which everyone in the conversation sees.
- The owner shares the pickup point with location sharing. It arrives as a pin with a Google Maps link.
- When the renter is on the way and not in your app, we email them the messages they missed after a delay you set, up to 15 minutes. They can reply to that email, and the answer shows up in the chat.
- You can also send mobile push notifications through APNs and FCM. SMS works too, and it’s charged separately.
At return: condition photos and chat history for rental damage disputes
In a damage claim, what counts is what both sides said and showed. Turo’s terms tell renters who find damage in their initial inspection to “upload photos of such pre-existing damage at the start of your reservation”. RVshare’s terms of service require owners to submit departure photos before the trip starts and return photos within 48 hours after it ends to be eligible for a Protection Plan payment for physical damage.
Keep the required check-in and return photos in your booking flow, and post a system message in the conversation when the photos are uploaded. Everything else the two sides show each other goes in the chat: turn on file sharing for a role and they can send images, PDFs and other files up to 100 MB each. Then, if there’s a claim:
- Every message is stored with its timestamp, and your backend can list all of a conversation’s messages through the REST API.
- Add your support agent to the conversation, and they see everything said in it, including messages sent before they joined.
- Once your claim window has closed, set each participant’s access to read-only. They can still read the conversation, but nobody can post.
Which in-app messaging SDK to use for a rental marketplace
Most chat SDKs send messages in real time. Pick one that also covers what a rental needs. Building chat yourself, even with an AI coding agent, still leaves notifications, masking and message history to build. TalkJS gives you all of it with a ready-made chat UI for React, React Native, Flutter and Web Components. To build your own UI, use our Data APIs for JavaScript, Kotlin and Swift.
Already running a chat you built? Import its users, conversations and messages, with their original timestamps, through the REST API.
Rental marketplace chat pricing
We price TalkJS per monthly active user, with unlimited conversations, messages and message history, so a renter counts once a month however many rentals they ask about. Basic is $279 a month with 10,000 monthly active users included, Growth is $569 a month with 25,000, and Enterprise is custom. You build and test in a free development mode on every plan, and pay when you go live. See pricing for what each plan includes, or compare TalkJS with other chat APIs.