Goodstay alternative for pet hotels: Boardinn vs Goodstay

Who each product is for

Of all the products we compare against, Goodstay is the most like Boardinn, so the differences are worth spelling out. Goodstay is boarding software for independent facilities: kennels, catteries, daycares and home boarders, from a handful of runs to fifty and more. Its pricing is public and simple: $29, $59 or $99 a month depending on how many pets and staff you have, every feature on every plan, a fourteen-day trial and no contract. It has report cards with photos and notes, check-in forms owners fill in before they arrive, Stripe or Square payments and CSV export whenever you like. It also says plainly that it takes no private equity or venture money. If you run a kennel in the US or Canada, that’s a strong, straightforward offer, and you should look at it.

Boardinn started from the same place, the front desk rather than the dashboard, and is built around the boarding stay in the same way. The differences are where the booking site lives, where the software is offered, and how far along each product is.

Where the software runs

Goodstay’s data processing addendum is unusually clear, and we respect it for that. The service is hosted in the United States, offered to facilities in the US and Canada, and doesn’t take on obligations under the EU or UK GDPR. That’s a legitimate choice of market. It also means that a pet hotel in Europe, the UK, or anywhere else GDPR applies isn’t who Goodstay is for.

Boardinn runs each hotel as its own installation, with its own database, its own containers and its own domain, HTTPS included, on servers in Helsinki with backups in Paris. When a hotel asks, we export or erase a customer’s data, the way GDPR expects. That isn’t a certificate. It’s how the system is put together.

What “your own domain” means here

Goodstay gives you a mobile-friendly booking page. Its site doesn’t say whether that page can run on your own domain under your name, so we won’t guess; ask them. With Boardinn the whole booking site is yours: your domain, one of five designs in your colours and fonts, reminder emails from your name and PDF invoices under your brand. The only Boardinn mention is a small footer link, and you can switch it off. It runs in English and Georgian for guests and staff, with Russian partly translated so far. The reasoning applies whichever vendor you pick.

Switching, and what setup looks like

If you already run on other software, or on a spreadsheet, Goodstay has the clearer answer today. Its FAQ offers migration assistance for customers switching from other kennel management software, covering customer data, pet records and vaccination history, and says it will help you import a spreadsheet. Its sign-up form even asks which system you use now, with Gingr, Time To Pet and PetExec among the options. Setup is self-serve: create an account, add your runs or suites, set your rates; the site says most facilities are running within an hour. It’s month-to-month with no penalty for leaving, and your data exports to CSV whenever you like. What its pages don’t say is which file formats it accepts, how long a migration takes or whether it costs extra.

Boardinn works the other way round. We set up each hotel with its owner, one at a time: the five designs, your services and prices, your capacity. If your customer and pet records live in another provider’s system or a spreadsheet, we migrate them for you. There’s no self-serve import tool: every hotel’s data looks different, so we handle each migration individually, and we’ll tell you up front what carries over. The trade is slower to begin and more hands-on while it happens, which suits some hotels and not others. If you’d rather click through setup alone this afternoon, that’s Goodstay.

Where Boardinn is behind

You can sign up for Goodstay yourself today. Boardinn is newly launched and sets up each hotel with its owner, one at a time (here’s how that went for Milo Pet Hotel). Goodstay has report cards with notes and replies, digital check-in, daycare packages and Stripe and Square payments. Boardinn now shares photos and videos from the stay with owners, but it has no written report cards, no online card payments and no daycare. Its service list (boarding, grooming, training, vet visits, pet taxi, relocation and sitting) is shaped by what a pet hotel asked for, not a daycare. If you’re in Goodstay’s market and those features matter to you, try Goodstay.

How we checked

Every claim about Goodstay on this page was checked against goodstay.pet: the homepage, the pricing page and the data processing addendum on 12 October 2026, and the migration, setup and contract details on 23 October 2026. Where their site doesn’t say something, such as a custom domain for the booking page, language options, customer numbers or where the company is based, we say so rather than guess. We re-check the page whenever we update the date. If we’ve got something wrong, email hello@boardinn.pet and we’ll fix it.