The pet parent
One account for every pet in the household.
Petworking vs. Generic ecommerce
A generic store sells products. Petworking knows who they are for.
General commerce platforms are excellent at carts, catalogues and checkout. What they do not hold is the pet: the species, the recurring needs, the trusted businesses, and the care network behind every order.
Written by Petworking. Last checked 15 September 2026. Shopify plans and pricing.
Already using Generic ecommerce? We will help move your data.
One platform. More of the pet world.
One animal, one lifeHere is every place one animal is cared for in a year, and the stretch of it Generic ecommerce is built for.
Vet
Grooming
Training
Walking
Sitting
Boarding
Food
Licences
Pickup
All nine, one recordScope, not quality. A short bar is a product that chose a lane and is probably excellent in it. We are arguing that the animal does not live in one lane.
| Capability |  | Generic ecommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Both of us do this | ||
| Ecommerce | ✓ | ✓ |
| Inventory | ✓ | ✓ |
| Subscriptions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Payments | ✓ | ✓ |
| And then there is the rest of the pet world | ||
| Pet profilesYou know the animal, not just the buyer. | ✓ | – |
| Species-specific customer dataA 40 kg dog and a gecko are not the same customer. | ✓ | – |
| Pet PassportThe record travels with the animal, between every business. | ✓ | – |
| Service bookingSell the groom and the bag of food in one place. | ✓ | – |
| Pet-care marketplaceDiscovery from people already looking for pet care. | ✓ | – |
| Professional networkConnected to the vets and groomers your customers already use. | ✓ | – |
| Pet-specific recurring careA refill every six weeks is a care pattern, not a subscription. | ✓ | – |
| Pet licences and permitsKept where the renewal reminder can find them. | ✓ | – |
Checked against Generic ecommerce’s own public product pages, help centre and pricing documentation on 15 September 2026. A tick means they publish it, a tilde means they publish something close with a caveat we have stated, and a dash means we found nothing. Vendors change fast: send us anything we have got wrong and we will fix it and say so.
A generic store plus its own payment rate is cheaper than our paid plans at any volume, and cheaper than the free plan past about $980 a month in card volume. What it does not carry is the animal, the species, the booking or the record behind the order.
What you save switching from Generic ecommerce
Plan against plan: your Petworking tier plus payment processing, against a named Generic ecommerce tier plus platform card processing at 2.8% online. Both sides have tiers, so pick the two that actually match your operation. The figure is whatever it is, including when it goes the other way.
Your Petworking plan
Their comparable planMatched to your plan. Change it if their tiers line up differently for you.
Petworking Independent$143.00
Generic ecommerce Basic plus its own payments$135.00
$8.00more a month with PetworkingPetworking is the cheaper of the two below about $2,200 a month in card volume, and the more expensive one above it.
What the difference buys
Petworking costs $8.00 more a month here. This is what that difference buys, on top of the software itself.
A consumer marketplacePet parents searching for what you do can find you in Explore and book you there. Practice software runs the business you already have.
The Pet PassportOne record for each animal that leaves with the pet, readable by the vet, groomer or sitter you refer to, so nobody rebuilds the history.
The PetworkYour professional profile, verified credentials and closed-loop referrals, attached to you rather than to whoever employs you.
Every species at species levelFields and husbandry attach to the species, so a ball python and a bearded dragon do not share a care model, and no animal is filed as Other.
No commission on your own clientsThe 7% applies only to a transaction Petworking generated. Everyone you bring or import stays at $0 commission, permanently.
Migration on any planSelf-serve import is free, and we will do it for you from $149. You never have to buy a bigger plan to get help leaving your old system.
If none of that is worth $8.00 a month to you, the cheaper line item is the right answer, and we would rather you worked that out here than after switching.
Independent plan fee$29.00
Payment processing, 3.80% of $3,000$114.00
Marketplace commission$0.00 on your own clients
Petworking Independent, total$143.00
Generic ecommerce Basic plan fee$51.00
Card processing, 2.80% of $3,000$84.00
Generic ecommerce Basic, total$135.00
Both sides exclude per-booking amounts: Petworking's $0.30 a transaction, and any fixed per-transaction charge on the other side. Petworking's 7% marketplace commission is excluded because it applies only to transactions Petworking generates, and is $0 on clients you bring yourself. Generic ecommerce Basic: Third-party pricing pages. To verify. Shopify Basic is listed at $51 Canadian a month, or about $37 on annual billing, with domestic online card processing quoted at 2.8% to 2.9% plus 30 cents depending on the source. Corroborated across several third-party pricing pages, not checked against Shopify directly. To verify. Most of these vendors publish in US dollars while Petworking prices in Canadian dollars, which moves the crossover once converted. Vendor pricing changes, so check it before you decide.
The calculator compares the reference subscription and online processing rate with your selected Petworking plan. The broader difference is the animal, the species, the booking and the care record behind the order. Verify current vendor pricing before deciding.
A generic commerce platform sees an order.
Petworking can understand the pet, the species, the recurring need, the trusted businesses, the buying history and the care network behind it. A 12 kg bag every six weeks for a senior dog on a prescription diet is not a repeat purchase. It is a care pattern, and it belongs next to the vet record that explains it.
The Pet Passport
Records, licences, permits and certifications the pet parent carries between businesses.
Their professionals
Vet, groomer, trainer, walker, sitter. Records, bookings and progress in one place.
Commerce and pickup
Retail, subscriptions and payments, collected from the business that sold it. Delivery coming soon.
The other-pet retail economy is real
C$6.7B
in Canadian pet-food retail sales in 2024
C$53.5M
fish food, alongside C$44.7M bird and C$23.8M small-mammal and reptile food
12.6M
Canadian pets that are not dogs or cats
Retail and population figures from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Pet food trends in Canada, 2025. Data year 2024.
Software should not create another job for your team.
Petworking Founding Pros are set up by the people building the product, not handed a knowledge base.
Founder-led onboarding
White-glove setup
Data migration assistance
Service and pricing setup
Staff setup
Customer onboarding assistance
Launch materials
Direct product feedback access
Your business should not have to figure out the platform alone.
Pet care is bigger than dogs and cats.
12.6 million Canadian pets are not dogs or cats. Petworking is being built for the whole pet world.
DogsCatsRabbitsBirdsReptilesFishSmall mammalsAmphibiansExoticsMore
One platform should not require every animal outside the two largest categories to become “Other.”
Canada had approximately 29.76 million pets in 2024, of which roughly 12.58 million were neither dogs nor cats. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Pet food trends in Canada, 2025. Data year 2024.
Switching should not mean starting over.
Petworking is being designed to import your existing business data rather than forcing you to rebuild it manually. We can migrate or preserve:
- Customers
- Pets
- Pet records
- Services
- Pricing
- Staff
- Bookings
- Appointments
- Memberships
- Packages
- Subscriptions
- Products
- Inventory
- Transactions
- Notes
- Documents
- Custom fields
If your current software can export it, our goal is to ingest it.
Talk to us about migrationFounding businesses receive white-glove migration support.
Ready to bring your business into the network?
Founding 25 businesses receive their first location on Multi-site, our highest tier, free for life. Transaction fees still apply at Multi-site rates.