Compare · Equine service
Vivetra vs. Eclipse & the UK & Ireland equine field
Shopping for equine practice software in the UK and Ireland is a shorter list than it looks. When we went looking for named specialist equine platforms we could cite real, current, sourced facts for in this market, we found exactly one: Eclipse Veterinary Software. Rather than pad the table with names we couldn’t honestly source, we’ll be straight about that — below is Vivetra next to the one specialist equine platform we have real, dated facts for here, with every Eclipse claim pulled from a sourced record you can check yourself.
Vivetra’s Equine service is $200/mo — the same number for one vet or eight, unlimited staff and fully managed hosting included in that price, not bolted on as a later line item.
And one capability is worth naming before the table rather than after it, because we did not find it anywhere in this market: an owner can hand their yard manager or trainer read-only visibility into their own horses, and take it back whenever they want. If your practice’s day is spent answering “is that horse fit to travel” from someone who is not the owner, skip ahead to that.
Vivetra and Eclipse, side by side
Eclipse’s facts are shown exactly as our sourced dataset records them — and because Eclipse is a rich, multi-feature platform, it carries several distinct sourced claims, each with its own “source” link to the vendor’s own page. Follow any of them to check the record we relied on.
| Platform | Published claims & facts | How it’s licensed / notable |
|---|---|---|
| Vivetra (Equine service) | $200/mo, flat — unlimited doctors and staff, never a per-vet, site-license, or implementation-fee stack | Fully managed for you: managed hosting included in the price, no server for you to run. One flat monthly rate, the same as the practice grows. Owner portal included, with owner-granted read-only yard-manager access (see below) and online bill pay through your own Stripe account. |
| Eclipse Veterinary Software source 1 (opens in new tab) source 2 (opens in new tab) source 3 (opens in new tab) |
in use at approximately 100 equine and mixed practices across the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands; built for equine hospitals, ambulatory practices and small-animal referral centers built-in PACS integration — DICOM images are automatically added to the correct animal history and can be viewed on any workstation or mobile Apple device, and routed/pre-fetched to specific vets' workstations, iPads, consulting rooms or operating theatres Eclipse Mobile is designed for ambulatory equine vets specifically, runs on Apple iPad and iPhone, carries complete animal histories and client information on visits, and works offline without a live WiFi/4G/5G connection |
A UK/Ireland/Netherlands equine specialist in around 100 equine and mixed practices — built for equine hospitals, ambulatory work and small-animal referral, with built-in PACS/DICOM that routes images to any workstation or iPad and a dedicated, offline-capable Eclipse Mobile app for ambulatory vets. Deep and Apple-centric where Vivetra is browser-based and species-general. |
About this comparison. This is Vivetra’s own comparison of competing products — we chose the vendor and wrote the framing, so read it as our argument, checked against sourced facts, not a neutral third party’s. Every Eclipse claim above is shown as published by that vendor or the cited record and was verified as of 2026-08-02. Features and positioning move; if a fact here is out of date or wrong, tell us at [email protected] and we correct or remove it within 5 business days. Vivetra’s own price is identical in every supported currency — no conversion, ever — so switching the currency selector only changes the symbol and tax note beside it, never the digits.
Yard-manager access — the one we would lead a demo with
A comparison table assumes the person asking about a horse is the owner. Equine practice in the UK and Ireland does not work that way. On a livery yard, a competition yard or a stud, the person who needs to know whether a horse is current on its vaccines and what the aftercare instructions were is very often the yard manager or the trainer — someone with the horse in their care every day and no ownership of it at all. Today that gets solved by your front desk reading records down the phone to a third party, which is slow for you and awkward the moment anyone asks whether you should have.
Vivetra’s Equine service ships a facility-scoped access-grant system for exactly this. The owner — and only the owner — opens a screen called “Who can see your horses” and grants a yard manager, trainer or groom read-only visibility. That person gets their own dashboard, “Horses you manage,” gathering every horse shared with them across every owner who has shared one, organized yard by yard the way they actually work.
- The owner grants it, not you, and not us. Your practice never plays gatekeeper for somebody else’s horse, and never has to decide on the phone whether a caller is entitled to a record. The owner made that call in advance, in the system.
- Read-only means read-only. Identity, schedule, vaccination status, Coggins compliance and care notes. No billing, no invoices, no pricing, no signing, nothing editable. And a yard manager cannot pass their own access on to somebody else — it is deliberately non-transitive.
- Scoped as narrowly as the owner wants. Everything that owner has with you, or one yard, or one individual horse. A manager never sees another horse on the same yard just because it is on the same yard.
- Revocable at any moment, by the owner, without ringing you. A horse moves yards, a livery arrangement ends, and the owner ends the access themselves.
- Your practice can switch the whole capability off. If you would rather no client shared anything with anyone, that is a setting, not a support ticket.
Two honest notes, because this section is doing a lot of selling. Grants do not expire on a timer — they run until the owner revokes them, the horse changes hands, or the account closes, so time-boxed access for a single event is not built yet. And this is a description of our own product, not a sourced comparison like the Eclipse claims above: we are not claiming nobody else has anything like it, only that we did not find it while researching this market.
On Eclipse, stated plainly
Eclipse is the one specialist equine platform we found real, current, sourced facts for in the UK/Ireland market, so it’s worth being exact about it rather than hand-waving. As verified on 2026-08-02, Eclipse is in use at roughly 100 equine and mixed practices across the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands, and it’s built for equine hospitals, ambulatory practices and small-animal referral centers. It ships built-in PACS/DICOM — images land automatically in the right animal history and can be routed to a specific vet’s workstation, iPad, consulting room or theatre — and a dedicated Eclipse Mobile app for iPad and iPhone that carries full histories offline in the field. That is a deep, specialist, Apple-centric toolset, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise.
What we deliberately do not say: we don’t claim Eclipse is the only equine platform in the UK or Ireland — it’s the only one we could source current, citable facts for, which is a statement about our sourcing, not a ranking of the market. And we don’t put a price on its row, because we found no public figure we were willing to cite. We’d rather state the boring truth than inflate the picture in either direction.
Where Vivetra genuinely falls short today
Hiding a real limitation is worse than not having it. Here are the honest gaps for the Equine service in the UK/Ireland market, stated directly.
- No dedicated native offline field app — Eclipse ships one today. Eclipse Mobile is a native iPad/iPhone app that carries full animal histories offline and works without a live WiFi/4G/5G connection — purpose-built for ambulatory equine vets on visits. Vivetra runs in the browser as a progressive web app: it works on a phone or tablet, but we don’t ship a dedicated native offline field app today. If your day depends on full records in a paddock with no signal, that’s a real difference, and it’s a known, deferred limitation on our side.
- Yard-manager grants don’t expire on their own. A grant runs until the owner revokes it, the horse changes hands, or the account closes — there is no “expires in 30 days” option today. For most yards that is the behavior you want, but if you were hoping to hand a groom access for one event and have it lapse by itself, that is not built yet.
- We’re newer than the established specialist. Eclipse has years of specialist equine track record across UK, Ireland and the Netherlands practices. Vivetra is a newer vendor with less of a track record in the yard — a real consideration we’d rather name than let you find out later.
Questions about this comparison
Why is the price the same whether I have one vet or eight?
Because Vivetra doesn't count vets. Vivetra’s Equine service is one flat monthly rate with unlimited doctors and staff and managed hosting included — so the number you see is the number you pay as the practice grows, whether you’re a single ambulatory vet covering yards in the Home Counties or an eight-vet equine hospital in Ireland. No per-vet rate, no site license, no implementation fee stacked on top.
Do I have to run my own server at the practice?
No. Vivetra is fully managed for you — the software runs on infrastructure we operate on your behalf. You never touch a server, never patch an OS, never restore a backup yourself. Managed hosting is included, so nobody at the practice ever has to actually operate a box in the office.
What does Vivetra genuinely NOT do that Eclipse does?
The honest one for UK/Ireland equine: Eclipse ships a dedicated native mobile app (Eclipse Mobile) that carries full animal histories offline on an iPad or iPhone and works without a live WiFi/4G/5G connection — purpose-built for ambulatory equine vets out on visits. Vivetra runs in the browser as a progressive web app; it works on a phone or tablet, but we do not ship a dedicated native offline field app today. Eclipse also has years of specialist track record we don’t yet. On our own side, yard-manager access grants don’t expire on a timer — they run until the owner revokes them, so there is no “access for one event” option yet. We’d rather say all of that up front than let you find it after signing.
Can a yard manager see a client's horses without being the owner?
Yes, and it is the capability we would lead a demo with. The owner grants it from their own portal — a screen called “Who can see your horses” — and the yard manager or trainer gets a read-only dashboard gathering every horse shared with them, across every owner who shared one, organized yard by yard. Read-only means identity, schedule, vaccination status, Coggins compliance and care notes: no billing, no invoices, no pricing, nothing editable, and no ability to pass that access on to anyone else. A grant can cover everything that owner has with you or narrow to one yard or one horse, the owner can revoke it at any time without ringing your front desk, and your practice can switch the whole capability off if you would rather nobody shared anything. What it will not do is expire on a timer — a grant lasts until it is revoked.
Can horse owners pay their bill online?
Yes. Your practice connects its own Stripe account, and owners pay their bills from the owner portal — with a card kept on file for next time if they want, and Apple Pay or Google Pay where the device offers it. No card number ever reaches your Vivetra deployment; the payment happens on Stripe’s own hosted checkout and settles into your Stripe account, so you keep your own Stripe relationship and your own Stripe rates rather than sitting behind a merchant account of ours. A small platform fee applies on top of Stripe’s own processing rate — ask and we will tell you what it is before you commit. Owners can also sign what needs signing remotely, so an estimate or a consent form doesn’t have to wait for someone to be physically at the yard.
See it against your own vet count
Pick the Equine service alone or bundle it with the others your practice needs, and see the exact flat monthly number — in your own currency — before you talk to anyone.