Pet Sitting Software Pricing Comparison: Total Bill

At six active sitters, Time To Pet's Team plan comes to $136 a month against Porchlight's flat $79, a gap of $684 a year. Use the formula and worksheet below to get that number for any tool at your headcount and text volume, then send vendors the script that makes them itemise the rest.

From the third active sitter, a per-seat bill passes $79

Per-seat monthly bill = base fee + (per-staff fee x active staff).

Break-even headcount = (flat price - base fee) / per-staff fee.

Example: Time To Pet's Team plan is $40 plus $16 per active staff member on its pricing page, checked 2026-10-08. Against Porchlight Team at $79, (79 - 40) / 16 = 2.4. From the third active sitter, the per-seat line is the higher one.

At two sitters the per-seat tool is cheaper. If you will stay at two, price alone is no reason to switch.

To see what growth costs you, take the monthly gap, multiply by 12, then by the hires you expect. That is the software tax. The six-sitter math is in Time To Pet pricing: what 6 sitters really cost, and what per-seat pricing really costs a pet sitting company explains the model.

Pick your row:

One worksheet gives you the real monthly bill

A software price is a stack of lines. Fill every line for every tool before you compare any two.

Total monthly cost =
  subscription
  + (per-user fee x active staff)
  + texting add-on
  + boarding or facility module
  + integration fees
  + (monthly card revenue x processing rate)

Tools fall into three models. Some charge one flat price. Some charge a base fee plus a fee per active staff member, and Time To Pet says it charges for who actually uses the system, so ask what counts as active before you plug in a headcount. Others sell tiers that unlock features at higher prices: Capterra lists LeashTime at several price levels, so match the tier to the features you need, not to the cheapest entry.

Fill one column per tool, using only what you verified on the vendor's own pricing page today:

Write "check vendor page" in any cell you could not verify. A plan that says "monthly" can sit behind a 12-month commitment, so ask. Prices change, so write the date in the last row. A directory page such as G2's Time To Pet listing can show a different starting price than the vendor's own page, so the dated vendor page wins.

Porchlight's Solo plan is for an owner doing every visit alone, with no staff accounts. The $79 Team plan has unlimited staff, whether that is 2 sitters or 40. Both plans carry unlimited clients and pets and a 30-day free trial with no card.

Count texts in segments before you trust "5,000 included"

Texting can be billed on its own line, and one message can use more than one segment. Each segment of a split message is billed as a separate SMS, so ask whether a vendor counts messages or segments.

The limits, from an SMS reference:

A single emoji can switch the whole message to Unicode, so a reminder that fit in one segment can need two.

Segments per message: 1 if the text is 160 characters or fewer (70 or fewer in Unicode). Otherwise round up length / 153 for standard text, or length / 67 for Unicode. Monthly segments = messages sent x segments per message.

Example: say you have 40 clients and send each one 3 texts a week, about 4.3 weeks a month. That is about 516 messages, or about 516 segments at one segment each. If every reminder has an emoji and runs to 100 characters, each is a 2-segment Unicode message and you use about 1,032 segments.

Porchlight includes 5,000 SMS segments a month on all plans, with no overage billing, under a fair use policy. Every send is logged with a delivery record across push, email and SMS, and failures retry. The pricing page has the current fair use wording.

Trim your reminder to 160 plain characters

1. Write your standard reminder with no emoji and no curly quotes.
2. Paste it into a character counter.
3. If it is over 160, cut it until it fits in one segment.
4. Save it as your default template.

Price boarding as its own row

If a tool sells boarding as a separate module, add that price to its row before you compare. Porchlight includes boarding and daycare in its plans. Time To Pet sells boarding as a separate Facility plan, and its facility and boarding depth is stronger than Porchlight's, so a boarding-heavy business should look closely there.

Send vendors this script

We have [n] staff and send about [n] texts a month. Please send our total monthly price with every fee itemised: per-user charges, texting, boarding or facility, integrations, and card processing. Do you meter texts by message or by segment, and what happens at the limit: an extra charge, a throttle or a block? Is there a minimum term? Can I export all my data if I leave?

Add "Is a seasonal sitter billed as an active staff member?" if you hire for the summer.

The cheapest tool is not cheapest if moving data takes weeks. Porchlight lets you export every table as CSV and JSON plus a media manifest at any time, and its Switch Kit imports from Time To Pet, Precise Petcare, Pet Sitter Plus and LeashTime with a dry run and one-click rollback. How long a move takes depends on how much data you have. The steps are in how to switch from Time To Pet.

Price one rival at your headcount in ten minutes

1. Minutes 1 to 2: write down your active staff count and last month's texts.
2. Minutes 3 to 7: open your top rival's pricing page and fill its column in the worksheet, with today's date.
3. Minutes 8 to 10: paste the script above into an email to that vendor.

When the answer comes back, compare the totals, not the starting prices.

Test the flat price against your own headcount

Porchlight has no public customer count or reviews yet, so judge it with your own numbers. The 30-day free trial needs no card, and you can check the price against your headcount and text volume before you pay anything. Start free for 30 days.