Why choose BusyPaws over PocketSuite?

PocketSuite is a booking app focused on serving small business. Their marketing and product is primarily focused on small, single owner-operator businesses. Dog training often fits within this category and is where BusyPaws and PocketSuite compete. If you're a trainer looking for software to help with your business let's compare the two so you can decide which is a better match for you.

What's the key difference between BusyPaws and PocketSuite?

Let's cut to the chase and identify two primary differences (more below if you'd like feature comparisons). The first difference is that BusyPaws is built for pet care business which means that our software understands a critical component of the client relationship: the pet. At a glance, this may seem like a small difference, but being able to assign bookings to the client's pet (or pets), and allowing your client to see their pets when registering makes a difference to their experience.

The second difference is in the devices PocketSuite is designed for - all clients who have switched from PcoketSuite to BusyPaws have mentioned the need to conduct much of their business on their computers instead of their phones. Mobile computing is wildly useful but also presents significant challenges for doing more than messaging on-the-go. All functionality in BusyPaws is accessible over the browser and built for desktop or mobile screens.

Not convinced this is enough to make the switch? Read on for a few more feature comparisons.

The top 5 reasons why businesses choose BusyPaws over PocketSuite

Fully functional desktop and mobile platform

BOOK NOW

BusyPaws is primarily built as a web application. This means that it can be accessed via any device with a modern web browser. That includes mobile devices like tablets and phones. Screen format and input devices (like keyboards and mice) greatly influence what processes you're able to perform, and how efficiently the tasks are done.

Native phone applications provide value in notifications that can't be achieved any other way (like notifying you when a client sends a message, or you get paid). Outside of notifications, there is little that can be achieved with a native app that cannot be done in the browser.

Traffic to BusyPaws is roughly split 50/50 between desktop and mobile devices. You can use whatever device suits the situation best!

"I love everything about this software. It looks great. My clients have the option of booking appointments themselves. Canceling the appointments via the client portal. Intake forms are generated and available for them to sign prior to their appointments. If I ever have an issue or made a mistake the team at BusyPaws are available to me. I actually can talk to them and they’ve always been able to resolve my problems. They answer questions in a timely manner and take suggestions regarding improvements that can be made. I have recommended this software to other dog grooming professionals in the industry. It’s so much better then other platforms."
- Emily H, Forest & Pugtatoe Salon

Designed for pet care business

Industry specific software is important for you, your clients, and your staff to experience a process that aligns with your business and industry. Anytime there are the dreaded "workarounds" it reduces the client/user experience. In the case of a new client booking for the first time, it can cause booking abandonment.

Pet parents come to you and your business to take care of their beloved pet. BusyPaws acknowledges this by making the pet a first class citizen in the software. When your clients register and pay for services, they're not just registering themselves, but their pets!

This also means that functionality unique to pets is available, like tracking vaccinations, breed, behavior or birthdays.

Modern booking and payment process

Consumers today interact with software on a daily basis, and the majority of service providers offer some sort of self-booking process. Pet care software has not kept pace with the rapid change in current best-practice software development and user experience.

BusyPaws has taken a best-in-class approach to the client self-booking process, exceeding the standard that clients have come to expect from modern service providers. This means things like fewer clicks to complete a booking, not requiring profiles/logins/passwords, processing payment upon booking, automated confirmations and reminders, and a mobile friendly experience. BusyPaws does all of this while also being dog trainer friendly (collect vaccinations, signatures, and custom responses).

Some services you do want to keep a little more private, however. That's ok, BusyPaws can handle that, too, with private booking links or via the Client Portal (which does require passwords to access).

"We could not run this business without Busy Paws. It has substantially reduced our admin time and enabled us to expand our business.
Busy Paws has saved us at least 20 hours a week of admin time. It has also allowed us to grow and expand the business. All the admin time saved has provided more opportunity for marketing which is helping us grow significantly. And we could not have supported the number of customers we have now without this management system."
- Laura, Drop the Leash

Built-in Learning Management System for online courses

BusyPaws is the only pet care software with a built-in learning and content platform. Allowing you to add instructional videos, orientation content, or full dog training self-guided content in the same platform used for booking and invoicing.

Use monthly subscription pricing to earn recurring revenue from your content.

If you're currently hosting video and content on a platform like Kajabi, Teachable or Google Classroom you can instead use BusyPaws and keep all of your content, and client experience, to a single platform.

Unmatched application stability and mature software development practices

Outside of issues that affect network stability due to downstream processes (like a datacenter catching fire!), most application downtime or issues are a result of human error. This is unavoidable, we all make mistakes, cause issues, and get knocked down. These mistakes shouldn't affect you or your clients, however.

At BusyPaws we take software quality seriously. To ensure that we're delivering bug-free software to our clients we build software that tests our software. It takes more time, but it is well worth it. By building an entire test suit that tests all of our functionality to ensure its working correctly, we're able to ensure that new functionality doesn't break old functionality.

Users don't always behave as a developer expects, however, and sometimes they're able to achieve things we didn't plan for that can break functionality. For these cases we have automated notifications that tell us when the system hits an issue and records what happened. This allows us to fix issues rapidly so that they don't affect other clients of BusyPaws.

Together this ensures we deliver enterprise-level software for small and medium sized business.