The short version
Buy SimplePractice if you bill insurance, or if you are private-pay but want superbills and Good Faith Estimates generated automatically rather than assembled by hand every month. That is the honest case for it. Telehealth included on every tier is real value that Jane ($15/mo for group), TheraNest (add-on at Essentials) and TherapyNotes ($15/mo for premium) all charge for. The GFE implementation — auto-populated, signed in the client portal, available on the $49 plan — is genuinely good and is a compliance obligation you would otherwise be meeting in a Word document. For an established California practice at 20+ clients a week, $79–$99/month is not the expensive part of your business.
Do not buy the $49 Starter plan if you are doing anything real. It has no secure client messaging, no appointment reminders except for telehealth appointments, no free claims at $0.50 each, and only partial access to the template library — which matters in California specifically, because the §2290.5 telehealth consent is not a form SimplePractice ships and adapting a template requires Essential or above. Starter is a trial tier wearing a price tag. If you are choosing SimplePractice, the real entry point is $79.
If you are an AMFT, ASW or APCC under supervision, price this out before you commit. Supervisor co-signature works well — the pending-signature queue, request-edits loop and dual signature on the finished note are all properly built — but team members exist only on the Plus plan, so your floor is $99/month, not $49. The supervisor seat itself is free once you are there. Also note that Alma and Headway, the two obvious 'someone else handles insurance' options, will not take you at all: both require full licensure. That single fact removes half the alternatives on this page for a large share of California's workforce.
SimplePractice →affiliate
What it actually is
SimplePractice is an all-in-one EHR and practice-management system for solo and small mental-health practices. One subscription covers the calendar, client records, progress notes, a client portal, intake and consent paperwork, invoicing and card payments, superbills, Good Faith Estimates, a basic practice website, and video sessions. Telehealth is included on every plan at no extra cost (https://support.simplepractice.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001196372-Getting-started-with-telehealth) — that is genuinely unusual and is the single strongest argument for it over cheaper competitors.
What is NOT in the subscription is worth knowing before you sign up. Card processing is a separate 3.15% + $0.30 per transaction (https://support.simplepractice.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019822032-Getting-started-with-online-payments). Electronic insurance claims are metered — Starter has no free claims at all and charges $0.50 each; Essential includes 10/month; Plus includes 35/month (https://support.simplepractice.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034957931-Comparing-SimplePractice-features-by-plan). There is a mandatory $20/clinician/year AMA fee for CPT code access, billed every December, that cannot be opted out of (https://support.simplepractice.com/hc/en-us/articles/28804985196173-AMA-fee-FAQs). AI note-taking (Note Taker, $35/mo), the Care Aide assistant ($59/mo) and ePrescribe ($49/mo + $89 setup) are all add-ons.
The tier boundaries matter more than the headline prices. Starter ($49) has no secure client messaging, no appointment reminders except for telehealth appointments, no free insurance claims, and only limited access to the template library — intake forms and scored measures, not the full set of customisable consent documents. Essential ($79) is where secure messaging, full reminders, a customisable template library and an analytics dashboard start. Plus ($99) is where team members exist at all — which means it is the only plan where a supervisor can co-sign a supervisee's notes.
For a California private-pay solo therapist, the two features that actually earn the money are superbills and the Good Faith Estimate, and SimplePractice does both properly. Superbills can be generated automatically on a monthly basis once a diagnosis and a Type 1 NPI are on file, and carry the dates of service, POS codes, CPT codes with descriptors, diagnosis codes and payment history that an out-of-network client needs to seek reimbursement (https://support.simplepractice.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058860991-Creating-superbills). The NSA Good Faith Estimate is a built-in template that auto-populates from the client's chart and your fee schedule and is signed through the client portal, on every plan (https://support.simplepractice.com/hc/en-us/articles/4418210427021-The-No-Surprises-Act-and-Good-Faith-Estimates).
It does not fit everyone. If you are an AMFT under supervision, the honest answer is $99/month, not $49 — supervision only exists on Plus. If you are a fully private-pay therapist with a handful of clients and no interest in insurance, you are paying $588–$1,188 a year plus 3.15% of revenue for a scheduling and notes system you could assemble for a third of that. And SimplePractice has been owned by Vista Equity Partners since January 2024 (https://www.vistaequitypartners.com/news/vista-equity-partners-completes-acquisition-of-engagesmart/), which is the context for the price-increase complaints in the criticism section below.
What it costs, all in
Three tiers, and the tier you need is decided by two things: whether you bill insurance, and whether anyone has to co-sign your notes. Everything below is SimplePractice’s own published figure as of 2026-08-07.
Starter
$49a month
- Unlimited clients and appointments
- Telehealth (unlimited appointments, unlimited session length) at no extra cost
- Client portal
- Professional website
- Superbills (manual or automated monthly)
- Good Faith Estimate template, shared and signed via the client portal
- Not included
- Secure messaging with clients
- Appointment reminders — available ONLY for telehealth appointments on this tier
- Free electronic insurance claims — every claim costs $0.50
- Automatic insurance eligibility checks (manual checks are $0.25 each)
- Group appointments
Essential
$79a month
- Everything in Starter
- Secure messaging with clients
- Full appointment reminders (email, text, voice)
- 10 free electronic insurance claims per month
- Full pre-built template library, including template customisation
- Analytics dashboard
- Not included
- Group appointments (available as a $20/month add-on)
- Automatic insurance status checks (manual checks $0.15 each)
- Team members — so no supervisor co-signature
- Premium phone support line
- Claims beyond 10/month cost $0.35 each, tiering down to $0.29 at 1,000+
Plus
$99a month
- Everything in Essential
- Group appointments and group telehealth included
- 35 free electronic insurance claims per month
- Automatic insurance status checks
- Team members — the only tier where they exist
- Supervisor, practice biller and practice scheduler roles at no additional charge
- Not included
- Claims beyond 35/month cost $0.25 each, tiering down to $0.19 at 1,000+
- Additional clinicians are charged separately (see extras)
- AI note-taking, Care Aide and ePrescribe are still paid add-ons
The subscription is not the cost
Card processing is 3.15% + $0.30 for each successful transaction, applying to 'all major credit, debit, FSA, . A therapist billing $8,000 a month in private pay hands over about $255 of it — more than five times the Starter subscription. It is the largest number on this page and it is the one nobody compares.
There is no separate clearinghouse subscription fee. Claims are metered per-claim as above. SimplePractice does not name which clearinghouses it uses, saying only that it 'works with a variety of clearinghouses.' Source: https://support.simplepractice.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004886912-Clearinghouse-FAQs
The charges that are not on the pricing page:
Realistically, all in: A California solo therapist on Essential seeing 20 private-pay clients a week at $180, all paying by card: $79 subscription + ~$472/month in card fees + $1.67/month amortised AMA fee = roughly $553/month, of which the software itself is 14%. The processing rate, not the subscription, is the real cost. Taking payment outside the platform (Ivy Pay at 2.75%, or ACH/check) is the single largest available saving.
If you are an associate, or supervise one
Supervisor co-signature works — on the Plus ($99/month) only
SimplePractice does support supervisor co-signature properly, and this is rarely written up clearly, so here is the whole thing. The workflow: the supervisee writes and signs a note, which enters 'Pending supervisor signature' status; the supervisor sees it under a 'Supervision' tab and can leave a comment, use 'Request Edits' to send it back, or sign and lock it. Once signed, 'The documentation will then show both the provider's and supervisor's signatures.' A supervisor can have unlimited supervisees; a supervisee can have only one supervisor; a team member with the supervisor role cannot themselves be a supervisee. Supervisees can bill insurance under the supervisor's credentials. One sharp edge: 'After adding their signature, the supervisor won't be able to unlock the supervisee's progress notes unless the supervis source ↗
The California-specific answers
Seven things a California therapist needs from practice software that a generic review will not tell you.
Yes, and it is one of the better implementations. SimplePractice ships a 'No Surprises Act Good Faith Estimate & Consent Disclaimer for Health Care Goods and Services' template. 'Most information will be auto-populated with your clinical information and the client's information, though all applicable fields can be updated,' and the estimate is 'shared via the Client Portal for the client to sign' — if the client has no portal access, they are given it when the GFE is sent. Basic GFE creation and sharing is available on ALL plans. Limitations: template customisation is Essential and Plus only; GFEs can only be created from the browser, not the mobile app; once shared they cannot be edited; you cannot remove the diagnoses or the disclaimer text; and only team members with billing access can create one. source ↗
Strong, and the main reason a private-pay California therapist would choose this over a cheaper scheduler. Superbills can be 'manually created or automatically generated on a monthly basis.' A generated superbill carries the client's demographics and DOB, their insurance information, provider information, diagnosis code(s), dates of service, Place of Service (POS) codes, CPT code(s) with service descriptors, amount charged, payments received, and the reimbursement recipient. Output can be printed, downloaded as PDF, or emailed. Two prerequisites that trip people up: a diagnosis must be entered on the client's chart with a diagnosis date earlier than each appointment, and your individual Type 1 NPI must be set in Settings > Profile > Clinical info. Known limitation: superbills do not reflect partial payments. SimplePractice's documentation does not confirm that a license number or EIN appears on the superbill — verify against your own before relying on it. source ↗
The BAA is included at every tier, including the free trial, and requires no separate request. It is agreed by checkbox at signup, and 'You don't need to re-agree to or electronically sign the BAA when you upgrade from a trial to a paid account.' There is no tier at which SimplePractice will not sign a BAA — which is not true of every competitor (Google Workspace's free and Solopreneur editions, for example, do not offer one). source ↗
Technically yes. The video is covered by the same BAA as the rest of the platform, is browser-based with no client app install, supports unlimited appointments and unlimited session length, and is included on every plan. California does not require a specific certified video product — B&P Code §2290.5 regulates consent and standard of care, not the vendor. The platform-level requirement a CA LMFT actually has to satisfy is the consent rule below, not the codec. source ↗
California requires that 'Before the delivery of health care via telehealth, the health care provider initiating the use of telehealth shall inform the patient about the use of telehealth and obtain verbal or written consent from the patient,' and that 'The consent shall be documented.' SimplePractice does NOT ship a California-specific telehealth consent form. Its template library contains an 'In Case of an Emergency - Telehealth' form and does include some California-specific documents ('Release of Information - For CA Clients', 'Medical Board of CA Notice to Patients'), but the §2290.5 telehealth consent itself is something you have to write or adapt. SimplePractice's own guidance is that all templates 'should be customized to meet your practice and state requirements.' The practical consequence for pricing: template customisation requires Essential or Plus — 'The Starter plan includes intake forms and scored measures only.' So a California telehealth practice arguably cannot properly paper itself on the $49 Starter plan without uploading its own documents. source ↗
SimplePractice documents this explicitly: 'California is unique in that it has two Blue Cross payers, and claims submitted to the incorrect payer will be rejected.' Blue Shield is payer ID BS001, Anthem Blue Cross is BC001. And: 'If you're in California, and a client has an out-of-state BCBS plan, use payer ID BS001.' Worth knowing before you file your first rejected claim. source ↗
Not established. SimplePractice publishes no statement about Medi-Cal or California Medicaid payer support, and does not name its clearinghouses, so whether a given Medi-Cal managed-care plan can be billed electronically has to be checked with support before you commit. CURES (California's controlled-substance reporting database) is a prescriber obligation and does not apply to LMFTs, LCSWs or LPCCs, who do not prescribe — SimplePractice's ePrescribe add-on is irrelevant to this audience. CalMHSA's county-based initiatives are not referenced in SimplePractice's documentation at all. source ↗
What else there is, with prices
Including the options that earn me nothing. A therapist seeing eight private-pay clients a week does not need $99 a month of software, and the bottom of this list is how you do it for under $60.
The complaints, unsoftened
Sourced, and left as found.
The Terms of Service grant SimplePractice a 'non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable' license to user data, including protected health information, for 'developing, improving, and marketing' its services — and those rights 'will survive the expiration or termination of Your Account.' The same terms impose mandatory arbitration with a class-action waiver from which users cannot opt out. This is the most serious documented criticism and it is a contract term, not a review-site grievance.
Miranda Palmer, ZynnyMe (therapist-practice consultancy), first published 16 June 2023, updated since read it ↗A plaintiffs'-side attorney investigation alleged that SimplePractice's client portal — where clients book appointments, complete intake forms and message therapists — carried tracking pixels from Google, Meta and TikTok that shared users' personal data with third parties without consent, potentially violating California privacy law. IMPORTANT CAVEAT: this is listed under 'Previous Investigations' on ClassAction.org and is marked complete, with attorneys no longer signing up affected consumers. No filed case, docket number or court could be located. Report it as an unproven allegation and an investigation that appears to have gone nowhere, not as a finding of fact.
ClassAction.org, 'SimplePractice Privacy Investigation for California Residents' (status: complete); context reported by Robin Levick, 2 April 2026 read it ↗Price increases are the single most consistent complaint. Verified reviewer language on Capterra includes 'extreme increase in price for absolutely no reason' (April 2025) and 'nickel and diming for features that should be standard' (November 2024), with one reviewer reporting an increase one month after signing up. A competitor blog (SteadyPractice, Feb 2026) states the Starter plan went from $29 to $49 in March 2025 — a 69% rise — but does not quote any SimplePractice announcement, and the historical price could not be verified against an archived primary source. Treat the direction as well-established and the specific old figure as unconfirmed.
Capterra verified reviews (2024–2025); SteadyPractice blog (competitor, Feb 2026) for the specific figure read it ↗SimplePractice's parent company EngageSmart was taken private by Vista Equity Partners in a $4.0 billion all-cash deal, agreed 23 October 2023 and completed 26 January 2024. This is the ownership context readers should have when weighing the price-increase complaints and the data-license terms: the company is private-equity owned and no longer files public financials. Stating this is fair; asserting a causal link to specific price rises is not supported and should not be claimed.
Vista Equity Partners press release, 26 January 2024 read it ↗Support quality. Phone support is a Plus-plan feature ('Premium support phone line'); Starter and Essential customers are on email, which reviewers repeatedly describe as slow and inadequate for urgent billing questions — 'not live' chat options created delays (reviews dated June 2019 and June 2024). If you are on the $49 or $79 plan, you do not get a phone number.
Capterra verified reviews (2019, 2024); tier confirmed by SimplePractice's own pricing page read it ↗Product limitations cited by professional reviewers: 'The system is outdated. It does not link treatment plans to progress notes' (July 2026); limited reporting and chart options (April 2026); no family/couple case chart structure (February 2026); no public API, so 'I can't connect other tools and make the system work' (June 2026). SimplePractice's G2 score is 4.1/5 from 129 reviews, notably lower than its 4.6/5 from 2,827 reviews on Capterra — worth flagging that aggregate scores diverge sharply by platform.
G2 verified reviews, 2025–2026; Capterra aggregate read it ↗No refunds and no proration. 'SimplePractice does not offer refunds.' If you cancel mid-cycle 'you won't receive a prorated refund for the remaining time.' Combined with the December AMA fee, a therapist who cancels in January has just paid a full year's CPT royalty for one month of use.
SimplePractice Support (vendor's own documentation), retrieved August 2026 read it ↗What you can take with you if you leave
Better than average, with three specific traps. WHAT YOU CAN TAKE: three export types, all delivered as ZIP files — 'Complete' (all client information), 'Sessions' (clinical documentation only), and 'Contacts' (vCard .vcf for address books). Complete and Sessions include progress notes, psychotherapy notes, mental status exams and other documents, plus a separate folder of stored/uploaded documents. A separate client-list spreadsheet export exists for importing into a new system. TRAP 1: 'Data exports don't include client appointments' — your calendar history has to be pulled separately via appointment reports. TRAP 2: client contact information 'can't be exported in CSV or Excel format through our data export feature'; you have to use a different report to get it in a spreadsheet. TRAP 3, the worst one: 'Access to the data export and its password (if required) will expire after a week.' If you request an export and get distracted, you start over. SimplePractice does not publish the file format of individual notes inside the ZIP, so whether they arrive as PDFs or something else is unconfirmed. CancelATION IS IRREVERSIBLE AND IMMEDIATE: cancelation is self-serve only — 'SimplePractice can't cancel your account for you' — via Settings > Practice > Plan info, confirmed by typing 'Delete My Account and Data.' 'Once your account is deleted, the data in that account can't be recovered,' and access is lost immediately with no prorated refund. Reports, subscription receipts and payment details are not in the standard export and must be pulled separately. PRACTICAL ADVICE: export everything, verify the ZIP opens and the notes are readable, and only then cancel. Note that California requires retention of adult patient records for 7 years after the last date of service; SimplePractice does not publish an archive-only retention plan, whereas TherapyNotes sells one at $9/month. Third-party migration paths exist — Jane publishes a SimplePractice import guide — which suggests the export is machine-readable enough for a real migration. source ↗
Who should not buy it
The honest cheaper path, and it is a real one: a therapist seeing eight private-pay clients a week does not need this. Google Workspace with a signed BAA for calendar, email, documents and video; Ivy Pay at 2.75% with no monthly fee for card payments; Spruce at $24/month if you want a business phone line that is not your mobile. That is well under $60/month plus a lower processing rate than SimplePractice charges, and on 80 sessions a month at $175 the Ivy Pay rate alone saves about $80 versus SimplePractice's 3.15% + $0.30 — more than the Starter subscription costs. What you give up is real: you write superbills and Good Faith Estimates by hand, you have no structured progress notes, and there is no client portal. The crossover is roughly where the hours you spend on paperwork start costing more than $99, which for most people is somewhere between 12 and 15 clients a week. Below that line, the DIY stack is the correct answer and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
Two things to weigh that no feature comparison will show you. First, the Terms of Service give SimplePractice a perpetual, irrevocable license to your data that survives account termination — read section 9.2 yourself before you decide, because no amount of feature quality offsets a contract term you would not have agreed to knowingly. Second, plan your exit on the way in: exports are ZIP files, the download link expires after one week, appointments are not included, and cancelation deletes everything immediately with no refund and no recovery. Export, verify the files open, then cancel — in that order.
Where SimplePractice is simply worse than a competitor, plainly: TherapyNotes files electronic claims at 14¢ against SimplePractice's $0.25–$0.50, sells a $9/month record-retention plan that SimplePractice has no published equivalent for, and includes unlimited non-clinical staff at no charge. Jane's card processing is 2.85% + $0.25 online against SimplePractice's 3.15% + $0.30. TheraNest starts at $29. Practice Better has a free tier. If your practice is claims-heavy, TherapyNotes is the better buy and the difference is not close.
Every paid link on this site, in full →
What I could not establish
Take these to their sales team, and notice how quickly they answer.
- Annual billing: no annual prepay option or discount is published on SimplePractice's pricing page or in its pricing FAQ, and no statement explicitly rules one out. Recorded as null rather than 'none.'
- The 2025→2026 price increase: the claim that Starter rose from $29 to $49 in March 2025 comes only from a competitor's blog (SteadyPractice, Feb 2026) with no quoted SimplePractice announcement. web.archive.org was blocked from this environment, so historical prices could not be verified against a primary source. Only the direction of change (verified by dated Capterra reviewer complaints) should be stated as fact.
- SimplePractice does not name which clearinghouses it uses — 'a variety of clearinghouses.' Payer-specific electronic filing availability cannot be confirmed in advance from published documentation.
- Medi-Cal / California Medicaid support is not addressed anywhere in SimplePractice's published documentation. Unknown, not absent.
- Google Workspace per-user monthly pricing could not be captured: the pricing page renders prices dynamically via a user-count widget and returned no figures. Only the plan names, storage tiers, the 16% annual-commitment saving and the 300-user cap were extractable. BAA edition eligibility is sourced to HIPAA Journal, not to Google's own support article, which was blocked.
- Trustpilot (both simplepractice.com and www.simplepractice.com) and the BBB complaints page both returned HTTP 403 to automated retrieval. No Trustpilot score, review count or BBB rating/complaint count was captured. Reddit was not attempted per instruction.
- Superbill contents: SimplePractice's documentation confirms demographics, insurance, provider info, diagnosis codes, dates of service, POS codes, CPT codes with descriptors and payment amounts, but does NOT confirm that license number, EIN or taxonomy code appear. Anyone relying on a SimplePractice superbill for out-of-network reimbursement should check their own output against their payer's requirements.
- The plan-comparison table does not list superbills as a line item, so it is inferred — not stated — that they are available on Starter. The compare-plans page at simplepractice.com/pricing/compare-plans/ renders its table client-side and could not be extracted.
- The file format of individual progress notes inside a data-export ZIP (PDF vs. other) is not published.
- SimplePractice publishes no archive-only / record-retention plan price for practices that have closed but must retain records for California's 7-year requirement. Whether one exists is unknown.
- The public pricing page returned inconsistent group-practice figures across two retrievals (first practitioner $74 vs $99; additional $49 vs $74). The support article's tiered table ($74 / $72 / $69 per clinician by practice size) is treated as authoritative here, but the discrepancy is unresolved and group pricing should be confirmed with SimplePractice directly.
- Practice Better's BAA availability by tier is not stated on its pricing page — only generic HIPAA/PIPEDA/GDPR compliance badges. Whether the free Sprout tier carries a BAA is unconfirmed and matters a great deal for anyone considering it.
Sources (43)
- SimplePractice pricing page
- SimplePractice Support — Comparing SimplePractice features by plan
- SimplePractice Support — Subscription plan and pricing FAQs
- SimplePractice Support — Getting started with online payments (3.15% + $0.30)
- SimplePractice Support — AMA fee FAQs ($20/clinician/year)
- SimplePractice Support — Adding and managing team members (per-clinician pricing, free supervisor role)
- SimplePractice Support — Clinician roles available for team members (Plus-only team members)
- SimplePractice Support — Designating a clinician as a supervisor or supervisee
- SimplePractice Support — Reviewing and signing documentation under supervision
- SimplePractice Support — Group practice FAQs (Plus is the only plan supporting groups)
- SimplePractice Support — The No Surprises Act and Good Faith Estimates
- SimplePractice Support — Creating superbills
- SimplePractice Support — Understanding invoices, statements, and superbills
- SimplePractice Support — BAA, Terms of Service, and Trust & Security
- SimplePractice Support — Getting started with telehealth (included on all plans)
- SimplePractice Support — Using pre-built templates and your template library (Starter limited to intake forms and scored measures)
- SimplePractice Support — Payers with unique claim filing rules (two California Blue Cross payers)
- SimplePractice Support — Clearinghouse FAQs
- SimplePractice Support — Data export: exporting client information (ZIP formats, one-week link expiry)
- SimplePractice Support — Exporting and downloading client data for transfer
- SimplePractice Support — Canceling your SimplePractice account (no proration, irreversible deletion)
- California Business & Professions Code § 2290.5 — telehealth consent must be obtained and documented
- ZynnyMe (Miranda Palmer) — SimplePractice Terms and Conditions changes, perpetual data license and arbitration waiver
- ClassAction.org — health data privacy investigations, including the completed SimplePractice California privacy investigation
- Robin Levick — SimplePractice, tracking pixels, and a $4 billion sale (2 April 2026)
- Vista Equity Partners — completion of the $4.0bn EngageSmart acquisition, 26 January 2024
- Capterra — SimplePractice reviews (4.6/5, 2,827 reviews) and price-increase complaints
- G2 — SimplePractice reviews (4.1/5, 129 reviews)
- SteadyPractice (competitor blog) — SimplePractice price increase 2025, unverified $29→$49 claim
- TherapyNotes Support — pricing and subscription options
- Jane App — pricing
- Jane App — importing from SimplePractice (migration path)
- Alma — for providers ($95/mo billed annually)
- Alma — FAQ (flat membership fee, cash-pay income retained)
- Headway — for providers (no subscription fee)affiliate
- Headway Help Center — rates and agreements (rates visible only after credentialing)
- Headway Help Center — getting paid (15th and last day of month)
- Ensora Health — introducing TheraNest's new pricing, 22 May 2025
- Practice Better — pricing
- Ivy Pay — 2.75% flat, no monthly fee, BAA included
- Spruce Health — pricing ($24/$49 per user, BAA on all plans)
- HIPAA Journal — Is Google Workspace HIPAA compliant? (BAA on Business/Enterprise editions only)
- Google Workspace pricing (plan names and storage; per-user prices render dynamically)