KennelBooker vs Gingr: Which Fits a Boarding Kennel in 2026?

July 27, 2026 · 8 min read

Short answer: KennelBooker is the cheaper of the two and prices by kennel capacity, so a small facility pays little and a large one pays more. Gingr is the more established platform with a deeper feature set, prices by the type of service you run, and costs noticeably more. Both handle online booking and vaccination tracking competently. If neither price suits you, there is a third option, priced on the month you had — we build one, and we'll be straight about where it does and doesn't fit.

Every price on this page is quoted from each vendor's own public pricing page, checked on 27 July 2026. Software pricing changes; check before you buy.

Pricing, side by side

This is the clearest difference between them, and it is not close.

	KennelBooker	Gingr
Entry price	$49.99/mo — up to 10 boarding rooms	$109/mo — “Spa” (grooming & training)
Boarding plan	$94.99/mo (60 rooms) $122.99/mo (100 rooms)	$179/mo — “Stay”
Daycare plan	Included in the same tiers	$169/mo — “Play”
What drives the price	Your capacity (rooms & daycare spaces)	Which services you offer
If you don't use their card processing	No change	$209/mo instead of $179
Annual discount	12%	9–17% depending on plan
Free trial	14 days, no card required	None published — demo only

Two things stand out.

Gingr charges you more for declining their payment processor. The Stay plan is $179/month with integrated payments and $209/month without — a $30 monthly penalty, or $360 a year, for keeping the merchant account you already have. If you have a rate you like with your current processor, work out whether it still beats that difference.

KennelBooker's price climbs with your kennel. At 10 rooms it is $49.99; at 100 rooms it is $122.99. That is fair — you pay for what you use — but if you are planning to expand, price the tier you are growing into, not the one you are in today.

Online booking automation

Both do the core job: your customers book online, around the clock, without phoning you.

KennelBooker publishes real-time availability so customers only see what is genuinely open, and it can split a booking across multiple runs to squeeze more out of your capacity — a genuinely useful trick if you juggle mixed room sizes. It also carries custom pricing rules for the awkward cases, plus manual overrides.

Gingr has the broader platform around the booking: reporting, employee scheduling, two-way SMS and a messaging bundle, though several of those are add-ons rather than part of the base price. If you run a bigger operation with staff scheduling and marketing needs in one place, that breadth is the argument for the higher cost.

For a straightforward boarding kennel, both will take the booking. The difference shows at the edges: how gracefully they handle split rooms, deposits, and the odd pricing rule you have because of how your business actually works.

Vaccination tracking

Both track vaccinations and both will chase expiries, so this is rarely the deciding factor people expect it to be.

KennelBooker lists vaccination compliance tracking alongside dietary and medical information and customisable questionnaires. Gingr covers the same ground within a larger records system.

The questions worth asking on a demo, because they are where these systems actually differ:

Can a customer upload the certificate themselves, or does a staff member key it in?
Does an out-of-date vaccination block the booking, or only flag it?
Who gets the reminder — you, the owner, or both?
What happens to a booking made now for a stay after the vaccine expires?

That last one catches people out constantly. Ask it of any system you trial, including ours.

So which one?

Choose KennelBooker if you are a small-to-mid boarding kennel, you want the lower price, and capacity-based pricing suits how you grow. The 14-day trial with no card required means you can find out for yourself.

Choose Gingr if you are a larger or multi-site operation that needs the wider platform — staff scheduling, SMS, deeper reporting — and the cost is worth having it in one place. Be aware there is no free trial, so you are committing off a demo.

Where BooknBuddy fits — and where it doesn't

We build BooknBuddy, so treat this section accordingly.

BooknBuddy starts at $39.99 CAD or US$29.99 a month, priced on the month you actually had. Not per room and not per service: the price follows how busy you were, so a slow month costs less. You connect your own Stripe or Square account. The trial is 30 days, longer than either platform above.

What you give up: we are a newer platform. Gingr has years of features we have not built and a support organisation we do not have. If you need multi-location roll-ups, deep marketing automation or an established integrations catalogue, Gingr is the more complete product and it would be silly of us to pretend otherwise.

What you get: pricing that follows your month, not your room count, a 30-day trial rather than a sales call, and support direct from the person who builds it. We are also independently owned rather than venture-backed, which means nobody is pushing us to raise your price to hit a growth target.

Try it for 30 days

From $39.99 CAD or US$29.99 a month. No card for the trial, no per-booking fees, and you use your own Stripe or Square.

Start Free Trial →

The bottom line

Between the two: KennelBooker is the value pick for most independent kennels, Gingr is the platform pick if you need the breadth and can absorb the cost. Trial whatever you shortlist with your own bookings and your own awkward pricing rules — a demo shows you the happy path, and your business is not the happy path.

And check the current prices yourself. Everything here was accurate on 27 July 2026 and every vendor on this list can change it tomorrow.