To every groomer, boarding facility owner, daycare operator, and pet care business owner who has ever felt like their software company is working against them instead of for them — this letter is for you.
Animal Friends OS is built by an operator who has been running a pet-care shop since 2013. A multi-service shop in Florida — grooming, boarding, daycare, the whole operation. Years of cleaning kennels at 6 AM, staying late for pickup emergencies, training new groomers, replacing equipment, dealing with no-shows, and trying to build something I am proud of.
And through all of that, I have paid for software. A lot of software.
I have paid the $125/month. I have watched the payment processing fees quietly eat my revenue — a few hundred dollars a month that I did not fully understand was being skimmed until I sat down and actually calculated it. I have been locked into annual contracts that auto-renewed before I had a chance to evaluate alternatives. I have sat on hold for 45 minutes waiting for support from a company that was bought by a private equity firm six months earlier and clearly stopped caring about customers my size.
I have watched features I relied on get moved behind a paywall in a “new pricing tier.” I have seen per-user fees appear on my invoice for the first time with a cheerful email explaining the “new pricing structure.” I have had to explain to my bookkeeper why the software line item keeps growing even though we are not using any new features.
My breaking point came when I realized I was paying more for software than I was paying my part-time front desk employee. That is not an exaggeration. When I added up the subscription, the processing fees, the per-user charges, and the SMS overages, I was spending over $300/month on a platform that still could not send a decent grooming report card or let my clients book online without creating an account first.
I remember thinking: I could build something better than this. And then I thought: no, that is crazy. Software is complicated. These companies have engineering teams. They have millions in funding.
But then I thought about it differently. These companies have millions in funding — and that is the problem. The funding is why the prices are high. The funding is why they take payment processing cuts. The funding is why they lock you into contracts. They need to generate returns for their investors, and you are the one paying for it.
What if someone built pet care software without investors? Without the pressure to maximize revenue per customer? Without the obligation to generate 30% profit margins for a PE fund? What if the software was built by someone who actually runs a pet care business and knows what matters?
So I built it.
Animal Friends OS is everything I wished my old software was. Booking, CRM, client and pet records, automated SMS reminders, payment processing (using YOUR processor, not mine), grooming report cards with photos, boarding management, daycare check-in, staff scheduling, payroll tracking, QuickBooks integration, two-way texting, an embeddable booking widget, and real reporting that actually helps you make decisions.
And I am giving it to you starting at $69 a month, plus a one-time $49 activation fee that covers carrier registration for texting and moving your data over.
Not a teaser rate that doubles after 90 days. Not a headline price with per-user fees and processing cuts stacked on top. Three plans: Starter $69, Professional $109, and Premium $169 a month, plus the one-time $49 activation fee. Every plan runs grooming, boarding, daycare and training in one system, with online booking and 0% platform fee on payments. No per-seat charges on any of them. No contracts.
You can cancel anytime. You can export your data anytime. I am betting that you will not want to — not because I have locked you in, but because the product is genuinely good and the price is genuinely fair.
I know what you are thinking. “There must be a catch. Nobody offers full-featured pet care software for $69/month.”
You are right — nobody does. And the reason nobody does is that every other company in this space has investors who expect their money back with a return. Those returns come from your subscription. From your processing fees. From your per-user charges. From your annual contract that you cannot escape.
I do not have investors. I have never taken a dollar of outside funding. I built this software myself, inside my own pet care business, using revenue from my own operations.
$69/month covers hosting, development, support, and SMS infrastructure with room to reinvest in the product. It is a sustainable price — not a loss leader, not a bait-and-switch, not a fundraising gimmick. I am building a business, not a startup that needs to 10x for investors.
I am not asking you to trust me blindly. I am asking you to do four things:
First, calculate what you are actually paying for software right now. Not the number on the pricing page — the real number. Pull up three months of invoices and add up every charge: subscription, processing, per-user, SMS, add-ons, everything. Divide by three. That is your real monthly cost.
Be honest. Is the software you are using today dramatically better than what you would build if you could design it yourself? Or is it just what you are used to?
Third, try Animal Friends OS for free. Fourteen days, full access, no credit card. Do not take my word for it — use it. Set up your services, import some clients, run through a day’s workflow. See if it holds up.
Fourth, share this letter with another pet care business owner. Not because I am trying to go viral — but because every business owner who switches from a $200/month investor-backed platform to a $69/month operator-built platform keeps an extra $1,572 in their pocket every year — $1,523 in the first year, after the one-time $49 activation fee. That is real money for a small business. That is a new dryer. That is a week of vacation. That is breathing room.
I will never take investors. I will never take a cut of payments that run through your own Stripe account. I will never charge per-user fees. I will never lock you into an annual contract. I will never sell your data. I will never move features behind a paywall after you are already using them.
These are not marketing slogans. These are commitments from someone who runs a pet care business alongside a software company, who knows what it feels like to be on the receiving end of every one of those practices, and who built something specifically to prove that it does not have to be this way.
You deserve better software at a fair price from someone who actually understands your work.
I built that. And I hope you will give it a try.
— Chase
Founder & CEO, AFPC Industries LLC
Operator of a busy pet care facility in Florida
Building pet care software since 2024. Animal Friends OS is built by an operator who has been running a pet-care shop since 2013.