X18 vs iRecall: review engine or reminder engine?
Ask iRecall what it is and its own homepage answers plainly: a "smart client communications platform, built for vets, by vets" — reminders, recalls and compliance, fully automated (irecall.vet, last checked 19 Aug 2026). Reviews are in there, but as one module among many. X18 is the inverse — a review engine first, built to turn the silent 99% of happy clients into public Google reviews. Different centres of gravity, different outcomes. Here's the honest version of that comparison.
A Zoetis-owned communications platform. The engine room is automated vaccination, parasite and appointment reminders across text, email and post — plus relationship touches like pet birthday messages, education templates and the ourvet.shop storefront.
Built to lift: compliance revenue. Their published customer claims: "400% increase on flea and worm product sales", "200% increase on vaccines".
A dedicated review engine. Every client gets asked via a frictionless one-tap flow (video reviews included), happy moments become public Google reviews, unhappy moments route to a private resolution flow your team sees first.
Built to lift: your public Google profile and local-pack ranking. Platform data: 6–13× more reviews monthly, 94% fewer negative public reviews.
The short version
If your bottleneck is lapsed reminders, look at iRecall — it's genuinely good at compliance. If your bottleneck is that your clinic is better than its Google profile says, that's exactly the job X18's vet review engine was built for. Plenty of clinics run both.
One clinic, same clients, two machines
Here's the head-to-head we can put a number on. One clinic in the X18 base had been running iRecall for four years — and after twenty years of operation its Google profile held around 300 reviews. Reminders were humming; the profile wasn't. Seven months after switching its review flow to X18, that same clinic passed 1,000 Google reviews.
Same clinic's Google reviews — before and after (anonymised, X18 customer base)
Average: barely more than one new review a month
~700 new public reviews at about 100 a month — same clients, same care, different asking machine
One thing worth being precise about: that's not a knock on iRecall's reminders, which that clinic kept using happily. It's what happens when the review ask moves from a module to an engine. For scale, iRecall's own site quotes a practice that collected "two hundred 5 star google reviews in less than a year" — roughly 17 a month, and a genuinely good outcome for a communications platform. (For how this same gap plays out against generic feedback software, see X18 vs Customer Radar and X18 vs ReviewTree.)
Feature by feature
| Capability | iRecall | X18 |
|---|---|---|
| Automated vaccination / parasite reminders | ✓ core product | ✗ not our job |
| Pet birthday + relationship touches | ✓ | ✗ |
| Client education templates + ecommerce | ✓ incl. ourvet.shop | ✗ |
| Review ask on every visit | ~ review module + NPS surveys | ✓ every client, visit-triggered |
| Frictionless one-tap flow incl. video reviews | ✗ | ✓ |
| Private resolution flow (offered to everyone) | ~ feedback dashboard | ✓ real-human follow-up inside 24h |
| Review cards / QR + NFC for the front desk | ✗ | ✓ |
| Ownership | Virtual Recall — a Zoetis company | Independent, founder-run (AU) |
Want to see the curve on your own clinic's profile?
Fifteen minutes, no slides. We'll pull up your Google profile live and show you what practices your size saw in their first 90 days.
Book a 15-minute strategy call →The compliance question you should ask any review vendor
Google's review policies prohibit "review gating" — selectively asking only your happy clients for public reviews (see Google's prohibited-content policy). Plenty of NPS-first tools across every industry stumble here, because the tempting default is: survey first, then invite only the promoters to Google. We're not claiming iRecall does this — its public pages describe a managed review system and NPS surveys without detailing the routing — but it's the first question we'd put to any vendor, ourselves included.
X18's answer is on the record: everyone gets asked, no sentiment gate, ever. The private resolution flow isn't a filter on who gets invited — it's service recovery offered to all, which is expressly permitted. That design choice costs us a few points of average rating versus gated systems and we take that trade every time, because it's the version that survives a Google audit.
Which one is right for you?
Choose iRecall if —
- → Lapsed vaccinations and parasite-product revenue are your biggest leak
- → You want reminders, education and ecommerce in one comms platform
- → Reviews are a nice-to-have, not the goal
Choose X18 if —
- → Your Google profile undersells the clinic you actually run
- → You want review velocity, video testimonials and local-pack movement
- → You want unhappy moments caught privately before they go public
Or run both — plenty of clinics in the X18 base keep iRecall for reminders and birthday touches and let X18 own the review ask. Just make sure only one system asks per visit.
Frequently asked questions
Is iRecall's review tool the same thing as X18?
No — iRecall describes itself as a client-communications platform (reminders, recalls, education) with a managed review system included. X18 is a dedicated review engine; review velocity, private resolution and local-pack ranking are the whole product, not a module.
Does X18 filter who gets asked for a review?
No. Every client gets asked — Google prohibits selectively soliciting only likely-positive reviewers. Unhappy clients get a private resolution path as well as the same public option; that's service recovery, not gating.
How do you measure the "6–13×" claim?
It's X18 platform data: new public Google reviews per month on a clinic's profile, compared before onboarding and after the engine is live, measured on the clinic's own Google Business Profile — visible reviews, not clicks or survey responses.
Can I run iRecall and X18 together?
Yes — they don't conflict. iRecall (or your PMS's own reminders) handles compliance comms; X18 handles the review ask and resolution flow. Just don't run two review-ask systems at once — clients should get one ask per visit.
What does switching involve?
X18 connects to your PMS, imports nothing sensitive, and the first review ask usually goes out within days of onboarding. Bring your last 90 days of review counts and we'll set the baseline together so you can judge us on the same numbers this page uses.
Leeor Meirovitz
Leeor's spent the last few years inside hundreds of independent vet clinics across the AU, NZ, UK, US, CA, TH, and PH markets — what actually moves Google ranking, what corporate chains can't replicate at the per-location level, and how the silent 99% of happy clients become the practice's loudest reviewers. He writes the way he talks at strategy calls: friendly, specific, and slightly opinionated.