Kennel Connection Review

Kennel Connection is a long-running boarding, daycare, grooming, training, and retail management platform that has been in the pet-care niche for around three decades — and it is one of the few systems left that still ships an offline desktop build alongside its cloud app. That hybrid reach is the whole reason to look at it: if your kennel loses internet on a busy holiday weekend, a local database keeps check-ins, run assignments, and invoicing moving. It is built for established, multi-station boarding and daycare facilities, not for a solo mobile groomer chasing the cheapest cloud subscription.

One quick disambiguation: Kennel Connection (kennelconnection.com) is now the parent operation behind PawLoyalty and the Hello-Groom grooming line after a 2023 merger under 100GROUP, so you may see all three names in the same orbit. This page covers the flagship Kennel Connection boarding/daycare product.

What Is Kennel Connection #

Kennel Connection is a business-management system for pet-care facilities that board, run daycare, groom, train, and sell retail. The company positions it as an all-in-one for the whole operation: the front desk checks a dog in against its reservation, the system holds the pet's profile and vaccination records, staff work off run assignments and kennel cards, and the owner reconciles invoicing and reports at the end of the day — all inside one platform rather than a spreadsheet-plus-Square-plus-notebook patchwork.

The operating picture is worth spelling out because it is where a purpose-built kennel system earns its keep. A returning client requests dates through the Pet Parent Portal; the reservation lands on the boarding calendar; the system checks the dog's vaccination records and flags anything expired before the stay is confirmed; the front desk assigns a run and prints a kennel card carrying feeding and medication notes; kennel staff work off those cards through the stay; and at checkout the invoice — including any grooming or retail add-ons — is totaled and paid, with an automated review request going out afterward if the SMS add-on is switched on. One record follows the dog from booking to checkout instead of living in three disconnected tools.

What sets it apart from the cloud-only crowd is deployment choice. You can run it as KC Cloud (fully hosted), as a Hybrid (online plus offline access), or as a Desktop build with a local database that is multi-station compatible. That makes it a natural fit for larger kennels that have been burned by an internet outage taking the whole front desk down. The product is privately owned and operated out of Moorpark, California, and after a 2023 combination under 100GROUP it now anchors a family that also includes PawLoyalty and the Hello-Groom grooming line.

Features #

Online booking and pet-parent portal #

KC Cloud and Hybrid include an online booking system and a Pet Parent Portal, so clients request reservations themselves instead of tying up the phone. A newer "Live Access" capability lets customers create their own accounts and submit reservation requests, which cuts down on front-desk data entry.

Reservations, run assignments, and kennel cards #

Reservation and appointment management is the core of the boarding/daycare workflow — assign dogs to runs, print kennel cards, and manage special rates for holidays or long stays. Because it spans boarding, daycare, grooming, training, and retail, a multi-service facility runs all of those off one calendar and one client record.

Pet records and vaccination tracking #

Each pet carries a profile with its history, and the system tracks the details a boarding facility has to police — including vaccination records — so the front desk can catch an expired shot before a dog walks in the door.

Point of sale, invoicing, and Text-To-Pay #

Invoicing and integrated payment processing are built in, and the SMS add-on includes Text-To-Pay so a client can settle a balance from their phone. Undo buttons and audit trails help owners trace changes.

Two-way SMS and reminders (add-on) #

The messaging package is a paid add-on: unlimited two-way SMS, picture messages, automated appointment reminders, review-request prompts, an after-hours auto-responder, and text forwarding. When it fires, a confirmed booking triggers a reminder text to the pet parent, which is the single most effective lever kennels have against no-shows.

Special rates, retail, and reporting #

Special-rates management handles holiday and long-stay pricing so peak-season bookings charge correctly without manual overrides. Retail sits inside the same POS for facilities selling food and product. On the reporting side, reviewers specifically credit the range of pet and financial reports and the ease of pulling data back out — "reports, invoicing, data retrieval all very easy" — which is what an owner needs to see occupancy, revenue, and staff activity at a glance.

Offline desktop and multi-station #

The Desktop and Hybrid builds run on a local database and are multi-station compatible, so several front-desk terminals share the same data even without a live internet connection. For a busy boarding operation, that means a check-in line keeps moving during an outage instead of grinding to a halt — the single most concrete reason a kennel chooses Kennel Connection over a cloud-only rival. Undo buttons and audit trails help staff walk back a mistaken change and let an owner see who touched what.

Pricing #

Kennel Connection publishes monthly pricing (USD), which is unusual in a boarding niche that is mostly quote-only. There is no free trial — evaluation is by demo. Prices below are verbatim from the vendor's pricing page:

Add-ons: two-way SMS runs $50/month (unlimited texting, picture messages, reminders, Text-To-Pay, review requests). VoIP and Corporate tiers are quote-only. The important budgeting note is that texting — the feature that actually reduces no-shows — is a $50/month line item on top of the plan, and the cheapest $89 Desktop tier is offline-only, so it trades away online booking and the client portal.

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

Kennel Connection fits an established boarding or daycare facility — especially a multi-station operation — that wants deep, all-in-one coverage and values the reliability of an offline/desktop or hybrid build. If your internet is unreliable, or you simply do not want the front desk to stop when the connection drops, the local-database option is a genuine differentiator few competitors offer.

It is a weaker fit for a solo mobile groomer or a brand-new single-location shop looking for the lowest possible cloud subscription — the entry price and demo-only evaluation make it heavier to try than budget grooming tools. Facilities that want month-to-month simplicity with everything bundled may also balk at texting being a separate $50 add-on. And an operator who insists the cloud app match the desktop build feature-for-feature should test the web version against their actual workflow first, since reviewers report the two are not at parity.

If your primary service is grooming, the $69 Hello-Groom tier is a lower-cost door into the same platform, but the product's real center of gravity is the boarding and daycare floor — that is where the run assignments, kennel cards, and offline reliability pay off.

Is It Legit and Worth It? #

Kennel Connection is about as established as this category gets — roughly 30 years in the pet-care market — and it now sits inside a larger group (100GROUP) that also owns PawLoyalty. Its Capterra rating is a solid 4.4 out of 5 across 80 reviews, corroborated by an identical 4.4/80 on SoftwareAdvice, and reviewers consistently praise the onboarding, the reporting, and the customer support ("KC support makes each transition smooth").

The honest cons are real, though. Some long-tenured users report the software becoming "quirky with frequent runtime errors," and reviewers have flagged crashes or freezes when completing payments — a painful place to hit a bug, since it is the moment a customer is standing at the counter. The web build does not have full parity with the desktop version, a recurring complaint if you expect the cloud app to do everything the desktop one does. And one reviewer noted you cannot view deleted invoices, which makes it harder to audit financials for internal theft. On the transparency side, Corporate and VoIP pricing is quote-only, and there is no advertised annual discount, so the sticker price is monthly and — once you add the $50 SMS package the no-show math depends on — meaningfully higher than the headline tier.

None of these are dealbreakers for a stable multi-station kennel that values the offline reliability and the three-decade track record. But a small, cloud-comfortable shop with reliable internet may find a newer cloud-native rival lighter to run and cheaper to text from — which is exactly the trade this page is trying to make legible.

Alternatives #

• PawLoyalty — its sibling product under the same parent, cloud-based charting for daycare/boarding/grooming with published pricing.
• ProPet — a cloud-native all-in-one kennel/daycare system reviewers often switch to from Kennel Connection.
• Gingr — a widely used cloud boarding/daycare platform with a strong feature set.
• Kennel Booker — a simpler, lower-cost cloud option for small-to-midsize boarding operators.

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

Login & Support #

Facilities log in through kennelconnection.com (desktop and cloud builds each have their own launcher). VIP onboarding and support are included on every plan, and the vendor lists a phone line at (888) 486-4343, with the company based at 489 E. High St., Moorpark, CA. There is no self-serve free trial — you evaluate through a scheduled demo.