Review: 5 Online Pet Food Sites

Since most pet guardians consider their furry companions as family members, it’s essential to keep our pets healthy and happy. At the same time, when shopping for high quality pet food and other ancillary pet-related merchandise, most of us consider keeping a watchful eye on the pocketbook a priority.

If you’re frustrated shopping at the local supermarket for pet supplies and tired of schlepping home heavy bags filled with pet products; rather than grabbing your car keys, next time you need to stock up, consider using your computer or smartphone and pick out pet food and supplies at your leisure. Curious about what site will work best for your pet needs? Here's a look at 5 online pet food sites.

Chewy is a relatively new pet site that I was thrilled to find. Despite being a newcomer, their website is extremely user-friendly. The company offers over 200 high quality brands of the “best pet food and stuff” that will satisfy even the fussiest pet. To answer questions or help in product selection, they offer telephone customer service 24/7 and online chat. They offer great discounts, an auto-ship program and free 1 to 2 day shipping for orders totaling $49, or if under, shipping is a flat $4.95. Sales tax is charged for customers in PA and FL.

To find just what I was looking for, I found Wag’s website a little tricky to navigate. This said, the company offers a wide variety of high quality pet food, toys and other everyday essential merchandise. And if you want to pamper your pet to the “nines”, Wag has a “Cat and Dog Boutique” to die for. There is also a bird, fish and reptile shop. Auto-ship and free two-day shipping is available on orders over $49, free return shipping, customer care 24/7 and 5-percent off on all pet food.

If you want to spoil your pet even more, PetFlow offers their “Spoiled Rotten” monthly gift club for loving pet parents, so this site may just be what the doctor ordered. Each month for $24.99, a member's pet will receive a box of "amazing hand-picked treats, toys and accessories.”  PetFlow has an excellent assortment of taste-tempting quality pet food and supplies. Free 2-3 day shipping is available for orders over $49 and for orders under, a $4.95 flat rate is applied. Auto-Ship is available. Sales tax is charged for customers in NY, NJ and NV.  Customer service provided Monday- Friday 9 a.m.-8 p.m. EST. While the website is organized by product brands, I still found the site somewhat tricky to navigate to find exactly what I needed. 

Another popular website for pet food is Amazon.com. While careful site searching can often help pet guardians get some good deals, I found the site particularly difficult and time consuming to navigate. Instead of Amazon having all pet related products listed in one area, one has to do separate searches for each type of desired product. And since Amazon is basically a shopping mall with many vendors participating, one is constantly redirected to these areas. But what I found particularly amusing and had me chuckling was under the “litter” category, vendors offered “new” litter for sale. After all, would anyone sell “used” litter? Additionally, making it a time consuming effort, the buyer is often redirected to the website of other online pet stores.

One of the most popular and oldest online vendors is PetFoodDirect. Their site is easy to navigate, listing their wide variety of products by category making it a cinch to find things. PetFoodDirect offers several discounts and sale prices on their merchandise. However, even with discounts, I found the cost of many of their products more expensive than many of the online vendors. Free shipping is available on orders under 60 pounds and $49, and a charge of .29 for each additional pound. Customer service is available by phone Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-10 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m., EST. Sales tax charged to PA customers.

Have you shopped for pet products online? Tell us about your experience in a comment.