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 one feature none of them is attempting — and it's just as direct about where Vivetra still comes up short.
A quick contrast worth naming up front: several of these tools charge by capacity. Carica Pets gates its price 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 August 2, 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 Spot something wrong or out of date?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 and currency formatting — a capable boarding tool, but not one built on a shared veterinary medical record the way Vivetra is. |
| Carica Pets source (opens in new tab) |
UK-native; 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) |
UK-native, but 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) |
on-premise Windows-PC install (not cloud); manages up to 200 boarding units; from UK vendor Grensoft |
An on-premise Windows install you run and maintain yourself, capped at 200 boarding units. Vivetra is fully managed for you — cloud, no server to touch, no unit cap. |
| Avalon Software source (opens in new tab) |
UK company based in Chadlington, Oxfordshire; provides kennel/cattery booking software (Avalon Bookings Manager plus an online-bookings add-on) |
A UK kennel/cattery booking package that offers online bookings as a separate add-on. Vivetra bundles the operational core flat, client portal included — though its online booking is request-and-approve rather than instant (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 no one else in this category is attempting
Here's the sharpest line between Vivetra and everything else on this page. PetExec, Carica Pets, KennelMate, Avalon Software — every one of them is a boarding, kennel, or cattery product. None of them is built on top of a genuine veterinary medical chart, because that isn't what they are.
Vivetra Boarding & Grooming is. 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 a category nobody else here is even attempting, and it's the single sharpest differentiator across everything Vivetra builds.
What your clients see
Every product on this page sells a client-facing front end, so this is a checkbox worth comparing item by item rather than taking on faith. Here's exactly what Vivetra's client portal does today.
- Online booking requests — staff still approves every one. Clients request 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. Vivetra never auto-books a pen you didn't agree to fill, which is a real difference from an instant-booking widget.
- 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.
- Booking is request-and-approve, not instant. These vendors lead their own marketing with online booking — Avalon Software even sells an online-bookings add-on — and some let a client confirm a pen outright. Vivetra doesn't: every online booking arrives as a request a staff member approves. We think that's the right default for a facility with real capacity limits, but if you want a client to be able to confirm their own booking at midnight with nobody in the loop, that isn't what this does.
- 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. Several of these tools have years of production track record behind them. Vivetra is newer 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 August 2, 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 does Vivetra do here that PetExec, Carica Pets, KennelMate, and Avalon don't?
It bridges a boarding stay into a real veterinary medical chart. Every product on this page is a boarding/daycare/kennel tool; none of them is built on top of a genuine vet 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. That category, boarding operations sitting directly on a real medical record, is one nobody else in this UK/IE field is even attempting. 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?
Two things, stated straight. Online booking here is request-and-approve: a client submits a booking request from the portal and a staff member approves it, so nobody fills a pen without your say-so — these vendors lead their marketing with online booking, Avalon even sells it as an add-on, and some let a client confirm outright, which is a genuine difference. And 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. Neither is hidden; 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. PetExec, KennelMate, and Avalon don't publish a headline price we could independently verify, so their rows carry the facts we could source and no invented number. A blank price is more honest than a guessed one.