Compare · Hospital service
Vivetra vs. the referral, specialty & ER field in the UK & Ireland
In the UK and Ireland the hospital-tier field is small — and we want to be straight about why. When we researched the general practice-management vendors here (RoboVet, Merlin, VetIT, Teleos, Verifac), none of them ship a distinct hospital or referral-specific edition; they’re general systems sold to practices of all sizes. So the genuine hospital/referral competitive set in this market is really just the IDEXX/Provet cloud stack — here, that’s Provet Cloud and ezyVet — plus the two US incumbents on our global Hospital page (Instinct Science and OpenVPM) for context. The table below is short because the specialty tier itself is smaller here, not because we left anyone out.
$200/mo covers shared-core plus your first service — unlimited doctors and staff, fully managed hosting included in that price, not a footnote. Each additional service adds +$50/mo to the same monthly bill.
This is Vivetra’s own comparison. We compiled it from each vendor’s public materials; all product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners, who are not affiliated with and do not endorse Vivetra. The competitor claims on this page were verified as of August 2, 2026 for the UK & Ireland market.
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The UK & Ireland hospital-tier field, with sources
These are the specific competitor facts we cite for this market — each shown with its exact wording and a link to the source we retrieved it from, verified as of August 2, 2026. The right-hand column is Vivetra’s own read of how each one fits the hospital tier, not a sourced assertion.
| Competitor & source | Claim (as verified) | How it fits the hospital tier |
|---|---|---|
| Provet Cloud source (opens in new tab) |
Referral Portal — a native (non-add-on) referral-hospital feature: referral centers create intake forms and define departments, clinics, and referral-types; referring vets share notes, DICOM images, and results through one portal across the referral lifecycle to discharge |
The closest thing to a purpose-built referral tier in this market: a native (non-add-on) Referral Portal where referral centers set up intake forms, departments, clinics and referral-types, and referring vets share notes, DICOM images and results through one portal from referral to discharge. |
| ezyVet source (opens in new tab) |
markets itself for "UK Primary Care, Emergency and Specialty referral" — positions emergency/specialty referral as a distinct served segment, not general practice only |
Markets itself for UK primary care, emergency and specialty referral alike — it treats emergency/specialty referral as a served segment rather than general practice only, so a referral hospital is a target user of the general platform. |
| Vivetra (Hospital service) |
One flat monthly price — unlimited doctors and staff, managed hosting included — with purpose-built ER tooling: a triage-acuity ward board, treatment-conflict detection, controlled-substance logging and real-time treatment sheets on the same shared-core record as every other service. |
Flat-rate, headcount-proof, hosting-included — the opposite of the per-vet cloud stack it sits next to here. |
Where Vivetra genuinely wins for a UK or Irish hospital
One flat price, any headcount
A twelve-doctor overnight ER pays the same base price as a three-vet referral clinic. Add a fourth overnight vet or a second surgery team and the number above doesn’t move — no per-vet quote, no headcount to report. That’s the opposite of the per-vet cloud pricing the IDEXX/Provet stack runs on.
Managed hosting, no server ops
Vivetra’s hosting is fully managed for you — Vivetra operates the deployment as part of the monthly price. Your team never patches an OS, never restores a backup, never touches a server. Managed hosting is included, not a bolt-on.
ER-grade depth on shared-core
A triage-acuity ward board, automatic treatment-conflict detection, controlled-substance logging, and real-time treatment sheets — on the same patient record and billing system as every other Vivetra service, not a general-practice product stretched to cover a hospital floor.
What the pet owner sees while their animal is with you
A referral or ER stay is the moment an owner most wants information and is least able to ask for it. Vivetra ships a client portal for exactly that, reading from the same record your floor is working in.
- Live hospitalization status. The owner can see that their animal is admitted and where the stay stands, without a receptionist relaying it between treatments.
- Medical records, vaccination history, and lab results they can download. Results and history are available to the owner directly — and downloadable, so a referring vet or a second opinion gets a real file instead of a phone call.
- Discharge instructions that don’t get left in the car. The discharge write-up stays in the portal, so the person medicating at 2 a.m. is reading the actual instructions rather than remembering them.
- Remote e-approval of estimates. An owner who is at work, or a long drive away, can approve a revised estimate from their phone — so treatment isn’t waiting on a signature that has to happen in your waiting room.
- Appointment and refill requests. Recheck and refill requests arrive as requests your team approves, rather than as another round of voicemail.
- And a print/scan-back paper path for the clients who want one. This is the unusual one, and it’s deliberate: every client-facing document can be printed, filled in by hand, and scanned back into the same record. “Our clients aren’t tech-savvy” is a fair objection to a portal, and most software in this field answers it by shrugging. Vivetra answers it by letting the paper route be a first-class path that lands in the same chart as the digital one.
Where we’re honest about the gaps
No comparison is worth reading if it only lists the wins. Here are the places a competitor — or an open-source project — may be the better call for your hospital. We’d rather you hear it from us.
- The IDEXX/Provet stack has a track record we don’t. This is our weakest flank in this service, and we’ll say it plainly: Provet Cloud ships a native Referral Portal built for referral centers, and ezyVet has spent years on hospital floors. The US incumbent Instinct Science even publishes a vendor-stated average 24/7 live support response of about 90 seconds (see our global Hospital page). Vivetra is a new vendor without years of referral-floor support history or a comparable published SLA yet. If a long, proven referral support relationship is your top priority today, weigh that seriously.
- OpenVPM can be cheaper — if you run your own server. OpenVPM (openvpm.com specifically — a different project from a similarly-named, subscription-gated one) is free to self-host with unlimited staff and no per-user fees — the closest pricing shape to ours anywhere. For a practice with the in-house IT capacity to run, patch and back up its own server, that can genuinely cost less than Vivetra. What you trade for our price is that we run all of it for you and back it with vendor support, versus a community-maintained project you operate yourself.
- You bring your own Stripe account — and there’s a platform fee. Clients pay bills and estimates online through a Stripe account that belongs to your hospital, so you keep your own Stripe relationship and your own processing rates and the money lands in your account, not ours. On top of Stripe’s own rate there is a small Vivetra platform fee. If your hospital would rather not use Stripe at all, that part of the product won’t suit you. (This is unrelated to how you pay us for the subscription.)
- We’re new and unproven next to the incumbents. Provet Cloud and ezyVet have years in the field and the backing of established owners. Vivetra doesn’t. If a long reference list and a decade of uptime history are decisive for you, that’s a real reason to choose an established vendor — and a fair one.
Common questions
Where do the facts in this UK & Ireland comparison come from?
Every source-linked claim on this page comes from a single internally-maintained dataset that stores the exact claim, its source URL, and the date we retrieved it. For the Hospital service in the UK and Ireland that dataset holds two verified competitor claims — Provet Cloud's native Referral Portal and ezyVet's UK primary-care/emergency/specialty-referral positioning — and each is shown with its source and retrieval date. Nothing else on the page is a sourced factual assertion about a competitor.
Why is the table so short — where are RoboVet, Merlin, VetIT, Teleos and Verifac?
Because we checked, and they don't belong in a hospital-tier table. When we researched the general UK and Ireland practice-management vendors — RoboVet, Merlin, VetIT, Teleos, Verifac — none of them ship a distinct hospital or referral-specific edition; they're general practice-management systems marketed to practices of all sizes. Padding this page with them would imply a specialty-tier match that isn't there. The genuine hospital/referral competitive set in this market is the IDEXX/Provet cloud stack shown above, plus the two US incumbents on our global Hospital page (Instinct Science and OpenVPM) for context. The field is smaller here because the specialty tier itself is smaller in this market — not because we left anyone out.
Is Vivetra really the best choice for a UK or Irish referral center or ER?
Honestly, it depends. Provet Cloud ships a native Referral Portal built for referral hospitals, and ezyVet has years of hospital-floor track record that a brand-new vendor like us has not matched yet — and the US incumbent Instinct Science publishes a support SLA we can't claim. Where Vivetra wins is the pricing model: one flat monthly price, unlimited doctors and staff, managed hosting included, on the same shared-core deployment as every other service. If a long, proven referral support relationship is your top priority today, weigh that seriously. If it's flat, headcount-proof pricing with hosting you never have to run, that's us.
What do our clients actually get, and what if they won't use a portal?
The client portal shows hospitalization status, medical records, vaccination history, discharge instructions, and lab results they can download, and it takes appointment requests, refill requests, and remote e-approval of estimates — so an owner a long drive away can approve a revised estimate from their phone instead of your treatment waiting on a signature in the waiting room. They can also pay bills and estimates online, and save a card, through a Stripe account that belongs to your hospital: you keep your own Stripe relationship and rates, the money lands in your account, and a small Vivetra platform fee applies on top of Stripe's own rate. And for the clients who genuinely won't use a portal, every client-facing document can be printed, filled in by hand, and scanned back into the same record — the paper route is a first-class path, not an apology.
Can I dispute something on this page?
Yes — please do. This is Vivetra's own comparison, compiled from public vendor materials, and we'd rather fix a mistake than defend one. Email [email protected] and we correct confirmed inaccuracies within 5 business days.
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