Stables Systems alternative: how Horsepower compares
Stables Systems is built for US lesson and boarding barns. Clients book themselves, pay by card or ACH, sign waivers electronically and get email and SMS reminders. There are lesson packages, camp and clinic registration, monthly tuition and board invoicing with autopay, and QuickBooks Online sync on the top plan. Pricing is flat, from $75 to $399 a month, with no share of payments taken. Horsepower covers the same lesson-barn ground — lessons around instructors' free hours, horses matched on grade, rider weight and daily workload, card payments into your own Stripe, waivers, reminders, packages, memberships, show entries with running orders and a staff rota. It adds native iOS and Android apps, GPS ride tracking and the day-to-day barn, and is free for up to three horses.
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Feature comparison
| Feature | Horsepower | Stables Systems |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | ✓ | – |
| Shareable invite links — no email needed | ✓ | – |
| Loan / livery / transfer between businesses | ✓ | – |
| Multiple yards per business | ✓ | – |
| Multiple businesses on one login | ✓ | – |
| Xero invoicing — livery & extras to draft invoices, overdue 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) | ✓ | – |
| Funded by paying customers, not private equity | ✓ | – |
| 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 | ✓ | ✓ |
| No-login profiles for children, managed by a family adult | ✓ | – |
| 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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Stables Systems details based on publicly available information at time of writing; verify the current product on the vendor's site.