Bittsi vs Instinct
Instinct grew up in emergency and specialty hospitals and now sells a primary-care edition; Bittsi runs general practice and the hospital floor in one system. What each publishes about price, contract, your data, support and AI, checked on their own pages, and who each one is right for.
Facts checked on the vendors' own pages, September 3, 2026 · written by the Bittsi team · sources at the end
- You run a referral or emergency hospital that already lives in Instinct and wants Plumb's monographs inside the record.
- You want to bring a third-party AI scribe you already pay for; Instinct integrates five.
- You want to buy support hours as much as software: Instinct publishes 24/7/365 live chat.
- You want a general-practice system that also runs the hospital floor: treatment sheets, anesthesia charted from the monitor, dental, inventory, payments and the pet-owner app in one record.
- You want the price on a page and a term you can read: from $249 a month, month to month, staff free, no renewal at a then-current price.
- You want your exit in writing: data exported free, in standard formats, at any time, instead of a clause that makes backups your job.
One system. Nothing to integrate.
Everything below is built into Bittsi and priced on one page. Enter it once and it is everywhere it needs to be: the charge posts and inventory moves the moment a treatment is logged. The only integrations are the ones only a lab or a card network can provide: IDEXX, Antech and Bittsi Pay.
Records and charting
Structured SOAP with templates and dictation; vitals and weight trends; vaccines and certificates; prescriptions, refills and labels; consent forms; the invoice drafts itself from the note.
Also: How the visit flows →Hospital floor
A status board with TV mode and shift handoff; live treatment sheets with due times, owners, protocols and fluid alerts; Crash Card dosing by weight with a CPR recorder.
Anesthesia and dental
Vitals charted every five minutes from the monitor with the drug timeline beside them; Triadan dental charts that bill the procedures when completed.
Also: Dental chart →Inventory and purchasing
Batch-level tracking with automatic FIFO, recall trace in about 30 seconds, purchase orders grouped by supplier, cycle counts and COGS per line.
Money
Estimates that convert in one click, Bittsi Pay inside the invoice, next-business-day funding reconciled to invoices, QuickBooks and Xero export.
Clients
Two-way SMS, MMS and email in one thread per patient, reminder cadences that stop on confirmation, and the clinic-branded Companion app.
Also: Companion app →Reporting
Financial, appointment and inventory dashboards that refresh as charges post; shareable links, scheduled PDFs and exports.
AI in the record
Scribe writes the note and the draft invoice from the conversation; Sage briefs every appointment, flags interactions and lab trends, and reconciles close-out.
Also: Sage →Side by side, from the published record
Every Instinct cell carries a source number. “Not published” means the vendor does not say on the pages we checked; ask them, and get it in writing.
| Topic | Bittsi | Instinct |
|---|---|---|
| Company and hosting | ||
| Owned by | Bittsi, an independent practice-software company | Instinct Science, backed by growth equity from Mainsail Partners since 2022; owner of Plumb's and Clinician's Brief since January 2024[1][2] |
| Hosting | Cloud-native, built for the browser from the first line of code; any device, including phones; no server, no install, no nightly batch | "Fully cloud-based" with 24/7 access from any device[3] |
| Where it came from | General practice and the hospital floor in one system from the first clinic: treatment sheets, anesthesia and dental are built in | Emergency and specialty hospitals; a primary-care edition followed in December 2025 as "a modern, cloud-based alternative to outdated, on-premise systems"[4] |
| Price and contract | ||
| Published price | Published, from $249 a month: Foundation $249 with one veterinarian included and $99 per additional veterinarian; Standard $379, or $249 with Bittsi Pay as the primary processor, $129 per additional veterinarian. Unlimited staff users on both. The pricing calculator is the bill, not an estimate | Not published; the pricing address returns a 404 and product pages carry no amounts[5] |
| Term and renewal | Month to month; annual billing saves 10% and can be cancelled at renewal | "Subscriptions will automatically renew at the end of the Term, at the then-current price"; notice of renewal at least 14 days before the term ends; the initial term length is not published[6] |
| Price changes | Prices are published; a change is a change to the pricing page | "The renewal prices are subject to change at any time"[6] |
| Setup and migration fees | No setup fee. One fixed migration quote before you sign, included with annual billing; a sandbox loaded with your own records before you commit | Not published |
| AI pricing | Published add-ons: Scribe $89, Sage $99, AI Suite $159 per seat a month; a seat can go to a veterinarian, a technician or the front desk and be reassigned as the team changes | Not published |
| Your data | ||
| Who owns it | You do, in writing | "Customer shall own all rights, title, and interest in and to the Customer Data"[6] |
| Export when you leave | Your data is yours, always: exported free, in standard formats, whenever you ask; no hostage clause, written into the agreement | The same clause continues: "Instinct is not obligated to maintain, store, or make any Customer Data available to Customer" and "Customer is solely responsible for making copies or backups of all Customer Data"[6] |
| Migration, training and support | ||
| Who does the migration | A named migration lead, one person from signature to go-live: clients, patients, visit history, prescriptions, reminders and balances moved, verified row by row against the old system, and you get the report | "Our team handles the details, trains your staff, and sticks with you through go-live and beyond"[7] |
| Time to live | Live in 14 days with role-based training; you keep seeing patients throughout; the lead stays on call through week one | "It depends on your practice's size, workflow, and setup"; no timeline published[7] |
| Support | One named lead from signature through go-live, then a real person who replies, usually within one business day; engineers answer when a question needs one; demos are hosted by a working DVM | "24/7/365 live chat support" with a "90-second average response time"; phone line published[3][7] |
| Integrations, AI, payments, clients | ||
| Laboratory and analyzers | IDEXX Laboratories, IDEXX Imaging and Antech Diagnostics built in, both directions: order from the record, results and images land on the visit and post their charges to the invoice; one-click activation from the admin panel. Your lab contract stays yours | IDEXX, Antech, Heska, Zoetis, Moichor, MVL, NBVL, Vetek and Micro-Vet[8] |
| Clinical reference | Sage medication safety checks against the patient's own chart: drug interactions, weight and species-aware dosing, lab-aware contraindications, and toxicology guidance with cited references; the clinician approves every prescription | Plumb's drug monographs, interactions and handouts are Instinct's own content, inside the record[2][6] |
| AI | Sage reads the whole chart: an overnight brief for every appointment, lab trends across panels, medication safety checks, close-out reconciliation of what was documented against what was billed, answers with citations. Scribe writes the SOAP note and the draft invoice from the exam-room conversation. Nothing is sent, billed, prescribed or signed without a clinician | ScribbleVet AI SOAP notes and Automations for follow-ups and reminders; record and visit summaries; five third-party scribes integrated[3][7][8] |
| Payments | Bittsi Pay inside the invoice: tap, dip, swipe, Apple Pay and Google Pay on the terminal; interchange-plus with the network cost and our margin on separate statement lines; next-business-day funding reconciled to invoices; refunds in-line; QuickBooks and Xero export; PCI-DSS Level 1 processor | Integrated payments on Clover devices; "No hidden fees. No surprise rate hikes. Ever."; rates not published[9][8] |
| Client communication | Built in: two-way SMS, MMS and branded email in one thread per patient; reminder cadences at 30, 7 and 1 days and day-of that stop when someone confirms; post-visit summaries and post-op check-ins drafted from the chart; mass campaigns; and the clinic-branded Companion app for pet owners | Through partners: PetDesk, Otto, AllyDVM, Oliver, FetchIT, ReviewTree, PetLink[8] |
Bittsi prices from bittsi.com/pricing. Bold text marks the stronger side of a row where there is one.
What Instinct does well
- Owned clinical content: Plumb's Veterinary Drugs and Clinician's Brief are Instinct companies, and the drug reference and safety alerts live inside the record.
- Support that publishes its own numbers: 24/7/365 live chat and a 90-second average response time.
- An open AI posture: its own ScribbleVet notes and Automations, plus integrations with CoVet, VetRec, TalkaToo, Dragon Veterinary and Hachiko.
- A deep integration catalogue across nine laboratory partners, six imaging and teleradiology services, and inventory and compliance tools such as CUBEX and VetSnap.
- Cloud-native with 24/7 access from any device, and explicit customer ownership of Customer Data in the terms.
- A primary-care edition launched in December 2025 in response to smaller practices asking for it.
What a switch actually looks like
The same plan for every clinic that moves to Bittsi, with a date and an owner on each step. It is written into the Switch Guarantee.
- 01Before you sign: one fixed quote and a sandboxWe size the migration from your current system and load a sandbox with your own records. You click around your real patients, not a demo clinic.
- 02Days 1 to 3: exportYour data comes out of the old system while it keeps running. Nothing changes for the front desk.
- 03Days 3 to 8: mapping and importClients, patients, visit history, prescriptions, reminders and balances, mapped field by field. Anything that cannot be mapped cleanly is archived read-only and labelled.
- 04Days 8 to 10: verificationEvery record checked against the source, row by row. You get the report.
- 05Days 10 to 13: training by roleShort sessions for the front desk, technicians and doctors on the parts they touch, not an all-day shutdown.
- 06Day 14: go-liveOn a lighter day, with your launch lead on call. The old system stays readable for reference until you retire it.
Questions clinics ask about Instinct and Bittsi
What does Instinct cost?
Instinct does not publish a price; its pricing address returns a 404. Its terms say subscriptions renew at the then-current price and that renewal prices can change at any time, so ask for the number, the term length and the renewal terms in writing. Bittsi publishes its price: from $249 a month on Foundation with one veterinarian included and unlimited staff; Standard $379, or $249 with Bittsi Pay.
Instinct has Plumb's built in. Does Bittsi?
Plumb's is Instinct's own content and we do not bundle a compendium. What Bittsi offers instead is Sage's medication safety check against the patient's own chart: drug interactions, species-specific contraindications, weight-based dosing and toxicology guidance with cited references. If a bundled formulary is your first requirement, ask Instinct what it costs inside the subscription; if a safety check on your own patient's data is, that is what Sage is built for.
What happens to my data if I leave Instinct?
Instinct's terms give you ownership of your data and, in the same clause, say Instinct is not obligated to maintain, store or make it available, and that backups are your responsibility. That is not an accusation; it is what is written. Ask them for an export commitment in writing. From Bittsi, your data is exported free, in standard formats, whenever you ask.
Is Instinct built for general practice?
Its heritage is emergency and specialty, and in December 2025 it launched a primary-care edition because, in its own words, smaller practices kept asking. Bittsi runs both from one record: the front desk and the exam room, and the hospital floor with live treatment sheets and anesthesia charted from the monitor. Ask each vendor to run your own day, not a demo day.
What does Instinct's auto-renewal clause mean for me?
Instinct's subscription terms say the subscription renews automatically at the then-current price, that renewal prices can change at any time, and that you get at least 14 days' notice before a term ends; the length of the initial term is not published. Before you sign, get the term length, the renewal price rule and the exit terms in writing. Bittsi is month to month at a published price, so there is nothing to negotiate on the way out.
How hard is it to move from Instinct to Bittsi?
One fixed migration quote before you sign, a sandbox with your own data, records verified row by row, and go-live in about 14 days with role-based training. Start by asking Instinct for a full export, since the terms make backups your responsibility.
Sources
Every Instinct statement above points to one of these. If a vendor page changes, tell us and we will change the row: info@bittsi.com.
- [1]Instinct announces growth equity investment from Mainsail Partners, Instinct Science, 2022.
- [2]Instinct Science acquires VetMedux, owner of Clinician's Brief and Plumb's, Instinct Science, 2024.
- [3]Instinct EMR, Instinct Science, 2026.
- [4]Instinct EMR for primary care, Instinct Science, 2025.
- [5]Instinct pricing address, Instinct Science, 2026.
- [6]Software subscription terms, Instinct Science, 2026.
- [7]Instinct EMR for primary care, product page, Instinct Science, 2026.
- [8]Integrations, Instinct Science, 2026.
- [9]Veterinary payment processing fees explained, Instinct Science, 2025.
Instinct and the other product names on this page are trademarks of their owners, used only to identify their products. Bittsi is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Vendor facts were read on the vendors' own pages on September 3, 2026 and can change; if you are the vendor and something is out of date, email info@bittsi.com and we will check it and correct the page within two business days.
See your own data in Bittsi before you decide.
One fixed migration quote, a sandbox loaded with your records, and a 30-minute walk through your real patients. No slides.