The True Cost of Gingr: What They Don't Put on the Pricing Page

Gingr advertises three pricing tiers between $105 and $155 per month. If you run a pet care facility, that number probably looked reasonable when you signed up. But the number on the pricing page and the number on your annual statement are not the same number. For most facilities, the true cost of running Gingr lands between $3,400 and $5,800 per year — and for businesses processing any real volume of payments, it can climb well past $8,000.

This isn't speculation. These figures come from Gingr's own pricing page, independent payment processing reviews, and reports from actual Gingr customers on Capterra and G2. Here's how the math works.

The Pricing Page

Gingr lists three tiers: Romp ($105/mo), Play ($130/mo), and Stay ($155/mo). Most full-service facilities end up on Stay because the lower tiers don't include features they need. At $155/month, that's $1,860 per year for the base subscription alone. Fair enough.

But the base subscription is just the starting line.

The Full Picture

Once you add the features most facilities actually need to operate — staff scheduling, SMS messaging to clients, and the payment processing fees that Gingr takes on every transaction — the number changes significantly.

Line Item	Annual Cost
Monthly subscription (Stay plan)	$1,800/yr
Staff Scheduler add-on	$180/yr
SMS messaging add-on	$240 - $600/yr
Payment processing markup (100+ bps over interchange)	$1,200 - $3,600/yr
True annual cost	$3,400 - $5,800+/yr

The SMS and processing costs vary by volume, which is why the range is wide. But even at the low end, the true cost is nearly double what the pricing page suggests.

One facility we spoke with confirmed they pay $154/month to Gingr — before processing fees. That's consistent with the Stay plan plus at least one add-on.

The Processing Fee Markup

This is where it gets expensive. Gingr processes payments through their own integrated system and charges between 3.4% and 3.9% on every credit card transaction. An independent review by Merchant Cost Consulting confirmed this range.

For comparison, direct Stripe integration — the payment processor most modern software uses — charges 2.7% + $0.05 for in-person and 2.9% + $0.30 for online.

That difference of 0.5 to 1.2 percentage points may sound small. It is not small. On $15,000 per month in card payments, it looks like this:

Processor	Rate	Monthly Cost	Annual Cost
Gingr (integrated)	~3.5%	$525	$6,300
Direct Stripe	~2.8%	$420	$5,040
Markup cost		$105	$1,260/yr

That's $1,260 per year in processing markup alone — on a modest $15K monthly volume. Facilities doing $25K-30K/month in payments are losing $2,000-3,000 per year to this markup.

There's another option Gingr doesn't offer at all: ACH payments. Direct Stripe ACH runs at 0.8%, capped at $5 per transaction. For recurring charges like daycare packages and boarding deposits, ACH could save facilities hundreds per month. Gingr doesn't support it.

What That Adds Up To

For a mid-size facility processing $15,000/month in payments, here's the full annual picture:

Cost Category	Annual
Gingr subscription + add-ons	$2,200 - $2,400
Gingr processing fees (~3.5% on $180K)	$6,300
Total cost of Gingr	$8,300 - $8,700/yr

That is a long way from "$155 a month."

What Customers Are Saying

The cost is one part. The experience is another. From verified reviews on G2 and Capterra:

"Reports and financial accounting are not accurate." G2 verified review

Multiple reviewers report that Gingr changed its payment batching timing without notifying customers — meaning revenue that used to hit accounts on a predictable schedule suddenly shifted. For a small business managing cash flow week to week, that kind of surprise is a real problem.

Support is another consistent complaint. Gingr does not offer phone support. Multiple users report that email support takes days to respond. When your check-in system goes down on a Monday morning with 40 dogs in the lobby, days is not an acceptable response time.

The Question

None of this means Gingr is a bad product for every business. It does what it does. But if you're a facility owner making decisions about your technology, you should be making those decisions with the real numbers — not the ones on the pricing page.

The real question is whether the software you're paying $8,000+ per year for is actually the best use of that money. Whether the processing markup is justified. Whether you could own your own platform, keep more of your revenue, and get support that picks up the phone.

That's the question we help pet businesses answer.