Stable Manager alternative: how Horsepower compares
If you're looking at alternatives to Stable Manager, here's how Horsepower lines up — built on a 2025 cloud stack, native iOS + Android apps, and funded by paying customers rather than investors. Same yard-management problems, a different app shape: free for yards with up to three horses, in-app messaging keeping the team talking inside the system, and a recurring yard-jobs board that replaces the kitchen-table whiteboard.
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What Stable Manager is good at
Stable Manager covers the core of what a yard needs and has been doing it for a long time: horse records with passport and microchip details, vet and farrier history with due-date reminders, a shared calendar, feed plans, fields and turnout, and apps on both phone platforms. If that's the whole of what your yard does, it does it — and a long-established tool with your history already in it is worth something. This page isn't an argument that it's a bad app; it's a list of what's different, so you can tell whether the difference matters to your yard.
Where the two differ in practice
Everything the team says stays with the horse
The usual shape is an app for the records and WhatsApp for the conversation about them — which means the reason a feed changed lives in a thread nobody can find in six months. Horsepower has in-app messaging with name disambiguation, important notes pinned to the horse's profile, and a recurring yard-jobs board with green / orange / red status, so the day's state is legible without asking anyone.
Riding is part of the record, not a separate app
GPS ride tracking with route, speed and stats, saved arenas and hacking routes per yard, arena bookings, and automatic fall detection that notifies the yard and the rider's family. For yards where a lot of the risk is people out on their own, that's the difference between an app for the office and an app for the yard.
Billing goes somewhere
Livery charges and one-off extras get logged against the right person as they happen and become invoices (sent from Horsepower with a pay-online link, or drafted into Xero or QuickBooks), with overdue ones nudging whoever owes them — rather than becoming an end-of-month reckoning from a notebook.
Paperwork that has to be signed
Rider declarations, livery agreements and insurance disclosures as versioned in-app forms, signed on a phone, with old signatures staying attached to the wording that was actually agreed. See yard forms & templates.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Horsepower | Stable Manager |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | ✓ | ✗ |
| 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 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).
Moving your yard across
The reason most yards stay on a tool they've outgrown is the thought of re-typing everything. Horsepower has a built-in importer that pulls horses, fields, treatments and members over in one go, so you can stand a trial yard up beside your current one and see whether the day-to-day actually runs better before committing. Yards with up to three horses stay free indefinitely; larger yards get the first month of Pro free, and there's no card up front. If it isn't better, you've lost an afternoon rather than your records.
Start free & try the importer · See a real yard running on it
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.
Common questions
Can I move my data across from Stable Manager?
Yes — Horsepower has a built-in importer that brings horses, fields, treatments and members across in one go, so you can try a switch without re-typing your yard or losing your history.
Is there a free Stable Manager alternative?
Horsepower is free for yards with up to three horses, and invited members are free at any yard size. Bigger yards move to a paid plan, priced per yard rather than per person.
What does Horsepower do that Stable Manager doesn't?
The biggest gaps in the table above are GPS ride tracking with fall detection, in-app team messaging, versioned member forms, invoicing for livery and extras, multi-animal types, a per-field resting timer and a free public business page. Stable Manager covers the core records, calendar, feeds and turnout that both apps share.
Do I lose my records if I cancel?
No. Your records stay readable after a cancellation — you're not locked out of your own yard history to force a renewal.
Start free · See other comparisons · Read the best-app guide · What stable management software should cover
Stable Manager details based on publicly available information at time of writing; verify the current product on the vendor's site.