Veterinary Practice Management Software · reliability comparison
Covetrus Pulse vs Shepherd: which is more reliable? (2026)
Covetrus Pulse is more reliable than Shepherd, scoring 74.7 vs 68.6 out of 100. Over the last 90 days Covetrus Pulse reported 31 incidents and Shepherd reported 5, with effective uptime of 100% and 99.46% respectively.
Data updated Nov 1, 2026 · How we score
| Metric | Covetrus Pulse | Shepherd |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability score | 74.7 | 68.6 |
| Rank (veterinary practice management systems) | #8 | #9 |
| Uptime (90 days) | 100% | 99.46% |
| Incidents (90 days) | 31 | 5 |
| Partial / major outages | 4 | 1 |
| Avg time to resolve | — | 4h 53m |
| Outages we detected | 0 | 0 |
| Transparency score | 100/100 | 100/100 |
Where Covetrus Pulse and Shepherd differ
- Covetrus Pulse reported 6.2× as many incidents as Shepherd over the last 90 days (31 vs 5).
- Covetrus Pulse had 4 partial or major outages, compared with 1 for Shepherd.
90-day uptime
Covetrus Pulse
Shepherd
- No incidents
- Degraded
- Partial outage
- Major outage
- No data
Recent Covetrus Pulse incidents
- Degraded performanceOct 30, 2026 · resolved (duration not published)
- Degraded performanceOct 30, 2026 · resolved (duration not published)
- Degraded performanceOct 28, 2026 · resolved (duration not published)
- Degraded performanceOct 26, 2026 · resolved (duration not published)
- Degraded performanceOct 22, 2026 · resolved (duration not published)
- Degraded performanceOct 20, 2026 · resolved (duration not published)
Recent Shepherd incidents
- Degraded performanceOct 30, 2026 · resolved in <1m
- Degraded performanceSep 14, 2026 · resolved in <1m
- Partial outageSep 14, 2026 · resolved in 22h 26m
Shepherd Application Service Disruptionofficial update ↗
Affected: Shepherd Application, Shepherd Pay, SMS (Texting Services), AI Services (TranscribeAI, SummarizeAI, DiagnoseAI), OpenAPI (Clinic Connect and Integrations), Shepherd Support Chat (Intercom)
- Degraded performanceSep 10, 2026 · resolved in 1h 10m
OpenAPI – Intermittent Request Failures
Affected: OpenAPI (Clinic Connect and Integrations)
- Degraded performanceAug 26, 2026 · resolved in 50m
Shepherd Application Degraded Performance
Affected: Shepherd Application, Shepherd Pay, SMS (Texting Services), AI Services (TranscribeAI, SummarizeAI, DiagnoseAI), OpenAPI (Clinic Connect and Integrations)
Other veterinary practice management systems to consider
- PetDesk · #1 · 100% uptime
- Otto · #2 · 100% uptime
- IDEXX Neo · #3 · 99.94% uptime
- Vetstoria · #4 · 99.96% uptime
See the full most reliable veterinary practice management software ranking →