Let us get the awkward part out of the way: we make barn management software. This is a guide to choosing barn management software. You should read everything below with that in mind, and you should read every other vendor's comparison page the same way.
What we can promise is this: no invented numbers, no strawman versions of our competitors, and a straight answer to the question most vendors will not touch, which is whether you need software at all.
First: do you actually need software?
Honestly, maybe not yet. A spreadsheet, a paper feed chart, and QuickBooks can genuinely carry a small operation when three things are true:
- One person runs everything. If the same person feeds, schedules, and bills, there is no handoff for information to fall through.
- Under roughly eight horses. Below that size, the admin fits in a quiet hour and the whiteboard stays current.
- Nothing is growing. No new boarders coming, no staff being hired, no second barn on the horizon.
The moment any of those breaks, paper starts to leak. The feed chart is right until the day it is not. The board invoice goes out late because it lives in someone's head. That is usually the moment barns start shopping.
The market, fairly described
You will find a handful of serious products when you search, each emphasizing a different mix of day-to-day barn work.
BarnManager describes a system for horses, boarders, staff, calendars, and billing. Stable Secretary presents its product around records, billing, scheduling, support, and data entry. Hippovibe organizes its feature set around horse data, tasks, health records, and stable management.
Equicty focuses on collaboration for professional and sport stables, including competition and breeding workflows. Stables.co positions itself around boarding operations, moving care through billing and payments with a transaction-based model. EC Pro is especially deep in riding-school operations such as lesson booking, rider eligibility, horse workload, and events.
All six are real products with distinct strengths and models. If you demo one and it fits the way your barn operates, you will be better off than you were on paper.
You will also find horse-owner apps that track one horse beautifully but were never built for a whole boarding operation, and general scheduling tools that know nothing about horses. Those are usually where regret comes from: the tool was good, it just was not built for a barn.
And then there is OnStride™, which is us. We will state our case at the end, briefly.
The seven questions that actually separate the options
Skip the feature checklists. On every demo, ask these:
1. Does it cover the whole loop, or just part of it?
The daily loop of a boarding barn is: care happens, care gets recorded, records become invoices, invoices become money. Many tools do one or two arcs of that loop well. Every gap between tools is a place where you re-enter information, and every manual re-entry is a place where revenue leaks.
2. Can your least technical groom use it?
Not the office manager. The weekend feeder. If the answer involves a training manual, the whiteboard will quietly come back within a month, and then you are paying for software while running on paper.
3. Does everyone get the right account and the right view?
Staff, trainers, riders, owners, and boarders do not need the same information or controls. Ask whether each person can have their own account, with access based on what they actually need to see and do. Then ask to see those views on a phone, including the boarder experience.
4. Does billing handle the messy reality?
Recurring board is the easy part. Ask about the hard parts: the mid-month blanket change that should be billed, the boarder who stopped paying, partial payments, autopay enrollment, and what happens when a card fails.
5. Is there a real mobile experience?
Barn work does not happen at a desk. If the software only truly works on a laptop in the office, the aisle-to-office gap stays open, and that gap is where information dies.
6. What does leaving look like?
An honest vendor will tell you how to get your data out and explain its cancellation terms without dodging the question. Clear terms and a usable data export matter more than a headline discount.
7. What does it cost at YOUR barn's size?
Per-horse fees, per-user fees, flat rates, and transaction fees all favor different operations. Model the price at your actual head count and payment volume, then at the size you want in two years. For a membership, separate the included services from software access so you compare the complete value rather than one headline number.
Bring your own chaos to the demo
Do not watch a canned demo politely. Bring your three ugliest real scenarios: the hard-keeper's feed changes, last month's messiest invoice, the boarder who texts at 9 PM. Have every vendor walk through them end to end.
Where OnStride™ fits
Our case, stated plainly: OnStride™ was built to cover the entire loop in one system: horse records and feed plans, scheduling, billing with Stripe autopay, accounts for everyone in the barn, team permissions, and mobile access for iPhone and Android that keeps the barn aisle and the office on the same page. The Early Adopter Club is $300 a month for barns with up to 100 horses, with no setup fee. Enterprise plans are custom for larger operations, multiple locations, custom branding, white-labeled solutions, or more complex needs. Setup is guided, and launch timing depends on the size and complexity of the operation.
What we will not claim: that we are right for everyone. If you need deep horse-show entry management or you are a one-person, four-horse barn happy on paper, tell us on the call and we will say so.
Compare us against your barn, not a checklist.
Bring your real scenarios to a 45-minute walkthrough and judge for yourself.
The short version
- Small, stable, one-person barns can genuinely stay on paper. Growth is the trigger to switch.
- Demo at least two tools. BarnManager, Stable Secretary, Hippovibe, Equicty, Stables.co, EC Pro, and OnStride™ each frame barn management differently; judge them against your real operation.
- Judge the whole loop: care to record to invoice to money, on a phone, by your least technical staff member.
- Prefer clear cancellation terms and a usable data-export answer over any headline discount.
- Bring your ugliest real scenarios to every demo and make the software walk them.