Veterinary Practice Management Software · reliability comparison
Otto vs Shepherd: which is more reliable? (2026)
Otto is more reliable than Shepherd, scoring 98.4 vs 68.6 out of 100. Over the last 90 days Otto reported 1 incident and Shepherd reported 5, with effective uptime of 100% and 99.46% respectively. Otto resolves incidents faster on average (<1m).
Data updated Nov 1, 2026 · How we score
| Metric | Otto | Shepherd |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability score | 98.4 | 68.6 |
| Rank (veterinary practice management systems) | #2 | #9 |
| Uptime (90 days) | 100% | 99.46% |
| Incidents (90 days) | 1 | 5 |
| Partial / major outages | 1 | 1 |
| Avg time to resolve | <1m | 4h 53m |
| Outages we detected | 0 | 0 |
| Transparency score | 100/100 | 100/100 |
Where Otto and Shepherd differ
- Shepherd reported 5× as many incidents as Otto over the last 90 days (5 vs 1).
- Otto fixes problems faster: <1m on average, against 4h 53m for Shepherd (Infinity× quicker).
- Otto's longest outage on record lasted 1h 17m (May 18, 2026); Shepherd's lasted 22h 26m (Sep 14, 2026).
90-day uptime
Otto
Shepherd
- No incidents
- Degraded
- Partial outage
- Major outage
- No data
Recent Otto incidents
- Partial outageOct 4, 2026 · resolved in <1m
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 Disruption
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
- IDEXX Neo · #3 · 99.94% uptime
- Vetstoria · #4 · 99.96% uptime
- Vetspire · #5 · 99.90% uptime
See the full most reliable veterinary practice management software ranking →