Your RescueGroups.org service can export your adoptable animals to our partner adoption sites automatically when you have enabled the exports feature.

Understanding animal exports

The exports feature offered by RescueGroups.org can save your organization time and help you to promote your animals. You can enable or disable this export at any time. There are some things you should know before you enable the exports feature:

  • Your animal adoption information comes directly from ResueGroups.org and we will troubleshoot problems and if necessary, contact the partner adoption agency. Therefore, if animals are not displayed correctly on your pet list, contact RescueGroups.org support. Please do not email the adoption website directly. 
  • By default, RescueGroups.org uploads adopted animal information to the sites that list successes.  Currently, only Petfinder lists adopted pets.  If you do not want your adopted animals to appear on the other sites, you can change this option under Animals > Exports > Settings.
  • When RescueGroups.org exports your adoptable animals, all current animals on the other websites will be deleted and will be replaced with the pets from your RescueGroups.org pet list.  It’s very important that your RescueGroups.org service contains ALL of your pet information, including adopted pets, pictures and videos, otherwise, you risk losing it when updates are enabled.

Safeguard your pet data!

It's extremely important that your RescueGroups.org account database has all of your animal information, pictures, and videos (including adopted pets) before you enable exporting to the adoption listing websites. If not, you could lose your pet information.

Enabling the export feature

To enable the export process:

Go to Animals > Exports and click the button API Exports are disabled. Click here to enable.


Once you've enabled the automatic exports, you can select the adoption sites to which you want your animal information exported.

To enable exports to Petfinder and Adopt-a-Pet.com, please set up accounts with them directly. These sites are listed as FTP Exports on the Animal Exports page.


We will request accounts on your behalf for all the other partner adoption sites automatically. All you need to do is to go to Animals > Exports and then enable any of the API Export partner adoption sites for your animal adoption exports. The red icons with exclamation points are not enabled; the green icons with check marks are enabled. You can change these selections at any time.

Enabling animal exports video

We've prepared a video for you to help you understand and to enable the animal exports feature.  If you would like to view in full screen please visit our YouTube link HERE.

How long will it take to update the API sites?

It can take as long as three hours to update your pet information on the other sites.  

After exports are enabled

After we enable your uploads:

  • Update and add your animals only to your RescueGroups.org service. Do not do manual updates while the exports are turned on or we cannot troubleshoot any issues.
  • Verify that your animals are uploaded to the other sites at least twenty-four hours after we enable the updates for the first time.

Details about exports/uploads

Some fields are mapped to their closest values on the partner adoption website (like breed, species, etc).  The following are changes that are made to your pet data when sent to the adoption listing websites:

  • Header/Footer added to the description
  • Link to your website (when allowed)
  • Link to the animal’s web page (when allowed)
  • Foster information (if provided and public)

  • Adoption application information (if public and the link enabled)

    You can enable and disable the adoption information link for all animals or just for courtesy listings. Go to Animals > Settings > Website Service Related Settings.

Each of the adoption listing websites supports different fields.  The following are cases where the data is handled differently:

  • Three pictures are sent to Petfinder and four pictures are sent to Adopt-a-Pet.com.
  • The Color field is sent to Adopt-a-Pet.com.

A link to your homepage as well as to the animal's web page is added to the animal's description (applies to Website Service only and only on adoption listing sites that allow the link) and can be disabled in Animals > Exports > Settings

If the foster's contact information is public, it will be added at the top of the animal's description.

You can control which adoption websites list a specific animal by selecting the appropriate accounts under the Accounts section of the animal’s information.  

Disabling the animal exports function

We've prepared a video for you to help you understand and to disable the animal exports feature.  You can also view the video in fullscreen on our Youtube channel HERE.

You can disable the animal exports function at any time, should you need or want to stop exporting your adoptable animals to a particular or to all national pet adoption websites.

To disable the animal export feature:

  1. Go to Animals > Exports.
  2. Scan the list for those websites with a green checkmark. Those are the sites that are currently enabled. Next to each is a link, Click to disable. Click those links for the sites you wish to disable. The green checkmark will change to a red exclamation point once you have disabled that export. If you have disabled one in error, simply click the Click to enable link for that site. You have both FTP and API exports.

  3. You can disable all the API exports singly, as described above, or you can disable all of them. The API exports are listed at the end of the FTP exports list and have the same green checkmark or red exclamation point as the FTP exports do. The link at the end of an entry acts in the same way as well.


    To disable all API exports at once, use the API Exports are disabled. Click here to enable button. If your accounts are enabled, this button will disable all API exports.