⭐ Key Takeaways

• SimplePractice is the most polished, easiest-to-use EHR for solo practitioners and practices of 1–5 clinicians
• Pricing starts at $49/month and scales to $99/month (Plus) — group plan adds $59/clinician, which gets expensive fast
• Zero API access, no webhooks, no third-party automation — a hard ceiling for any practice trying to scale operations
• Managed insurance billing costs 6% of collections with a $750/month minimum — expensive for high-volume practices
• Real user complaints center on price increases, telehealth reliability, and billing rigidity at larger practice sizes
• Our #1 alternative for group practices: Healthie — full GraphQL API, webhooks, multi-provider architecture, and a 14-day free trial

SimplePractice is one of the most recognized names in mental health EHR software — and for good reason. Over 225,000 clinicians use the platform, it consistently earns top marks for ease of use, and its client portal sets a high bar for the industry. After five years managing a growing group practice on various EHR platforms, I've developed a clear picture of exactly where SimplePractice shines and where it breaks down.

This review covers everything: features, real pricing (including the numbers platforms don't advertise), what users actually say, and a direct comparison against the best SimplePractice alternatives in 2025. If you're running a solo practice, SimplePractice may be exactly what you need. If you're managing 10 or more clinicians — or planning to — you need to read this carefully before committing.

What Is SimplePractice?

SimplePractice is a cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) and practice management platform designed primarily for mental health professionals, therapists, counselors, social workers, and other health and wellness practitioners. Founded in 2012 by Howard Spector while training to become a Marriage and Family Therapist, the platform was designed from the ground up to simplify the business side of private practice.

In January 2024, SimplePractice was taken private as part of the Vista Equity Partners acquisition of EngageSmart for approximately $4 billion — making it one of the most valuable companies in the mental health tech space. Today, the platform serves over 225,000 clinicians across the United States.

SimplePractice covers scheduling, clinical documentation (SOAP notes, treatment plans, assessments), insurance billing, telehealth, client messaging, and a branded client portal in a single system. It's especially known for its modern, intuitive interface — consistently ranking among the easiest EHRs to learn and use in independent reviews.

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Healthie EHR — dashboard, scheduling, client management, clinical notes, billing, and telehealth

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SimplePractice screenshots — dashboard, client portal, scheduling, documentation, and billing

SimplePractice Features: A Deep Dive

SimplePractice covers the full lifecycle of a therapy practice — from first client contact through documentation, billing, and telehealth. Here's how each area performs in real-world use.

Client Portal & Onboarding

This is SimplePractice's strongest feature and a genuine competitive differentiator. When a new client signs up, they're walked through a polished, mobile-optimized portal that handles intake forms, e-signatures on consent documents, insurance card uploads, payment method entry, and appointment booking — all before their first session. Form fields auto-save to prevent data loss, hover tooltips guide users through confusing fields, and the whole experience feels consumer-grade rather than clinical-software-grade.

The result is fewer phone calls, fewer no-shows, and a more professional first impression. For solo practitioners especially, this level of automated onboarding is genuinely valuable.

Clinical Documentation

SimplePractice's documentation toolkit is solid and flexible. Providers get access to SOAP note templates, treatment planning tools, Wiley Treatment Planner integration (on Plus plan), group therapy documentation, discharge summaries, and fully customizable intake forms. Unlike more rigid systems, practitioners can tailor note templates to their specific modality and workflow.

The platform also supports PHQ-9, GAD-7, and other standardized outcome measures as part of intake or ongoing care — a meaningful feature for practices focused on measurement-based care. Documentation flows efficiently, and notes from the same session can populate billing codes automatically, reducing double-entry.

Scheduling

The scheduling system is clean, visual, and reliable. Automated appointment reminders go out by text, email, or both — users consistently report significant reductions in no-shows after implementation. Clients can self-schedule through the portal within windows the provider controls. For group practices, a shared calendar shows all provider availability in one view.

Where scheduling gets limited: there's no bulk-reassignment capability, no programmatic booking via API, and no way to build custom logic (e.g., auto-assign new clients to the next available clinician based on specialty or caseload). Growing practices consistently bump into these walls.

Telehealth

SimplePractice's built-in telehealth is one of its most marketed features — no third-party app required, sessions launch directly from the platform. For many years this worked reliably. However, recent user reviews on Capterra and other platforms have flagged degraded video quality and connection issues since 2024. One long-term user wrote that her clients now "make jokes about how unreliable the telehealth features are" — a notable shift from the platform's earlier reputation.

Insurance Billing

SimplePractice includes standard insurance billing — claim creation, electronic submission, ERA processing, and superbill generation. The managed billing service takes the follow-up work off your plate. The platform integrates eligibility verification, claim tracking, and payment reconciliation in a single workflow.

The cost structure is where it gets complicated. The managed billing add-on charges 6% of insurance collections with a $750 monthly minimum. For a practice collecting $30,000/month from insurance, that's $1,800 in billing fees. For practices with higher volumes, this becomes a meaningful line item. The base plan includes only 35 free claim submissions monthly on the Plus plan — practices with heavier volume will pay per-claim fees on top.

SimplePractice Pricing 2025: The Real Numbers

SimplePractice's published pricing is straightforward, but the total cost picture depends heavily on practice size and billing volume. Here's the complete breakdown:

One important note: SimplePractice has raised prices multiple times since 2022. Several users report being required to upgrade to the $99 Plus plan to retain features that were previously available on cheaper plans. If budget stability matters to your practice, factor in a history of price increases.

SimplePractice Pros & Cons

What Real Users Say About SimplePractice

We analyzed hundreds of verified reviews on Capterra, GetApp, and Trustpilot to surface the themes that matter most to practicing clinicians.

The pattern across hundreds of reviews is consistent: solo practitioners and small practices love SimplePractice. Larger group practices increasingly find the platform too expensive relative to what it delivers at scale — and the absence of any automation capability becomes a serious operational bottleneck as headcount grows.

SimplePractice vs. Top EHR Alternatives (2025)

For our complete breakdown of every major platform, see our full EHR comparison for mental health therapists →

Is SimplePractice Right for Your Practice?

Why Healthie Is Our #1 SimplePractice Alternative for Group Practices

If you've read this far and you're running a group practice — or planning to grow into one — Healthie deserves serious consideration. Here's exactly why it outperforms SimplePractice at scale, and what you need to know before switching.

The API Advantage: Why It Matters More Than You Think

SimplePractice has no developer API. Full stop. There are no webhooks, no programmatic access, no way to connect the platform to any external tool via automation. This means your staff manually handles everything that could otherwise be automated: intake routing, appointment reminders outside the platform, insurance verification follow-up, onboarding communications, and reporting.

Healthie exposes the same GraphQL API its own developers use to build the product. That means anything you can do in the Healthie UI, your team (or an automation tool like n8n) can also do programmatically. New client created in the portal? Webhook fires, triggers your intake workflow, sends confirmation email, creates the insurance verification task, and assigns the clinician — all automatically. This is the kind of infrastructure that separates practices running lean from practices drowning in administrative overhead.

Multi-Provider Architecture

Healthie was designed for practices with multiple providers from the ground up. Supervisor-supervisee relationships, caseload visibility, 70+ granular role permissions, and administrative bulk actions are all native to the platform — not bolt-ons. As your team grows from 10 to 40 clinicians, the administrative structure grows with you. SimplePractice's group features, by contrast, were designed for small teams and show it.

Honest Tradeoffs: Where Healthie Is Harder

Healthie is not as immediately intuitive as SimplePractice. The platform is more powerful, which means more to configure. Practices migrating from SimplePractice should plan for a real onboarding investment — setup, template configuration, staff training, and workflow design. Group plans also start at roughly $1,500/month, significantly more than SimplePractice for equivalent team sizes.

For solo practitioners or very small teams, SimplePractice is the more practical and affordable choice. The Healthie value proposition becomes clear at 10+ clinicians, and becomes compelling at 20+, where the automation savings and administrative efficiency gains typically more than offset the price difference.

Frequently Asked Questions About SimplePractice