Tractive bought Whistle from Mars Petcare, then switched off every Whistle tracker

Tractive is an Austrian maker of GPS location and activity trackers for dogs and cats; Whistle was its US rival, owned by Mars Petcare.

Tractive sells GPS pet trackers for cats and dogs, including XL versions for larger breeds, with subscriptions adding GPS tracking, heart and respiratory rate monitoring, bark tracking, virtual fences and escape alerts, and activity and sleep monitoring.

Tractive acquired Whistle from Mars Petcare and announced the Whistle platform would shut down with all devices stopping on August 31, 2025. Existing customers could claim a free Tractive tracker until September 30, 2025, by registering on Tractive's platform, selecting a new subscription and providing their Whistle serial number. Whistle plans of over two months transferred to the new Tractive subscription; shorter plans got two free months on signup.

Whistle device warranties were not honored — the trackers simply stop being supported — but the free replacement devices carry their own two-year warranties. Tractive's Basic plan starts at $108 for one year ($144 for two); Premium adds family sharing, worldwide cellular, year-long location history and GPS data export at $120 per year or $300 for five.

The acquisition was a subscriber grab: Tractive took over a rival's installed base and converted it to its own hardware and plans.

A hard shutdown date (August 31, 2025) forced every Whistle owner through the migration funnel rather than leaving a zombie platform running.

Free devices plus transferred subscription time removed the switching cost that usually makes platform deaths churn users.

The warranty cut on old hardware drew a hard line: Tractive supported the customers it inherited, not the products it retired.

Acquiring a competitor's subscribers means running two migrations at once: kill the old platform on a date certain, then make switching free enough that nobody becomes a churned customer or a lawsuit.

As of July 28, 2025, Whistle users had until September 30 to claim free Tractive replacements, with devices going dark on August 31. Tractive continued selling its own Basic and Premium subscription plans with the acquired users folded in.