Compare · Hospital service
Vivetra vs. the referral, specialty & ER field
Some hospital software prices per vet (Provet Cloud, for one), and the closest purpose-built competitor has years of track record that we, as a new vendor, simply don’t have yet. This page lays that out straight: where Vivetra’s flat-rate, managed-hosting model genuinely beats the field, and where an established competitor or an open-source project is the honest better fit. Available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.
$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 sourced claims on this page were verified as of October 29, 2026.
Software changes fast, and we’d rather fix a mistake than defend one. Spot something wrong or out of date? Report an inaccuracy. We correct confirmed inaccuracies within 5 business days.
The Hospital comparison, side by side
Vivetra against every named competitor in this segment. The pricing and fit notes below paraphrase the claims in the sourced-claims table, where each one carries its citation; “Not stated” means we have no sourced fact for that cell.
| Product | Pricing model | Flat price, any headcount? | Managed hosting | ER / specialty depth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vivetra (Hospital service) | $200/mo for shared-core + your first service, +$50/mo per additional service | Yes — the price never changes with headcount | Yes — included in the price; you never touch a server | Purpose-built: triage-acuity ward board, treatment-conflict detection, controlled-substance logging, real-time treatment sheets |
| Instinct Science | No price published; demo booking only | Not stated | Yes — fully cloud-based | Purpose-built ER/specialty EMR — in our view the closest direct competitor |
| ezyVet | From $260.50/mo; corporate/enterprise by custom quote | Same features from a single vet to large groups; flat/unlimited pricing not stated | Yes — cloud software | Markets to general practice and to specialty & emergency |
| Vetspire | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Markets an AI-driven medical record and practice platform (acquired by Pathway Vet Alliance) |
| ImproMed | ~$5k one-time license + ongoing support fees (third-party estimate) | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Covetrus Pulse (formerly eVetPractice) | Not stated | Not stated | Cloud-based (vendor-stated) | Pitched as an all-in-one cloud veterinary operating system (vendor claim) |
| Shepherd (acquired Hippo Manager, March 2025) | No numeric rate card published (publicly reported) | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| VetBlue | No published price; vendor contacts you about pricing | Not stated | Cloud (vendor-stated) | Markets to mobile, clinic, equine and holistic practices |
| Provet Cloud | Per-vet + monthly platform fee | No — priced per vet | Not stated | Native Referral Portal for referral centers |
| OpenVPM (openvpm.com) | Self-host: no license fee (you pay for your own infrastructure); managed Cloud: $79/location/mo (see sourced claim below) | Cloud plan: per location, unlimited staff, no per-user fees | Self-hosted (you run the server) or managed OpenVPM Cloud | Not stated |
Every sourced claim on this page
These are the specific competitor facts we cite — each shown with its exact wording, its status, and a link to the source we retrieved it from, verified as of October 29, 2026. Everything else on this page is category-level characterisation, not a sourced assertion.
| Competitor | Claim (as verified) | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instinct Science | FAQ: "Instinct EMR offers 24/7/365 live chat support" with "a 90-second average response time"; page stats: "<90s" average support response time and "24/7 live support when you need it" | verified |
View source for Instinct Science (opens in new tab)
Retrieved October 29, 2026 |
| OpenVPM (openvpm.com, NOT openvpms.org) | self-hosting has no license fee (the clinic still pays for its own infrastructure); managed OpenVPM Cloud is $79/location/mo with unlimited staff and no per-user fees | verified |
View source for OpenVPM (openvpm.com, NOT openvpms.org) (opens in new tab)
Retrieved October 29, 2026 |
| Covetrus Pulse (formerly eVetPractice) | Covetrus page: "Pulse (formerly eVetPractice) is at the center of the Covetrus Platform, integrating your software into a unified, cloud-based environment"; Covetrus calls it "The industry’s first cloud-based all-in-one Veterinary Operating System" (vendor claim) | verified |
View source for Covetrus Pulse (formerly eVetPractice) (opens in new tab)
Retrieved October 29, 2026 |
| VetBlue | "powerful and affordable cloud veterinary software for offices of all sizes and types such as mobile, clinic, equine and holistic veterinary practices"; no published price (free-trial form: "We'll contact you about pricing"); site footer: FirmCloud Corp., Oakland, CA | verified |
View source for VetBlue (opens in new tab)
Retrieved October 29, 2026 |
| Provet Cloud | Referral Portal — a native (non-add-on) referral-hospital feature: referral centers create forms and define departments, clinics, and referral-types; referring vets share notes, DICOM images, and results through one portal from referral submission to discharge | verified |
View source for Provet Cloud (opens in new tab)
Retrieved October 29, 2026 |
| ezyVet | lists "Specialty & Emergency" as a distinct practice type alongside General Practice — emergency/specialty is a served segment, not general practice only | verified |
View source for ezyVet (opens in new tab)
Retrieved October 29, 2026 |
| ezyVet | founded in 2006 and based in New Zealand; acquired by IDEXX in June 2021 along with Vet Radar; IDEXX positions it for both general practice and specialty clinics | verified |
View source for ezyVet (opens in new tab)
Retrieved October 29, 2026 |
| Vet Radar | New Zealand-based electronic treatment sheet, whiteboarding and workflow tool for veterinary hospitals; acquired by IDEXX with ezyVet in 2021 and made part of ezyVet | verified |
View source for Vet Radar (opens in new tab)
Retrieved October 29, 2026 |
Where Vivetra genuinely wins for a hospital
One flat price, any headcount
A twelve-doctor overnight ER pays the same base price as a three-doctor referral clinic. Add a fourth overnight doctor or a second surgery team and the number above doesn’t move — no per-seat quote, no headcount to report. That’s the opposite of per-vet pricing like Provet Cloud’s.
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. That’s the concrete difference from OpenVPM’s run-your-own-server path, where all of that is your job.
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, vaccine 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 three hours away, can approve a revised estimate from their phone — so treatment isn’t waiting on a signature that has to happen in your lobby.
- 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. 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.
- Instinct Science has a track record we don’t. This is our weakest flank in this service, and we’ll say it plainly: Instinct is a purpose-built ER/specialty EMR whose company story goes back to 2017, and it states 24/7/365 live chat support with a 90-second average response time (see the sourced-claims table above). Vivetra is a new vendor; we do not have years of hospital-floor support history or a comparable published support response time behind us yet. If a long, proven ER 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 openvpms.org) has no license fee to self-host (you pay for your own infrastructure), and its managed Cloud plan is priced per location with unlimited staff and no per-user fees — the closest pricing shape to ours in the whole segment. 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, versus self-hosting where the server work is yours (or paying OpenVPM for its managed Cloud).
- 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. ezyVet has been around since 2006, and Instinct’s story starts in 2017. Vivetra’s doesn’t go back that far. 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 numbers in this 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 those include Instinct Science's vendor-stated support (24/7/365 live chat, 90-second average response), OpenVPM's pricing (no license fee to self-host; a per-location Cloud plan with unlimited staff and no per-user fees), and what Covetrus Pulse and VetBlue say about themselves — each shown with its source in the sourced-claims table. The comparison table paraphrases those sourced facts; where we have no sourced fact for a cell, it says "Not stated" rather than guessing.
Is Vivetra really the best choice for a hospital or ER?
Honestly, it depends. Instinct Science is a purpose-built ER/specialty EMR with a company story going back to 2017 and a vendor-stated 90-second average response time on its 24/7/365 live chat support — a real, earned advantage a brand-new vendor like us has not matched yet. 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 your priority is a long, proven ER support relationship today, weigh that seriously. If it's flat, predictable, headcount-proof pricing with hosting you never have to run, that's us.
How is this different from OpenVPM, which has no license fee to self-host?
OpenVPM (openvpm.com specifically — a different project from openvpms.org) is genuinely the closest pricing shape to ours: self-hosting carries no license fee (you still pay for your own infrastructure), and its managed OpenVPM Cloud plan is a per-location monthly price with unlimited staff and no per-user fees. If your practice has the IT capacity to run its own server, patch the OS, and restore its own backups, OpenVPM can be cheaper than Vivetra — we're not going to pretend otherwise. The difference is that Vivetra's architecture is fully managed for you (Vivetra operates the deployment as part of the price, so nobody on your staff touches a server), and it ships ER-grade clinical depth backed by a vendor support relationship rather than a server you operate yourself.
What do our clients actually get, and what if they won't use a portal?
The client portal shows hospitalization status, medical records, vaccine 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 three hours away can approve a revised estimate from their phone instead of your treatment waiting on a signature in the lobby. 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.
Ready to see it on your own floor? Start a Hospital deployment in minutes — unlimited doctors and staff, managed hosting included, flat monthly price.
Shopping from the UK, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand? See the UK & Ireland comparison or the Australia & New Zealand comparison.
Deciding between the two names on most hospital shortlists? See ezyVet vs. Instinct Science, head to head.