KennelBooker Review

KennelBooker is a cloud booking-and-management system for boarding kennels, catteries, doggy daycare, grooming, dog walking, and board-and-train operations, and its pitch is refreshingly simple: put a 24/7 online booking portal in front of clients, track vaccinations automatically, and price by capacity instead of per user. That per-capacity model — you pay for how many boarding rooms or daycare spaces you run, not how many staff log in — is the detail that makes it a value pick for small-to-midsize kennels with a few employees sharing one system.

Quick disambiguation: KennelBooker (kennelbooker.com) is a browser-based platform aimed at independent and small-to-midsize operators of roughly 2–10 staff. It is not the same as Kennel Connection, the older desktop-and-cloud system covered separately in this catalog.

What Is KennelBooker #

KennelBooker is a web-based system that runs the booking-through-payment loop for a pet-care facility. A pet parent books a stay through the 24/7 online portal, the system checks the pet's vaccination records and questionnaires, staff manage the calendar and capacity, and reminders and confirmations go out by SMS and email automatically — so the front desk spends less time on the phone chasing bookings and reminding no-shows.

It spans boarding, catteries, daycare, grooming, dog walking, home boarding, training, and board-and-train, and the vendor states it serves thousands of businesses across 40-plus countries. Because it is browser-based and hosted on Azure, you reach it from a PC, tablet, or phone; the vendor also states iOS and Android apps are available.

The design bet behind KennelBooker is that a small kennel does not need a heavy, per-user enterprise system — it needs the booking-to-reminder loop automated and its vaccination compliance handled, at a price that does not punish it for adding a second or third front-desk person. That is why every tier ships the same features and the only thing that changes as you pay more is capacity. It is the opposite of the quote-only, sales-call model that dominates the boarding niche, and for owners who just want to see the number and start, that transparency is half the appeal.

Features #

24/7 online booking portal #

The centerpiece is customer self-service booking that runs around the clock, so a client can request a stay at 11pm and the calendar reflects it without a phone call. Bookings require the customer to create an account — a small amount of friction that the vendor uses to capture clean pet records.

Vaccination-compliance tracking #

KennelBooker tracks vaccination compliance with expiration alerts, so an out-of-date rabies or Bordetella record is flagged before the dog is booked in. This is core boarding-facility hygiene rather than a nice-to-have.

Automated SMS and email reminders #

Booking confirmations and reminders go out automatically by SMS and email, plus digital "pet postcards" that push updates to owners during a stay — the automation reviewers most credit with saving admin time and reducing missed bookings.

Capacity, questionnaires, and pet details #

You can rename spaces to match your operation (runs, rooms, kennels), set capacity per tier, attach custom customer- and pet-specific questionnaires, and record dietary and medical information per pet. Reviewers single out that customization — being able to make the software speak your facility's language rather than forcing you into a generic template — as one of the reasons it is quick to set up.

To-do lists, wait lists, and staff accounts #

Behind the client-facing portal, the day-to-day floor tools include to-do and wait lists, time-and-attendance tracking, and staff account management with multiple concurrent logins — so several people run the same calendar at once, which is precisely why capacity-based (not per-seat) pricing works in the operation's favor.

Point of sale and reporting #

Product sales / POS, revenue and reporting dashboards, time-and-attendance tracking, staff account management with multiple concurrent logins, and to-do and wait lists round out the day-to-day operations.

Integrations #

Named integrations include QuickBooks and Xero for accounting, Stripe (and Stripe payment terminals) for card payments, MailChimp for email marketing, and Google Calendar. Payments sync so takings recorded in KennelBooker flow to your accounting package rather than being re-keyed.

Pricing #

KennelBooker publishes flat monthly USD pricing, tiered purely by capacity (number of boarding rooms / daycare spaces), not by feature set — every tier gets the same functionality:

There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, no long-term contracts, and the vendor offers free data migration from other systems. One budgeting note that comes straight from reviewers: online card payments run through Stripe only, and Stripe's processing fees are the cost item people mention most — there is no alternative gateway to shop for a cheaper rate.

The subscription number is the honest number here, which is not always true in this category. Because tiers are feature-identical, you are not going to discover that the reminder or vaccination feature you assumed was included actually lives one tier up. The two variable costs to model are your Stripe processing rate (a percentage of every card transaction, unavoidable if you take online payment) and, if you outgrow a tier's capacity, the step up to the next room count. For most small kennels the entry Dachshund tier at $49.99 covers the operation for a long time before capacity forces a move.

Who It's For (and Who It Isn't) #

KennelBooker fits an independent or small-to-midsize boarding, cattery, or daycare operator (roughly 2–10 staff) who wants a clean, self-serve booking portal, automatic vaccination checks, and a price that tracks capacity rather than headcount. If several people share the system, per-capacity pricing is genuinely cheaper than per-user rivals, and the fast, well-reviewed support lowers the risk of getting stuck.

It is a weaker fit for a facility that needs deep, customizable reporting, wants a payment processor other than Stripe, or runs many different boarding types at once — reviewers note the system "does not lend itself well when you do different types of boarding," and multi-pet-per-client handling on the calendar can be clunky. A household booking two dogs into the same stay is common in boarding, so if that is most of your book, test it in the trial. Very large operations above the 100-room top tier fall outside the published tiers, and a facility that lives in month-over-month calendar planning will feel the limitation that the calendar cannot span months without changing pages.

Where it lands especially well is the switch off paper, a spreadsheet, or an older desktop tool. Reviewers who moved from Gingr, Revelation Pets, DogBizPro, and PetExec cite the simpler interface and the value; the free data migration lowers the cost of making that move.

Is It Legit and Worth It? #

KennelBooker holds a strong 4.6 out of 5 on Capterra across 77 reviews, with an especially high customer-service sub-score around 4.8. The praise is consistent: reviewers call it "the best for the value by far," cite email support responses "within 15 minutes," and like how easy it is to set up and rename spaces to match their kennel. For a small facility moving off paper or a spreadsheet, that combination of low entry price and responsive support is the core of the pitch.

The honest cons are mostly rough edges rather than fundamentals. The calendar cannot span month-to-month without changing pages; adding a service like a groom to a boarded dog does not surface prominently on the schedule; newer features "feel a bit bolt-on and don't flow"; and individual pages can bog down in the activity portal. Payments being Stripe-only, with fees reviewers call expensive, is the most practical limitation for a facility watching its margins.

Alternatives #

• Kennel Connection — a heavier, longer-established boarding system with offline/desktop deployment.
• Revelation Pets — another simple, well-loved cloud boarding tool with vaccine-expiry alerts.
• ProPet — a more full-featured cloud all-in-one for kennel/daycare/grooming/training.
• Gingr — a widely used platform for facilities that outgrow a lighter tool.

See the full pet boarding software category for the complete comparison.

The vendor also makes a set of compliance and infrastructure claims — bank-level encryption, PCI DSS, GDPR support, real-time backups, hosting on Microsoft Azure — that are standard reassurances for a system holding client and payment data. Treat them as marketing statements rather than audited facts, but they are the right list of things for a booking platform to be claiming.

Login & Support #

Facilities log in through kennelbooker.com in any browser, or via the vendor's iOS/Android apps. Support is a repeated bright spot — reviewers describe email responses within about 15 minutes and a team that acts on customer feedback, which is a meaningful risk-reducer when you are learning a new system during a busy season. Onboarding includes free data migration from other systems and a 14-day no-card trial, so you can run a real week of bookings before paying.