Compare · Boarding & Grooming service
Vivetra Boarding & Grooming vs. PetExec, Carica Pets, KennelMate & Avalon Software
Boarding and kennel software is a mature category in the UK and Ireland, and most of these products are good at what they do. This page lays out how Vivetra's flat, unlimited-staff, managed-hosting model stacks up against the named competitors on how they price and deploy, on the client portal your pet parents actually use, and on the one feature Vivetra is built around — and it's just as direct about where Vivetra still comes up short.
A quick contrast worth naming up front: Carica Pets prices by pen count — more pens, higher tier. Vivetra doesn't work that way: the price never depends on how many kennels, pens, or staff you run.
Vivetra Boarding & Grooming is fully managed for you: you never touch a server, patch an OS, or restore a backup — that's included in the price, not a footnote.
Pricing & deployment comparison
Verified as of October 29, 2026. Every competitor fact in the table is shown exactly as that vendor publishes it, with a link to the source we pulled it from and the date we checked.
This is Vivetra's own comparison of Vivetra against other boarding software used across the UK and Ireland — written by an interested party, and honest about it. Spot something wrong or out of date? Report an inaccuracy and we'll correct it within 5 business days.
| Product | What we verified (as sourced) | How its pricing / deployment model compares |
|---|---|---|
| Vivetra Boarding & Grooming source |
$200/mo as your first service — unlimited staff and fully managed hosting included. +$50/mo added to an existing Vivetra deployment. Flat, regardless of headcount. |
Flat platform-plus-per-service pricing — never gated by pen count, kennel count, or staff headcount; cloud, fully managed for you; and built directly on a real veterinary medical chart. |
| PetExec source (opens in new tab) |
serves USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Dubai; customizable to home-country date/time format and monetary symbol (some exclusions apply) |
Serves several regions with home-country date/time format and monetary symbol (some exclusions apply). Vivetra is built on a shared veterinary medical record. |
| Carica Pets source (opens in new tab) |
capacity-tiered pricing by pen/kennel count — Bronze £5/mo (up to 5 pens), Silver £10/mo (up to 10 pens), Gold £20/mo (unlimited) |
Priced by pen count — £5/mo up to 5 pens, £10/mo up to 10, £20/mo for unlimited — so the bill climbs as you add capacity. Vivetra's price never depends on how many pens or kennels you run. |
| KennelMate source (opens in new tab) |
Windows-PC software; manages up to 200 boarding units; from UK vendor Grensoft |
Windows-PC software that manages up to 200 boarding units. Vivetra is fully managed for you — cloud, nothing to install, no unit cap. |
| Avalon Software source (opens in new tab) |
Avalon Software (UK) Ltd, Chadlington, near Chipping Norton; booking software for boarding kennels and catteries |
UK booking software for boarding kennels and catteries. Vivetra bundles the operational core flat, client portal included, with online booking defaulting to request-and-approve and real-time self-booking available as an opt-in switch (see the gaps below). |
Competitor figures are shown exactly as each vendor publishes them — in that vendor's own currency and units (Carica Pets in pounds sterling, for example). Only Vivetra's own price responds to the currency selector at the top of the page, and it never does so by exchange-rate conversion: it's the same number in every market, shown with the local symbol and tax treatment.
The bridge Vivetra is built around
Here's the sharpest line Vivetra draws on this page. PetExec, Carica Pets, KennelMate and Avalon Software each sell themselves as boarding, kennel, or cattery software.
Vivetra Boarding & Grooming is built on a genuine veterinary medical chart. It runs on the same shared-core patient record your practice's medical services use, so a boarded pet that needs aftercare — recovering from surgery, on a medication schedule, flagged for a recheck — is tracked against the same history, the same current medications, and the same notes the medical side already keeps. Nobody reads a summary over the phone or re-enters a drug list by hand. That combination — real kennel operations sitting directly on a real medical record — is what Vivetra is built to do, and it's the single sharpest differentiator across everything Vivetra builds.
What your clients see
Client-facing booking is a checkbox worth comparing item by item rather than taking on faith. Here's exactly what Vivetra's client portal does today.
- Request-and-approve by default, real-time booking as an opt-in switch. Out of the box, a client requests a stay, a daycare day, or a groom from the portal, the request lands in your queue, and a person on your team approves it — nobody fills a pen you didn't agree to fill. Flip real-time self-booking on and a client can book against your live capacity outright, with the slot held for a default 15 minutes (configurable per practice) while they finish checkout.
- Pet profiles and a vaccine compliance gate. Owners keep their own pet details current and upload vaccination records, and the portal checks compliance up front — so the awkward conversation happens before the drop-off, not at your front counter with a car still running outside.
- Saved cards, deposits, and online payment. You connect your facility's own Stripe account. Clients save a card, pay a deposit to hold a booking, and settle the bill online. You keep your own Stripe relationship and your own rates; a small platform fee applies on top of them.
- Recurring bookings and pre-arrival prep. Standing daycare days repeat without re-entry, and before a stay the owner works through a pre-arrival bundle — forms signed, belongings listed, vaccination status confirmed. Arrival itself is still a staff act at the door; this just means nothing is outstanding when they get there.
- Stay updates, grooming report cards, and style preferences. Owners follow the stay from their phone, and a groom finishes with a report card and photos rather than a verbal summary. Style preferences carry from visit to visit, so the second groom starts where the first one left off.
Where Vivetra falls short today
Real limitations, stated as directly as the strengths above — because burying them would be dishonest, and you'd find out anyway.
- Request-and-approve is the default, not the only mode. Carica Pets, for one, advertises letting customers book and pay directly, 24/7. Out of the box, every online booking on Vivetra arrives as a request that a staff member approves — we think that's the right default for a facility with real capacity limits. A facility that wants a client to confirm their own booking outright can switch real-time self-booking on; it's the newer of the two paths, so it hasn't had the same length of production run as the request-and-approve flow.
- You bring your own Stripe account — and there's a platform fee. Online payments run through a Stripe account that belongs to your facility, so you keep your own Stripe relationship and your own processing rates, and the money lands in your account, not ours. On top of Stripe's own rate there's a small Vivetra platform fee. If you'd rather not use Stripe at all, this part of the product won't suit you.
- We're the new vendor here. Vivetra is the newer vendor here, and less battle-tested in boarding specifically. The medical-record foundation is a genuine advantage — but "newer" is a fair thing to weigh against it.
Ready to weigh it against your own facility?
Tell us your country, your current unit count, and whether you're also running a medical service, and we'll walk through the exact monthly number.
Comparison questions, answered
How current is this comparison?
Every competitor fact below is dated. The claims here were independently verified as of October 29, 2026, and each row links to the exact vendor page it came from. If any of it has gone stale, tell us and we'll correct it within 5 business days.
Is this an unbiased comparison?
No — and we'd rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise. This is Vivetra's own comparison of Vivetra against other boarding software used across the UK and Ireland, so of course it's written by an interested party. What we can promise is that every competitor claim is sourced, dated, and linked, that we state Vivetra's real gaps in the same breath as its strengths, and that we never quote a figure we haven't independently verified.
What sets Vivetra apart from PetExec, Carica Pets, KennelMate, and Avalon?
It bridges a boarding stay into a real veterinary medical chart. Vivetra Boarding & Grooming runs on the same shared-core patient record your practice's medical services use, so a boarded pet's aftercare — a post-surgical stay, a medication schedule, a wound recheck — is already looking at the same history nobody has to re-type. Boarding operations sitting directly on a real medical record is what Vivetra is built around. The same record is what the client portal reads from, which is why the vaccination gate on a booking request is the pet's actual history rather than a separate list somebody keeps up by hand.
What does Vivetra NOT do that these boarding tools do?
One thing, stated straight: online payments run through a Stripe account that belongs to your facility. You keep your own Stripe relationship and rates, the money lands in your account, and a small Vivetra platform fee applies on top of Stripe's own rate. (Online booking used to be a gap here too — Vivetra defaults to request-and-approve, where a staff member approves every request, but real-time self-booking against live capacity now ships as an opt-in switch, newer and less battle-tested than the default flow.) Both are in the gaps section above.
Why do some rows show a price and others don't?
Because we only quote a figure a vendor actually publishes. Carica Pets publishes its pen-count tiers (£5/£10/£20 per month), so we show them exactly as Carica states them. We have no sourced price for PetExec, KennelMate, or Avalon, so their rows carry the facts we could source and no invented number. A blank price is more honest than a guessed one.
Looking at one vendor specifically? Carica Pets vs. Vivetra · Gingr vs. PetExec.