Vs subscriptions
Pet Care vs the monthly bill
On Pet Care:
The household surface aisle is stacked with subscriptions: Cozi at $39 a year, and Todoist at $60 a year, or $7 a month. The Pet Care is one HTML file that does the honest working core of what those tools sell, once, for the price of a Swiss Knife.
The bill you were quietly paying
Name the actual products and the arithmetic stops being abstract: Cozi ($39 a year: family calendar without the ads), Todoist ($60 a year, or $7 a month: lists with a premium tier), Notion ($120 a year, or $12 a month: household wiki, per member). An average home & life stack lands at $3 to $10 a month, forever.
Run that out five years and Cozi costs $195, Notion costs $600. A Swiss Knife, with the Pet Care folded in beside up to eleven other tools, is $95, once.
30 months of Cozi at $39 a year come to the price of a Swiss Knife at $95. Every year after that is pure savings on this category.
What the Pet Care replaces cleanly
The vet asks when the last worming was, and you and the dog exchange a look of equal blankness. That is the working shape most subscriptions in this category are wrapped around; the Pet Care delivers it without the wrapper.
Concretely: Cozi would keep everything it needs to keep the picture honest on its own servers, behind its own login, on its own pricing schedule. The Pet Care keeps the same fields in a file on your disk — same shape of work, no monthly line on the card.
You keep the workflow. You lose the login, the sync outage, the price hike email, and the export deadline.
What you honestly give up
Team collaboration in real time. Auto-import from third-party APIs. A mobile app that pings you. Cozi does those things and does them properly; if any of them are load-bearing for how you work today, keep paying Cozi — the Pet Care is not trying to compete on those fronts.
Most people, honestly, were paying for features they did not use. The Pet Care is what remains when you strip that back to the tool.
What you stop renting
- Cozi: $39 a yearFamily calendar without the ads. $39 a year, every year.
- Todoist: $60 a year, or $7 a monthLists with a premium tier. $60 a year, every year.
- Notion: $120 a year, or $12 a monthHousehold wiki, per member. $120 a year, every year.
Questions people ask
How does the cost compare to Cozi?
Cozi runs about $195 over five years and Notion about $600. 30 months of Cozi at $39 a year come to the price of a Swiss Knife at $95. A Swiss Knife folds the Pet Care in with up to eleven other tools for $95, once, and there is no year two.
Is the Pet Care a like-for-like replacement for Cozi?
For the working core — everything it needs to keep the picture honest — yes. For family calendar without the ads, no. We would rather say that plainly than sell you a switch you'll regret in a fortnight.
What if my needs grow past a single file?
Excellent problem. Keep the Pet Care for what it does well; add a specialised SaaS on top only when you have a specialised need. Nothing here locks you in — it is a file.
Can I import my current data?
The Pet Care is deliberately hand-entered. Two minutes of typing on Monday keeps you closer to your own household surface than an integration ever will.
The subscription was renting the arithmetic. Buy the arithmetic instead.