Best Animal Shelter Software – 2024 Review

If your animal rescue is evaluating shelter, kennel, or volunteer software, we have you covered with our analysis of the top programs your team should consider. In this review, we’ll cover what a top animal shelter software program does, outline the features, and compare pricing to help you find the right management software solution for your shelter.

What Types Of Animal Shelter Software Are There?

Nonprofits, humane societies, SPCAs, animal control agencies, animal services organizations, and rescue groups use a variety of shelter and animal management software. Organizations may use digital programs to manage volunteers, fundraising, donors, accounting, and animals.

In this animal management software review, we’re focusing on animals and volunteers, primarily for cat rescue and cat shelter facilities. For other situations and needs, there may be other animal management software that will work better. The top animal shelter management software programs for cat rescues are: 

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ShelterLuv Features:

• Automatic to-do list
• Advanced Medical Features
• Foster Management

Homepage Video – Mobile Checkout and Donation Boost

• Easily send adopters paperwork within ShelterLuv. All electronic. 
• Then, the donor goes to a donation option. 30% of people will donate. It’s the best time to ask for a donation. 
• The adopter enters their credit card info and completes the donation.

How-To Video – Self-Guided Tour + Donation Boost 

ShelterLuv is so easy to use, this is the only video you should need. The home base page has four tabs: Animals, People, Partners, and Transactions. 

• Animal Records – all animals in your care, adoption management.
• People – everyone that interacts with you, adoptions, volunteers, staff. 
• Partners – all organizations you interact with. 
• Transitions – adoptions, donations etc. 

Videos – Take-A-Tour 

• Self-Guided Tour + Donation Boost 
• Mobile Adoption Checkout and Donation Boost
• Tasks – manage staff tasks
• Foster
• Reporting
• Customer Success and Support – Customer relationship management
• Field Services

ShelterLuv Review Conclusion

ShelterLuv is a pretty comprehensive animal and people shelter manager. There is a $2 per adoption fee, but they offer a way to accept donations, which should cover the fee and generate additional revenue for your rescue. Overall, this is an intuitive animal management software that is a great choice for most animal shelters and animal rescue groups.

Here is our setup guide for ShelterLuv, which covers the initial configurations you’ll do after you sign up.

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RescueGroups Features

• Pet Adoption Portal
• Data Management Service
• Website Service
• Exports to Adoption Websites
• Web-based Services
• Offers Marketing, Communication, and Website Services

Video of The Top 4 Services:

• Pet Adoption Portal (free)
• Import and export animal info to other sites
• Data Management Service (low cost)
• Online Form Service
• Website Service – uses subdomain landing sites

A nonprofit animal welfare organization working for nonprofits and keeping costs low. Web-based services and cloud-based software allow you to access data anywhere.

Main service – Pet Adoption Portal, which is free!

• No ads on pet descriptions
• Sends to over 200 adoption listings, Petfinder, and Adopt-A-Pet.
• Pet Adoption Toolkit – website widget that displays adoptable pets.*Helpful
• Has an app for easy uploads
• Pet Adoption Tracker data on views and website visits
• Pet Adoption Kiosk – Photo stream for adoption events

For better adoption photos, check out our resources for how to take great photos and videos for your adoptables.

RescueGroups Review Conclusion

The services are limited in scope to the pet adoption portal and website and marketing support services. This software also seems limited just to animal management and doesn’t offer much for foster or volunteer management. The pet adoption portal is free, so this software would be great for nonprofit startups and new shelter rescue groups.

The animal shelter software cost is free with additional paid marketing features. The website is helpful and informative about their services. Their support uses a ticketing system, which looks inconvenient. They have an easy signup feature that will automatically create an account for your rescue.

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Pawlytics Features

• Pet and People Record Management
• Custom Forms and Applications
• Great Customer Service

There are also several other services and features listed as Coming Soon. 

• Foster Sourcing and Matching
• E-sign Contract Storage
• Transportation Organizer

Pawlytics has a Blog with monthly posts that also feature their recent press. 

The pricing page has a video featuring the Founder and CEO Lizz Whitacre. They strive to be an extension of your team!

Pawlytics Review Conclusion

Pawlytics is a newer cloud-based software that seems to do a good job of the basics for managing animal records, health records, and medical history. They have new features coming soon, like the ability to create custom forms and digital application forms, which will likely make this a more robust shelter management software for advanced shelters. If you are looking for an alternative to ShelterLuv, Pawlytics would be a great choice.

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Doobert Features

Doobert’s program features three main areas. The Doobert Community (Volunteers), the Store, and their shelter software. I found this video, How Doobert Can Help Your Organization, helpful in providing an overview of the programs. You can coordinate transportation and foster and connect with other organizations to expand your network.

Doobert Shelter Software

Doobert accepts all types of organizations focused on animal welfare: Rescues, Shelters, Transport groups, and Friends of Shelter groups.

As a Doobert member organization, you’ll have access to the following:

• Create transportation requests
• Create local ride requests
• Create routes and take reservations
• Sell items in the Rescue Store
• Find volunteers and new partner organizations

Doobert Store

The Doober Store has everything you might need for most small pets, including birds and reptiles. From food and litter to toys, flea, and tick medicine. They even have unique Doobert products like solar illuminate pet collars. Bookmark this site so you can check out their cute seasonal pet products.

Doobert Tribe

The Doobert Volunteer program focuses on three main areas. Transporting animals to their destination, finding pets needing fosters, and networking with organizations.

Doobert FAQs

I really had to dig down into the FAQs to figure out what Doobert really does. Here’s an overview of the program FAQs: 

Fosterspace: Two-way communication with your fosters, with the ability to segment group texts based on custom tags. Has an Instagram-like feed where fosters can share content with possible adopters. 

Case Management (CRM): Users who fill out forms will automatically be entered into the system with capabilities for automated communication and accessible reporting. 

Doobert Store: Gies back 5% of a shopper’s total purchase to a local animal shelter of their choice. Shelters can get verified and add their PayPal link to the store to participate. 

Rescue Store: The Doobert Rescue Store is like Etsy and allows you to sell your items to your supporters. You can also run auctions and take the highest bidder for your products. 

RescueTUBE: A mobile app that allows users to easily upload and share videos.

Transport: Helps you coordinate multiple types of volunteer-based transports. This includes dispatch and multiple routes or legs of a trip. Transport also allows you to find and connect with another support team outside your normal network. 

Fundraising: Offers animal-specific fundraising options, including a pledge-first option. Doobert utilizes PayPal as its payment processor.  

Import Data: Doobert has integrations with ShelterBuddy, ShelterLuv, Shelter Manager, PetPoint, Chameleon, Adopt a Pet, and RescueGroups to make it easy to get your profiles and pictures into the system.

Trading Post: The Trading Post module is a marketplace that allows you to post or find extra shelter supplies. You can even be notified when someone has extra items you might need. 

Doobert Review Conclusion

Doobert does several things, so you’ll have access to quite a bit when you join the community. However, if you are simply looking for an animal shelter software program to manage animals, intakes, and adoptions, this might not be the best fit for your group. Doobert offers several resources to help shelters with fosters, transportation, and marketplace services. 

Doober also has an active blog and Podcast program (Animal Innovations Show). In addition to real-time supply and demand tracking of transportation needs, Doobert also has several online communities and training resources that make this website a helpful resource for shelters.

Lastly, Doobert offers free training courses with Petcademy. The courses are for organization members, volunteers, or anyone who simply wants to help save lives. Become Petcademy trained in fostering for free!

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Their goal is to capture the most common ways shelters and other organizations are supporting community members and keeping pets from becoming homeless. The professionally developed software program collects data focused on the number of animals receiving community services each month and was designed to conveniently fit into the shelter management process.

Shelter Animal Counts Features

This program was designed to:

• Standardize data
• Collect data
• Publish reports and make data available for research

Two main data collection programs include:

Intake and Outcome Database (IOD)

This covers animals you take in and the condition/intention for the animal, such as outcomes for the animal, like adoption or return to the field.

There is a helpful PDF with intake question examples 

Community Services Database (CSD)

This tracks the services provided and includes multiple species. You can also list the support services needed, veterinary services, field services, and behavior services.

There is also a helpful PDF with intake question examples.

Shelter Animal Counts Review Conclusion

While uploading data to Shelter Animal Counts is an extra step, it does force you to track your services, support, and medical records accurately and in an organized fashion. Plus, it’s made easy with their data migration services. Paired with good shelter management software, uploading data to their cloud system or Basic Data Matrix is well worth the step. This is a program all humane societies, animal control groups, and animal shelters should be using.

For new rescue groups only focused on saving animals or intake management, this database is probably not your priority. It’s a great idea to track your system and services, but this software is more critical for medium to large groups and animal control facilities.