Image by Herbert Bieser from Pixabay
Why should you choose AnimalTrakker® over our competitors? Today’s farmer has tons of options for stock management, and each has benefits and drawbacks. No two programs are the same.
As shepherds ourselves, we have intimate knowledge of what our competitors do well (and what they could improve upon). Half of why we created AnimalTrakker® was to make a program that eliminated or improved those weaknesses while learning from the things they do right. The other half was to create an open-source, internet-agnostic alternative.
In our Competitive Review series, we’ll go over AnimalTrakker®’s biggest competitors, what they do better than AnimalTrakker®, what they do worse, and a final judgment going over why you might choose either one. Part of our job is to convince you why you should go with us, and we don’t do things halfway.
In this initial entry, we’ll just be setting the stage. Join us as we go over some of AnimalTrakker®’s greatest strengths – and what we believe sets our program apart.
1: You Own Your Data
When you use AnimalTrakker®, you always own your data. We don’t collect any data from you – not even anonymized data. We won’t show you ads, either.
Your AnimalTrakker® data is stored locally on your device. AnimalTrakker® does have the capability to back up your database to a connected Google Drive, if you prefer, but it’s designed to function without the internet. This means you can interact with your database even without service or internet access.
Owning all of your data comes with responsibility. You’re the one responsible for keeping that data safe. If you lose your data and don’t have it backed up elsewhere, we won’t have a copy waiting on our servers for you. It’s up to you to keep safe, updated backups in a secure location, just in case something goes wrong.
2: We Focus on Usability, Not Revenue Generation
AnimalTrakker® doesn’t operate using a traditional pay-per-license or monthly fee structure. Our product is completely free. Instead, to help finance our operation, we offer optional services that provide extra value to our users. These optional services are in no way required to use AnimalTrakker®.
Our first optional service is preloaded hardware packages. If you already own an Android tablet that can run AnimalTrakker, you have all you need to get started. However, for those who don’t want the extra hassle of setting AnimalTrakker® up on their own, our hardware kit is an excellent value. It comes preloaded with connected peripherals, the newest stable AnimalTrakker® release, and a fresh database.
Our second optional service is accelerated feature implementation. AnimalTrakker® is in active development, so all of our “wishlist” features will eventually make their way into AnimalTrakker®. However, we tend to implement these features in order of perceived value. If you have a feature in mind that you’d like implemented right away, we can work with you to make it happen.
Our third and final optional service is registry creation and management. We are rare breed stewards ourselves, so having a way for other breeders to inexpensively run a registry is important to us. If you’d like help setting up your own breed registry, please reach out! You can see the AnimalTrakker® Registry Package in action through the American Black Welsh Mountain Sheep Association.
If you have no need of our optional services, but still want to support AnimalTrakker®, we also accept direct donations.
3: We Maximize Security by Avoiding the Cloud
AnimalTrakker® was designed to be completely internet agnostic. This means that you can connect your Google Drive for cloud backups, if you prefer, or you can enjoy the program without ever connecting it to the internet. The only thing AnimalTrakker® needs the internet for is software patches and updates.
Why do we so strongly believe in keeping AnimalTrakker® disconnected? Because that’s the only way to keep your data truly private. Data leakage events happen more and more every year. Storing sensitive data in the cloud can be unreliable at best and catastrophic at worst.
Not everyone will be interested in the names, numbers, and histories of the animals at your farm. However, those who are interested are likely to be bad actors. Data leaks open the way for activism, lawfare, and overreach from corporate and government entities. Skipping the cloud allows you to completely avoid that security risk.
4: We Support Drugs with Off-Label Use
AnimalTrakker® is a bit of an abnormality in the flock management software world because we support off-label drug administration tracking. You can use AnimalTrakker® to record administration data of both on-label and off-label drugs with the approval of a licensed veterinarian. We believe that off-label drug use is a fact of life at any farm, and while you can always track off-label administrations with physical notes, we think that’s unacceptable. Keeping accurate records is essential to maintaining healthy and successful stock.
5: We Separate Ownership from Location
AnimalTrakker® allows you to separate animal ownership from location. Location has an enormous effect on disease traceability, and good location and ownership records help us track down when and where disease transmission occurs. Without complete location records, it may be difficult to figure out when and where disease outbreaks happen.
Not all software allows you to separate ownership from location – at least, not easily. This can be a deal breaker for some. Brush-clearing goats and solar graziers, for example, need to have the ability to adjust location in their records. In fact, one of our clients here at AnimalTrakker® is a solar grazier.
6: We Record Full ID Histories
AnimalTrakker® has the unique capability to automatically track full ID histories on the animals in your database. No matter what type of ID, be it EID, paint brand, farm tag, ear notch, Scrapie, or something else, AnimalTrakker® will track it, and it’ll stay on the animal’s record for all time. This means that if you need to replace a tag for any reason, you can add a new tag without fear of losing any data you’ve attached to the old one. AnimalTrakker® keeps track of the dates you add and remove tags, too.
7: We Offer Mobile Record-Keeping (Without the Cloud)
Farm management software often isn’t the most up-to-date technology. Some of our competitors don’t support the newest Windows and Macintosh releases, and few of them support Linux at all. Several of them are PC-only, meaning you’re forced to bring a laptop with you. We dislike those limitations.
We’ve designed AnimalTrakker® to be a dual-purpose system: Farm Mobile for field data collection, and Farm Desktop for at-home report generation. Neither option uses the cloud (unless you choose to set them up that way).
Since neither AnimalTrakker® version requires an internet connection, you can keep and update records anywhere. Plus, since Farm Mobile is designed for use on a tablet, you can avoid lugging around an unwieldy, expensive, and fragile laptop. Our tablets are a much smarter (and less expensive, in case they break) choice.
AnimalTrakker® vs. The Competition
AnimalTrakker® has no shortage of competitors. Our goal isn’t to compete with them, but rather to make them unnecessary. Why would you pay for a program like FlockFiler or Sheep Book when AnimalTrakker® can do everything they do, for free? We want AnimalTrakker® to be a cut above in features, security, and accessibility.
To our knowledge, we are also the only livestock management software on the market with an Open Source commitment. Not everyone can afford to pay hundreds of dollars in startup or migration fees. Our free, open-source alternative allows you to start professionally managing your stock immediately and inexpensively. Plus, our team is here to answer any questions you may have.
We also want to provide a viable alternative to farmers who use other systems. For many of you, time is money. We offer our software for free to those who have the time and inclination to set up their own system, and we offer preloaded hardware to those who have more important things to do.
Please stay tuned for the rest of our Competitive Review posts, which will directly compare AnimalTrakker® to the most popular livestock management software applications on today’s market!