FAQs

PawPlacer is a modern pet management platform built specifically for non-municipal animal shelters, fosters, and rescue organizations. We streamline operations with features like pet tracking, adoption management, foster partnerships, volunteer coordination, task management, and much more. Every feature we build comes from direct feedback from shelters and fosters, ensuring PawPlacer actually meets the real needs of animal welfare organizations.

Absolutely! PawPlacer includes a free forever plan with access to all features, limited only by the number of in-care pets, users, and task boards. Pets that have been adopted, transferred, or otherwise moved out of your care don't count toward your limit. It's perfect for small shelters, individual fosters, or anyone wanting to try out the platform.

Our pricing is low on purpose. PawPlacer is built by a small team with direct animal welfare experience, modern infrastructure, and no municipal-contract overhead. We keep costs focused on product development and support, so small shelters, foster networks, and local rescues can use capable software without enterprise pricing.

No hidden or per-pet fees, ever. Cancel anytime without penalty. After canceling, you'll have read-only access to your data. Reactivate your plan to regain full access. You can also export your data at any time, including after cancellation, and we encourage you to reach out. We'll create a custom export formatted exactly how you need it, for free. For the developers out there: we know SQL inside and out. For everyone else: this means you can ask for any combination of data and we'll provide it in a clean, easy-to-use spreadsheet. From the exports page in settings, you can export a richly formatted CSV, XLSX, or XLS file with all of your pet data.

No problem! Unlike many websites that load everything on your device, PawPlacer does most of the heavy lifting on our servers first, then sends you only what's needed. This means your device doesn't have to process or download as much, and pages load quickly, even on older devices or slow internet. Check out our technical FAQs for more details.

Yes! Set default fees by age and species or customize per pet. Enable temporary discounts for events. We never take a percentage of your adoption fees, ever. You choose which payment methods to accept, from PayPal to Venmo to Bitcoin, and keep 100% of the proceeds. We also offer a donation feature for supporters who want to contribute directly to your organization.

Yes! We have no-code widgets you can add to your site to let potential adopters, fosters, and volunteers view your pets and/or apply and donate directly. We also offer a fully documented and heavily-typed PawPlacer SDK on npm for developers who want to work with pets, adopters, fosters, adoption fees, contracts, and custom fields. REST APIs are available for those who prefer a more manual approach. Grab a key from Settings → SDK & API and you'll be ready to ship.

No. While adoption fees are permitted, selling pets is strictly prohibited. PawPlacer supports legitimate shelter and foster adoption processes only. Puppy mills, backyard breeders, and other unethical practices are not allowed and will immediately result in account closure and subscription cancellation. Zero exceptions to this policy.

No. We will never remove our free plan. In the future, we may increase prices on other plans to better reflect the value we provide. However, existing customers will be grandfathered into their current rate for as long as they keep their plan. If you're signed up today, you lock in your price permanently.

PawPlacer was built by organization volunteers and tech professionals who care deeply about improving animal welfare. Unlike corporate-owned or VC-backed companies, we answer to our users, not outside investors. We focus on practical organization needs, responsive product development, and fair costs.

Yes. You can import pets, adopters, fosters, and volunteers from CSV, XLSX, or XLS files. The uploader maps matching headers, helps review partial matches, supports custom fields, and can suggest pet column mappings with AI when that setting is enabled. It does not automatically import every historical record type, such as medical timeline entries or documents.

Absolutely. Create custom forms for adoptions, fosters, volunteers, and partners with our form builder. Add any field type and set required responses. All terms are fully customizable in settings.

PawPlacer is a mobile-responsive web platform accessible from any device with an internet connection. This ensures you always have the latest features without managing separate apps. Add a shortcut to your home screen for easy access. With modern web technology, the experience is nearly identical to a native app. Thanks to smart caching, you can still view most of your data even without a connection. Web push notifications are coming soon for devices that support them.

At PawPlacer, our focus isn't on competing. It's on serving. We want to give shelters, fosters, and rescues a new tool to manage their operations using UIs and methods that they are comfortable with. We're grateful to platforms like Shelterluv and Buzz for blazing the trail; PawPlacer couldn't have existed during the many years they have been serving this community. We see ourselves as friendly peers in the same mission, not opponents, and we're excited to keep learning, innovating, and contributing alongside them, all in service of helping animals find homes.

PawPlacer started as a project to serve a community we care about. We keep costs low with modern infrastructure, a remote team, careful hiring, and growth through community support. That lets us put more of our budget into product development and support.

PawPlacer is here to stay. We have substantial capital available to ensure continued development and growth. Our lean, efficient approach keeps costs low while allowing us to continually improve the platform. We're committed to keeping PawPlacer affordable, scalable, and evolving based on the needs of shelters and fosters, now and for the long haul.

No. PawPlacer provides organization management software only. We don't take in, house, foster, or transport pets. Contact local organizations directly for these services.

Absolutely. PawPlacer is built to scale with your organization, no matter how large. We use modern cloud infrastructure, proper database design, and efficient code to keep common workflows fast and reliable on any device. We also stress-tested the platform with 1 million pets in a real-world scenario, and it handled the workload smoothly.

We believe features like AI-assisted imports, full exports, flyer design, and custom forms are useful for most organizations, not just large teams with large budgets. We include them because PawPlacer is meant to reduce operational strain, not create another expensive add-on list.

Never. We believe in clear, upfront pricing. The only payments we collect are subscription fees for small, medium, and large organization plans. We never take a cut of your donations or adoption fees.

PawPlacer keeps our own account data collection small: we require an email address for login, and names are optional. Organizations control what they collect in their own forms, applications, pet records, notes, documents, donations, and volunteer workflows. We never sell user data, broker user data, serve ads inside PawPlacer, or use rescue records for third-party marketing. We disclose data only to the subprocessors needed to operate the service, such as Supabase, Vercel, Stripe, Resend, Google Maps, and OpenAI when optional AI features are enabled. For payments, we don't handle card data directly; Stripe does. Optional AI features are organization-controlled and start turned off. We also offer data export options so you can keep local backups anytime. Review our security page for the technical deep-dive.

No. We intentionally steer clear of municipal contracts to stay fast and flexible. Government partnerships often come with slow procurement cycles and broad requirements that can drive up costs. By working directly with shelters and fosters, we stay responsive and focused on practical day-to-day needs.

PawPlacer is built by a small, dedicated team of developers, designers, and organization volunteers who understand shelter needs firsthand. Our support staff handles most inquiries, with developers and leadership available for technical discussions or upon request. We typically respond within 6 hours during business hours (8AM-8PM EST) and within 24 hours maximum, 7 days a week. Everyone contributes across multiple areas to ensure PawPlacer truly serves the organization community.

PawPlacer runs on React, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Supabase, and Vercel. The app uses React Router 7 SSR for fast page loads, with account-scoped database functions and practical indexing to keep common workflows responsive. The UI is built with accessible shared components. Payments flow through Stripe, emails through Resend, and optional AI features, such as pet biographies, matching explanations, and column mapping, are powered by OpenAI. Matching uses a lightweight shortlist before AI scoring so we do not score every possible pair.

No. PawPlacer does not sell user data, broker user data, serve ads inside the product, or use shelter, adopter, foster, volunteer, donor, or pet records for third-party marketing. Organizations own and control their workspace content; public listings, forms, widgets, and donation pages are public only when an organization chooses to publish them. PawPlacer account data is minimal, cookies are used for security, session protection, preferences, core functionality, and non-ad product analytics, and private records are protected through account-scoped access controls. You can read the details on our security, terms, privacy, and cookie policy pages.