How we score veterinary practice management software
We read what each vendor publishes and score nine things a practice manager usually needs to know before buying.
The score is not a mark out of ten for how good the software is. It only tells you how much you can check without speaking to sales.
Checked: 2026-09-21
The key point
The score measures how clearly they explain things, not software quality.
It shows how much of a buying decision you can complete from the vendor’s own public pages, without speaking to a salesperson. It is not a rating of the product. We think a vendor that is clear before you buy is more likely to be clear after you buy.
The nine things we look at
Each score is about whether you can see the answer in public at the start of a buying decision. It is not a score for how good that part of the product is.
| What we look at | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Cloud or on-site | You need to know where the software runs and where clinic data sits. Cloud, on-site, or both changes hardware, internet and where records are stored. |
| Pricing | You cannot budget or compare options if the price is hidden. Listed prices, plans or a calculator let you do a first pass without a sales call. |
| Contracts | Minimum terms, notice periods and payment or wholesaler lock-in decide how hard it is to leave. That belongs at the start, not after you have already switched. |
| AI | Practices are being sold AI as a default. You need to know what it does, whether it is included or extra, and whether you can leave it unused. |
| Other software it connects to | If it cannot talk to your labs, imaging, accounts or payments, you pay a second switching cost. A public list of connections, or an API, tells you whether it will sit with what you already have. |
| Who it is for | Species, mobile versus hospital, single-site versus group. The wrong shape of product wastes the rest of the evaluation. |
| Switching over | Moving records is often the real cost of changing systems. You need to know who does the work, what comes across, and how go-live is handled. |
| What it does | Records, diary, billing, stock and messages to clients are the jobs the software has to do. If those are unclear, later questions are premature. |
| Getting your data out | Who owns the records, what you can export, and whether you can leave. Without a public exit path, you are buying a lock-in you cannot inspect. |
Scoring rubric
| Score | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 5 | The vendor’s own site has a clear answer. You can understand it without calling sales. |
| 4 | The vendor’s own site is mostly clear, but a useful detail is missing. |
| 3 | The vendor mentions it, but the information is too thin to use on its own. |
| 2 | We found a credible answer elsewhere, but not enough on the vendor’s own site. |
| 1 | What we found is mainly sales talk, a quote form, or hard to check. |
| 0 | We could not find a usable answer on their public site. |
A score of 0 does not mean a product lacks the feature. It means we could not find enough on their public site to answer the question. We distinguish “they have not said” from “it cannot do it”.
These scores are not product ratings. A vendor that explains a lot may still be the wrong fit. A vendor that explains little may still be an excellent product. The score only shows how much of your first research you can do without a sales call.
Overall score
The overall score is simply the nine equally weighted scores combined:
Transparency Score = total of the nine scores ÷ 45 × 100
There is no hidden weighting.
For example, Vetrics in the current sheet is 4 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 44/45 = 98%.
Where we look
We start with the vendor’s own website and official documents. If we cannot check something there, we may use other credible material. Information that only appears on a third-party site scores lower than the same information on the vendor’s own site. The sources for each product are listed on that product’s page.
Who appears on the list
The list is the veterinary practice management systems in this catalogue, scored from public sources. Adjacent products that are not a full practice system are not listed.
Corrections
Send a link to something public — a pricing page, contract terms, API docs or an export policy. Private sales material does not count as a public answer.