Veterinary Practice Management Software · reliability comparison
Shepherd vs Vetspire: which is more reliable? (2026)
Vetspire is more reliable than Shepherd, scoring 89.7 vs 68.6 out of 100. Over the last 90 days Shepherd reported 5 incidents and Vetspire reported 4, with effective uptime of 99.46% and 99.90% respectively. Vetspire resolves incidents faster on average (1h 40m).
Data updated Nov 1, 2026 · How we score
| Metric | Shepherd | Vetspire |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability score | 68.6 | 89.7 |
| Rank (veterinary practice management systems) | #9 | #5 |
| Uptime (90 days) | 99.46% | 99.90% |
| Incidents (90 days) | 5 | 4 |
| Partial / major outages | 1 | 2 |
| Avg time to resolve | 4h 53m | 1h 40m |
| Outages we detected | 0 | 0 |
| Transparency score | 100/100 | 100/100 |
Where Shepherd and Vetspire differ
- Shepherd reported 25% more incidents than Vetspire over the last 90 days (5 vs 4).
- Vetspire had 2 partial or major outages, compared with 1 for Shepherd.
- Vetspire fixes problems faster: 1h 40m on average, against 4h 53m for Shepherd (2.9× quicker).
- Shepherd's longest outage on record lasted 22h 26m (Sep 14, 2026); Vetspire's lasted 1d 22h (Mar 30, 2026).
90-day uptime
Shepherd
Vetspire
- No incidents
- Degraded
- Partial outage
- Major outage
- No data
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)
Recent Vetspire incidents
- Degraded performanceOct 22, 2026 · resolved in 2h 56m
Affected: Cubex
- Partial outageOct 9, 2026 · resolved in 1h 7m
Affected: CardConnect
- Major outageSep 16, 2026 · resolved in 58m
Affected: IDEXX VetConnectPlus & In-House Labs
- InformationalAug 19, 2026 · resolved in 4h 44m
Idexx WebPACS integration now requiring a test to be selected/inputted where previously not required
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 →