What you are actually buying
A daycare and boarding site has a harder job than most local business sites. The owner is not buying a haircut. They are deciding where their dog sleeps for nine nights while they are in another country, and they are doing it from a phone, at night, comparing you against three other kennels they have never visited.
So the site has to show the building, explain the routine, state the requirements, and take the booking with the paperwork attached. The bands below are what the market charges to do that.
Band 1: the booking platform's own page
Gingr, PetExec and Revelation Pets all give you a customer portal or a hosted booking page with your name on it. Squarespace and Wix give you a template with a photo of a labrador in a field.
Cost: nothing to low hundreds, on top of the software you already pay for.
You get: somewhere to send existing clients, and a phone number.
You do not get: a domain of your own ranking for "dog boarding" plus your town, photos of your runs and sleeping quarters, requirements stated before anyone rings, an assessment booked as a first step, or your licence rating anywhere a stranger will see it.
Right for: a home boarder in the first year, filling the diary from a village group and word of mouth.
Band 2: a template site, $800 to $2,500
A pet theme with your branding, a gallery, a page about daycare, a page about boarding, and a link out to booking.
You get: something presentable with your name on it.
Usually missing: speed once the gallery loads; daycare rates and boarding rates separated properly, with peak nights and second-dog rates stated; booking embedded rather than linked; an assessment page; vaccination and consent captured before arrival; hosting in your name.
Right for: a kennel that has been full every summer for ten years and wants a business card.
Band 3: a purpose-built daycare and boarding site, $2,500 to $6,000, roughly £2,000 to £4,800
Built around the sequence an anxious owner follows. Facilities photography and video of every area, held as records so one upload feeds the daycare page, the boarding page and the home page. A daily routine page saying what happens hour by hour. Assessment booking as the visible first step for new dogs. Requirements stated plainly, with vaccination and consent collected inside the booking flow. Daycare packages and a boarding calendar wired to Gingr, PetExec, Revelation Pets or Kennel Connection. Your licence and inspection rating displayed. Webcam or daily photo update information. Google reviews near the buttons. Fast on a phone, structured data, tracking, everything in your name.
You get: a site that ranks locally, answers the requirement questions before the phone rings, and gets a new dog to an assessment rather than to a voicemail.
Not usually included: photography, video and copy unless the quote says so.
Right for: an established daycare or kennel with capacity to fill outside the school holidays.
Band 4: multi-site, or boarding with grooming and training, $8,000 and up
Two or more facilities with separate calendars and capacity, or a kennel that also runs grooming, training and a shop, where the site has to sell several services to the same owner without confusing any of them.
After launch
- Hosting: managed WordPress at $20 to $50 a month, or often free on a framework host, in your name.
- Domain: small, annual.
- Kennel software: whatever you already pay Gingr, PetExec, Revelation Pets or Kennel Connection.
- Maintenance: a care plan at a modest monthly fee, which is where rates, peak dates and photos get kept current.
- Photography and video: half a day on site, with owner permission for the dogs, repeated every couple of years or whenever you build.
Where the band 3 money goes
- Facilities photography and video of reception, the assessment space, each play area, the outdoor space and fencing, the sleeping quarters and the quiet room.
- The daily routine page, hour by hour, for a daycare day and for a boarding day, which is the page nervous owners read twice.
- Assessment booking as its own bookable thing, so a new dog has a route in that is not a phone call.
- Requirements and consent stated on the site and collected at booking: vaccinations with expiry, neutering policy, flea and worm treatment, temperament, vet details, emergency authority.
- Packages and the boarding calendar, with capacity, peak nights, minimum stays, deposits and second-dog rates behaving the same on the site as in the software.
- Licence, rating, insurance and reviews where owners look, not on a legal page nobody opens.
- Speed, local search foundation and tracking of booking clicks and call taps by page.
Judging a quote
Ask six things. Are the facilities photographed, or bought in. Is there a daily routine page. Can a new owner book an assessment without ringing. Are vaccination and consent captured in the booking flow. Does the boarding calendar show real availability, or is it a form. 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 dog daycare and boarding kennel websites sit in band 3 at a fixed price, with the facilities shoot, the routine page, assessment booking and the calendar included, and the wider approach is on the pet business page. If your site is in band 1 or 2 and August still fills by phone while February sits half empty, the number to weigh against a rebuild is how many of those callers you never heard from at all.