PetDesk Alternatives: Vet Portals, Record Folders, and the Days in Between

You did not choose PetDesk. Your clinic chose it, and you downloaded it because the front desk asked you to. Inside it you can request an appointment, ask for a refill, see vaccine records and lab results, and confirm a visit. PetDesk calls itself "an extension of your existing veterinary practice management system," and says it works with over 12,000 practices and more than 7 million owners. For owners it is free.

That relationship is the entire product, and it is why searching for PetDesk alternatives returns a confusing pile. Most of what comes back is a folder for documents your clinic already holds. Only one thing here covers what no clinic portal contains: the 364 days your dog was not at the vet.

TL;DR: The 6 Best PetDesk Alternatives

1. Tails — best overall. Not a clinic portal and not pretending to be one. Walks recorded automatically by phone GPS, poop logged by quality, months of walks turning into stamina trends.
2. 11Pets — best for records and medication schedules. Preventive care, dosage and frequency with a reminder for each administration, hygiene, nutrition, vet visits. Free tier plus a paid subscription.
3. Pawprint, now Great Pet Care — best for getting vaccination records out of your vet, in a form a groomer or boarder accepts.
4. Airvet — best for reaching a vet outside clinic hours. $35 per month for unlimited 24/7 video calls and chats, or $75 per visit.
5. PetPage — best like-for-like clinic portal, if your veterinarian subscribes. Free to owners.
6. PetPro Connect — best only if your clinic already uses it. Free, from Boehringer Ingelheim.

Short answer: if you lost the clinic connection, PetPage is the closest shape and only your clinic can turn it on. If you lost the records, 11Pets or Great Pet Care. If you wanted a record of your dog's ordinary days, that was never in PetDesk, and Tails is where to get it.

Why Do Users Look for PetDesk Alternatives?

Four reasons come up, and they lead to four different apps.

Your clinic stopped using it, or you changed clinics. The most common reason and the least solvable. When the practice leaves, appointment and refill requests stop working, and the records you could see were a window into the clinic's system, not a copy you own.

You want a copy you control. Owners who move house, change vets, or use a specialist alongside a regular practice discover this at the worst moment. Record apps are a separate category for this reason.

Access is tied to one clinic's hours. A request at 2 a.m. is not an answer at 2 a.m. If something looks wrong on a Sunday, a portal cannot help. A telehealth service can.

You wanted a health record and got an appointment book. Vaccine dates and lab results are a medical file, not a picture of how your dog is doing. A dog walking fifteen minutes less every week since June has nothing in the clinic file until something breaks.

Short answer: switch portals only if your clinic switched. Add a record app for a copy you own, a telehealth service if the gap is access, a daily tracker if the gap is the days between visits.

How We Evaluated Each Alternative

Five criteria, applied the same way to every app, including ours.

1. Does it work without your clinic's cooperation? Whether it survives you switching vets, or your practice switching vendors.
2. What does it actually hold? A window into someone else's system is not a record you keep.
3. What does it capture that nobody has to remember? Anything typed in at the end of a long day eventually goes untyped.
4. Can you get it in front of a veterinarian? Export, sharing, or a printable view.
5. Is the price legible? Whether a free tier exists and the paid number is on the vendor's own site.

We ranked on what an app adds to your dog's record, not on how closely it copies PetDesk, which is why the closest clone is not first.

Bottom line: three of these cannot be switched on by you at all. Weigh that first.

The 6 Best PetDesk Alternatives

1. Tails: Best Overall for the Record PetDesk Does Not Hold

Tails is the best choice when daily walk proof and dog health tracking are the core of your routine, because it records walks automatically, logs poop and symptoms alongside them, and turns months of ordinary walks into health trends you can show a vet.

Tails records three things a records app has no field for. Poop is logged by quality, not counted, so "three this week" becomes "soft for four days running." Sniffari time tracks the share of a walk the dog spent nose-down investigating rather than covering ground. And stamina trends accumulate, so a decline shows up as a line rather than a feeling. All of it is captured by the phone in the walker's pocket, with no hardware and no report to file.

Family plans consolidate every walk and note from everyone caring for the dog onto one screen automatically, so when your partner walked at lunch and a sitter walked at four, neither has to write anything down. Tails tracking works for any owner in any country, unlike the three clinic apps here.

Where Tails loses to PetDesk: Tails does not talk to practice management systems, and never will. Nothing your clinic records appears in Tails, and nothing you record in Tails appears in the clinic's file — you have to show it. Tails cannot request an appointment or a refill, and does not hold your vaccination certificates. It is dogs only, and it does not interpret or diagnose anything it records.

Start with the Tails dog health tracker or the best dog health tracker apps guide.

2. 11Pets: Best for Medical Records, Medications, and Preventive Care

If what you wanted from PetDesk was the records, 11Pets is the better answer and we would rather you used it. It handles preventive care scheduling, medication with dosage and frequency plus a reminder for every administration, hygiene, nutrition, vet visits logged with reason and cost, measurement charts, and expenses. You can invite your vet to add data without them joining.

It is free to use, with a paid subscription adding medical records, veterinary visits and unlimited pet seats. 11Pets publishes no price on the pages we could reach, so check its pricing page. It does not track walks: it is a care file, not an activity record.

Choose 11Pets if: your dog is on several medications, has a chronic condition, or sees more than one clinic. Choose something else if: the daily picture is what you keep losing.

3. Pawprint (Now Great Pet Care): Best for Getting Vaccination Records Out of Your Vet

Pawprint has been rebranded. Visit getpawprint.com and you land on Great Pet Care, with the message "Pawprint is now Great Pet Care!" Existing accounts sign in with the same details.

Its original job survives the rename: get your pet's vaccination and medical records from your vet so you can use them as proof with a groomer, boarder, or daycare. It also covers weight tracking, recall alerts, and medication reminders. No pricing appears on the pages we could reach.

Choose Great Pet Care if: you keep being asked for vaccination proof. Choose something else if: you want an ongoing record, not document retrieval.

4. Airvet: Best for Reaching a Veterinarian Outside Clinic Hours

Airvet belongs here because "my clinic is closed and I do not know if this is serious" is one of the real reasons people go looking. Membership is $35 per month for unlimited 24/7 video calls and chats with its network of vets, or $75 for a single visit. Many get it free through an employer benefit, so check before you pay.

The limit is stated plainly by Airvet: because of US state and Canadian provincial law, its vets cannot prescribe medication over a telehealth visit. It is triage, not a prescription pad.

Choose Airvet if: the gap was access to a professional, not software. Choose something else if: you need medication or a physical exam.

5. PetPage: Best Like-for-Like Clinic Portal

PetPage is the closest thing here to a straight swap: a patient portal from AllyDVM, now under Cencora, free to owners, showing your pets' records as they exist in your vet's system, with after-hours appointment requests, refill requests, custom Pet IDs, and reminders.

The catch is structural. Your veterinarian must subscribe to PetPage and have your email on file, or registration will not work.

Choose PetPage if: your new clinic uses it. Choose something else if: you were hoping to pick your own portal.

6. PetPro Connect: Best Only If Your Clinic Already Uses It

PetPro Connect is a free clinic engagement app from Boehringer Ingelheim, introduced in select US markets in 2019 and expanded in 2020. It combines client messaging, appointment scheduling, refill requests, shareable medical records, loyalty programs and telemedicine, and practices still list it.

One caution. When we checked in August 2026, the product's own website, petproconnect.com, did not resolve, while clinic pages promoting it stayed live. Ask your practice whether it is still supported before relying on it.

Choose PetPro Connect if: your clinic offers it. Choose something else if: you are choosing for yourself.

What PetDesk Still Does Better

Leaving costs something. The honest accounting:

Two concessions belong in plain words rather than a table cell. First, PetDesk's clinic integration is something Tails cannot replicate: Tails cannot pull your lab results in or push your walk history out, so you have to show it, in the room, on your phone. Second, a phone only records the walks a person is on. Backyard time, the afternoon a neighbour took your dog out, and any walk where the phone stayed home do not exist in Tails.

Bottom line: PetDesk owns the clinic relationship. Nothing here takes it from them.

Should You Keep PetDesk and Add a Second App?

For most people, yes, and this is the part the category gets wrong.

PetDesk is free, it is the only route to your clinic's booking and refill queue, and deleting it gains you nothing. What it will never contain is what a veterinarian asks in the room: how far he is walking compared to spring, whether the stool has been consistent, whether he has been slowing down. Those get answered from memory, which is why they get answered badly.

So: keep PetDesk for the clinic, and add one thing for the days in between. If those days mean medications and documents, add 11Pets. If they mean walks, poop and slow change, add Tails.

That second half is worth doing because ordinary walks turn out to be measurable. The Tails Index publishes what a walk looks like across 1,648 completed walks by 133 real dogs: 33.8 minutes and 1.19 miles per walk, 47.6 minutes per active dog-day, 1.4 poops per day. Those come from GPS-recorded walks, not owner surveys, which matters, because surveys record what people remember.

Short answer: keep PetDesk. Add the app that covers whichever gap you noticed.

Match the Alternative to Your Situation

Getting Your Records Out Before You Switch

The portal is a window, not a filing cabinet. If you are changing practices, request the records from the clinic itself. A PDF of vaccination history, recent bloodwork and current prescriptions covers most future requests.

Start the daily record now. A tracker installed the week before an appointment shows a week. The same tracker installed today shows a season by the time it matters. See how often you should track your dog's walks.

Which PetDesk Alternative Is Best?

Tails, for most owners, because it is the only option here that covers what no clinic portal contains, and the only one that keeps working regardless of which software your veterinarian bought.

For the records themselves, 11Pets is better than Tails and better than PetDesk. For vaccination proof, Great Pet Care. For after-hours access, Airvet. And if what you lost was the clinic connection, no app here restores it.

Short answer: Tails for the days between appointments, 11Pets for records and medications, Airvet for after-hours access, your clinic's portal for the clinic. Most households want two of these, not one.

Conclusion

PetDesk is good at a job nobody else is attempting: putting your clinic's booking queue, refill queue and file in your pocket, free, with the clinic paying. That is worth keeping. What it was never built to do is describe your dog.

Bottom line: keep PetDesk for the clinic, and pick a second app for the gap you noticed. If that gap is medications and documents, use 11Pets. If it is walks, poop and slow change, start with the Tails dog health tracker or download Tails.