What you are actually buying
A cattery site has one job, narrower than a general pet business site. A woman is going to Portugal for ten days. She has never left her cat before, she feels guilty about it, and at half past ten at night she is looking at three catteries on her phone. She wants to see the pen her cat will sleep in, know how many other cats are in the building, understand what happens if the cat needs a tablet twice a day, read the vaccination rules, see a price per night, and hold the dates.
Everything you pay a web developer for is in service of that ten minutes. The bands below are what the market charges to do it.
Band 1: your booking software's public page
Revelation Pets, Gingr, PetExec and Kennel Connection all offer some form of customer-facing booking or portal page with your cattery name on it. A Squarespace or Wix template gives you a stock photograph of a tabby on a windowsill.
Cost: nothing to low hundreds, on top of the software you already pay for.
You get: somewhere to send an owner who already knows you exist.
You do not get: a domain that ranks for cat boarding plus your town, photographs of your own pens, a routine page, requirements stated before the booking, your licence displayed, or anyone to ring when the page stops loading in July.
Right for: a new cattery filling its first season by word of mouth.
Band 2: a template site, $800 to $2,500, roughly £650 to £2,000
A pet or boarding theme with your logo, a gallery, and a link out to booking.
You get: something presentable with your name on it.
Usually missing: speed on a phone; a price table by pen type and number of cats rather than one "from" figure; booking embedded rather than linked; a page per pen type; the routine and medication page; requirements stated with timing; hosting and domain in your name.
Right for: a cattery full every August from repeat customers that wants a business card.
Band 3: a purpose-built cattery site, $2,500 to $6,000, roughly £2,000 to £4,800
Built around the guilty owner at half past ten at night. Photographs of every pen type, inside and out, showing the sleeping area, the outdoor run, the heating and the gap between pens. A routine page saying what a day looks like and how medication is given and recorded. Requirements stated with timing, so an owner knows whether the booster is recent enough before they book rather than at the gate. Prices per night by pen type, with the multi-cat rate. Online booking from Revelation Pets, Gingr, PetExec or Kennel Connection embedded, collecting vaccination records and medication notes in the flow. Licence and inspection rating where owners look. Reviews beside the buttons. Fast on a phone, everything in your name.
You get: a site that ranks locally, answers the pen question before the phone rings, and takes a peak-season enquiry at eleven at night with the vaccination card already attached.
Not usually included: photography and copy unless the quote says so.
Right for: an established cattery with more than a handful of pens that wants new owners from search rather than referral alone.
Band 4: multi-site or cattery plus kennels, $8,000 and up
Two premises with separate capacity, or a cattery attached to dog boarding, where the site sells two services with different requirements and different owners to reassure.
After launch
- Hosting: managed WordPress at $20 to $50 a month, or often free on a framework host, in your name.
- Domain: small, annual, registered to you and not to the agency.
- Boarding software: whatever you already pay Revelation Pets, Gingr, PetExec or Kennel Connection.
- Maintenance: a care plan at a modest monthly fee, which is where prices, dates and photographs get kept current.
- Photography: half a day on site, in daylight, with owner permission for any cat in shot. Real photographs of your own pens are the most valuable thing on a cattery site, and a stock ginger cat is worth nothing.
Where the band 3 money goes
- A page or section per pen type, priced, photographed and bookable, so a family pen and a standard pen are not the same paragraph.
- The routine and medication page, which converts the owner of a diabetic cat.
- Requirements as content, stated with timing and repeated in the booking flow.
- Booking embedded and tested on a phone, including the Instagram in-app browser.
- Availability made honest, so peak weeks show as booked or route to a waiting list rather than a dead form.
- Licence, inspection rating and insurance displayed rather than buried on an About page.
- Speed and tracking of booking clicks and call taps by page.
Judging a quote
Ask six things. Is there a price table by pen type and number of cats, and can I edit it in January. Is booking embedded, and does it collect vaccination and medication notes. Is there a page for the routine and one for requirements. Are the photographs of my pens or bought in. What is the mobile speed target. Whose name are the domain and hosting in. A quote that cannot answer those is a template quote whatever the number says.
Where this sits
Our cattery websites sit in band 3 at a fixed price, with pen photography, the routine page, stated requirements and online booking included, and the wider approach is on the pet business page. If your site is in band 1 or 2 and your July is still booked by voicemail, weigh the rebuild against how many of those callers you never heard from twice.