We're not hospitality outsiders building “another proptech tool.” We're hosts who got tired of unreliable access codes, app overload, and 2am “how do I get in?” texts.
How Staykey started
In 2019, Ammon bought his first short-term rental in Park City - while living in Brazil. Everything had to work remotely: cleaning, heating, lighting, and most importantly, getting guests through the front door.
He wired the property through Home Assistant. Smart locks, thermostats, garage doors. The tech was there. But guest access was still stubbornly unreliable - a mess of Airbnb auto-codes, August app invites, and MyQ links that guests hated and that quietly broke across platforms.
Then Morgan, his co-founder, stayed at an Airbnb in a gated community in Hawaii. The host didn't send an app invite or a PDF with instructions. They sent one link. Morgan tapped it. The gate opened. That was it.
He called Ammon the next morning. “Why doesn't every host do this?”
That phone call is where Staykey started.
We had all the smart-home tech. What didn't exist was a clean, universal, guest-friendly way to use it. Guests didn't need more apps - they needed one simple link.
What we built
Staykey takes the complexity of smart-home access and turns it into the simplest possible experience — for you and your guests.
No app downloads, no account creation. Guests tap and they're in.
Generated and tied to each reservation. They start when check-in does, end when checkout does.
Airbnb, VRBO, direct bookings - one flow, no per-platform workarounds.
You own the hub. No vendor lock-in, no monthly cloud fees.
Principles
Not corporate values — lessons learned from running our own properties.
A link that works 100% of the time beats a slick app that works 95% of the time. Reliability is the feature.
Hosts care about efficiency; guests care about simplicity. Design for the guest and the host wins anyway.
Set it up once. Access should run itself, booking after booking, so hosts can actually sleep.
The team
Hosts first, builders second. We still run Staykey on our own properties.
Co-founder & Product Lead
Solution engineer, STR host
Ran a Park City rental from Brazil. Wired everything through Home Assistant, but guest access kept failing. Built Staykey so no host gets woken up at 2am by 'the code doesn't work' texts.
Co-founder & Infrastructure
Senior DevOps engineer
Stayed at a Hawaii Airbnb where one link opened the gate. Called Ammon: 'Why doesn't everyone do this?' DevOps engineer who makes cloud systems run themselves - now applies that to guest access.
Dig deeper
Local control, no monthly cloud fees, no vendor lock-in - and why that matters to hosts.
Read the essayBlogProduct notes from the team on why we built it this way and what we're working on next.
Read the blogCommunityThe founders are in the Discord daily. Bring feature requests, hosting questions, or just say hi.
Join the communityWe still run Staykey on our own properties. And we're still obsessed with making guest access work perfectly, every single time.
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