3 SaaS Companies Innovating Animal Rescue Management — Comparison Guide
11 min. read
Intuitive UX design and comprehensive support are becoming standard for SaaS products. People are used to navigating their phones seamlessly all day long and are beginning to expect the same ease and elegance when they log in to their workspace.
Unfortunately, animal management software has been slow to catch up. In fact, if you run an animal rescue, you probably consider yourself lucky just to have something that works.
But changes are afoot. The SaaS world is picking up underserved markets, including the animal welfare sector. That means modern design, more comprehensive features and better customer support are finally trickling down to the rescue world.
Let’s compare three newcomers making a splash at the intersection of animal care and tech: Shelterluv, Pawlytics and Petfinder. After a brief overview, we’ll talk about how each one stacks up on affordability, features and support.
Overview
Shelterluv
Founded by Stanford School of Business grad Greg Lucas in 2012, Shelterluv has been quietly innovating the animal rescue SaaS scene for the past ten years. So, yes, it's not entirely correct to call them a new kid on the block.
Still, Shelterluv gained the most momentum in the last few years, offers the largest selection of features and is one of the few animal-focused SaaS providers out of Silicon Valley. For all those reasons, it makes sense to include them in the innovator column.
Shelterluv provides cloud-based software to animal management organizations, including shelters, rescues and veterinary clinics. Their clients include some well-known faces in the animal welfare world, Best Friends Animal Society and Maddie’s Fund among them.
Aside from providing animal management and operations tools, Shelterluv has a strong brand focus on helping nonprofits raise money with their donation boost feature. Their products cast a wide net, catering to both foster-based orgs and shelters with field operations.
Pawlytics
Pawlytics is a true pandemic era success story. Lizz Whitacre officially launched the company in 2019, and her venture took off amidst the increased need for foster management during COVID-related closures. By March 2021, Pawlytics secured $500, 000 in pre-seed financing and upped its roster to include clients from all 50 states.
Headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, Pawlytics provides cloud-based software catered to foster rescues. Before Pawlytics, Whitacre ran her own rescue and has a grassroots approach to animal welfare, which she combined with her love of data in this latest endeavor. Pawlytics is registered as a B-corp (Public Benefit Corporation).
As of this writing, Pawlytics is working on several new features, which we’ll talk about briefly, but for a company that’s less than three years old, they’ve already gained a reputation for intuitive UX design and great customer support.
Pet Friend
Pet Friend is co-owned by Jesse Dye, a developer at Amazon Web Services, and Chris Roy, an animal welfare advocate and rescue coordinator. The two created Pet Friend in 2017 with the goal of updating and modernizing animal management software.
Based in Columbus, Ohio, Pet Friend is the second start-up from the Midwest in our overview. Is the spirit of tech innovation (quite literally) seeking greener pastures? Pet Friend is geared toward a variety of animal organizations, including shelters, rescues and vet practices.
For a start-up, their selection of features is pretty robust, though they’re still establishing themselves in the market. Their brand focuses on ease of use and portability (like Shelterluv and Pawlytics, Pet Friend is cloud-based), making daily tasks like animal intake hassle-free.
Affordability
Let’s start with the affordability factor, a concern for most animal organizations.
Shelterluv
Shelterluv uses a cost-per-adoption model. As of January 2022, the price is listed at $2 per adoption, billed monthly, with no additional fees for setup or support. If your rescue adopts out 15 animals in April, your April bill will come out to $30. They also charge their customers (you) a credit card processing fee for adoptions.
That being said, Shelterluv makes the case that some orgs get their software for free. Adopters can opt to cover the credit card processing fee as well as donate an additional sum directly to the rescue at checkout. For some orgs, these donations cover the cost of both the software and credit card fees.
Pawlytics
Pawlytics also uses a cost-per-adoption model, at $1 per adoption. Their “Pricing Pawmise” (you’ll find lots of puns on their website, and either love it or hate it), is to be affordable to all rescues. Since Pawlytics is focused on foster-based rescues, which tend to have a lower volume of animals, the price reduction makes sense. As with Shelterluv, there are no additional fees for setup or support.
Pet Friend
Pet Friend uses the classic SaaS pricing model — tiers. The higher the tier, the more features you get and the more you pay.
The “Rescue” tier, aimed at smaller organizations, is $25 per month. The “Shelter” tier for medium-size orgs is $50 per month and the “Shelter Plus” tier (for large animal shelters) is $100 per month.
They can also provide a specialized quote if you feel that your org doesn’t quite fit into a tier or if you’d like to customize features. You can view a demo of each tier on the Pricing page.
I wasn’t able to verify if Pet Friend charges setup or support fees during my research, so that may be your first inquiry when reaching out. As of publication, Pet Friend accepts payment only through PayPal and credit or debit payments via Stripe.
Discussion
You’ll need to do a bit of math to figure out if the cost-per-adoption model makes more sense than the flat fee per month. If you have a particularly good adoptions month or a big event, your costs will automatically rise for that month with the price-per-adoption model. And if your adoptions fluctuate a lot in general, expect the cost of your software to fluctuate as well.
A lower bill may be welcome news during slowdowns, but a lot of rescues may not enjoy paying more during busier months. If you prefer knowing how much you’ll pay for software each month or if you have a fixed budget to spend on tech, a tiered-pricing system, like the one used by Pet Friend, may work better for you.
On the other hand, it can be hard to justify paying $25 per month (the lowest-priced tier with Pet Friend) if you adopt out less than 10 animals in an average month. In that case, the cost-per-adoption pricing offered by Pawlytics and Shelterluv makes the most sense.
Look at the number of animals you host, how many adoptions you do per month and your budget. Would having your bill go up $20 or $30 a month after an adoption event feel uncomfortable? Or are you focused on only placing a small number of animals at a time? Your answer to these questions can help you decide.
All three providers offer a free 14-day trial, which should give you some time to play around with the features and decide if a price makes sense.
Features
Let’s take a look at how Shelterluv, Pawlytics and Pet Friend stack up on some common features.
Shelterluv
Being the most established of the three, Shelterluv has the longest list of features including
Automatic to-do lists that update in real time
Customizable intake and outtake forms
Pre-built reports to help you understand and present data
Configuration with Petfinder and other third-party listing services
More niche features include their mobile checkout Shelterpay, which is run through Stripe (you’ll need a Stripe account).
Shelterpay allows you to send a link to an adopter’s phone and have them complete paperwork and pay the fee through a credit card transaction right on their device. Alternatively, you can also email the link if an adopter doesn't use a smartphone.
Integrated with Shelterpay, is Shelterluv’s donation boost feature, which prompts an adopter to add a donation to their adoption fee during the checkout process. You can list different amounts and add an explanation of what the adopter’s donation will cover. Adopters can also choose to cover your credit card processing fee.
This is objectively useful. When someone is already committed to supporting your org by adopting an animal, asking for more money can feel awkward. The adopter may feel equally awkward saying no, but not particularly happy to say yes. Automating this task and making it a routine part of the donation process takes uncomfortable emotions out of the equation, making it easy for adopters to make the choice without feeling pressured.
And it looks like most choose to give. According to Shelterluv’s data, 77% of adopters convert to donors with an average donation of $20.
Shelterluv also has unique features for rescues and shelters providing field services (TNR, disaster response, pet food pantries). Their map-based tool can document various animal care efforts within the community and track your officers’ activities in the field. It’s mobile-friendly and (per Shelterluv) requires only 15 minutes to set up. At the time of this writing, this is the only map-based tool on the market for field services.
For foster-based orgs, Shelterluv offers Foster Finder, a tool that can help you search and recruit available fosters already in your system. You can filter by preferred animal species, availability and length of stay, and exclude people at their max capacity for fosters. Once you’ve built out your list, you can send out a plea email directly from Shelterluv, which automatically populates the form with email addresses on file.
These are just a few highlights. You can get a full walkthrough in the configuration section of Shelterluv’s help center. There are a LOT of them, and they’re constantly updating their offerings.
If you have an organization with a complex set of needs, you’ll probably enjoy the range of services Shelteluv offers.
Pawlytics
Pawlytics hasn’t been around long, so understandably, their selection of features isn’t as robust as Shelterluv’s. However, they’re growing quickly, and their focus on foster-based organizations makes them a strong choice for smaller rescues.
Their platform is mobile-friendly, and they offer several automated reports, custom forms and applications that can be embedded directly onto a website page. Like Shelterluv, they allow for automatic configuration with third parties (Adopt-a-Pet, Petfinder).
An especially convenient feature for foster orgs is the ability to tag people to specific pets in your care. Their database will autogenerate profiles for people in your org and automatically update them when something changes (i.e. someone takes on or drops off a foster).
As of publication, Pawlytics has a slew of new features in the works, including FosterFix (a foster matching algorithm), e-signature capabilities and a transport organizer.
Pawlytics has the cleanest, most modern interface of the three providers. It’s intuitive and easy on the eye, in a way most traditional animal management platforms aren’t.
Clearly, Pawlytics is just getting started, and if their impressive reviews on Capterra are any indication, they are gaining popularity.
Pet Friend
Pet Friend is also in start-up mode but already has key features for everyday animal management. These include:
Mobile-friendly format
Remote adoption processing with e-signature capabilities
Configuration with third parties (Adopt-a-Pet and Petfinder)
Task management and tracking
Animal records and kennel management
Calendar and report generator
Note that Pet Friend features vary from tier to tier. Most basic functions like animal management, report generation and automatic imports are included across the board. Officer management and license registration are only available at the $100 tier. Uploading files is only allowed at the $50 and $100 tiers. You’ll need to think through your rescue’s needs carefully before making a purchase, or you may want to request a custom quote.
Pet Friend also allows for animal records transfer, but only for organizations using their platform. Considering that they’re a new provider, it’s not clear how many organizations can benefit from this feature.
Discussion
At the base level, all three providers fulfill the same functions: help you manage data about animals that come and go through your org, and the tasks associated with housing, transporting and adopting them.
However, Shelterluv offers the most variety and depth in its features, which could make it an excellent choice for complex organizations with multiple operations.
Pawlytics is catching up fast, and its affordable price makes it a great choice for smaller animal rescues. Pet Friend has some solid features but lacks some key components, like people management in their lowest tier. Their focus on licensing, registration and officer management makes them a strong choice for municipal organizations that prefer to pay a set price each month.
Shelterluv and Pawlytics have newsletters, which I’d recommend signing up for before making a purchase.
Support
Teaching your staff a new system can take up valuable time. No one wants to spend hours figuring out how to complete an intake form when they could be hauling kittens to a vet. Here’s how the three providers compare on implementation and customer support features.
Shelterluv
Overall, Shelterluv’s support system is pretty impressive. They host a user-friendly help center with information organized by topics like onboarding and billing. There's a section with how-to videos on features and basic tasks.
A search bar at the top of the support center’s home page allows you to look up a specific query.
Shelterluv clearly put a lot of thought and time into organizing their documentation and updating it frequently. You can pretty much find the answer to most questions within a few minutes, as well as submit a request for a question to be answered.
Your browsing history is saved, so you can refer back to the articles you recently viewed from the homepage, which I found useful during my research.
If you can’t find something or need to talk to someone, you can message the customer solutions team while browsing the resource center or send an email.
For first-time users, there’s an extensive self-guided tour and user guide which can also be found in the resource center.
Shelterluv also hosts a blog with quick how-tos, updates and more general topics in the animal welfare world.
Pawlytics
Pawlytics offers how-to videos, email and Zoom support. Their team guarantees a response within 24 hours. If you request a Zoom support call, you’ll get to talk to a person who can walk you through an issue in real time.
They don’t host an ungated support center but considering that Pawlytics is a much younger organization than Shelterluv, it’s not surprising that their learning resources aren’t as robust.
Pawlytic's blog, Muttrics is focused on various aspects of running a rescue, not on the Pawlytics software specifically. In general, the Pawlytics brand seems to be aiming for a thought-leadership approach to content, so expect to see lots of topical, newsy articles, tangentially related to their actual products.
Pet Friend
Pet Friend offers an ungated demo for all of their tier levels, as well as a tour of their interface. That means you can get a feel for their platform without committing to the 14-day trial.
They also offer online training videos and customer support via email. Considering that Pet Friend isn’t run full-time, there may not be a ton of documentation available, but the free ungated demo is a great way to test out some features.
Discussion
Shelterluv provides an impressive amount of resources for rescue managers who prefer a DIY approach to implementation. However, you’ll need to dedicate some time to make the most of their help center. This may be a barrier for very small teams with a million other priorities. That’s not necessarily a point against Shelterluv, since they do offer live and email support.
Pawlytics has a slightly more intuitive interface with fewer features, so the set-up process may be less complicated. They’re the only provider out of the three to offer Zoom support with an actual person. A plus, if you prefer a personal touch or don’t feel comfortable hacking your way through a new system on your own.
Pet Friend offers email support and training videos only. That means if you have a larger team, onboarding may be a longer process. However, since they offer a free demo, you can decide early on if their user interface is intuitive enough to figure out on your own.
Conclusion
All three of these providers offer plenty of features for rescues of all sizes. And while each one has its strengths and weaknesses, all of them are adding some much-needed innovation to the animal rescue SaaS scene.
