Ona Health vs SimplePractice (2026): Which Is Better for Your Practice?

SimplePractice is a popular electronic health record (EHR) for solo therapists and wellness practitioners who want simple scheduling, notes, and a strong client portal. Ona Health is an all-in-one practice management platform with a broader medical stack: e-prescribing for controlled substances, real-time insurance eligibility, an AI receptionist, and an ambient scribe. Insurance-heavy and prescribing practices usually lean Ona.

Quick answer:

• Keep SimplePractice if you run a cash-pay solo therapy practice and are happy with simple, proven tools and a polished client portal.
• Choose Ona Health if you bill insurance heavily, prescribe medication (including controlled substances), or want AI to answer your phones and draft your notes.
• Both are easy to test: SimplePractice offers a 30-day free trial, and Ona offers a 14-day free trial with full access and no credit card required.

SimplePractice: strengths and who it serves best

SimplePractice has earned its position: the company states that over 20 million clients and 250,000 practitioners trust its platform. Its core audience is therapists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and psychiatrists.

Its reputation rests on simplicity. Scheduling, documentation with a large template library, integrated telehealth, and a well-regarded client portal all work with little setup. On the insurance side, SimplePractice offers eligibility checks with most payers, batch claim filing, electronic remittance advice (ERA) payment reports, and automatic superbills for out-of-network reimbursement.

Pricing is published in three tiers: Starter at $49 per month, Essential at $79 per month, and Plus at $99 per month for the first practitioner, with a 30-day free trial. The Plus plan includes 35 free insurance claims per month. Newer capabilities are paid add-ons: Note Taker, which transcribes and drafts therapy notes using AI, is $35 per month per clinician; the Care Aide AI suite is $59 per month for the account owner; and ePrescribe is $49 per month per clinician plus a one-time $89 setup fee per clinician, with two-factor authentication for controlled substances and optional prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) integration. All prices are from simplepractice.com as of July 2026.

For a solo therapist with a mostly cash-pay caseload, that package is often everything the practice needs.

Ona Health: a broader medical stack with AI built in

Ona Health starts from a different premise. It is an all-in-one practice management platform that combines customer relationship management (CRM), the EHR, and revenue cycle management (RCM) in one product: 19 tools on one platform. Four differences matter most in this comparison.

• Prescribing goes deeper. Ona embeds DoseSpot e-prescribing on every patient record, including Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances (EPCS) for Schedule II-V medications with two-factor signing that meets Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) requirements. Interaction and allergy flags appear at the moment of signing, staff can prepare drafts for the prescriber, and Ona checks active licensure against the patient's state. E-prescribing is an add-on at $45 per prescribing practitioner on the pricing calculator; EPCS is an additional add-on that requires e-prescribing, and no EPCS price is published on the site.
• Insurance is built for volume. Real-time eligibility checks put coverage status, co-pay, deductible, and out-of-pocket max on the patient record before the visit. Claims generate from the signed chart note into a pre-filled CMS-1500, go out through an integrated clearinghouse, and move through a visible status pipeline with a denial and resubmission queue. Medicare and Medicaid are supported for eligibility and claims.
• AI is included, not an add-on. AI charting and the ambient scribe are part of the base plan at no extra cost: the visit is recorded with per-visit patient consent, turned into a speaker-labeled transcript, and drafted into your note template, and nothing enters the chart until the clinician signs. The AI receptionist is an optional add-on at $499 per month including 1,500 minutes; it answers calls 24/7, books against the live calendar, and escalates urgent or sensitive calls to a human.
• The rest of the stack is named. Telehealth runs on LiveKit in the browser with nothing to install, payments run on Stripe at pass-through rates (Ona states it does not take a cut of your payments), and labs and supplement protocols run through an embedded Fullscript dispensary.

Pricing is per-seat rather than tiered: the calculator at ona.health/#pricing shows an example of $305 per month for 2 practitioner seats and 1 staff seat, and practices with 5 or more practitioners get a tailored plan. Support is human, delivered over in-app chat, with guided onboarding and workflow tuning included in every plan. Ona reports a 4.9 average rating and says 98 percent of its users recommend the platform.

Two honest caveats: staff notifications in Ona are email and in-app today (SMS and push are on the roadmap), and patients receive booking confirmations while automated appointment-reminder cadences are still on the roadmap.

Head-to-head: Ona vs SimplePractice

	Ona Health	SimplePractice
Target user	Practices that bill insurance, prescribe, or want AI front-desk automation; 9 medical specialties from primary care to behavioral health	Solo therapists and wellness professionals: therapists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, psychiatrists
E-prescribing / EPCS	Embedded DoseSpot with EPCS for Schedule II-V and two-factor signing; e-prescribing add-on at $45 per prescribing practitioner, EPCS an additional add-on requiring e-prescribing (price not published)	ePrescribe add-on at $49 per month per clinician plus $89 setup per clinician; two-factor for controlled substances, optional PDMP
Insurance billing depth	Real-time eligibility (co-pay, deductible, out-of-pocket max), claims from the signed note, denial queue, Medicare and Medicaid	Eligibility with most payers, batch claims, ERAs, superbills; 35 free claims per month on Plus
AI capabilities	AI charting, ambient scribe, and AI intake included in the base plan; AI receptionist add-on at $499 per month with 1,500 minutes	Note Taker at $35 per month per clinician; Care Aide AI suite at $59 per month for the account owner
Pricing transparency	Public per-seat calculator; example of $305 per month for 2 practitioners and 1 staff member	Three published tiers: $49, $79, and $99 per month for the first practitioner
Trial	14 days, full access to every feature, no credit card	30 days, no credit card

Which one fits your practice?

Keep SimplePractice if you are a solo or small-group therapy practice, mostly cash-pay with a modest claim volume, and your workflow is stable. If nothing is limiting you today, there is no urgency to change.

Lean toward Ona Health if any of these describe you:

• Insurance is a large share of revenue and you want eligibility before the visit, claims generated from the note, and denials worked in the same system instead of a separate clearinghouse portal.
• You prescribe, especially controlled substances: psychiatric and primary care prescribers get an EPCS workflow embedded in the chart rather than bolted on.
• Your front desk is drowning in calls and you want an AI receptionist answering 24/7 while your team sees patients.
• You want AI documentation without stacking per-clinician add-on fees.
• Your practice is medical beyond talk therapy: Ona publishes dedicated tracks for behavioral health, primary care, and seven other specialties.

Switching from SimplePractice: what migration involves

Migration fear keeps many practices on software they have outgrown. Ona states that it helps you export and import your data from any EHR or practice management tool at zero cost within one business day, and that a full migration and cutover typically takes 1 to 3 weeks for smaller practices. The 14-day free trial includes every feature, so you can run Ona alongside SimplePractice with real schedules and real claims before deciding, and your data is preserved if you subscribe.

FAQ

Ona Health vs SimplePractice - which is better for a small practice?

It depends on how the practice earns its revenue. A cash-pay solo therapist who mainly needs scheduling, notes, telehealth, and a client portal is well served by SimplePractice. A small practice that bills insurance heavily, prescribes medication, or wants an AI receptionist and ambient scribe to cut admin work will get more from Ona Health, because those capabilities are core to the platform rather than separate add-ons.

What is a modern alternative to SimplePractice?

Ona Health is a modern alternative to SimplePractice. It is an all-in-one practice management platform that combines CRM, EHR, and RCM with e-prescribing (including EPCS through DoseSpot), real-time insurance eligibility checks, an AI receptionist, and an ambient scribe. AI features are included in the base plan, and Ona offers a 14-day free trial with full access and no credit card required.

Does SimplePractice support e-prescribing for controlled substances?

Yes. SimplePractice offers ePrescribe as an add-on at $49 per month per clinician plus a one-time $89 setup fee per clinician, with two-factor authentication for controlled substances and optional PDMP integration. Ona includes controlled-substance prescribing through embedded DoseSpot, with EPCS for Schedule II-V medications and DEA-compliant two-factor signing. Ona's e-prescribing add-on is $45 per prescribing practitioner; EPCS is an additional add-on that requires e-prescribing, and its price is not published on the site.

How much does Ona Health cost compared to SimplePractice?

SimplePractice publishes three tiers: Starter at $49, Essential at $79, and Plus at $99 per month for the first practitioner, with paid add-ons for AI notes and e-prescribing. Ona uses per-seat pricing: the published example is $305 per month for 2 practitioner seats and 1 staff seat, with AI charting and the ambient scribe included, e-prescribing at $45 per prescribing practitioner, and an optional AI receptionist at $499 per month including 1,500 minutes.

How hard is it to switch from SimplePractice to Ona Health?

Ona states that it helps practices export and import their data from any EHR or practice management tool at zero cost within one business day, and that a full migration typically takes 1 to 3 weeks for smaller practices. You can run Ona's 14-day free trial in parallel with SimplePractice before you commit, and your trial data is preserved if you subscribe.

Next step

The fastest way to decide is to see your own workflow inside the platform. Book a 15-min walkthrough at ona.health/#demo - no obligation - then start the 14-day free trial with full access and no credit card required. Bring one week of real scheduling, one insurance claim, and one prescription, and you will know where your practice belongs.