A daycare doesn't really run on its software. It runs on the half-dozen people who walk in at 6:45 a.m. with coffee in one hand and a leash multiplier in the other. The software's job is to not get in their way and, when something breaks at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday, to make the truth recoverable. That's a narrower problem than the marketing pages suggest, and a much harder one to get right.
We re-evaluated the daycare software market for 2026 because the category has shifted more in the past eighteen months than in the previous five. Three of the incumbents shipped substantive overhauls. Two scrappier products grew up enough to be on the shortlist for real operations. And pricing has finally drifted toward something defensible after years of opaque "call us" tiers.
Our top pick is still Gingr. It is not the prettiest software in this category, and it is not the cheapest. It is the one that quietly handles the long tail of weird operational moments, a regular's vaccine doc that lapses on a Sunday, a temperament re-evaluation triggered by an incident note from the previous week, a tax-line-item correction that has to propagate through three months of POS data, without making any of that the operator's problem. After four-plus years of evaluating tools in this space, that's the differentiator that actually matters.
That said: if you're a single-location daycare under 40 dogs/day, and your ops people would rather chew glass than learn a new piece of legacy software, ProPet and Easy Busy Pets are both meaningfully better than they were in 2024. We'd put either on a new facility without hesitation.
Who this guide is for, and who it isn't
This guide is for owner-operators and GMs of doggy daycare facilities, including those that also run boarding, grooming, or training under the same roof. It is not for pet sitters, dog walkers, or in-home boarders, those operators should read Best Pet Sitting Software instead. It's also not for veterinary practices; that's a different software stack with different liability surface area.
How we evaluate
Every product in this guide is evaluated against the same operational framework: the things the software has to absorb for an operator to be able to run a real business on it, without spending nights and weekends reconstructing what the software should have captured.
Operational fit, not feature counts
We rank by how well a product matches the work an operator actually does, not by which has the longest feature list. Every recommendation states who it's good for and who it isn't.
Public pricing and documentation
Pricing and feature details are drawn from each vendor’s public pricing pages, documentation, and demos. They reflect a snapshot in time, so always confirm current pricing with the vendor.
Written from an operator’s lens
We frame every pick around how a pet-care business actually runs, with input from working operators where we have it, and we flag what we could not independently verify. See our editorial standards.
We disclose affiliate relationships at the top and bottom of every guide. We do not accept revenue-share terms in exchange for placement. When we link to a vendor it may be an affiliate link, and we may earn a referral fee at no cost to you; it never changes our rankings. The How we test page explains specifics.
Gingr
The most complete daycare-and-boarding operating system on the market. Built for facilities that have outgrown their first piece of software and are starting to feel the cost of patchwork operations.
Today · Thursday, April 14
- Starting price
- $169 / month (Play, the daycare tier)
- Modules
- Daycare, boarding, grooming, training, retail
- Multi-location
- Yes, native
- Customer app
- Branded web portal + native app (included)
Gingr is the product we'd put a facility on if we couldn't have a conversation with the operator first. It is not the most enjoyable to look at, the interface still has the bones of software built in the early 2010s, and there are corners of the admin that read like they were never updated, but it is the most operationally complete thing in this market by a meaningful margin. Capacity logic, package billing, vaccine reminders, employee scheduling, incident reporting, automated communications, POS, retail inventory, reporting, and an actually usable API are all in one product, and they all behave the way an operator would expect.
What we keep coming back to is the reservation flow. A regular books online for daycare three Tuesdays from now; the system checks vaccine expirations against that date (not today's), checks temperament-test status, checks against capacity rules that vary by day of week, checks against the customer's specific package balance, and produces either a confirmed booking or a clean, actionable reason it can't be confirmed yet. Almost every other product in the category gets at least one of those checks wrong, or makes the operator piece it together by hand.
The reporting is also the deepest in the category. Gingr ships with about ninety stock reports, most of which an operator will never run, but the ones you do need (revenue by service, package liability, average daily rate, customer churn cohort, staff productivity) are all there and they all reconcile to your POS without manual cleanup. For multi-location operators, the roll-up reports are usable straight out of the box.
What annoys us
Setup is a real project, not a Saturday. Newer operators sometimes get meaningfully stuck during onboarding because the product asks them to make configuration decisions (vaccine grace periods, capacity weighting, package expiration logic) that they don't yet have an opinion about. Gingr's implementation team is good, but you have to use them. Plan on two to four weeks of part-time setup before you're truly running.
The other persistent friction is the UI. Gingr's redesign rolled out piecemeal across 2024–2025, and there are still pockets of the admin that feel ten years older than the dashboard. Staff onboarding takes longer than it should. We hear this from operators consistently; it is the most common reason a facility switches away from Gingr, usually to ProPet.
Good for
- Facilities running daycare and boarding (or adding boarding soon)
- Operators with 40+ daily dogs and complex package billing
- Multi-location and franchise structures
- Anyone whose accountant has already complained about exports
Not good for
- Solo operators under 25 daily dogs (overkill on price and complexity)
- Owners who want their staff to be productive on day one
- Anyone allergic to "needs a setup call" software
- Grooming-only or training-only businesses (Pawfinity or Goose fit better)
Pricing scales with capacity. The daycare tier (Play) is $169/mo for facilities under 30 ADR (average daily reservations); a 60-dog facility lands around $185–$215/mo depending on add-ons. The branded customer app costs extra, as does SMS at volume. Verify directly with the vendor, Gingr's pricing page has been moving around since the late-2024 ownership change.
ProPet
The cleanest UI in the category, with a polished client web portal, and a learning curve that staff can clear in a single shift. Our pick for most single-location operators under 40 daily dogs.
Daycare · 42 dogs
- Starting price
- $65 / month (base + daycare module)
- Modules
- Daycare, boarding, grooming, training
- Multi-location
- Yes (higher tier)
- Customer app
- Web client portal
ProPet has been the most-improved product in this category two years running. The current interface is genuinely good, it's the only daycare tool we'd hand to a new shift lead without sitting next to them, and the customer- facing mobile app is in a different league from the branded web portals most competitors ship. Customers actually use it, which means deposits actually get collected and waivers actually get signed before drop-off.
The product is structured around a day view instead of a calendar grid. For daycare operations that's correct: most of an operator's work is "what's happening today, and what could go wrong before pickup," and ProPet's UI reflects that. Yards, capacity, temperament-test status, and vaccine flags all surface on the same screen.
Where ProPet is still catching up is in the operational long tail. Reporting is good but not as deep as Gingr's. Multi-location is workable but feels bolted on, roll-up reporting only landed in the 2025 release and there are still corners where you can tell location isn't a first-class concept. Package billing got a major overhaul in late 2025 and is now solid; we'd flag it as the area to ask the vendor pointed questions about during a demo.
Good for
- New facilities and recent switchers who want low onboarding friction
- Operators whose customer base will actually use a mobile app
- Single-location daycare under ~50 daily dogs
- Anyone whose previous software lost them to a customer support failure
Not good for
- Heavy boarding operations (PetExec or Gingr fit better)
- Multi-location operators with shared customer lists across sites
- Facilities with unusual package structures (test billing in trial)
PetExec
The deepest kennel logic in the category. If your daycare also runs twenty-plus boarding runs and an overnight staff, PetExec was built for you even when the UI feels like it wasn't.
Boarding · Wed Apr 14 → Mon Apr 19
- Starting price
- $105 / month
- Modules
- Daycare, boarding, grooming, training, retail
- Multi-location
- Yes
- Customer app
- Branded web portal
PetExec has been quietly operating boarding-heavy facilities since well before most of the cloud-native competition existed, and it shows. The kennel grid is the right abstraction for a boarding operator, runs as rows, days as columns, color-coded by rate plan, drag-to-extend stays, and the surrounding logic (length-of-stay pricing, holiday surcharges, medical kennels, exit grooming tacked onto a stay) is more thought-through than anywhere else.
We also like PetExec's customer record. It carries forward every interaction, every note, every incident, every billing event, and every vaccine document into a single view that's easy to read at 7 a.m. when a regular shows up and you need to know whether they're cleared for boarding tonight. The notes UI is plain, but it's faster than every competitor's "customer profile" tab.
The catch, and it is a real one, is the interface. PetExec looks like the kind of software people refer to as "yeah, it works." Buttons are dense, spacing is tight, and the visual hierarchy assumes you've been using the product for six months. New staff take longer to onboard here than on anything else in our top five. PetExec has been shipping incremental UI improvements, but a daycare hiring 18-year-olds for the play floor should factor in a real training week.
Good for
- Boarding-heavy facilities (15+ runs)
- Operators who think in length-of-stay and rate plans, not "reservations"
- Mixed-modality businesses (daycare + boarding + grooming + training)
- Owners who value depth of customer history over interface polish
Not good for
- Daycare-only operations with high staff churn
- Operators who want a "modern" feel for their team
- Anyone who's never used boarding software before (start simpler)
Easy Busy Pets
The easiest system to learn in this guide, but no longer a budget option: the current plan starts around $250/mo plus per-staff fees. Worth it only if fast, painless onboarding matters more to you than price, and you’re under ~40 daily dogs.
- Starting price
- $250 / month + ~$13 per active staff
- Modules
- Daycare, boarding, grooming, walking
- Multi-location
- Limited (one main + sub-rooms)
- Customer app
- Branded web portal
Easy Busy Pets covers daycare, boarding, grooming, and walking in one subscription, and it’s the quickest of these tools to get running. What it is not, despite how it’s often positioned, is cheap: the current plan starts around $250/mo plus roughly $13 per active staff member. Price it against ProPet or DaySmart before you commit.
The product has clear ambitions to grow up, and the team has been shipping consistently. The booking engine works. Package billing works. Vaccine tracking works. The customer portal is simple but doesn't embarrass the business. None of these are best-in-class, they are just good enough, which at this price point makes sense only if onboarding speed is your priority.
The product's ceiling tends to show around 40 daily dogs. At that scale you start wanting capacity rules that vary by day, package liability reporting your accountant won't roll their eyes at, and multi-yard logic that Easy Busy Pets doesn't fully model. Switching off this product is meaningfully easier than switching off Gingr or PetExec, the data tends to export cleanly.
Good for
- New facilities, year one
- Solo operators and partner-run small daycares
- Anyone who's currently running on a spreadsheet and Acuity
Not good for
- Facilities approaching 40+ daily dogs
- Multi-location ambitions
- Operators who need depth in any single area (reporting, packages, kennels)
DaySmart Pet
The product to put on a multi-location pet care business that already has a CFO. Best-in-category accounting export, the cleanest roll-up reporting in the category, and the kind of enterprise-grade support contract that matters when you have eight locations.
- Starting price
- from $69 / month
- Modules
- Daycare, boarding, grooming, training, retail
- Multi-location
- Yes, first-class
- Customer app
- Branded web + mobile
DaySmart Pet (formerly 123Pet) sits inside DaySmart Software, which also makes spa, salon, and appointment products. That ancestry is visible, the core appointment engine is more polished than most pet-specific tools, and the accounting exports are the kind of clean that an outside controller can consume without phone calls.
For single-location operators the case is weaker. Pricing starts higher than Gingr's, the pet-specific features (capacity-by-yard, temperament tests, vaccine reminders that bundle multiple pets per customer) are present but not deeply differentiated, and the customer app is good rather than excellent. We'd pick Gingr or ProPet for a single facility.
For three-plus locations, the math changes. DaySmart's roll-up reporting, centralized customer database, and per-location P&L breakouts work cleanly out of the box. Multi-location operators consolidating onto DaySmart from a patchwork of single-location tools commonly report real operational savings inside six months.
Good for
- Three-plus location pet care groups
- Operators with a real finance function (controller / outside CFO)
- Franchise-style organizations with corporate-vs-location separation
Not good for
- Single-location operations
- Operators wanting deep pet-specific features (boarding logic, behavior tracking)
- Anyone allergic to enterprise sales cycles
Who shouldn't buy any of these
If you're running a single play-yard with twelve regulars and you already have a working spreadsheet, a payment processor, and a waiver service, you probably don't need pet-care software yet. The math doesn't work in your favor until you're spending more than four hours a week on operations the software would absorb, or until you start losing visible revenue to missed bookings and double-bookings.
The same logic applies to pet sitters and dog walkers. None of the tools in this guide are built for in-home service operations. Time To Pet and Scout for Pet Sitters are both better answers and run cheaper.
What to look for, regardless of which tool you pick
Vendors will spend the demo showing you their five strongest features. These are the seven things we'd check before signing anything.
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01
Capacity logic that varies by day, yard, and dog A Saturday is not a Tuesday. A small-dog yard is not a large-dog yard. If your software treats them as the same problem, you'll either turn away revenue or oversell the floor.
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02
Vaccine expirations that check against the reservation date Half the products on this list check vaccines against today, not against the date the dog will actually be in the building. That's a real liability exposure on advance bookings.
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03
Package liability that reconciles to your books If a customer pre-pays for ten days and uses three, your software needs to track the remaining seven as a liability the way your accountant expects. Most do this badly.
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04
An export your accountant can use Ask the vendor to show you a journal-entry export, not a "monthly summary PDF." If they can't, plan on hiring a bookkeeper who knows the product.
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05
Incident reporting that's findable a year later If you ever need incident records for a claim or underwriting review, you should be able to pull every recorded incident across the prior 24 months in under five minutes, with full context. Confirm required documentation with your carrier.
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06
A waiver flow that is worth having your attorney review Signed at the timestamp, version-controlled, attached to the customer record, and re-prompted on policy update. "We emailed it to them" is not a defensible answer.
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07
A real exit plan Before you sign, ask how data export works on termination. Test it in trial if you can. Software lock-in via export friction is the single most common operator regret we hear.
