BarnBeacon alternative: how Horsepower compares
BarnBeacon aims at US boarding barns with complicated, variable billing — multi-service invoicing, an owner-facing portal for horse records, and AI-assisted health monitoring that flags changes from logged data over time. It offers a 30-day trial, though it does not publish pricing. Horsepower handles straightforward board invoicing — sent from the app with a pay-online link and an overdue reminder — and is built around the shared running of a barn: horse records, vet & farrier history with due-date reminders, the shared calendar, feed plans, field maps & turnout, riders, team messaging, versioned member forms and practitioner logins — with native iOS and Android apps, GPS ride tracking, published pricing and a free tier for yards with up to three horses.
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Feature comparison
| Feature | Horsepower | BarnBeacon |
|---|---|---|
| Horse records (passport, microchip, breeding) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-animal types (Horse / Dog / Cat / your own) | ✓ | – |
| Vet / farrier / dentist / physio history with file attachments | ✓ | ✓ |
| Treatment frequency & due-date reminders (auto-rolls on add) | ✓ | ~ |
| Shared calendar (month & day views) | ✓ | – |
| Per-horse Calendar tab with colour-coded visit chips | ✓ | – |
| Rider tracking with arena bookings | ✓ | – |
| Saved arenas & hacking routes per yard | ✓ | – |
| Feed room inventory & per-horse plans (big & small scoop) | ✓ | – |
| One-tap "Fed" log + recent feeding history per horse | ✓ | – |
| Field map & turnout plan | ✓ | – |
| Per-field resting timer & history | ✓ | – |
| Recurring yard jobs with green / orange / red status & completion log | ✓ | – |
| Illustrated How To guides with searchable steps & images | ✓ | ✗ |
| Important horse notes pinned to the horse profile | ✓ | – |
| Weight tracking over time | ✓ | – |
| Per-horse rug size (3'6" – 7'6", metric or imperial) | ✓ | – |
| Per-horse photo galleries | ✓ | – |
| Document & photo uploads (PDF, .docx, .pages) | ✓ | – |
| Vehicles (lorry / trailer / 4x4) with MOT, insurance & service reminders + per-vehicle log | ✓ | – |
| In-app messaging with smart name disambiguation | ✓ | ~ |
| Versioned member forms (declarations, disclosures) | ✓ | – |
| Multi-type vets / farriers / dentists with their own login | ✓ | – |
| Family groups: switch into a child / partner's account | ✓ | ✗ |
| No-login profiles for children, managed by a family adult | ✓ | ✗ |
| Shareable invite links — no email needed | ✓ | – |
| Loan / livery / transfer between businesses | ✓ | – |
| Multiple yards per business | ✓ | – |
| Multiple businesses on one login | ✓ | – |
| Xero or QuickBooks invoicing — livery & extras sent as invoices, unpaid nudges | ✓ | – |
| Invoices sent from Horsepower itself — PDF, pay-online link, overdue reminder (Pro / Max plans) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Connect to Claude / any MCP-compatible AI for natural-language queries | ✓ | ✗ |
| Import your existing data from other yard apps | ✓ | – |
| Native iOS app | ✓ | – |
| Native Android app | ✓ | – |
| Browser web app | ✓ | ✓ |
| Eight UI languages (EN, FR, DE, ES, IT, PT, NL, PL), metric or imperial units | ✓ | – |
| Free for small yards (up to 3 horses) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Free for invited members no matter the yard size | ✓ | – |
| Your records stay readable forever | ✓ | – |
| Modern cloud stack (Microsoft Azure, 2025-grade) | ✓ | – |
| GPS ride tracking with route, speed and stats per ride | ✓ | ✗ |
| Automatic fall detection notifying the yard + family | ✓ | ✗ |
| Horsepower Plus — £2.99/mo or £29.99/yr family-shared add-on | ✓ | ✗ |
| Free public business page (/business/your-yard) with hero, gallery + booking | ✓ | – |
| Bookable services — visitors request slots online, owner approves | ✓ | – |
| Lesson booking — clients pick a length and a time from what is actually free | ✓ | – |
| Instructor teaching hours, days off and changeover time, with no double-booking | ✓ | – |
| Lessons gated by rider grade, so nobody books above their level | ✓ | – |
| Horse matched on grade and rider weight, with a daily workload cap per horse | ✓ | – |
| AI-generated marketing copy (Claude) for the public business page | ✓ | ✗ |
| 1 GB personal media library shared across the family group | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real-world Mapbox field map with live rider trails + area auto-calc | ✓ | ✗ |
| One-tap satellite imagery on field + ride-tracking maps | ✓ | ✗ |
| Office filing cabinet — every file across the yard grouped by horse / member / treatment / vehicle | ✓ | ✗ |
| Nested file folders scoped per horse, per member or at yard level | ✓ | – |
| PDF first-page thumbnails on every uploaded document | ✓ | – |
| Card payments when clients book — lessons, packages, memberships, entries | ✓ | – |
| No per-booking or transaction fee on top of the card processor's own | ✓ | – |
| Online waivers signed before a client's first booking | ✓ | – |
| Automatic lesson reminders by email and app notification | ✓ | – |
| Lesson packages — credits used automatically as lessons are booked | ✓ | – |
| Memberships with a booking discount and renewal reminders | ✓ | – |
| Show, clinic & camp online entries with class limits | ✓ | – |
| Running order & start times sent to every entrant | ✓ | – |
| Staff rota — shifts planned by person and day | ✓ | – |
| Staff time-off requests & approval | ✓ | – |
| Staff report — rostered hours next to the work each person logged | ✓ | – |
Legend: ✓ included · ~ partial · – not listed (check the vendor's site to confirm).
Why people switch to Horsepower
- Reliability — hosted in Microsoft Azure UK on a 2025-grade cloud stack.
- 30 years of app experience — built by Worldweaver, a UK studio that's been shipping web and mobile software since the dawn of the web.
- Independent & organic — funded by paying customers, not private equity. No investor pressure to raise prices, sell to a roll-up, or shut features behind a Pro Plus Plus tier.
- Free for small yards & members — yards with up to 3 horses pay nothing; invited members are free no matter the yard size.
- Native iOS & Android apps plus a browser web app. Same data, same login.
- Your data stays yours — records stay readable if you cancel.
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BarnBeacon details based on publicly available information at time of writing; verify the current product on the vendor's site.