ePM, from First Solutions, has existed since 2011 and covers everything from single practice to hospital: clinical records, prescribing certified by the health system authority, nursing, physiotherapy, inpatient care, dentistry, nutrition and ophthalmology. It is serious medical software from an institutional vendor. It publishes no price, and that is where the comparison with us gets interesting for a small clinic.
Different categories. Where ePM is unbeatable — certified prescribing, inpatient care, medical verticals — we are not today, though our integration with the health service's PEM platform is built, with approval under way. The comparison below is useful for outpatient clinics, not for institutions.
Checked on 12 September 2026Public source: first-global.com
| What is compared | Appointmint | ePM |
|---|---|---|
| Product scope | AppointmintRunning and automating an appointment-based business: calendar, client record, clinical notes, invoicing, online payments and prepayments, communication, packages, stock, reports and AI. | ePMCloud clinical, administrative and financial management for practices, clinics and hospitals, with Doctor, Nutris and Clinics editions. |
| Calendar and online booking | AppointmintRooms and resources, group classes, waiting lists, recurring appointments, practitioner and branch absences, and online booking. | ePMReal-time calendar and appointment management, with several practices on a single database. |
| Client record and clinical notes | AppointmintA configurable record and clinical reports the clinic shapes to its specialty: 56 ready-made templates across 16 areas — physiotherapy, dentistry, psychology, nutrition, osteopathy, podiatry and more —, with body charts, dental charts, photos you can draw on, tables and signatures, and templates built with AI from the document you already use. Forms, surveys, consents and a client portal. Reads the Portuguese Citizen Card to fill in the record. | ePMComplete clinical record, vital signs, documents, nursing, physiotherapy, inpatient care, dentistry, nutrition and ophthalmology. |
| Certified invoicing | AppointmintOptional module. Appointmint issues invoices, receipts and credit notes certified by the Portuguese tax authority, through Cegid Vendus no. 2230/AT, with real-time or SAF-T reporting. Insurer and health-scheme coverage is recorded per service on the client record and deducted automatically from what is invoiced; public health service and scheme code tables are imported from the catalogue, with the codes on the invoice. | ePMIntegrated administrative and financial management. We found no published invoicing certification number. |
| Client communication | AppointmintWhatsApp on the clinic's own number: we are a Meta-approved Tech Provider, and the clinic connects its number from inside Appointmint, one per branch. Fifteen ready-made message templates, from the reminder to the payment request, submitted to Meta automatically when the number is connected, plus whichever the clinic writes, with quick-reply buttons. The client confirms with a button and the reply reaches the calendar. Also SMS and email, with its own wording per client language. | ePMVideo calls and personalised documents. Automated messaging appears in a customer testimonial, with no public technical detail. |
| Automations and pipelines | AppointmintAn automation engine the clinic writes itself: six events — a booking made, after the appointment, a pack running out, a birthday, a stage change and a cancelled appointment —, the conditions the clinic sets (service, first or nth appointment, client tags, days stalled in a stage, send time), and seven actions: WhatsApp, SMS, email, a task for the team, a survey, a Google review request and moving the client to another stage. Twelve automations ready to switch on. Pipelines built on the clinic's own tags, with won and lost stages, an alert for whoever is stalled, and time per stage. | ePMWe found no event-driven automation engine, client pipelines or AI on the public pages. |
| Electronic prescribing (PEM) | AppointmintIntegration with the Portuguese health service's PEM platform built, with the health service's approval under way: prescription, medicine search and prescriber signing by Chave Móvel Digital, Citizen Card or username and password, switched on per eligible clinic. We hold no clinical certification of our own. | ePMePM Doctor is presented as certified by the health system authority, with medicine and test prescribing. |
| Mobile apps | AppointmintTwo Android apps published on Google Play: admin and client portal. The iPhone version is coming soon; until then the iPhone opens the web version, which is complete. | ePMThe my ePM app was announced for Android and iPhone in 2021. We could not reconfirm its current state in the stores. |
| Public pricing and trial | AppointmintPlans and add-ons published on the site. Thirty days without a card, and free data migration. | ePMPublishes no price and no self-service trial. Purchase is by quotation. |
Checked on 12 September 2026. See our pricing
“Appointmint made a real difference to the day-to-day running of the studio and to managing it. We save a lot of time and have everything in one application. It is a genuine advantage.”
Ricardo CostaCEO · MagicStudioA hospital, medical centre or multidisciplinary clinic that needs certified prescribing, inpatient care, nursing and specialised clinical processes — and organisations that require contractual 24/7 support.
An outpatient clinic that wants to be working this week, with no implementation project, and whose problem is operations and communication rather than the regulated clinical act.
It is not public: purchase is by quotation. When you ask for one, ask in the same document for implementation, migration, training, storage and the cost of extended support — that is where the totals of institutional software usually change scale.
First announced the my ePM app for Android and iPhone in 2021 and we could not reconfirm its current state in the stores, so we do not take it as given. On our side the answer is simple: the installable apps today are Android, the iPhone version is coming soon, and until then the web version works fully in the iPhone browser.
It depends on what decides your purchase. If it is running the clinic — diary, packages, invoicing, communication — then yes. If it is certified prescribing, diagnostic requests or public agreements, then no, and this page says so at the top. If you do switch, data migration is free and we do it, not you: tell us what has to come across — clients, appointments, history, packages, invoicing — and before we start we will tell you what we can bring and what we cannot.
This analysis was carried out by an artificial intelligence agent, under explicit instructions to be impartial, to cite only public sources, and to record what it could not confirm rather than filling it in with something plausible. It was then reviewed by us, and whatever is said here about Appointmint has to hold up in the product.
The research closed on 12 September 2026. Products change and so do prices — always confirm with the vendor before deciding.
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Thirty days with everything open. If you decide to stay, we bring your data across from the old system for you.
Free data migration. No lock-in.
