Private Equity Is Killing Pet Services Software

Here is something nobody in the pet services industry is talking about openly: one private equity-backed holding company now controls three of the most widely used kennel and daycare software platforms in the country. And the product is getting worse.

If your software has been buggier lately. If support takes days instead of hours. If your processing fees crept up without explanation. If your old platform just... disappeared. This is why.

It is not a coincidence. It is a strategy.

The Acquisitions

Togetherwork, backed by GI Partners (formerly Aquiline Capital Partners), has been quietly buying up pet services software for nearly a decade.

Combined, these three platforms serve over 7,000 pet care businesses -- roughly 4% of the total addressable market.

That might not sound like much. But these were three of the most established names in the space. And now they are all under one roof. With one set of priorities. Determined by one PE firm.

The Playbook

Private equity firms do not buy software companies because they love the product. They buy them for the recurring revenue, the switching costs, and the captive customer base.

Then they run the playbook:

Step 1: Acquire competitors. Buy the alternatives so customers have fewer places to go. Togetherwork now owns three of them.

Step 2: Kill the weaker products. PetExec is no longer accepting new clients. Visit their website today and you get redirected to Gingr. Thousands of PetExec customers are being forced to migrate -- whether they want to or not.

Step 3: Reduce support costs. No phone support at Gingr. Ticket responses take days. The people who built the product and understood it are gone. They have been replaced by cost centers.

Step 4: Raise fees quietly. Changed payment batching timing without notifying customers. Users reported waiting two or more weeks for answers about where their money was. Processing fees creep up. New charges appear.

Step 5: Extract margin. Every dollar saved on support, every fee increase, every eliminated competitor -- it all flows to the PE firm's returns. Not to your product. Not to your experience.

This is not innovation. It is extraction.

What Customers Are Saying

You do not have to take our word for it. Here is what actual users are posting on G2, the largest software review platform:

"Owned by a venture capital firm that doesn't care about the software or service and just buys out other better softwares and makes them disappear."

-- Gingr review on G2

"Really glitchy... constantly small things that aren't working correctly."

-- Gingr review on G2

"Reports and financial accounting are not accurate, and the company is aware but continues to fall short."

-- Gingr review on G2

"Took 1 month just to set up and customer service was seriously lacking."

-- Gingr review on G2

These are not edge cases. Gingr's ratings have been declining over time. The pattern is unmistakable: as PE ownership deepens, the product deteriorates.

And when customers were blindsided by changed payment batching schedules -- money they depend on to make payroll, to pay rent -- they waited over two weeks with no answers from support.

Two weeks. For a question about where your money is.

The Contrast

If the PE playbook actually worked -- if cutting support and killing competitors was the path to dominance -- then nobody would be gaining ground on Gingr.

But someone is.

MoeGo launched as an independent, product-focused alternative. Their approach is the exact opposite of the PE playbook: invest in the product, invest in support, let the quality speak for itself.

Read that price column again. MoeGo charges more than Gingr. And they are growing twice as fast with a 4.8-star rating.

That tells you everything you need to know. Pet business owners will pay more for software that actually works, that is actually supported, and that is actually getting better over time. The market is not price-sensitive. It is quality-sensitive. And it is trust-sensitive.

MoeGo proves that when investors fund the product instead of extracting from it, everybody wins -- the company, the customers, the industry.

What This Means for Your Business

If you are running your pet business on a Togetherwork-owned platform, you are not a customer. You are a line item on a PE firm's quarterly report.

Your support experience will not improve. Your processing fees will not go down. The bugs in your reporting will not get fixed with any urgency. And if history is any guide, the next acquisition could be the platform your friends use -- the one you were thinking about switching to.

This is not about any single software being "bad." It is about an ownership model that is structurally misaligned with your interests as a small business owner. PE firms optimize for margin extraction on a 5-7 year hold period. You are trying to build something that lasts decades.

Those two goals do not overlap.

The good news: the market is waking up. Independent, product-first alternatives exist. And the switching costs are lower than the incumbents want you to believe.

The question is not whether to move. It is when.