Spaceships: An Honest Review for Renters

The Beta and the Dream Sleeper Mini are not certified. The Beta 2S, the Sigma and the VW Cosmo are listed as green-warrant certified, each with a fixed toilet: the standard rental vehicles have needed since 7 December 2024, and every vehicle since 7 June 2026. The Sigma's page gives its certification period as 2026–2030; the Beta 2S page still describes it as the company's only self-contained van.

That is not a quality difference, it is a legal one about where you may sleep. A non-certified van needs a holiday park or a site that accepts non-self-contained vehicles every night; the certified models can also use sites reserved for certified vans. Over a fortnight those fees can outweigh the rental-rate difference.

On the three classic Estima models, Basic cover freezes a NZ$5,000 bond on your card, with write-off liability up to NZ$18,000 and a NZ$100 accident admin fee. Partial, at NZ$25 a day, cuts the first two to NZ$3,000 and NZ$9,000; Stress-Free, at NZ$35, removes all three. Both are capped at 50 days and cost NZ$30 and NZ$40 if added from 1 October 2026.

Windscreen, tyre and underbody damage stay customer-liable below Stress-Free, and a cracked windscreen costs the same whether or not you paid down the bond. Water damage, and any incident on Skippers Canyon Road, Ball Hut Road or Ninety Mile Beach, stays with you at every tier. The Sigma and VW Cosmo vans added in September 2026 carry higher bonds and prices.

Four of the five models sleep two. The Beta seats four but sleeps two: four can travel in it, only two can sleep in it. The VW Cosmo, on a Volkswagen Transporter T6, is the exception: it seats and sleeps three, with a large rear bed and a single in the pop-top roof, and comes as an automatic or a manual.

Only the Cosmo has standing headroom, once its pop-top is raised, and only the Cosmo lists a separate diesel heater, which runs off the fuel tank along with its two-ring hob. The Sigma and Beta 2S are certified but still low-roofed, and the non-certified pair have no toilet at all. For a summer trip built around campsites and short drives the smaller vans are often the right call; for a winter trip or a wet fortnight, the Cosmo is the only one built for it.

Auckland and Christchurch only, so a Queenstown finish is not available, and the two depots sit on different islands — a one-way still means booking and paying for the Cook Strait ferry yourself. Within that footprint, the absence of a repositioning fee keeps an Auckland-to-Christchurch trip unusually cheap to structure.

Pickup and return are available 24 hours through an automated process, which does not always mean a staff member on site — Christchurch's handover in particular runs fully self-service. Cancel 22 or more days out for a full refund; inside that window the fee becomes a sliding-scale voucher.

Spaceships is the only company in this comparison where the Google figure and the Trustpilot figure land on the same number — 4.5 both ways. Both draw on samples in the hundreds rather than the dozens, which is unusual at this end of the market.

What both platforms credit is consistent: fast problem-solving once a renter reaches an actual person, easy parking on narrow roads, and no mechanical trouble reported on multi-week trips across both islands. Clever under-bed storage is singled out by name more than once.

The recurring complaint is not the van but the first reply: an automated message answers before a human follows up, sometimes many hours later. A minority of vans arrive with wear — sticking sliding doors and a noisy fridge recur independently at the Christchurch depot.

Christchurch's pickup is also fully self-service, and more than one reviewer describes it as feeling understaffed, including one account of no one present at a scheduled weekday collection. If a staffed handover matters to you, ask which depot you are actually assigned before booking.

Four New Zealand threads running from 2019 to 2023, and nothing substantial since, describe the same trade-off the newer platforms do: small, spartan vans that show their age but keep running. One commenter directly compares Spaceships with JUCY, giving JUCY the edge on comfort but Spaceships the edge on support.

The threads also correct a common mix-up: self-containment here is a model, not a brand-wide feature. Today three of the five models are listed as certified, so a booking made on the brand name alone can land you one of the two that are not.