Comparison

Proper Strides vs. barn management platforms

Manage your barn without the enterprise price tag.

Traditional barn management software is expensive, dated, and forces you into a specific business model. Proper Strides handles the same operations for a fraction of the cost, with a modern app, AI-powered insights via Equibot, and a design that respects how horse people actually work.

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Free for one horse. No credit card required.

Head to head: Proper Strides vs. Stable Secretary Professional

Stable Secretary Professional ($8/mo) is the invoicing-enabled tier geared at barns billing clients through their management tool.

Feature	Proper Strides	Stable Secretary Professional
Horse records (vet, farrier, feed, etc.)	✓	✓
Team sharing with role-based access	✓	✓
Multi-horse, multi-owner management	✓	✓
Reports	~ Basic, growing	✓ extensive pre-built
Invoicing & payments	✓ 0% platform fee	✓
Digital waivers & contracts	✓ 8 templates, saved to customer	~ Not visible
Breeding features	✓	✓
Competition tracking	✓	✓
AI horse advisor	✓ (Equibot)	—
Modern mobile-first UI	✓	~ Older UI
Free tier	1 horse, permanent	None
Farm Sitter public link	✓	—
Document extraction (AI reads PDFs)	✓	—
Starting price	Free or $9.99/mo	$8/mo

A note on reporting: Stable Secretary has more pre-built reports out of the box. This is partly a product of their dated interface, which makes pre-built reports the primary way to see aggregated information. Proper Strides surfaces the same underlying data directly in the app, so pre-built reports are less essential.

Invoicing — and we take 0%: both platforms let you bill clients. Proper Strides charges no platform fee and no application fee. You pay Stripe’s standard processing rates directly — nothing extra to us. Every paid invoice also ties the service back to the horse’s record automatically, so vet visits, farrier work, and training show up on the horse’s timeline where Equibot can reason about them.

Where Proper Strides is stronger: modern UI, Equibot AI, active development, free tier, mobile-first design, zero-fee invoicing, and a growing feature set that already covers more than barn management.

Head to head: Proper Strides vs. BarnManager

BarnManager offers Essentials ($40/mo) and Pro ($70/mo), the latter adding invoicing and QuickBooks integration.

Feature	Proper Strides	BarnManager Essentials	BarnManager Pro
Horse records	✓	✓	✓
Team sharing	✓	✓	✓
Calendar & scheduling	✓	✓	✓
Feed & medication management	✓	✓	✓
Reports & CSV exports	✓	✓	✓
Invoicing	✓ 0% platform fee	—	✓
Automated recurring invoices	✓	—	✓
Payment processing	✓ Stripe	—	✓
Digital waivers & contracts	✓ 8 templates, saved to customer	~ Not visible	~ Not visible
QuickBooks integration	—	—	✓
Breeding features	✓	~ Limited	~ Limited
AI horse advisor	✓ (Equibot)	—	—
Farm Sitter public link	✓	—	—
Free tier	✓	—	—
Trial	14 days	14 days	30 days
Monthly price	$9.99–$19.99	$40/mo	$70/mo
Annual price	Not yet	$400/yr	$700/yr

Where BarnManager Pro is stronger today: QuickBooks integration ships now. If your accountant lives in QuickBooks and native two-way sync is your deciding factor, BarnManager Pro is a functional choice at $70/mo.

Where Proper Strides is stronger — especially on invoicing: both platforms let you bill clients through Stripe. Proper Strides charges 0% platform fee and 0% application fee — you pay Stripe’s standard processing rates directly, nothing extra to us. Paid invoices also auto-attach the service to the horse’s timeline, so Equibot sees the work in context. On top of that: dramatically lower price for the same core features, Equibot AI, breeding features, Farm Sitter link, and a free tier.

Pricing comparison for a boarding barn with 20 horses

	Proper Strides Plus	Stable Secretary Pro.	BarnManager Pro
Monthly	$19.99	$8/mo flat	$70/mo (unlimited horses)
Includes invoicing	✓ 0% platform fee	✓	✓
Includes waivers & contracts	✓	~ Not visible	~ Not visible
Includes breeding	✓	✓	~ Limited
AI advisor	✓	—	—
Farm Sitter link	✓	—	—
Team sharing	✓	✓	✓

For a smaller operation with 5–10 horses, Proper Strides is often the lowest-cost option that still includes full features. For very large operations, custom annual pricing brings the effective per-horse cost well below competitors.

What Proper Strides includes beyond barn management

Barn management platforms handle the barn. Proper Strides handles the horses too:

Comprehensive horse records for every horse, with owner separation for boarders
Ride and training logs alongside barn operations
Show and competition tracking for barn horses
Breeding features for barns that also breed
Equibot AI horse advisor
Farm Sitter public link for boarders traveling
Team sharing with granular permissions
Multi-barn support for facilities with multiple locations
Free tier that lets boarders join at no cost
Modern mobile-first design that staff actually want to use

Everything a barn management platform does, plus everything a horse needs.

Pricing

Free — 1 horse, permanent, no credit card
Core — $9.99/mo — up to 5 horses
Plus — $19.99/mo — up to 15 horses, unlimited barns, team sharing
Larger operations — flat annual rates for boarding barns and training programs. Get in touch.

Most boarding facilities run on Plus or a custom annual plan depending on horse count. See full pricing →

Start managing your barn today.

No credit card. One horse permanently free. Add more horses and turn on team sharing with a 14-day trial of Core or Plus.

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Feature comparisons based on public information as of July 2026. Something we got wrong? Email info@properstrides.com and we’ll update.