Starter
Up to 75 bookings per month
Every feature and team access included, with SMS reminders (50 credits a month).
£19/mo
Barkway vs ShakeYourTail
Barkway vs ShakeYourTail. Both are built for groomers. The limits sit in very different places.
ShakeYourTail has a long-running grooming product with free and low-cost entry tiers. Barkway takes a newer workflow-led approach and puts its limits on monthly bookings rather than clients, users or feature access.
Barkway is designed around the working diary while keeping the dog, client, payment and follow-up context attached.Comparison checked 1st October 2026
At a glance
Compare the things that actually change what you pay.
ShakeYourTail ranges from a free plan to £45/month, with limits on clients, users and features depending on tier. Barkway ranges from £19 to £39/month and keeps team access and core product capability included while monthly booking limits change.
Entry price
Barkway
£19/month
ShakeYourTail
£0/month Free; £15/month Core
Primary limits
Barkway
75 / 150 / 300 monthly bookings
ShakeYourTail
Free: 100 clients and 1 user; Core: unlimited clients but 1 user; higher tiers expand users and features
Team access
Barkway
Included across plans
ShakeYourTail
1 user on Free/Core; 5 on Business; unlimited on Enterprise
Online booking
Barkway
Included across plans
ShakeYourTail
Listed from Business at £35/month
Support
Barkway
Included across plans
ShakeYourTail
Pricing table lists support from Business at £35/month
SMS credits
Barkway
50 / 100 / 150 per month
ShakeYourTail
0 / 100 / 200 / 300 by tier
Payments and deposits
Barkway
Stripe card payments and deposits on every plan
ShakeYourTail
Payments & deposits from Core (£15) via Lopay and SumUp
Reporting and analytics
Barkway
Included in the core product
ShakeYourTail
Listed from Business at £35/month
Multi-site
Barkway
Custom for multi-location/high-volume setups
ShakeYourTail
Enterprise at £45/month
Trial
Barkway
30-day free trial, no card required
ShakeYourTail
30-day free trial
Pricing & limits
Compare the plan you would actually need, not just the cheapest number on the page.
Barkway
Pricing changes with monthly booking volume.
Growth
Most popularUp to 150 bookings per month
Every feature and team access included, with SMS reminders (100 credits a month).
£29/mo
Professional
Up to 300 bookings per month
Every feature and team access included, with SMS reminders (150 credits a month).
£39/mo
ShakeYourTail
Published pricing checked 1st October 2026.
Free
A limited free starting point.
£0/month
- 100 clients
- 1 user/resource
- Email reminders
- No online booking or support listed
Core
Low-cost single-user plan.
£15/month
- Unlimited clients
- 1 user/resource
- 100 SMS credits
- No online booking or support listed
Business
The tier where most business features appear.
£35/month
- 5 users/resources
- Online booking
- Support, marketing and reporting
- 200 SMS credits
Enterprise
Top published tier.
£45/month
- Unlimited users/resources
- Multi-site management
- 300 SMS credits
- 4 campaign credits
Which one fits?
There should be a good reason to choose either.
Choose Barkway if…
- You want team access, online booking, reporting and support without choosing a higher feature tier.
- You would rather scale pricing by booking volume than by client, user and feature limits.
- You want Barkway’s newer Smart Scheduler™, connected pet history and recall workflow.
Choose ShakeYourTail if…
- A £0 or £15 entry point is more important than having the wider feature set immediately.
- You want a long-established grooming platform with its existing marketing and campaign tooling.
- Its published £45 Enterprise tier maps neatly to the multi-site and unlimited-user setup you need.
The trade-offs
The useful differences show up in the working day.
01 · Entry price
ShakeYourTail can start cheaper, but the useful comparison is the tier you will actually run.
Its Free and £15 Core tiers are single-user and don’t list online booking or support. Those arrive on Business at £35. Barkway starts at £19 with its core feature set and team access included.
02 · Limits
Barkway caps bookings. ShakeYourTail mixes client, user and feature limits.
That makes the products easy to compare once you know the shape of your business. A solo low-volume groomer may value ShakeYourTail’s cheaper entry; a team may care more about when users and online booking unlock.
03 · Maturity versus approach
This one is as much about product philosophy as price.
ShakeYourTail has been serving pet businesses for years. Barkway is intentionally more opinionated about the grooming workflow, with connected records, recall and scheduling designed as one modern working-day experience.
How we compare
Checked 1st October 2026
We build Barkway, so this isn’t an independent review. Competitor prices and limits are taken from the companies’ own published pages and we deliberately include reasons you might prefer them. If something changes, we want to correct it.
Questions
The bits worth checking twice.
Is ShakeYourTail cheaper than Barkway?+
At entry level, yes: ShakeYourTail publishes a free plan and a £15 Core plan while Barkway starts at £19/month. However, ShakeYourTail’s pricing table lists online booking, support, marketing, analytics and reporting from its £35 Business plan.
Does ShakeYourTail limit users?+
Yes, by published tier: 1 user/resource on Free and Core, 5 on Business and unlimited on Enterprise. Barkway includes team access across its published plans.
Which plan do I need for ShakeYourTail online booking?+
ShakeYourTail’s public pricing table lists online booking on Business at £35/month and Enterprise at £45/month, not on Free or Core.
Which has the higher SMS allowance?+
ShakeYourTail publishes 100, 200 and 300 SMS credits on Core, Business and Enterprise. Barkway includes 50, 100 and 150 by plan.
More comparisons
Still weighing it up?
Barkway vs TuftTwo grooming-specific products with very different pricing and marketplace models.Barkway vs Savvy PetCompare Barkway’s booking-volume pricing with Savvy Pet’s feature-based tiers.Barkway vs BookdSame £19 starting price. Barkway includes 75 bookings a month; Bookd’s Starter includes 20.Barkway vs BooksyGrooming-specific software versus a broad beauty marketplace and booking platform.Barkway vs Square AppointmentsA grooming-specific workspace versus a powerful general appointments and payments ecosystem.
Still deciding?
Put a real grooming week through Barkway.
Use your own diary, clients and dogs. The difference is much easier to judge when the software has to survive a real working day.