AVImark Alternatives: For Practices That Liked Owning Their Software

Disclosure first: we build OpenVPM, one of the alternatives below, listed last and labeled. Everything else is judged on its merits with publicly reported pricing.

AVImark, now part of Covetrus, has run thousands of independent practices for decades, and the practices that kept it were not being stubborn. The model was right: a license you bought and owned, running on a server in your building, with records that kept working when the internet did not. The product around that model has aged, the interface shows it, there is no open API, and Covetrus's energy has visibly moved to its cloud products. So the question for an AVImark practice in 2026 is really two questions: do you want to keep the ownership model, and separately, do you want to keep the product?

If you want to keep the ownership model

This is the road almost nobody tells AVImark practices exists, because there is no commission on it. The modern version of owning your software is open source.

OpenVPM (that is us) is AGPLv3-licensed veterinary practice management you can run on your own server, exactly like AVImark, except the software itself costs $0 forever and the product is modern: browser-based, with SOAP notes, scheduling, invoicing, inventory with lot tracking, two-way client communication, DEA-style controlled-substance logging, a documented REST API with 150+ endpoints, and a built-in AI agent. The database schema is public, so your data is not merely in the building, it is in a format you can query and export yourself. No license fee, no per-vet fee, no exit fee. If you ever stop wanting to run a server, managed OpenVPM Cloud is $79 per month per location with unlimited staff, and the move between the two is your call, not a vendor's.

The honest trade: you or your IT person applies updates and keeps backups running, the way you already do for AVImark, and OpenVPM is a young product without AVImark's decades of edge cases. Run the demo at demo.openvpm.com against your messiest real workflows before you decide anything.

If you are ready to let someone else run it

If the server itself is the thing you are done with, the cloud systems below are the credible landing spots, ordered roughly by how AVImark-shaped they are.

DaySmart Vet is the closest in spirit: affordable, publicly reported from about $123 per month, clean and simple, built for small practices that do not want enterprise anything. Shepherd costs more, publicly reported at $299 per month for the first vet plus $99 per added vet, and buys you a genuinely excellent SOAP-driven workflow with migration and training bundled. Digitail, publicly reported between $149 and $300 per vet per month, is the pick if you want built-in AI doing your documentation. And Cornerstone, IDEXX's flagship, is where AVImark practices historically went for more depth, though moving from one aging system toward another vendor's legacy product in 2026 deserves a hard think.

Side by side

Getting your data out of AVImark

AVImark stores records in a proprietary local database, so whichever direction you pick, budget for a conversion step. Ask your destination vendor exactly what they convert from AVImark and what it costs; ask Covetrus in writing what an export includes and whether there is a fee. Because your data is already on your own server, you are in a stronger position than most switchers. Do not let anyone convince you otherwise.

The instinct that made you keep AVImark this long, that your practice should own its tools and its records, was correct. In 2026 you no longer have to choose between that instinct and modern software.