PawPlacer is a rescue and shelter management platform for animal welfare organizations. This guide answers the questions teams most often ask before creating an account or moving from another system.
Is PawPlacer Really Free?
Yes. PawPlacer provides animal welfare organizations with the complete platform for free. There are no paid feature tiers, per-user platform charges, usage limits, required sales calls, or required demo setup.
An organization can create an account and explore the workspace without booking a demo. If the organization accepts online payments, its chosen payment processor can still charge its own standard processing fees; PawPlacer does not add a platform fee to those transactions.
How Do We Switch From Our Current Tool?
Migration is white-glove and handled by the PawPlacer team. Whether the organization is on a spreadsheet or another platform, PawPlacer takes care of moving the records, recreating the workflows, and setting up the team, so users, workflows, and configuration are ready on the first day the organization logs in.
To start, use the public contact form or email contact@pawplacer.com. Include the current tool, the export formats it can produce, approximate record counts, and the workflows that cannot be interrupted. There is no charge for migration, and it does not require a sales process.
Teams that prefer to move their own data can still do so. PawPlacer's data uploader accepts CSV, XLS, and XLSX files for supported records, including pets and people such as adopters, foster caregivers, and volunteers. During import, the uploader previews the rows, maps source columns to PawPlacer fields, and identifies exact or partial matches. Optional AI mapping can suggest pet-column matches, and the team reviews the mapping and validation results before anything is saved.
How Does Petfinder Sync Work?
PawPlacer publishes eligible pets to Petfinder from the pet records the team already maintains. Status and public-visibility rules control which pets are eligible. The preview validates required listing data before each manual or scheduled synchronization, so blocked records can be corrected before upload.
The integration uses Petfinder FTP credentials, which are different from a Petfinder website login. Administrators manage the connection from Settings > Listing Integrations, review the preview, correct validation issues, and start a manual sync or enable scheduled synchronization.
Only information intended for a public pet listing is included. Eligible data can include the pet's name, species, breed, sex, age, size, status, description, adoption details, public photos, and the organization or contact details required by the feed.
See Petfinder Integration for connection, validation, scheduling, and troubleshooting details.
Is Our Rescue's Data Safe?
PawPlacer scopes private workspace data to the organization account and checks authorization near protected data operations. Roles and permissions limit what each team member can view or change. Public listings and forms expose only the information the organization intentionally publishes.
PawPlacer does not share user data for advertising, data brokerage, or third-party marketing and does not serve ads inside the product. Service providers receive only the data needed to operate the platform, and public pet listings are shared with GetBuddy according to the organization's visibility settings. Optional AI features such as matching and descriptions start off and are organization-controlled. The Data Uploader's AI column mapping runs automatically and sends unmatched column headers and form field labels, not row data, to OpenAI.
Organizations can export their core records. Team owners remain responsible for assigning appropriate roles, removing access when someone leaves, protecting account credentials, and avoiding secrets or unnecessary private information in public forms.
See the Security page for the current plain-language commitments and technical controls.
Can We See a Demo or Ask About a Feature?
Yes. Use the public demo to explore a representative PawPlacer workspace, or book a call for a guided conversation. A demo is optional and is not required before signup.
PawPlacer covers pet records, medical care, adoptions, foster and volunteer management, forms, documents, reporting, public profiles, website widgets, Petfinder publishing, events, transports, tasks, donations, permissions, imports, exports, and developer integrations. Browse the feature catalog and Documentation for current details.
Feature availability and behavior can change as PawPlacer improves. When this guide or the linked documentation does not answer a specific policy, edge case, implementation detail, or future-feature question, email contact@pawplacer.com. The team will confirm rather than ask the sales assistant to guess.