Best Boarding Software for Small Kennels: 3 Steps, 2027

Start with the category decision

Kennel boarding software is the system that books overnight stays, assigns rooms or runs, logs vaccination and feeding notes, and bills the stay at checkout. The first decision is the category, not the brand. If your kennel boards animals in named rooms or runs, buy a boarding-specific system that shows occupancy. If you only sell walks, grooming or records, a general pet-care scheduler can do the job. Spreadsheets and general accounting software cannot show which run is free for tonight, and that gap causes most double bookings at small kennels.

Demand for these systems is growing, so more vendors are competing for your business. Market size: USD 2.97 billion in 2026 according to Mordor Intelligence (2026), with a forecast of USD 3.86 billion by 2031 at a 5.36% compound annual growth rate. Other research firms publish different growth rates, so treat any single forecast as directional and let your own shortlist drive the decision.

TL;DR: For most small kennels, shortlist boarding-specific tools that track rooms or runs, compare the prices each vendor publishes, and get written quotes wherever a price is missing.

Key Takeaways

• Choose for room or run tracking first. A tool that cannot show which unit is occupied will create double bookings no matter how good its app looks.

• Only some vendors publish a boarding-capable price on their own site. Gingr, Time To Pet and KennelBooker do. KennelPlus shows its tiers only on its homepage, and PetExec publishes no plan prices.

• The lowest entry point is DoggieDashboard's free tier (a third-party figure from ToolRadar, not DoggieDashboard's own page), but that listing shows no room management. It fits record-keeping better than boarding operations.

• Ownership belongs in your contract review. Togetherwork's own site lists Gingr and PetExec in its Pet Care group.

• The hidden costs sit in add-ons. Gingr's pricing page lists 2-Way SMS and Employee Scheduling without prices, so ask for a full quote before comparing totals.

• Automation helps only after your booking system can export or expose reservations, and a person should still approve refunds, cancellations and vaccination exceptions.

How we evaluated these tools

We scored each tool against seven weighted criteria, using what each vendor's own pages say and independent references where we could open them. The weights below are our judgment of what a small boarding business needs first. They are not vendor claims or measured results. Room and run management carries the largest weight because a tool that cannot show occupancy causes the most expensive errors.

A roundup lists seven boarding tools, according to Guideflow (2026), and we used it only as a starting list, not as a ranking. We printed prices read on each vendor's own pricing page, with one labeled exception: the DoggieDashboard figures come from the third-party directory ToolRadar. Third-party directories show different figures for several of these vendors, and we left those other figures out rather than guess which one is current.

Feature matrix for six kennel tools

The matrix is normalized: each cell reflects what the vendor's own page showed when we opened it. "Not listed" means the feature did not appear on the pages we opened, not that the product lacks it. Treat every "Not listed" cell as a question to ask the vendor before you sign.

The gaps are the useful part. Several products that look similar in marketing differ on whether room tracking and payments sit inside the same system, and that difference decides whether you need a second tool.

What the published prices add up to

The table below shows every price we could read on a vendor's own page, plus the DoggieDashboard figures from the third-party directory ToolRadar, with the 12-month list cost calculated only from that published figure. These are list-price sums, not total cost of ownership. They leave out setup fees, payment processing rates, add-ons and any staff-based charges that a vendor does not publish.

These are list prices as published by each vendor, except the DoggieDashboard rows, which are third-party figures from ToolRadar. Checked October 27, 2026 against the Gingr, Time To Pet and KennelBooker pages linked above.

The most important line in this table is the one with a condition attached. Stay plan with Integrated Payments: $179 per month according to Gingr (2026). Gingr's page shows $209 per month for Stay without Integrated Payments, so the payment choice moves the monthly cost more than the plan choice does. Gingr also lists Integrated Payment Processing, 2-Way SMS, Employee Scheduling and a Messaging Bundle without prices, and states no setup fee amount, so request those figures in writing.

Time To Pet's Team plan is priced per active staff member, with a per-user charge after the first group of users, and its large-team tier is quote-based. A single-site kennel with one or two people will usually compare the Facility plan against the Team plan, so price both against the same staff count before deciding.

Vendor profiles: best fit, limits and implementation

Gingr

Best fit: a kennel that wants boarding, daycare and grooming bookings, payments and client messages in one platform, and can accept the Stay plan price. The Stay plan adds overnight reservations, kennel room management and extended-stay handling on top of the Play and Spa features, and the pricing page says every plan includes the customer portal and mobile app (Gingr pricing page).

Limits: Stay pricing depends on Integrated Payments being active, and Enterprise is contact-only for multi-location operators. Ownership is worth checking. Togetherwork's own site lists Gingr among its three pet care brands, according to Togetherwork (2026). One research page in our search groups Gingr under a different owner, so confirm the contracting entity before you sign.

Implementation: plan a data import of client, pet and vaccination records before go-live, and ask which payment rate applies to your account. Start with the Stay plan only if overnight boarding is your core business, because the Play plan covers daycare without the room features.

Time To Pet

Best fit: a kennel that also runs pet sitting or walking and wants staff scheduling and a facility check-in process. The Facility plan includes guest check-in and check-out, a capacity and occupancy widget, space-based scheduling, medication and feeding tracking, and run cards for pets. Facility plan: $79 per month, billed monthly according to Time To Pet (2026).

Limits: Time To Pet Payments is required on the entry Lite plan, the Facility plan lists no annual price, and the Full Service combination is custom-priced. Zapier and QuickBooks Online appear in the feature list for the Solo tier, which is useful if you plan to connect accounting later.

Implementation: set up your rooms, runs and spaces before loading history, because the occupancy view depends on that setup. Confirm which staff need the Team-level app with GPS tracking and time-off management before you choose between Facility and Team.

DoggieDashboard

Best fit: a kennel that needs records, waivers, invoicing and appointments first, and wants to start without a subscription. Premium Monthly plan: $40 per month according to ToolRadar (2026). The free plan covers up to 10 pet profiles, which is a useful test for a very small operation.

Limits: the ToolRadar pricing listing shows no room or run management, so a boarding operation will need to track occupancy somewhere else. The ToolRadar summary shows a 5.0 rating from 21 reviews across the web and lists over 50 PDF reports, according to ToolRadar (2026). The same summary also lists a required internet connection and no new client or pet records after Premium is canceled among its cons. The rating rests on a small sample, so weigh it lightly.

Implementation: count your active pets before choosing the free tier, because the cap applies to pet profiles and can stop new intake. Confirm how your staff logins and device access will work, since the ToolRadar listing does not state a staff limit.

KennelBooker

Best fit: a kennel where online booking across boarding, daycare, grooming, training, dog walking and homestay matters most. Starting plan: $49.99 per month according to KennelBooker (2026). The boarding page also describes a 14-day free trial with no credit card needed and no contracts.

Limits: room caps differ by tier, and the homepage shows which tier fits each run count, so count your runs before you choose. The page also mentions a custom pricing algorithm for complex stays. That refers to how a kennel charges for stays, such as pets sharing a run or varying stay lengths, not to a separate software plan.

Implementation: map your room or run list to the tier limits, then configure the booking rules for each service you sell. The page does not describe how payments flow, so ask whether card charges run through the product or through a separate processor.

KennelPlus

Best fit: a kennel that wants room designation, availability tracking and check-in and check-out in one database that also covers grooming, daycare and training. Its boarding feature page lists room designation, room availability, check-in and check-out, and boarding scheduling, per KennelPlus.

Limits: the tiers are priced by user count, and they appear only on the homepage. We could not open a dedicated pricing page, so this guide does not print a KennelPlus figure. The main review sites blocked our requests, so we could not verify independent reviews for this product.

Implementation: match the user-count tier to the number of staff who need their own logins, then ask the vendor to confirm whether online booking and payments are included at that tier.

PetExec

Best fit: a multi-service business running boarding, daycare, grooming and training that is willing to request a quote. Togetherwork announced its acquisition of PetExec on November 4, 2024, and said the PetExec team would keep supporting existing customers, according to PetExec (2024).

Limits: PetExec publishes no plan prices on its site, and the pricing path we tried returned not found, so every figure has to come from a quote. Payment processing and data transfer appear on the homepage, but the boarding-specific room features were not verifiable on the pages we opened. Reviewer comments exist in directories we could not open, so we do not repeat them here.

Implementation: request a written quote that covers setup, payment processing, texting and data transfer, and ask for the room-tracking screens in a live walkthrough before you commit.

Who this is for

Choose a boarding-specific system with room or run tracking if you operate one site, take overnight stays, and need to see occupancy at a glance. Choose a lighter records tool if most of your revenue comes from day services and you do not board overnight. Choose a quote-first vendor only when you can wait for a written price and your budget allows for it.

Red flags: you do not yet have a written list of rooms, runs and daycare spaces; you need a vendor price before you can budget; or you expect the boarding tool to replace your accounting system without a check on what it can export.

Three steps to pick a tool

Step 1: write your room, run and daycare-space list, and note any unit that cannot take multiple animals. Use that list to read each tier's room or user limit before you compare any price.

Step 2: shortlist only tools that track rooms or runs and offer a payment path you accept. Use the feature matrix above, and turn each "Not listed" cell into a question for the vendor.

Step 3: compare 12-month totals only for like-for-like plans, and request written quotes from every vendor that shows "Quote-based" or no price. Include setup, payment processing, texting and add-ons in each quote so the totals match.

Common mistakes

• Comparing monthly list prices without the payment rate, which can change the monthly cost more than the plan itself.

• Buying a records-first tool for a boarding operation that needs occupancy at check-in.

• Treating "integration" as live two-way sync without checking which objects the tool actually exports.

• Skipping the room count, then finding out that a lower tier caps the number of rooms or runs.

• Ignoring ownership changes. Ask who supports the product and who owns the contract entity before you sign.

Where US Tech Automations fits

US Tech Automations is an automation layer that sits beside a boarding system. It does not replace one, and it needs something to read from. A configurable design would start with a trigger when a reservation is created or changed in the boarding system. The prerequisite is an export file or API read access to reservations, plus fields for vaccine expiry and deposit status. The action checks those fields and queues a reminder text through a messaging provider. The output is a log of each send and its delivery status, and any undelivered text becomes a task for the front desk. A person reviews any message that mentions price or cancellation before it goes out.

A second proposed design would start when a check-out is marked complete. The action builds a draft invoice in the accounting system from the nights, add-ons and deposit already paid, using a price table that matches the boarding system. The output is a draft in a review queue, not a sent invoice. The prerequisites are accounting API access and a price table that both systems agree on. A staff member releases each invoice, and a staff member approves every refund.

A reminder example shows the planning arithmetic, and the figures are illustrative rather than measured at any kennel. Suppose a kennel has 48 boarding stays a month, and each stay sends two reminder texts, which makes 96 messages a month. If a person sends each text by hand in 90 seconds, that takes 8,640 seconds, or 2.4 hours a month (96 × 90 = 8,640; 8,640 ÷ 3,600 = 2.4). In the proposed design, the workflow logs each message's date_sent and checks its status, and Twilio's message resource lists twelve status values, including undelivered, according to Twilio (2026). Any text that does not deliver goes to a person, so no reminder fails silently.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations

Skip an automation layer when your boarding vendor's built-in reminders already cover your texts and you do not need custom checks. Skip it when your booking system offers no export or API, because the workflow has nothing reliable to read. Skip it when one front-desk person handles all bookings by hand and the work fits on a single calendar. In each case a simpler boarding tool, or its native reminders, is the better choice.

Stitching it together yourself

Zapier, Make and n8n can connect a boarding system to a messaging tool and an accounting tool without a custom build. When configured, those tools can keep run histories, retry failed steps, route errors to a separate branch and record audit evidence. The buyer still has to design and own idempotency, so a retry does not send a second text; escalation; access controls; and ongoing maintenance when a vendor changes its export format. Time To Pet's Solo tier already lists Zapier, so check whether your chosen boarding tool exposes the fields a zap needs before you build. A proposed US Tech Automations design would configure the same checks as named steps, with the prerequisites and human approvals described above. Compare that against a DIY build on maintenance hours, not on setup speed, because the ongoing work is where most small teams underestimate the cost.

Frequently asked questions

Does any boarding software here have a free plan?

Yes, the third-party directory ToolRadar (not DoggieDashboard's own page) lists a DoggieDashboard free plan that covers up to 10 pet profiles, per ToolRadar's DoggieDashboard pricing page. The free plan does not show room management, so it fits records better than daily boarding operations.

Does Gingr publish its prices?

Yes, Gingr publishes monthly and annual prices for its Spa, Play and Stay plans, and it lists Enterprise as contact-only. Add-ons such as 2-Way SMS and Employee Scheduling are listed without prices, so ask for them in writing.

Can I compare PetExec's price with the others?

No, not from its public site, because PetExec publishes no plan prices. Ask for a written quote that covers setup, payment processing, texting and data transfer, then compare totals with the same scope.

Is Gingr owned by Togetherwork?

Togetherwork's own site lists Gingr in its Pet Care group, but one research page in our search groups it differently, so confirm the contracting entity before you sign. Ownership affects who supports the product and who can change its terms.

Should a small kennel add workflow automation to boarding software?

Only after the boarding system can export or expose reservations, because automation needs reliable input. Once it can, automation handles repeatable reminders and draft invoices, and a person still approves refunds, cancellations and vaccination exceptions.

Choosing and next steps

Pick the boarding-specific tool whose room or run model matches your kennel, then get written quotes for every missing price and every add-on. If you already have a booking system and need reminders, payments and accounting connected, see how US Tech Automations configures this with your own export fields and approval steps.