Search for scheduling software for therapists and you get two completely different kinds of product sold with the same words. One is a full EHR / practice-management system: notes, treatment plans, insurance claims, a client portal, and a calendar. The other is a booking tool: a link a client clicks to pick a time, with reminders attached.
They are not competitors. They cost 5–10x different, and buying the wrong one is the most common mistake in this category.
Do you need to keep clinical records and bill insurance in the same place your clients book?
If yes — buy an EHR. SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, Jane, Sessions Health. Not a scheduler. A scheduler cannot write a progress note or file a claim, and bolting a separate note system onto it means your calendar and your chart disagree.
If no — you are cash-pay, or you are a coach, or you already own an EHR and simply hate its booking page — then a $49–$99/month EHR is mostly a filing cabinet you are renting. A scheduler costs $0–$16.
Bookafy is in the second group. If you take insurance and need notes, the rest of this page will point you somewhere else, and it should.
| Tool | Best for | Price (July 2026) | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| SimplePractice | Solo therapists who take insurance | $49 / $79 / $99 per month; extra clinicians from $74 each | Appointment reminders don’t start until the $79 tier |
| TherapyNotes | Documentation-heavy practices | $69 solo; $79 + $50 per extra clinician | Text reminders are 14¢ each; email is free |
| Jane | Multi-discipline clinics | $54 / $79 / $99 per month; +$35 per extra full-time practitioner | The $54 plan caps you at 20 appointments a month |
| Sessions Health | The cheapest real EHR | Free up to 3 clients; $39/mo unlimited; +$29 per practitioner | Smaller company, thinner integrations |
| Practice Better | Nutrition, wellness and health coaches | $35 / $69 / $155 per month | Built for programs and protocols; overkill for talk therapy |
| Bookafy | Cash-pay, coaches, teams, or anyone who already has an EHR | Free (1 user); Pro $7/user/mo; Pro+ $11/user/mo | No notes, no claims, no client portal, no app-store app |
| Calendly | Discovery calls and consultations only | Free; Standard $12/seat/mo; Teams $16/seat/mo billed annually | Calendly’s own terms tell you not to put PHI in it |
| Acuity Scheduling | A scheduler that will sign a BAA | $16 / $27 / $49 per month | HIPAA BAA only on the $49 plan; text reminders only from $27 |
| Setmore | A small practice with no budget | Free for up to 4 users | Free tier is email reminders; no HIPAA story |
| Cal.com | Anyone who wants to self-host | Free for individuals; $15/user/mo for teams | Open source means you own the maintenance |
Best for: solo therapists who bill insurance. $49 / $79 / $99 per month.
If you take insurance, keep progress notes, and want one system that does intake forms, telehealth, claims and the calendar, this is the industry default for a reason. Client portal, electronic claim filing, measurement-based care, and a mobile app your clients will recognise.
Where it falls short. The entry plan is misleading. Appointment reminders — the single feature most practices are actually shopping for — do not appear until the $79 Essential plan. Group practices add clinicians at roughly $74 each per month, so a three-clinician practice is well past $200/month. And if you are cash-pay with no notes to keep, you are paying EHR money for a calendar.
Best for: practices where the note is the product. $69 solo; $79 + $50 per extra clinician.
Long-standing, extremely well supported, and built around clinical documentation and billing. Unlimited clients, notes and appointments; a client portal; basic telehealth included; a 30-day free trial with no card.
Where it falls short. Almost everything past the note is metered. Text and phone reminders are 14¢ each (email reminders are free), premium telehealth is +$15/month per clinician, ePrescribe is +$65/month, and electronic claims are 14¢ apiece. A busy solo practice sending two SMS reminders per appointment will notice. Read the add-on column before you compare the headline price to anything else on this page.
Best for: clinics with therapists, physios, massage and more under one roof. $54 / $79 / $99 per month.
Jane is the strongest option when your practice is not just talk therapy — when you have several disciplines, rooms, and staff with different schedules. Unlimited staff profiles on the $79 Practice plan, timesheets, and unlimited free SMS reminders, which is genuinely unusual at this price.
Where it falls short. The $54 Balance plan is capped at 20 appointments a month — that is a part-time caseload, not a practice. Realistically you are on $79, plus $35/month per additional full-time practitioner.
Best for: new practices that need records but not a $79 bill. Free up to 3 clients; $39/month unlimited.
Notes, scheduling, a client portal and insurance workflows for $39/month with unlimited clients, and a free tier that carries your first three. Extra practitioners are $29/month, telehealth is +$10, electronic claims are 25¢. If you are starting out and the SimplePractice bill feels heavy before you have a caseload, start here.
Where it falls short. Smaller company, fewer integrations, and a smaller community to ask when something is odd.
Best for: nutritionists, functional-medicine and health coaches. $35 / $69 / $155 per month.
Built around programs, protocols, food journaling and client accountability rather than clinical notes and claims. If you sell a 12-week program more often than you sell a 50-minute hour, this is the shelf you belong on.
Where it falls short. For straight talk therapy it is the wrong shape — you will pay for program tooling you never open. SMS reminders are metered by credits.
Best for: cash-pay practices, coaches, group practices, and anyone who already owns an EHR. Free for 1 user; Pro $7/user/month; Pro+ $11/user/month.
Three honest reasons a therapist ends up here:
HIPAA sits on Pro+ at $11/user/month, along with a second SMS reminder, custom API access and the optional white label. SMS reminders are included in the plan — not billed per text.
What Bookafy is not, and will not pretend to be: no progress notes. No treatment plans. No insurance claims or superbills. No ePrescribe. No client portal or document vault. No telehealth of our own — we generate the link in Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex or GoToMeeting and attach it to the booking. No iPhone or Android app in the store. Payments are Stripe only. If you needed any item on that list, buy something from shelf one.
Best for: the free consultation call. Free; Standard $12/seat/month; Teams $16/seat/month billed annually.
The best-known scheduling link in the world, and it deserves the reputation for what it does — get a meeting onto two calendars with no email thread.
Where it falls short, and it matters here. Calendly’s own customer terms instruct you not to put protected health information into it. There is no self-serve BAA; the Enterprise tier, where compliance conversations happen, starts at $15,000 a year. Plenty of therapists use Calendly anyway for a first discovery call where no PHI is collected — that is a defensible use. Running client sessions and clinical intake through it is not. Read your own vendor’s terms before you decide.
Best for: a solo practice that wants HIPAA without an EHR. $16 / $27 / $49 per month.
Deeper than Calendly: intake forms, packages and memberships, gift certificates, payments. Owned by Squarespace.
Where it falls short. Read the plan ladder carefully — the BAA for HIPAA compliance is only on the $49 Premium plan, and text reminders do not start until $27. So the real price of “Acuity, HIPAA, with SMS” is $49/month for one person. Compare that with a scheduler priced per user and decide honestly which shape fits your practice.
Best for: a small practice with no software budget. Free for up to 4 users.
A genuinely generous free tier — four users, unlimited appointments, a booking page. For a two-person cash-pay practice, Setmore’s free plan beats our paid one, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Where it falls short. Free means email reminders; SMS costs. There is no HIPAA story to speak of, so it belongs to coaching and cash-pay work, not clinical care.
Best for: technical practices that want to self-host. Free for individuals; $15/user/month for teams.
Open source, self-hostable, and the only tool on this page where you can keep every byte of scheduling data on infrastructure you control — which is a real answer to a real compliance worry.
Where it falls short. Self-hosting means you now run a server, patch it and back it up. Most therapy practices do not want a second job. If that sentence made you tired, buy something hosted.
Almost every vendor in this category uses the phrase “HIPAA compliant” somewhere on its site. The phrase is worth nothing on its own. There is only one test:
Will this vendor sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with you, in writing, on the plan you are actually buying?
If the answer is no, or “on Enterprise, let’s talk,” then the product is not a HIPAA answer for you — regardless of what the marketing page says about encryption. Encryption is not a BAA.
Two things worth knowing before you sign anything:
Ask any vendor on this page — us included — to put the BAA in front of you before you pay. A vendor who will not is telling you something.
No, not on its self-serve plans. Calendly’s own customer terms state that your data should not contain protected health information subject to HIPAA, and there is no self-serve Business Associate Agreement. Its Enterprise tier starts at $15,000 a year. Many therapists use Calendly for a first discovery call where no health information is collected; that is a different thing from running clinical intake through it.
Among schedulers, Bookafy’s Pro+ plan at $11 per user per month is the cheapest tier that includes HIPAA support, with Acuity’s Premium plan at $49 per month the main alternative that will sign a BAA. Among full EHRs, Sessions Health at $39 per month is the least expensive that includes notes and claims. Ask any of them for the BAA in writing before you buy.
If you bill insurance or keep clinical notes, you need an EHR — a scheduler cannot do either, and running two systems in parallel means your calendar and your chart drift apart. If you are cash-pay, coaching, or you already own an EHR and only want a better booking page, a scheduler is enough and costs roughly a tenth as much.
Jane includes unlimited free SMS reminders on its $79 Practice plan (availability varies by region), and Bookafy includes SMS reminders in its $7 Pro plan rather than billing per message. TherapyNotes charges 14¢ per text, SimplePractice does not include reminders below its $79 tier, and Acuity does not include text reminders below $27. Email reminders are free almost everywhere — texts are what cost money, because the sender pays for them.
Yes, and a lot of practices do — they keep the EHR for notes and claims and put a faster booking page in front of it. Be deliberate about which system owns the calendar, and keep the two synced through a shared calendar so you cannot be double-booked. If you cannot keep them in sync, do not do it.
No progress notes, no treatment plans, no insurance claims or superbills, no ePrescribe, no client portal or document vault, and no telehealth of our own — we attach a Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex or GoToMeeting link to the booking instead. There is also no iPhone or Android app, and payments run through Stripe only. If you need any of those, buy an EHR from the first half of this page.
