pet sitting software for UK businesses, compared

We make sitkit, so we're not neutral. We've tried to be fair anyway: the prices come from each company's own pricing page, linked below, and we say where another app will suit you better.

The short answer

• If your business runs on customers knowing and trusting you, and it's you or a small team, choose sitkit. It takes the admin off your hands and leaves the relationship with you.
• If you have a large team and want customers to serve themselves through an app while you track staff by GPS, choose Time To Pet, Pet Sitter Plus or Precise Petcare.
• If you're a dog walker who wants customers to book their own walks, look at My Pet Walker.

At a glance

If you pay in dollars, what leaves your account changes with the exchange rate, and your bank may add a fee.

The question that matters most

Most pet sitting software is built around a customer portal. Your customers download an app or log in to a website, request their own bookings, and the software sits between you and them. That's efficient when you have hundreds of customers and a team of staff they've never met.

For a small business, we think it's the wrong way round. People are handing you their keys and their animals. They chose you, not an app, and what keeps them coming back, recommending you and accepting your prices when they go up is that they know you. When we looked into it, we found that having customers make their own bookings through an app works against that relationship.

So the first thing to decide is which kind of business you're running:

• Customers deal with you. They message you as they always have, you put the booking in, and the software does the sums, the diary and the payment. That's sitkit.
• Customers deal with the software. They log in, request and manage bookings themselves, and you approve them. That's Time To Pet, Pet Sitter Plus, Precise Petcare and My Pet Walker.

sitkit

£15 a month on your own. £30 a month with a team, however many sitters you have. Made in the UK and priced in pounds.

sitkit does the part of the job nobody went into pet sitting for. You agree the dates with your customer the way you do now. You add the booking, and sitkit lays out every visit and works out the total. You send your customer a link, and they see a page in your business's name and colours with their visits and the price, and pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay. The booking confirms itself. If the dates change, sitkit works out what's still owed or what to refund.

After that it's your diary: each day's visits, with the notes, the address and the phone number a tap away on the doorstep. And it shows you what you've earned, what's booked ahead and whether you're up on last year, so you know when it's time to put your prices up.

What we left out on purpose

• No customer logins or customer app. Your customers get a link. There's nothing for them to download, no password to forget, and nothing between you and them.
• No self-service booking. You decide what you take on and what it costs, and your customer hears it from you.
• No GPS tracking of your sitters. It's for businesses small enough to know and trust the people who work for them. Each sitter sees their own visits and the notes they need.
• No app store download. It opens from your home screen like any other app, on iPhone and Android, and it's always the latest version.
• No per-sitter pricing. Taking someone on to help over the summer doesn't put your bill up.
• No setup project. You can add your first booking a couple of minutes after you sign up.

When to choose something else

• You want payroll, or a link to accounting software such as QuickBooks. The full systems below have both.
• You run boarding, day care or grooming. sitkit is for visits and walks.
• Most of your work is the same walks every week, booked by customers themselves.
• You take a lot of card payments and the fee matters more to you than the time saved. sitkit adds 1% to Stripe's card fee, and Time To Pet says it adds nothing. Taking payments another way through sitkit costs nothing extra.

See how sitkit works

My Pet Walker

£19.99 a month for one person, £39.99 for a small team, £69.99 for the Business plan. A UK company. 14-day free trial.

Aimed first at dog walkers, with a plan for day cares. Customers book online through a portal, staff get a mobile app, and card payments go through Stripe.

Choose it if: you're a UK dog walker and want customers to book walks for themselves.

Worth knowing: the price goes up with the number of people using it.

My Pet Walker's prices

NarpsUK

£20 a month, however many staff you have. A UK association. 14-day free trial.

NarpsUK is a membership association for pet sitters and dog walkers, and it sells its own software, on its own or as part of a membership. It covers customer and pet records, a booking calendar, invoices, staff logins and reports such as profit and loss.

Choose it if: you're a NarpsUK member, or you want invoices and financial reports at the lowest flat price for a team.

Worth knowing: its page describes invoices you print or email. It doesn't mention customers paying by card online, or a booking page for customers.

NarpsUK's software

Pet Sitter Plus

From £24 a month for one person. Teams pay a base price plus a charge for each active member of staff. 30-day free trial.

A full system that's been going since 2009, rated 4.8 out of 5 from 140 reviews on Capterra. Customers log in to a portal to book and pay by card. There's scheduling with repeat services, GPS check-in, visit reports, key tracking, invoicing, and links to QuickBooks and Stripe. The Solo plan includes every feature.

Choose it if: you have an established business with staff, want everything in one system, and want to pay in pounds.

Worth knowing: there's a lot to set up, and the price goes up with each active member of staff.

Pet Sitter Plus's prices

Precise Petcare

$20 a month for one person, $45 for 2 to 5 staff, $90 for 6 to 10. Priced in US dollars. Free trial.

A full system with mobile apps for staff and customers, GPS tracking with a live map of sitters, late arrival alerts, customer self-service, billing, and staff management and payroll. Every plan has every feature, and you pay by the number of active staff.

Choose it if: you have a larger team, need to see where staff are, and want to pay them through the same system.

Worth knowing: it's priced in dollars.

Precise Petcare's prices

Time To Pet

$25 a month (Lite) or $50 (Solo) for one person. Teams pay $40 a month plus $16 for each active member of staff. Priced in US dollars. 14-day free trial.

The most reviewed app in this list: 4.9 out of 5 from 271 reviews on Capterra. Customers request services through a portal, and it handles scheduling, invoicing, card payments, messaging and updates for customers, staff management and payroll. It also has plans for boarding and day care businesses. Time To Pet says it adds no fee of its own to card payments.

Choose it if: you're growing a larger business and want the most complete system, with plenty of other users to learn from.

Worth knowing: it's priced in dollars, the price goes up with each active member of staff, and reviewers say the number of settings takes some getting used to.

Time To Pet's prices

What about Rover and Cat in a Flat?

Those are marketplaces, not software. They find you customers, take a share of each booking, and handle the booking and payment themselves. The apps on this page are for running your own business with your own customers. Plenty of sitters start on a marketplace and move to their own bookings once they have regulars.

Got something wrong?

Prices and features change. If anything here is out of date, email support@sitkit.com and we'll correct it.