Compare · Shelter service
Vivetra Shelter in Australia & New Zealand — and why this comparison is deliberately short
We looked hard for Australian and New Zealand shelter-management software to line up against Vivetra Shelter, and the honest finding is that the field is thin. Our research pass specifically searched for AU/NZ shelter-management vendors and turned up no New Zealand-native shelter-management product at all. The one AU-origin shelter-management vendor of real substance is ShelterBuddy — originally built by RSPCA Queensland, now US-headquartered — and it already sits in our main /compare/shelter/ comparison rather than being duplicated here. Rather than pad this page with unrelated tools to look busy, we are showing a short, honest table. A short accurate list is more credible than a padded one.
The one AU/NZ-relevant name worth citing is PetRescue — but read the table carefully, because it is not a like-for-like alternative. PetRescue is a national adoption-listing charity, a free portal that 900+ rescues publish their adoptable animals to; it is not shelter-management software. Most AU/NZ shelters run a management platform and separately list on PetRescue. The two are not substitutes, and we are not going to pretend otherwise to make the table look fuller.
What Vivetra Shelter offers is one animal record from intake through adoption, running on the same clinical core a full veterinary practice uses, at a flat monthly price with unlimited staff and volunteers and managed hosting included.
$200/mo as your first service — unlimited staff and volunteers, fully managed hosting included in that price, not a footnote. +$50/mo if Shelter is added to an existing Vivetra deployment that already runs another service.
The honest gap, before the table
Here is the question we would ask first if we ran a shelter, so we are answering it before you have to ask: Vivetra Shelter has no built-in syndication to PetRescue, Petfinder, or Adopt-a-Pet. You would keep listing your adoptable animals on PetRescue the way you do now, alongside Vivetra — the management platform and the listing portal stay separate. That is the sharpest honest gap of any service we offer, and it is the first thing on this page for a reason.
One part of that has changed, and we will state it just as plainly. Vivetra Shelter now ships its own public, no-login adoptable-animals page and donation page, both of which you embed straight into the website your shelter already has. That is not PetRescue syndication — it does not put your animals in front of PetRescue’s national audience, and we are not going to pretend it does. But if what you wanted was “our adoptable animals need to be somewhere the public can reach them without an account,” that part exists now. There is a section on it below.
One more limitation we tell every prospective shelter upfront:
We are a newer, unproven vendor. Vivetra is new, with no long track record behind it in the AU/NZ market yet. That is a real reason to be cautious, and we would rather say it than have you find it out later.
The one AU/NZ name worth citing
The figure below is quoted as stored in our sourced dataset — not our paraphrase of it — with the source link on the row. Read the third column: PetRescue is an adoption-listing charity, not a management system, and the table is built so it can never be mistaken for an alternative to buying shelter-management software.
| Product & source (verified August 2, 2026) | What they publish | How it lines up against Vivetra |
|---|---|---|
| Vivetra (Shelter service) pricing |
Flat $200/mo for your first service (unlimited staff and volunteers, managed hosting included); +$50/mo per additional service on the same deployment. Same number at 3 people or 30 — no per-adoption, per-outcome, or per-seat metering. |
Shelter-management platform on the same clinical core a full vet practice uses, plus a public, no-login adoptable-animals page and donation page you embed on your own website. Honest gap: no PetRescue / Petfinder / Adopt-a-Pet syndication. |
| PetRescue source (opens in new tab) |
A national Australian animal-welfare charity (PetRescue Ltd, ABN 35 123 057 536) that in 2004 "launched the first national pet adoption website"; its "free programs and services" assist "more than 900 rescue organisations, shelters, and councils," with "approximately 60,000 pets find loving homes via our platform" each year. It is an adoption-listing/syndication platform (not shelter management software) that shelter systems publish listings to. |
National adoption-listing charity, not a management system — many AU/NZ shelters run a management platform like Vivetra's Shelter service AND separately list animals on PetRescue; the two aren't substitutes. Listed here as the one real AU/NZ name to cite, not as an alternative to buying management software. |
ShelterBuddy is the one AU-origin shelter-management vendor of substance — originally built by RSPCA Queensland, now US-headquartered — and it carries its own sourced row on our main /compare/shelter/ page. We have not duplicated it here. If you are weighing Vivetra Shelter against a shelter-management system in Australia or New Zealand, that page is the direct comparison.
What the public can see without logging in
This is the most concrete, most demonstrable thing on the page, so it gets a section rather than a footnote. Vivetra Shelter ships two public, no-login pages that a staff member switches on from a single screen and that you frame into the website your shelter or rescue already runs.
- An embeddable adoptable-animals page. Every animal your staff have published as adoptable, with photos, on a page anybody can open — no account, no login, nothing for a visitor to install. Your staff control whether it is on at all, which details it is allowed to show, and how many animals it will show at once. It reads the same animal record your team already keeps, so your listings are never a second thing to remember to update.
- An embeddable donation page. A one-time giving form a supporter uses without an account, switched on from that same screen. No card ever touches your Vivetra deployment — the donor is handed to Stripe’s own hosted checkout page to pay.
- Fee payment and saved cards, inside the adopter portal. Adopters and foster carers already have a portal here — applications, e-signing, follow-up, the foster journal — and they pay their fees in it and keep a card on file for next time.
On payments generally, stated exactly rather than flatteringly: you connect your own Stripe account. Your adopters and donors pay into it, and you keep your own Stripe relationship and your own Stripe rates — we do not put you behind our merchant account or resell you a processor you did not choose. A small platform fee applies on top of Stripe’s own processing rate; ask us and we will tell you what it is before you commit to anything.
And to close the loop on the gap at the top of this page: none of this is PetRescue syndication. Your animals appear on your site, and you would still list on PetRescue exactly the way you do now. That limitation stands as stated.
Questions Australian and NZ shelters ask before switching
Is PetRescue a competitor to Vivetra Shelter?
Not really, and we would rather be straight about it than pad a table. PetRescue is a national Australian adoption-listing charity — a Petfinder-style portal that 900+ rescues, shelters and councils publish their adoptable animals to for free. It is not shelter-management software. Most AU/NZ shelters run a management platform AND separately list on PetRescue; the two are not substitutes. We list PetRescue here because it is the one real AU/NZ-relevant name to cite, not because you would choose it instead of a management system.
Why is this table so short — where are the Australian and NZ shelter-management vendors?
Because we looked hard and the field is genuinely thin. Our research pass specifically searched for Australia and New Zealand shelter-management software vendors, and we found no New Zealand-native shelter-management product at all. The one AU-origin shelter-management vendor of real substance is ShelterBuddy — originally built by RSPCA Queensland, now US-headquartered — and it already appears in our main /compare/shelter/ comparison. Rather than pad this page with unrelated tools to look busy, we would rather show a short, honest table. A short accurate list is more credible than a long padded one.
Does Vivetra Shelter sync adoptable animals to PetRescue, Petfinder, or Adopt-a-Pet?
No. Vivetra Shelter has no syndication to PetRescue or any other adoption-listing portal, so you would keep listing on PetRescue exactly the way you do now, alongside Vivetra. We would rather state that gap plainly at the top of the page than let it surprise you in a demo. What Vivetra Shelter does have is its own public, no-login adoptable-animals page that you embed on your shelter's existing website — your own audience, without an account, but not PetRescue's audience, and we are not going to blur the difference.
What are the public pages, exactly, and what do they cost?
Two pages anyone can open without an account, included in the same flat monthly price with no separate add-on fee. The first is an adoptable-animals listing: every animal your staff have published as adoptable, with photos, reading straight off the record your team already keeps. The second is a one-time donation form. Both are off until a staff member turns them on, both are configurable from one screen (what may be shown, how many animals appear at once, which of your own website addresses are allowed to frame them), and both are meant to live inside the website your shelter already runs rather than replace it.
How do adoption fees and donations actually get paid?
You connect your shelter's own Stripe account. Adopters pay their fees in the adopter portal and can keep a card on file for next time; supporters give through the public donation page without an account. Both hand off to Stripe's own hosted checkout, so no card number ever reaches your Vivetra deployment, and the money settles into your Stripe account — you keep your own Stripe relationship and your own Stripe rates rather than sitting behind a merchant account of ours. A small platform fee applies on top of Stripe's own processing rate; ask us and we will tell you what it is before you commit to anything. (All of that is entirely separate from the checkout you would use to pay your own Vivetra subscription.)
About this comparison. This is Vivetra’s own comparison of its own product against names we selected — it is marketing, not an independent third-party review, and you should weigh it as such.
The PetRescue description above was independently verified as of August 2, 2026 and is shown exactly as stored in our sourced dataset, with its source. Organisations change their details, and we can get something wrong. If anything here is out of date or inaccurate, report an inaccuracy and we will correct the page, or cite the source it came from, within 5 business days.
Vivetra’s own number is identical in every supported currency — no conversion, ever — so the currency selector in the header only changes the symbol and tax note shown next to Vivetra’s price, never the digits.