I’ve received a ton of comments asking for a SpotOn vs Invisible Fence GPS review. Dog owners want to know how the new Invisible Fence GPS collar compares with SpotOn Fence in terms of keeping your dog safe off-leash, so you can kick back and enjoy your yard in peace.
My team finally got our hands on the Invisible Fence GPS collar and we took it for a spin. Does this new GPS collar from the long-standing invisible dog fence brand rival the first-in-class SpotOn GPS Fence? Stick around and find out.
As always, check the link below for discounts:
CLICK HERE: Get my EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT for the SpotOn (applied at checkout) →Price
The Invisible Fence GPS collar is about $700, although right now it’s on sale for about $600. You’ll need a subscription to use it. The only option when I signed up was for an annual plan at about $100.
SpotOn costs about $1,000, although it’s on sale for about $900 right now. The subscription is nice to have for live-tracking and real-time notifications, but unlike most GPS fences, a subscription is not required. If you want one they start at about $10/mo, and they get cheaper with longer-term plans.
So, depending on how you look at it, the Invisible Fence collar is a little easier on the wallet.
Setup
Now, let’s talk setup. This is where things started to fall apart for the Invisible Fence GPS collar. We ran into a lot of issues, and after a few hours and calls with customer service, we still weren’t able to get the collar up and running. These days I’d expect a better experience with such an expensive product, and most of the other products are indeed easier to set up.
Compare this with SpotOn, for example. There are still some steps involved—you have to set up your account and connect your collar over bluetooth, then make sure you’re getting a strong GPS signal but the process has been much smoother in our experience. The SpotOn is more or less ready to go right out of the box.
Over the course of setting up the Invisible Fence GPS collar, it became quite clear that this product is essentially indistinguishable from the new PetSafe Guardian + Tracking collar.
Interestingly enough, it seems that Invisible Fence and PetSafe are indeed owned by the same parent company, Radio Systems. We already had that collar up and running for testing, so we decided to cut our losses and try to return our Invisible Fence GPS collar. From everything we saw, we didn’t expect any difference in performance between the Invisible Fence collar and the PetSafe Guardian.
So I reached out to customer support via the email address provided in my order confirmation, and I followed up twice over the course of the next week. But I didn’t get a response. Then I found a customer support contact form on their website and submitted my query there. Still nothing.
Then I gave them a call and I was able to get in touch with a friendly support representative who helped initiate the reimbursement for my subscription and the return of my collar. The following week I hadn’t received any confirmation of my return, so I called again.
Turns out they are sending me a return box, which should make the process easy, but its still about a week out from their estimates. I won’t receive a refund until my return is processed, which is fine, but if all goes well from here it’ll be over 2 weeks from my initial request before my collar is even shipped back—let alone the time it takes for them to receive it and process the refund.
All in all, when you’re paying this kind of money for a product these days, you tend to expect a smoother customer experience. Customer support with SpotOn has been great in my experience, and they make it easy to contact them by email, live chat, or phone right from within their app.
I feel a little bummed that I didn’t get a chance to test the Invisible Fence GPS collar in action, but at the same time I’m guessing most dog owners would probably not love what we went through either just to find the right collar [1].
I did get to test the PetSafe Guardian with Tracking. Again, from what I can tell it’s the exact same collar, it’s cheaper than the Invisible Fence GPS, and the PetSafe team is more set up for a smooth customer support experience.
Verdict: SpotOn vs Invisible Fence GPS
That said I still think SpotOn is the top performing GPS Fence, and they continue to develop their product to keep up with the needs of dog owners.
The Invisible Fence collar is still young, and maybe with time it will get there.
Don’t forget to click the link below for discounts on your dog’s GPS fence collar.
CLICK HERE: Get my EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT for the SpotOn (applied at checkout) →