Elin Hartley
Editor-in-chief at Downeast Host Journal.
Spent nine summers turning over cottages between Wells and the midcoast before starting this journal from Freeport. She grades host tools the way a harbormaster grades moorings: on what holds in bad weather.
What Elin covers
Elin covers the rankings as a whole — which companies make the shortlist, where they land, and whether a claim is solid enough to publish. Every piece of that work is held to how we test and our editorial policy, which means no company can pay for a place, a score, or a kinder sentence.
How Elin works
Elin starts from the provider’s own published detail and refuses to fill the gaps with estimates. Where a company does not publish a fee or a price, the review says so plainly rather than printing a guess dressed up as research. Our weighting leans hardest on guest experience (34%), setup (26%), and the same rubric is applied to every company in the field — the one we rank first included.
Where you will see Elin’s work
Across our two rankings — management companies and host software — and in the individual reviews, which now run to 95 management companies and 74 software tools, each on its own page with the provider’s published facts laid out in full.
Corrections
If Elin gets something wrong, we would rather fix it than defend it. Tell us and we correct it promptly and note the change.