diff --git a/dev-requirements.txt b/dev-requirements.txt
index e820a967..0eae2139 100644
--- a/dev-requirements.txt
+++ b/dev-requirements.txt
@@ -5,3 +5,7 @@ codecov
 black
 notebook>=4.0
 websockets
+# etcd3 & python-consul2 are now soft dependencies
+# Adding them here prevents CI from failing
+etcd3
+python-consul2
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/jupyterhub_traefik_proxy/consul.py b/jupyterhub_traefik_proxy/consul.py
index 33416ccd..3459aab0 100644
--- a/jupyterhub_traefik_proxy/consul.py
+++ b/jupyterhub_traefik_proxy/consul.py
@@ -25,7 +25,6 @@
 import base64
 
 import asyncio
-import consul.aio
 import escapism
 from tornado.concurrent import run_on_executor
 from traitlets import Any, default, Unicode
@@ -56,6 +55,10 @@ def _default_kv_url(self):
 
     @default("kv_client")
     def _default_client(self):
+        try:
+            import consul.aio
+        except ImportError:
+            raise ImportError("Please install python-consul2 package to use traefik-proxy with consul")
         consul_service = urlparse(self.kv_url)
         if self.kv_password:
             client = consul.aio.Consul(
diff --git a/jupyterhub_traefik_proxy/etcd.py b/jupyterhub_traefik_proxy/etcd.py
index 95d22bb4..9b0e0d15 100644
--- a/jupyterhub_traefik_proxy/etcd.py
+++ b/jupyterhub_traefik_proxy/etcd.py
@@ -23,7 +23,6 @@
 import os
 from urllib.parse import urlparse
 
-import etcd3
 from tornado.concurrent import run_on_executor
 from traitlets import Any, default, Unicode
 
@@ -73,6 +72,10 @@ def _default_kv_url(self):
     @default("kv_client")
     def _default_client(self):
         etcd_service = urlparse(self.kv_url)
+        try:
+            import etcd3
+        except ImportError:
+            raise ImportError("Please install etcd3 package to use traefik-proxy with etcd3")
         if self.kv_password:
             return etcd3.client(
                 host=str(etcd_service.hostname),
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 1cfa126c..ccb6dc38 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,5 @@
 aiohttp
 escapism
-etcd3
 jupyterhub>=0.9
 passlib
-python-consul2
 toml