Pawfinity vs Time To Pet (2026): The Multi-Service Head-to-Head

Updated: August 19, 2026 · 11 min read · By Grooming Software HQ

Grooming Software HQ Editorial Team

Independent research on pet grooming software — we compare features, pricing, and real user feedback so groomers can choose with confidence.

The Short Version

These two get shortlisted together because they're the two platforms in this category that genuinely run more than one service line. Grooming, boarding, daycare, training — most grooming software stops at the first one. Pawfinity and Time To Pet don't.

But they arrive at "multi-service" from opposite directions, and it shows up in two places that matter more than any feature list.

The first is how they charge. Pawfinity prices by which services you offer and gives you unlimited staff. Time To Pet prices by how many people work for you — $16 a head, every month. Those two models produce the same number at about two groomers and then diverge fast, in Pawfinity's favor, forever.

The second is less obvious and more important. Time To Pet came out of pet sitting and dog walking, and it's still finishing its grooming story: the mobile grooming product is live and selling, but the dedicated grooming software page is currently a waitlist. Pawfinity has been a salon grooming platform from the start. If you're a brick-and-mortar salon, that gap matters more than the $16.

At a Glance

Side-by-Side Comparison

The Headcount Math

Every other comparison on this site turns on text volume. This one turns on payroll.

Pawfinity publishes three packages: Groom & Train at $60/month for grooming, training, nail or dental services; Stay & Play at $60/month for boarding, daycare or pet sitting; and Royal at $110/month for all of it. Annual billing takes 10% off, bringing those to $55 and $100. Every tier includes the same operational stack — POS, stored payments, inventory, time clock and payroll, QuickBooks connect, marketing, review booster, two-way SMS — and, critically, "unlimited employee profiles, logins, clients, pets, appointments, photos, and more." Texting is metered separately at 5¢ under 500 messages a month, 4.5¢ from 501 to 1,000, 4¢ from 1,001 to 1,500, and 3.5¢ past 1,501. Only Royal includes free credits, at up to 250 a month.

Time To Pet publishes five: Lite at $25/month, Solo at $50, Team at $40 plus $16 per active staff member, Facility at $79 flat, and a custom Large Team tier. On Team, the per-user rate drops to $5 from user 26 up. Texting costs $10/month to switch on, then includes 250 messages per active staff member — pooled across the team and rolling over — with overages at 2.5¢.

Two footnotes before the table, because both will cost someone money. Lite is not a real option for a groomer: it carries no staff and no integrations at all, which explicitly includes texting, QuickBooks and Zapier, and it requires you to use Time To Pet Payments. A solo groomer who wants to text clients is on Solo at $50 plus the $10 fee. And "active staff" is broader than it sounds — it's any staff member or trainee with at least one assigned or completed event in the billing period, and office managers and administrators always count, whether or not they touch a dog.

Here's what that produces at realistic sizes. Text volume is set at 250 messages per groomer per month — roughly 80 appointments at three texts each — which is exactly Time To Pet's included allowance, so this table is generous to Time To Pet:

Three things fall out of that, and together they're most of the decision.

One: the crossover is two to three people. Below it, Time To Pet is cheaper — its texting allowance is generous enough to erase Pawfinity's lower base. Above it, Pawfinity wins and keeps winning, because every hire costs $16 on one platform and $0 on the other. At eight groomers the gap is $48 a month, or nearly $600 a year, and it grows with the payroll rather than the appointment book.

Two: Time To Pet has the better texting economics and it doesn't rescue them. A 2.5¢ overage rate beats every tier Pawfinity publishes, and 250 free messages per staff member is a real allowance. But notice where that allowance comes from — it scales with the same headcount you're paying $16 each for. You are, in effect, buying your text credits at $16 per 250. Priced that way, Pawfinity's 5¢ metering is the cheaper deal.

Three: the exception is the Facility plan, and it's a big one. $79 flat for daycare, grooming and boarding, with no per-staff charge, undercuts Pawfinity's $110 Royal package for comparable breadth. If you're a boarding-and-daycare operation that also grooms, Time To Pet is roughly $30 a month cheaper and the headcount math stops applying entirely. See what grooming software really costs for how per-seat pricing plays out across the wider market.

One caveat worth confirming: Time To Pet's texting allowance is defined per active staff member, which is a concept the flat-rate Facility plan doesn't otherwise use. Ask how the allotment is counted on Facility before you budget around it.

Where Pawfinity Pulls Ahead

Pawfinity's advantages are structural and operational rather than flashy:

• Staff are free: Unlimited employee profiles and logins at a flat rate. This is the single strongest line in the comparison and it compounds with every hire. A six-groomer salon pays what a solo groomer pays.
• Salon grooming is the actual product: Not an expansion, not a waitlist. Booking Genius, advanced online booking, rich client and pet profiles, and grooming history have been the core of the platform for years.
• A real POS and retail inventory: Included on every tier, not just the top one. If you sell shampoo, brushes or collars off a shelf, Time To Pet has nothing published that matches this.
• Time clock, payroll and commissions: Bundled in. For a salon paying groomers on commission, this removes an entire second system.
• One flat number for the whole operation: Royal covers grooming, boarding, daycare and training at $110. Time To Pet splits in-home and facility into separate products that need a custom bundle quote to combine.
• Review Booster and QuickBooks Connect on every plan: No tier-gating on the two integrations most likely to pay for themselves.

Where Time To Pet Pulls Ahead

Time To Pet is the more polished, more modern product, and for the right shape of business it's also the cheaper one:

• The Facility plan is excellent value: $79 flat for daycare, grooming and boarding with no per-head charge is the best price in this comparison for a multi-service facility.
• Genuinely cheap texting: 250 messages per active staff member, pooled and rolling over, with 2.5¢ overages. Nothing in this category meters more kindly.
• Mobile grooming is a finished, live product: Staff app, before-and-after photo report cards with grooming notes and custom questions, and post-visit client updates. For a van operator this is a real strength, not a checkbox.
• A 14-day trial with no card: Double Pawfinity's seven days — and you need the extra time, because per-staff billing means you want a full period of real scheduling before you know your bill.
• Support and onboarding are never charged: Including data import, with email, live chat and screen-share available. Pawfinity's support reputation is the most common complaint in its user feedback.
• Billing follows a quiet month down: Active-user counting is retroactive, so a seasonal slowdown genuinely reduces the invoice. Flat rates don't do that.

The Question That Settles It

Ignore the price for a moment and answer this: is grooming the business, or one service among several?

If grooming is the business — a salon with a front desk, a couple of tables and a team — take Pawfinity. It's cheaper from your second or third hire onward, it doesn't charge you for growing, and salon grooming is the thing it was built to do rather than the thing it's building. Time To Pet's waitlist on its dedicated grooming page is the tell.

If grooming is one line among several — especially if boarding, daycare or sitting carries more of your revenue — take Time To Pet. The $79 Facility plan is the best flat rate here, the texting is cheaper, and its in-home heritage is a genuine advantage that Pawfinity's Stay & Play package matches on paper more than in depth.

And if you're solo? Time To Pet is about $8 to $14 a month cheaper and gives you two weeks to prove it. Just budget for Solo at $50 plus the $10 texting fee, not the $25 Lite plan — Lite can't text clients at all, which for a groomer is not a plan.

Whichever way you go, export your client and pet data before you cancel anything. Both platforms will import clients and pets; it's photos and older appointment history that tend to disappear in a migration.

Which One Is Right for You?

Bottom Line

Pawfinity and Time To Pet look like direct competitors because both run multiple service lines, but they're really priced for different org charts. Pawfinity sells you the building and lets you staff it however you like. Time To Pet sells you seats.

That makes the decision unusually clean. Under two groomers, Time To Pet is modestly cheaper and noticeably more polished. Past three, Pawfinity's flat rate pulls away and never looks back — $48 a month at eight groomers, and rising. The one genuine exception is the $79 Facility plan, which beats everything here for a boarding-and-daycare operation that also grooms.

The feature question is separate and, for a salon, probably decisive: Pawfinity ships salon grooming today, while Time To Pet's dedicated grooming product is still gated behind a waitlist even though its mobile grooming offering is live. Ask Time To Pet's team exactly what a brick-and-mortar salon gets right now before you compare anything else.

Both trials are free and cardless — seven days on Pawfinity, fourteen on Time To Pet. Load a real week of appointments into each, count your own staff and your own texts, then check those two numbers against the table above. Those are the only variables that matter, and only you have them.

Both vendors change pricing periodically. Confirm current rates directly before you sign up.

Still comparing? See MoeGo vs Pawfinity and MoeGo vs Time To Pet for each against the market leader, Groomsoft vs GrooMore for the budget end of the market, or Groomer.io vs GrooMore for unlimited versus metered texting. Our best pet grooming software guide ranks the whole field, and the best mobile grooming software roundup covers van-based operations specifically.

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