Why demos flatter, and the fix
A platform demo is a rehearsed path through the product's best rooms. Nothing you see is false, and almost nothing you need is shown: the failed payment, the out-of-stock pharmacy, the export at contract end. Vendors are not lying to you; they are editing. The fix is to stop being the audience and start being the director.
The scorecard below is 40 questions across eight areas. Run it live and score each answer 0, 1, or 2: a 2 means they showed it working in the product, a 1 means a partial answer, a services workaround, or a credible named customer doing it today, a 0 means a roadmap slide, a subject change, or "our team handles that." Maximum score is 80. Send the full list before the demo and say you will be scoring; a vendor that welcomes that is telling you something, and so is a vendor that does not.
This is the companion tool to the vendor evaluation framework, built to be run against the shortlist from the honest platform comparison.
Clinical workflow and pharmacy
| # | Question | The answer that should worry you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Show a real intake reaching a provider and being approved, live | A slide deck of screens, or "we can sandbox that after signing" |
| 2 | How does a case reach a licensed provider in the patient's state? | Manual assignment, or "you bring the routing logic" |
| 3 | What happens to a flagged or failed intake? | It emails somebody; there is no queue |
| 4 | Can questionnaires branch by state and by answer? | One form for every state |
| 5 | What is the median time from intake submit to provider decision across current customers? | No number exists |
| 6 | Which pharmacies are integrated and live today? | "We can integrate with anyone" and no named live partner |
| 7 | What happens when a pharmacy is out of stock or down? | A support ticket; no rerouting path |
| 8 | Can my team see per-patient order status in real time? | Status lives in the pharmacy's portal, not yours |
| 9 | How is medication pricing set, and is there a markup? | They cannot or will not say |
| 10 | Can I add or switch a pharmacy without an engineering project? | "That is a professional services engagement" |
Billing and data ownership
| # | Question | The answer that should worry you |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | Show a full subscription lifecycle: signup, renewal, failed payment, refund | Only the happy path exists in the product |
| 12 | What does failed-payment retry and dunning look like? | "Stripe handles it," with nothing configured |
| 13 | Can billing start only after clinical approval? | Patients are charged at checkout regardless of outcome |
| 14 | How does my team issue a refund or partial refund? | By filing a ticket with the vendor |
| 15 | Whose merchant account processes payments? | Theirs, and your revenue flows through it |
| 16 | Who owns patient records, and can I export everything? | "Your data is available on request" |
| 17 | What does a full export contain, in what format? | PDFs only; no structured data |
| 18 | What does export cost at termination, and how long does it take? | An egress fee, or a 90-day timeline |
| 19 | Can I read my own data programmatically today? | A reporting UI, marketed as an API |
| 20 | If we part ways, what happens to active subscriptions and charts? | No offboarding process has ever been written down |
Questions 16-20 deserve their own hour; the deep version is the data ownership question list. A vendor scoring below 6 of 10 here is quoting you the price of leaving, before you have even joined.
Integrations and compliance posture
| # | Question | The answer that should worry you |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | Which EHR, lab, and analytics integrations run in production today, for whom? | A logo wall with no live customer attached |
| 22 | Does the API cover the full workflow or just reads? | Webhooks and read endpoints marketed as a platform API |
| 23 | Where is the API documentation? | Behind an NDA |
| 24 | How do integrations handle failures and retries? | Silence, or "that has never happened" |
| 25 | What does an integration you do not have cost to build? | Undisclosed services rates, quoted later |
| 26 | What is your security posture: audits, encryption, access controls? | "We are HIPAA compliant" as the entire answer |
| 27 | Will you sign a BAA, and what does it cover? | Hesitation, or a surcharge for it |
| 28 | How is PHI access logged and role-scoped? | Everyone at the vendor can see everything |
| 29 | How do you help partners avoid prohibited marketing claims? | "That is entirely on you" |
| 30 | Tell me about your last security incident and how you disclosed it | "We have never had one" |
Migration and pricing transparency
| # | Question | The answer that should worry you |
|---|---|---|
| 31 | Walk me through a real migration you ran onto this platform | They have never done one |
| 32 | What can be imported: patients, charts, subscriptions, order history? | Patients re-onboard from scratch |
| 33 | How do active subscriptions move without double-charging? | No answer exists |
| 34 | What does offboarding away from you look like? | Nobody has ever left, allegedly |
| 35 | Who does the migration work, and on what timeline? | Your team, unassisted, no playbook |
| 36 | What is the all-in price for my modeled volume, in writing? | "It depends," on call three |
| 37 | What costs extra: implementation, seats, integrations, support tiers? | You will find out in the contract |
| 38 | What minimums or commitments apply, and from when? | Minimums sized to their forecast of your business |
| 39 | How does pricing change at 2x and 10x my volume? | No volume curve has been contemplated |
| 40 | Do you make money on pharmacy or product margin beyond the platform fee? | Evasion |
If a switch is in your future, run questions 31-35 against the migration playbook; for the pricing block, the model-by-model math is in the platform pricing breakdown.
How to score it
Total the 40 answers. Above 65 of 80: proceed to reference calls and contract diligence. Between 50 and 64: viable, but every 0 is now a negotiation item with a price and a deadline attached. Below 50: keep shopping, because you are not buying a platform, you are funding one.
Two overrides beat the total. Any single area scoring 4 or less out of 10 is a project you are agreeing to staff, whatever the overall number says. And any question answered with "no one has ever asked that" is worth double weight, because it means no serious buyer has made it through this demo before you, or none stayed.
FAQ
What questions should I ask in a telehealth platform demo? Cover eight areas: clinical workflow, pharmacy integration, billing, data ownership, integrations and API access, compliance posture, migration, and pricing transparency. Insist on seeing workflows live in the product, ask for the failure paths, failed payments, out-of-stock pharmacies, exports, and get pricing itemized in writing at your modeled volume.
How can I tell real platform infrastructure from slideware? Real infrastructure demos live: cases route to providers, subscriptions retry, orders track, data exports, in the product, in front of you. Slideware answers with roadmap slides, "our team handles that," services engagements for basic functions, and no named customers running the feature today.
What is a good score on a platform demo scorecard? On this 80-point scorecard, above 65 justifies reference calls and contract diligence, 50-64 means negotiating every gap with a price and deadline attached, and below 50 means keep shopping. Any single area at 4 or less out of 10 is a red flag regardless of the total.
Should I send demo questions to the vendor in advance? Yes. Send the full list and say you will score the answers live. A confident vendor prepares real demonstrations and flags honest gaps ahead of time; a vendor that resists, reschedules, or swaps in a slide presentation has answered several questions at once.