X18 vs HotDoc for GP practices: a review engine next to a patient-engagement platform

If you already run HotDoc, you already have a Google review request going out — so the honest question isn't "which one asks for reviews". It's whether the asking you've got covers all of your patients, fires at the right moment, and gives an unhappy one somewhere to go that isn't your public profile.

TL;DR

HotDoc is a patient-engagement platform for Australian general practice — bookings, reminders, recalls, results, forms, check-in, telehealth, payments — with Reviews as one module among roughly sixteen. Per its own product page (last checked 31 August 2026) that module sends an SMS, push or email asking for a Google review "two hours after HotDoc booked appointments". X18 isn't a platform and doesn't try to be: it's a review engine that triggers off the completed visit in your practice software regardless of how the patient booked, optimises timing, channel and wording rather than using a fixed delay, and offers every patient a private route back to the practice. If most of your appointments come through HotDoc bookings and you want one vendor, HotDoc's module is a reasonable answer. If a meaningful share of your visits are phone or walk-in, that's the gap worth measuring first.

What is HotDoc, and what does its Reviews module actually do?

HotDoc is one of the most widely installed patient-engagement platforms in Australian general practice, and it's a genuinely broad product — we'd rather start by describing it accurately than by picking at it. Its general practice page lists Online Bookings, Appointment Reminders, Automated Recalls, Results, Digital Forms, Mobile Check-In, Telehealth Video, Vaccine Management, Routine Requests, Online Payments, Caller ID, Reviews, Inform, Broadcast SMS, Telehealth On Demand and Referral Upload. It states that it "integrates seamlessly with Best Practice, ZedMed and Medical Director", with Helix supported at a narrower feature set.

The Reviews module is the piece that overlaps with what we do. Per HotDoc's own product page, last checked 31 August 2026, it will "automatically request Google Reviews from patients who have just had an appointment", delivered by SMS, push notification or email "two hours after HotDoc booked appointments". The page also states an average rating of "4.8 stars" for clinics using the feature, describes the product as "AHPRA and RACGP compliant", and offers dashboard visibility of your Google reviews plus practitioner alerts when a review names a doctor.

Two things worth saying plainly. First, those are real Google reviews on your real Google profile — not reviews trapped inside a booking marketplace. Second, the compliance framing is explicit and public, which is more than a lot of review software in this market puts in writing. If you've been told HotDoc reviews "don't count" because they live on a booking platform, that's simply not what their product does.

So what does X18 do differently?

Three things, and they're all about the mechanics of the ask rather than the size of the feature list.

The trigger is the completed visit, not the booking channel. X18 works from appointment and visit data in your practice software, so a patient who rang reception or walked in is in the same flow as one who booked online.
Timing, channel and wording are optimised, not fixed. Rather than one delay applied to everyone, the engine learns from message outcomes across comparable practices — weighted by practice type, region and patient mix — and adjusts when the request goes out and what it says.
Every patient gets a private route back to the practice. Not a filter that intercepts unhappy patients before they reach Google — a service-recovery path offered to everyone, alongside the same public ask everyone gets.

That last distinction matters more than it sounds, and it's worth being precise about it because the industry has spent years being imprecise. Sorting patients by predicted sentiment and steering only the happy ones toward Google is review-gating. It breaches Google's policies, it's under pressure from consumer regulators in every market we operate in, and we don't build it. Asking everyone identically and giving everyone a direct line back to the practice gets you the same operational benefit — you hear about problems early — without the part that's being phased out.

Does the "HotDoc booked appointments" trigger leave patients out?

This is the question worth actually measuring in your own practice, and it's the one thing in this comparison we'd rather you verify than take from us.

HotDoc's product page describes the request firing "two hours after HotDoc booked appointments". Read literally, that means the review ask rides on the online booking. In a practice where nearly everything is booked through HotDoc, that's close to full coverage and the distinction is academic. In a practice where reception still books a large share by phone — which describes plenty of established and older-demographic patient bases — those consultations sit outside the trigger, and every one of them is a patient who was never asked.

Before you take our word for it: pull two numbers out of your practice software for last month — total completed consultations, and consultations that originated from an online booking. If the second number is 85% of the first, this section doesn't apply to you. If it's 45%, you've just found more than half your patients sitting outside the ask, and it's worth putting the question to HotDoc directly rather than assuming either way.

We're deliberately not claiming HotDoc can't cover phone-booked visits — their public page doesn't say one way or the other, and a marketing page isn't a specification. What we're saying is that the coverage question is the one that decides whether a second system earns its place, and it's answerable in ten minutes with your own data.

Want the coverage gap measured properly?

Fifteen minutes. We'll look at how many of your completed consultations are actually reaching a review ask today, what your profile looks like next to the practices in your catchment, and whether a second system is worth it at all — we'll tell you if it isn't.

Book a 15-minute strategy call →

Where is HotDoc genuinely the better choice?

Several places, and pretending otherwise would make the rest of this page less useful to you.

If you want one vendor, one bill, one support line. X18 does reviews. It doesn't do bookings, reminders, recalls, results delivery, forms, telehealth or payments, and it isn't going to. If consolidating suppliers is the goal, adding us moves you the wrong way.
If patient-facing brand recognition matters to you. HotDoc has a consumer marketplace and an app that Australian patients already have on their phones. We have no consumer-facing brand at all, by design.
If nearly all your bookings are already online. The coverage argument above is the main structural case for a second system. Take it away and what's left is timing, wording and the private route — real, but a smaller prize.
If you want a published compliance position from a large local vendor. HotDoc states AHPRA and RACGP alignment openly on its product page. We hold the same line and write about it constantly, but we're a smaller company without an equivalent public badge.
If your practice has no appetite for another integration. A second system is a second thing to configure, monitor and explain to reception. That's a real cost and it's fair to weigh it.

Look, we get it — a comparison page from the challenger that concludes "we win on everything" is worth exactly nothing to a practice manager who has to live with the decision. The useful version tells you where the line is.

Can you run both, and should you?

You can, plenty of practices do, and there's one rule that matters: only one system sends the review prompt. Two products both messaging the same patient two hours after the same consultation is the fastest way to look careless to the person you were trying to impress — and repeated prompting is exactly the behaviour that gets messages marked as spam and asks ignored.

The sensible split, where practices run both, is to keep HotDoc doing what it's built for — bookings, reminders, recalls, results, forms, the whole engagement layer — and let one system own the review ask. Which one that is depends entirely on the coverage number from the section above.

Decision checklist — work through it in order

What share of completed consultations came from an online booking last month? Under about 70% and the coverage gap is the whole conversation.
How many new public reviews did you get last month, and what's the date on your third-newest one? If it's older than a fortnight, whatever is running now isn't running hard enough.
Where does an unhappy patient currently go? If the honest answer is "Google, or nowhere", you're missing the service-recovery route entirely.
Is every eligible patient asked the same way? If anyone is deciding who to ask based on how the consult seemed to go, stop — that's the gating pattern being phased out.
If you add a second system, which one turns its review ask off? Decide before you switch anything on, not after the first patient gets two messages.

Work through those five and you'll usually have your answer without needing a sales call from either of us. The exclusion side — which patients shouldn't be in the ask at all, and why an automated rule needs a human override — is worked through in the GP review-ask exclusions piece.

What do the numbers look like on each side?

Here's both sides with their sources attached, because a comparison page where only one party's figures are cited isn't a comparison.

Stated figures, both sides

4.8 stars — average Google rating stated for clinics using HotDoc Reviews. Source: HotDoc product page, last checked 31 August 2026. Sample size and measurement window not stated by HotDoc.
~99% — share of satisfied patients who never write a review unless asked properly. Source: X18 platform data, May 2026, across practices running the engine; metric = proportion of eligible completed visits producing an unprompted public review.
6×–13× — increase in new public reviews per month after a practice starts asking every eligible patient the same way. Source: X18 platform data, May 2026; metric = the practice's post-onboarding monthly new-review count against its own prior monthly baseline. Wide range because starting baselines vary enormously.
+100 to +450 — new public reviews added per practice across our anonymised case set, over windows of roughly 1 to 10 months, ratings landing between 4.5 and 4.9. Source: X18 case set; per-practice totals against self-reported start dates.

Note what can't be compared: HotDoc's 4.8 is an average rating across its user base, and ours are velocity figures measured against each practice's own baseline. They're different metrics answering different questions, and lining them up as though one beats the other would be dishonest. Rating tells you where you'd land; velocity tells you how fast you'd get there and how recent your profile looks when a patient checks it — which is the part that decays if you stop.

If you'd rather see the argument without a named competitor in it, X18 versus generic review software for GP practices covers the same mechanics, and how GP practices actually win new patients puts the review layer in context with everything else. The rest sits in the GP practice library alongside the Review Engine for GP practices. Happy to share specifics on a 15-minute strategy call →

Frequently asked questions

Does HotDoc collect Google reviews or its own reviews?

Google reviews. Its product page describes the module as automatically requesting Google Reviews after an appointment and taking the patient through to the practice's Google reviews page, with the resulting reviews visible in the HotDoc dashboard. Last checked 31 August 2026. If anyone tells you HotDoc reviews sit inside a walled garden, that isn't what the product does.

Do we have to leave HotDoc to use X18?

No, and most practices that use both don't. X18 doesn't do bookings, reminders, recalls or results, so it isn't a replacement for the platform — it replaces or supplements one module of it. The only hard rule is that a single system owns the review prompt, so whichever one you choose, the other's review feature gets switched off before you go live.

Which practice software does each work with?

HotDoc states it integrates with Best Practice, ZedMed and Medical Director, with Helix supported at a narrower feature set (their site, last checked 31 August 2026). X18 works with any system that can produce a completed-visit or appointment feed, which covers Best Practice, Medical Director, ZedMed, Genie Solutions and Helix in Australian general practice. Worth confirming your specific version with both of us rather than assuming.

Is asking every patient for a review compliant in Australia?

Asking is fine. Publishing testimonials about regulated health services in your own advertising is restricted here, which is why we don't build testimonial walls for medical practices and why Google is the right destination anyway. The parts to get right are: ask everyone eligible the same way, never incentivise a review, make opting out one tap and permanent, and never confirm in a public reply that someone attended — attendance is health information. HotDoc's page states AHPRA and RACGP alignment for its module; we hold the same line.

SMS or email for the review request?

SMS gets the higher response rate by a wide margin — it's read within minutes and the review takes one tap from the phone already in the patient's hand. Email is the better fallback for patients without a mobile on file and for practices whose patient base skews older and reads email properly. Both HotDoc and X18 can use either; the difference is that a fixed rule sends the same channel to everyone, while cohort-optimised sending picks per patient based on what's actually working in comparable practices.

How do you handle a patient who doesn't want to be contacted?

One reminder at most, an obvious one-tap opt-out, and permanent suppression once someone opts out — across every future campaign, not just the one they replied to. Patients in clinically sensitive categories shouldn't be in the ask at all, and that exclusion list is set by the practice with a human able to override any automated rule. We wrote that up properly in the GP review-ask exclusions piece.

How is the 6×–13× figure calculated?

Against the practice's own history, not against an industry average: new public reviews per month after onboarding, divided by the same practice's average monthly count before it. X18 platform data, May 2026, across practices running the engine. The range is wide because the baseline is — a practice collecting two reviews a month has far more headroom than one already collecting fifteen, and both are in that figure.

Find out whether you need a second system at all.

Fifteen minutes. We'll work out how many of your completed consultations reach a review ask today, what your Google profile looks like against your catchment, and whether what you're running already is enough — start with the GP practice library or the Review Engine for GP practices.