Rescue software, priced by the adoption $1
Every dollar and every hour, back to the animals.
One dollar for each adoption and nothing else: the first year free, no monthly fee, and the phone system, the shared inbox, the website and volunteer shifts included. With Stripe, your adopters can even cover the dollar.
- No contract
- Card, cash, check, Zelle, Cash App or Venmo
- Export everything, any time
- Never a tip for us from your adopters
A phone system, a website, volunteer scheduling, a newsletter tool.
- RescueConsole, this year
- $0
- RescueConsole, from the second year
- $96 a year
- ShelterLuv, with the tools it replaces
- $2,064 a year
- Its card fees over Stripe’s, 3.4% against 2.9%
- $108
You keep, this year
$2,064
and $1,968 a year after that
Your adopters also cover $670 a year of card fees, so each fee reaches you whole.
that’s vet care, not software
See all of them, side by side · prices as of October 15, 2026
- $1 an adoption
- First year free
- No monthly fee
- Your data exports any time
- A full API
- Calls, texts and WhatsApp on your number
Transparent pricing
A year of 240 adoptions, priced every way.
Each figure is the company’s published price, or the one in a contract it signed, read on and applied to your numbers. Where a flat fee comes out lower than ours at your size, it says so.
dated, sourced, no fine print ↓
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RescueConsole
$1 an adoption, the first year free; your adopters cover it when they pay by card through Stripe
$0, then $96
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ShelterLuv
$2 an adoption, plus $18 for each of 82 adoptions short of 94% paid through its checkout; card fees 3.4% + 30¢
$2,064 a year
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Pawdango
$2.50 a completed adoption
$600 a year
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Animal Shelter Manager
$395 a year
$395 a year
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Pet Friend
$25 a month for a rescue
$300 a year
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RescueGroups.org
By service: website $100 a year (with data management and online forms), local voicemail $150 a year
$250 a year
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Free tools
$0. Ask the five questions below.
$0 a year
ask these out loud
Free is a price, too. Ask a free tool:
- Who pays you, and will you be here in two years?
- Do you sell, share or study our data, or our adopters’?
- Must our payments run through your merchant account, and at what fee?
- Do you ask our adopters for a tip, or a fee, for yourselves?
- Do you show our adopters anybody’s offers?
Sources, read on October 15, 2026
- ShelterLuv, “Shelterluv Pricing and What it Includes” ($2 an adoption; card fees 3.4% + $0.30)
- ShelterLuv’s ordering document, approved by the Sumter County, Florida, Board of County Commissioners on August 23, 2022 (the 94% threshold and $18 an adoption short of it)
- Pawdango on Capterra ($2.50; charged per adoption, which Pawdango’s own site does not publish)
- RescueGroups.org, Service Pricing
- Pet Friend, “Compare” ($25 a month for rescues)
- sheltermanager.com, Pricing
- Stripe, Pricing (2.9% + 30¢ a card payment in the United States)
ShelterLuv’s threshold is counted by the month; the year here assumes your adoptions are spread evenly across it. Its card fees and ours are compared on the same card adoptions, whose 30¢ is the same.
The work, done where it starts.
The Today page lists overdue tasks, each with who has it and how long it has waited. The pointer presses Mark done beside “Pepper: photograph them”, and the task leaves the list with a note that it was marked done.
Today and the Inbox
Everything waiting on somebody, with the button that deals with it.
Overdue vaccines, a reply owed, photos for the website: who has each, how long it has waited, and Mark done without opening anything.
Recorded in the demo rescue, Contoso, as it happened.
Pepper’s record: her status, days in care, what is due today and her weight. The pointer presses Weight under Quick log, types 18.6 pounds and saves, and the record’s weight changes to 18.6 lb, dated today.
One record, intake to home
Her whole story on one page, from the kennel or a phone.
Status, days in care, what is due today and the medical record, with a note, a photo or a weight logged in one tap. The cage card’s code opens it.
Recorded in the demo rescue, Contoso, as it happened.
The list of applications. The pointer opens Noor Haddad’s, and the page moves down to This home and these animals: Biscuit’s needs against her answers, marked fine, check (there is a cat at home) and conflict (Biscuit should not be alone as long as this home says).
Applications
Each application checked against what the animal needs.
Her placement notes against the household’s answers: fine, check or a conflict, before anybody books a meet. The applicant’s messages sit on the same page.
Recorded in the demo rescue, Contoso, as it happened.
The list of shifts with how many places each role has filled. The pointer opens the week view, moves to the next week, and opens Sign up, where a volunteer sees the shifts and roles open to them, each with a Sign up button.
Volunteering
Shifts that fill themselves, inside your rules.
Volunteers book the places they are approved for. You see where the gaps are, and sign off the hours where they were worked.
Recorded in the demo rescue, Contoso, as it happened.
The shared inbox. The pointer opens a voicemail, written out with a button to play it, then a text thread with Dana Whitfield, and types a reply to go by text from the rescue’s number: “Thursday at 10 is perfect. See you both then!”
Calls, texts, WhatsApp and email
Your counselors never call from their own phones again.
Calls and voicemail on the rescue’s number, texts and WhatsApp in the same shared inbox as the email, each threaded to the person and the animal.
Recorded in the demo rescue, Contoso, as it happened.
Reports. The pointer opens two ready-made reports in turn: the animals in care, counted by species and split by status, and intake by month and type. Each is drawn as a bar chart.
Reports you build
The figures your board asks for, without a spreadsheet.
Pick any list, group it, chart it, and print it, save a PDF or open it in Excel. Put it on a schedule and it arrives on the first of the month.
Recorded in the demo rescue, Contoso, as it happened.
Included in the dollar
What the others charge extra for, or don’t do.
everything below is included ↓
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Phone, voicemail, texts and WhatsApp
Counselors call and text from the rescue’s number, never their own, and every call lands in the shared inbox.
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Volunteers and shifts
They book themselves inside your rules, check in from their phone and tick what they did; you sign off the hours.
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Email from your address, or ours
One shared inbox per address, every reply threaded to the person and the animal it is about.
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Medical records
Vaccines, treatments, exams and what is due, kept from the kennel on a phone.
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Housing and fosters
Who is in which kennel, which foster homes have room, and what each one takes.
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Reports you build
Any list, grouped and charted, emailed to your board on a schedule.
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Transports
Runs between rescues, with the seats booked and paid for and the paperwork with them.
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A pet food pantry
Households, limits and partner agencies, counted for Shelter Animals Count.
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Surrender requests, shared
Pass a surrender to another rescue that takes that kind of animal near the owner, with the owner’s consent.
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Transfers that keep your view
Send an animal to a partner organization without losing your record of it.
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A website, basic to EmDash
Your animals on your own site, from a simple page to a full CMS on EmDash.
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A public registry
A safety registry rescues share, and a microchip lookup anybody can use to find a pet’s rescue.
Questions to ask any vendor. Our answers.
Ask the same of whoever else you are looking at, and write their answers in the margin.
- Do our counselors have to call and text from their own phones?
- No. Calls, voicemail, texts and WhatsApp run on the rescue’s own number, into the shared inbox.
- Must our payments run through your merchant account? If so, what is the fee?
- No. Card payments go through your own Stripe account, into your own bank, at Stripe’s standard 2.9% + 30¢, and we add nothing. Cash, checks, Zelle, Cash App and Venmo cost the same dollar an adoption. (ShelterLuv’s card fee is 3.4% + 30¢, and its ordering document adds $18 for each adoption short of 94% paid through its checkout in a month.)
- Can our adopters cover the $1, and the card fee?
- Yes, both, if you choose. When an adopter pays by card through Stripe, the dollar can be added to the adoption fee as its own line, and that adoption comes off your bill. Stripe’s card fee can be covered too, and your rescue chooses how: the adopter always covers it, the adopter is offered a box ticked for them, or you pay it.
- Can we ask adopters for a donation at checkout?
- Yes, and all of it is yours. An adopter can add a gift on top of the fee, paid into your rescue’s Stripe account, and we take none of it. You can ask them to cover Stripe’s card fee too.
- Do you ask our adopters for a tip, or show them offers?
- Never. Nothing on your checkout is for us. It asks for a gift to your rescue, or for the card fee to be covered, only when you switch those on, and afterward it tells the adopter how to register the pet’s microchip.
- Can we bring our records with us?
- Yes. Import a spreadsheet of animals, people, donations, events, organizations or pantry households: say which column is which, check the whole file before anything is saved, and it goes in all at once or not at all. From RescueGroups.org or ShelterLuv your animals come straight across, and from RescueGroups your people, journal entries, events and filled-in forms too.
- Can we export everything, any time, without asking you?
- Yes. From Settings, whenever you like: every list, with your own custom fields, as a CSV file.
- Is there a full API?
- Yes. What the app does, your code can do, with keys you scope to what they may read or change.
- How do you make money, and will you be here?
- A dollar an adoption. We are paid when your animals go home, and we publish what we ship, every day, in the open.
Your data, your code
Everything you can click, your code can call.
A full API with keys you scope to what they may read or change, webhooks for anything that takes an HTTP call, and an export of everything from Settings whenever you like. Moving in, import any spreadsheet, checked before a record is saved, or bring your records straight from RescueGroups.org or ShelterLuv.
$ curl https://contoso.rescueconsole.com/api/animals/animals?status=available \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $RESCUECONSOLE_KEY"
{ "results": [
{ "name": "Biscuit", "species": "dog",
"pet_id": "A00101", "status": "Available for Adoption" }
] }Connects to what you already use
more on the way: see the roadmap →-
StripePayments
Adoption fees, donations and transport seats by card, paid into your own bank.
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TwilioPhone and text
Your rescue’s number: calls, voicemail, texts and WhatsApp, in the shared inbox.
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Your email domainEmail
Mail from your own address, with delivery, opens and bounces on each message.
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Adopt-a-PetListings
Your adoptable animals listed, photos and all, and kept up to date on a schedule.
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SmartTagMicrochips
Register a chip, and check whether it is already registered, from the animal’s record.
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XeroAccounting
Adoption fees and donations into your books, without typing them again.
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MailchimpNewsletters
Your people in an audience, tagged by role, and their unsubscribes brought back.
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Shelter Animals CountReporting
The monthly report, filled from your records.
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monday.comTasks
Your tasks on a monday.com board, kept up to date as they move.
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Zapier and MakeAutomation
Webhooks and the API, for anything else you want connected.
Built and waiting on their vendors before we call them included: AKC Reunite and Petco Love Lost.
Send these numbers to your board.
Your figures, the arithmetic and today’s prices with their sources, emailed to you and to whoever else should see them: the treasurer, the director, the board. We keep a copy so a person can answer their questions, and each address you add gets that one email.
treasurers love this part →
Built in the open.
What changed, on the day it changed, and what is next, on a public changelog and roadmap. Paid by the adoption, so we are paid when your animals go home.