Looking for a Stable Secretary alternative?
This page is for the person who has just moved a couple of horses — and probably some chickens and a goat — onto a few acres of their own, and has found Stable Secretary while looking for somewhere to keep the records. It's a good product for the barn it was built for. Whether it's the right one for you depends on whether you run a business or a home, so here is the honest comparison.
What’s the same
- Every horse gets a record — identification, health, farrier — with a history you can put in front of a vet.[3]
- Reminders for farrier and health appointments, so the due date finds you instead of the other way round.[3]
- More than one person on the account. They add barn managers, grooms and vets; we allow up to ten people on one property.[3]
- Works on a phone and on a computer.[1]
- A 30-day free trial before anything is charged — both of us.[2]
What’s different
| Stable Secretary | Acreage Guardian | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it's built for | Their own words: "equine barn management software designed to keep your business, billing, and horse health records organized in one place". A barn that runs as a business.[1] | A person with a few animals on her own place, who has never had a paddock to look after before. No business, no clients, no billing. |
| Which animals | Horses. Nothing else is mentioned on their pages.[1] | Horses, ponies and donkeys, plus sheep, goats, alpacas, cattle, pigs and poultry — one record per animal, or one per flock for the chickens. |
| The land the animals stand on | No weather, pasture or property features mentioned on their pages. The horse is the record; the place isn't.[3] | The week is built from your weather. Paddocks are drawn on a map — in Queensland and New South Wales the title boundary is looked up from your address. The plants in your state that hurt your animals are listed by species, with official sources. |
| Fire danger | Not mentioned.[3] | The official fire-danger rating is checked before any burn or flame job is suggested. Live feeds for New South Wales, the United States and Canada; elsewhere a weather-based estimate, and it says so. |
| Billing your clients | Invoices individually or in batches, payments recorded or taken online, with QuickBooks and Stripe integrations. This is a real strength.[3] | None. We don't invoice anyone for you, and won't. |
| How the reminders work | You set reminders for farrier and health appointments.[3] | Each animal has care cycles — worming, farrier, dental, vaccination, drench, shearing, hoof trim — and each one lands on your week and on your phone before it's due. Ticking it writes the history and sets the next one. |
| Price | Four plans, "starting at" $1.99 to $12.00 a month depending on the plan, monthly or annual, 30-day free trial. Invoicing is on the Professional plan.[2] | One plan. US$39 a month, or US$349 a year with three months free. 30 days free with a card up front, nothing charged before day 31, and a 90-day money-back guarantee. |
Who Stable Secretary suits better
- You run a boarding or training barn and need to bill clients. Invoicing and payment tracking are theirs and not ours.[2]
- You keep breeding and competition records — their Professional and Performance plans list both.[2]
- You want a native app from the App Store or Google Play. Ours installs from the browser and never goes through an app store.[1]
Who Acreage Guardian suits better
- You've got horses and chickens and a couple of goats, and you want one app that knows about all of them.
- You'd rather be told. The week arrives, the reminder fires, the fire rating gets checked — nothing waits for you to open a diary.
- The place itself is new to you: the paddocks, the weather, what's poisonous along the fence line. That's the part we're built around.
Try it on your own place
One plan: US$39 a month, or US$349 a year with three months free. 30 days free — card up front, cancel any time before it ends. 90-day money-back guarantee: if it hasn't paid for itself in your first quarter, email us for a full refund.
Sources
Everything said about Stable Secretaryabove comes from these pages, read on the date shown. Their product changes; if a line here is out of date, their site is right and we’ll fix ours.
- https://www.stablesecretary.com/ — read 2026-09-14. Home page. Describes the product as equine barn management for business, billing and horse health records; iOS, Android and web; 30-day free trial; QuickBooks and Stripe integrations. No weather, pasture or property features mentioned.
- https://www.stablesecretary.com/pricing — read 2026-09-14. Pricing page. Four plans (Go!, Performance, Professional, Essentials) each "starting at" a monthly figure from $1.99 to $12.00; monthly or annual; 30-day free trial on all; invoicing on Professional; breeding and competition records listed.
- https://www.stablesecretary.com/features — read 2026-09-14. Features page. Identification, health, farrier, breeding and service records; reminders for farrier and health appointments; invoices in batches and online payments; team roles (barn managers, grooms, vets, farriers, bookkeepers); health reports and due dates. No weather, pasture or land features.
Stable Secretary is a trademark of its owner. We're not affiliated; this comparison is ours, from their public pages on the date shown.