SimplePractice Review (2026): Honest Pros and Cons
An honest 2026 SimplePractice review: verified pricing, where it is strongest, where it falls short, and which practices should pick something else.
SimplePractice is a mature, easy-to-use practice management platform built mainly for solo and small behavioral health and wellness practices. Published plans run $49, $79 and $99 per month with a 30-day free trial. It is strong on documentation, scheduling and the client portal, and weaker once prescribing volume and insurance work grow.
Quick answer:
- Best for solo and small therapy, counseling, and wellness practices that want a clean, familiar system without a long implementation.
- Watch the total cost, not the plan price: claims are metered per claim above an allowance, and AI plus e-prescribing are separately billed add-ons.
- Look elsewhere if your practice prescribes heavily outside mental health, orders labs, or runs insurance operations on every single visit.
All prices and product details below were checked against SimplePractice's own pages on August 19, 2026.
What SimplePractice is, and who it is built for
SimplePractice titles its homepage "EHR Software for Health & Wellness Professionals," and the audiences it leads with are therapists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and psychiatrists. That focus is the most useful fact in this review, because almost every strength and limit below follows from it.
The published feature set covers scheduling, online booking, a client portal with a client-facing mobile app, HIPAA compliant secure messaging, therapy notes, measurement-based care, group appointments, telehealth, insurance and claim filing, credentialing, payments, reports, ePrescribe, and group practice team management. The AI layer is sold as two add-ons: Note Taker, and Care Aide, which bundles Note Taker with Session Sidekick, Treatment Planner, and Client Summaries.
Where SimplePractice is genuinely strong
Ease of use. This is why SimplePractice keeps winning solo practices. Setup is short, the calendar and note flows are legible on day one, and the 30-day trial runs on the Plus plan with no credit card, so you can test the ceiling before picking a floor.
Behavioral health documentation. Basic diagnostic and treatment plans and integrated measurement-based care are included on every plan. Customizable treatment plans and Wiley Treatment Planners arrive on Essential. For a therapy practice, that library is a real head start compared with building templates from scratch.
A mature client experience. The client portal has been in the market a long time and it shows: online appointment requests, paperless intake documents, secure messaging, card payments, and a client mobile app. Appointment reminders and calendar sync start on Essential.
Group work and credentialing. Group appointments and group telehealth are included on Plus, which matters for practices running therapy groups. Credentialing is a first-class feature rather than an afterthought, though SimplePractice publishes no price for it, so ask what it costs on your plan before you count on it.
Where SimplePractice runs into limits
The tiering is real. Several things a growing practice treats as basic sit above the entry plan. Appointment reminders and calendar sync begin on Essential ($79). Automatic insurance status checks, group appointments, group telehealth, and the premium support phone line begin on Plus ($99).
Claims are metered. Starter files claims electronically at $0.50 per claim with no included allowance. Essential includes 10 free claims a month, then $0.35 each. Plus includes 35 free claims a month, then $0.25 each. If you file a few hundred claims a month, model that line before you sign, and read our take on reducing claim denials and getting paid faster alongside it.
Add-ons stack per clinician. Note Taker is $35 per month, Care Aide is $59 per month for the account owner plus $49 per additional clinician, and ePrescribe is $49 per month plus an $89 one-time setup fee. SimplePractice states that group practices pay per clinician for add-ons. A five-clinician practice that wants AI notes and prescribing is doing meaningfully different math than a solo.
Prescribing exists, but it is scoped. To SimplePractice's credit, ePrescribe is available on all subscription tiers and does support controlled substances once the prescriber completes EPCS registration. PDMP integration is an optional add-on. The framing throughout is psychiatrists, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners, and other mental health prescribers. That is a fit question, not a defect.
No AI phone answering. Nothing in the published feature list picks up the phone for you. If your front desk is drowning in calls, price that gap.
Group practice base cost. Additional clinicians start at $74 each on Plus ($74 for 2 to 5, $72 for 6 to 15, $69 for 16 and up), before add-ons. Our guide to software for mental health group practices shows how that compounds.
What SimplePractice costs in 2026
Starter is $49 per month, Essential is $79, and Plus is $99, with a 50% off for three months promotion if you start a paid plan within 7 days of opening the trial. The free trial is 30 days on the Plus plan, no credit card required. Those are honest, published numbers, which is more than many vendors in this category offer. Just add the metered items to the total.
SimplePractice and the alternatives, ranked by fit
Ranked by which practice type each platform serves best, not by which is objectively better. Pricing taken from each vendor's own pricing page on August 19, 2026.
| # and platform | Best fit | Strengths | Trade-offs | Published pricing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SimplePractice | Solo and small behavioral health, therapy, and wellness practices | Fast to learn; deep note and treatment-plan library; mature client portal with a client mobile app; group telehealth on Plus | Features split across three tiers; claims metered above an allowance; AI and e-prescribing billed per clinician | $49 / $79 / $99 per month; extra clinicians from $74 each; 30-day trial, no credit card |
| 2. Ona | Practices that prescribe regularly and bill insurance heavily, and want AI in the core product | Every feature on every plan; DoseSpot e-prescribing with EPCS; real-time eligibility and claims; ambient scribe and AI receptionist; HIPAA compliant, BAA on every workspace | Web only, no native mobile apps; telehealth is 1:1, no group visits; no two-way calendar sync; the AI receptionist is the one metered line and is priced per practice | $130 per practitioner seat, $45 per staff seat; e-prescribing +$45, EPCS +$25; AI receptionist from $199 per month depending on the practice, with included minutes set per practice and $0.20 per minute beyond them; 14-day trial, no credit card |
| 3. Healthie | Nutrition, dietitian, and virtual-first care teams | Low self-serve entry price; strong fit for programs and coaching-style care | Group and higher tiers cost noticeably more; less specialized for behavioral health documentation | Core $19.99, Essentials $49.99, Plus $129.99, Group $149.99+ per month; 14-day trial on the Plus plan, no credit card |
| 4. AdvancedMD | Behavioral health and medical groups that already run a billing function and negotiated payer contracts | Specialty-specific editions; scheduling, claims, ePrescribing, patient portal, telehealth and reporting in one bundle; a full RCM service is available | Priced per provider well above the solo therapy band; sized for practices with dedicated billing staff | Mental health $130 to $399 per provider per month, medical specialties $429 to $1,070; RCM 4% to 8% of collections; 30-day free trial on the self-service mental health edition |
Who should choose SimplePractice, and who should not
Choose SimplePractice if you are a solo therapist or a small counseling, coaching, speech, or occupational therapy practice, you file a modest number of claims, and you want something you can be running properly inside a week. On that profile it is a strong, fairly priced product, and the 30-day trial removes most of the risk from finding out.
Look elsewhere if the medical side of your work is the heavy side. A practice writing prescriptions across specialties, checking eligibility on every visit, ordering labs, or dispensing supplements is asking SimplePractice to do work it was not designed around. That is where Ona fits: every feature on every plan, e-prescribing and EPCS on the same chart, eligibility and claims in the same system as the note. For the head-to-head see Ona vs SimplePractice, and for the wider field our SimplePractice alternatives roundup and behavioral health documentation software guide.
FAQ
Is SimplePractice worth it in 2026?
For a solo or small behavioral health, therapy, or wellness practice, yes. You get scheduling, notes, a client portal, telehealth, and claim filing from $49 per month, and it is genuinely easy to learn. The value case weakens as you add clinicians, claim volume, and paid add-ons, each priced separately.
How much does SimplePractice really cost?
The plan is the starting point, not the total. Published plans are $49, $79, and $99 per month. On top of that: claims beyond your allowance ($0.50, $0.35, or $0.25 each by tier), additional clinicians from $74 each, ePrescribe at $49 per month plus an $89 setup fee, Note Taker at $35, and Care Aide at $59 for the account owner plus $49 per additional clinician.
Does SimplePractice support e-prescribing and controlled substances?
Yes. ePrescribe is an add-on on all subscription tiers, and controlled substances are supported once a clinician completes EPCS registration: identity proofing with Experian, tokens and two-factor authentication for the EPCS dashboard, and Logical Access Control. SimplePractice frames prescribing around psychiatrists, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners, and other mental health prescribers, and offers PDMP integration as an optional add-on.
What are the real weaknesses of SimplePractice?
Three things. Features are split across three tiers, so appointment reminders and calendar sync start on Essential and automatic insurance status checks and group work start on Plus. Insurance claims are metered per claim above a monthly allowance. And AI and prescribing are paid add-ons billed per clinician, which changes the math for group practices more than for solos.
Who should not use SimplePractice?
Practices whose center of gravity is medical rather than behavioral: high prescribing volume across specialties, eligibility checks and denial work on every visit, lab ordering, or supplement dispensing. Also practices that want AI phone answering, which does not appear in the SimplePractice feature list.
Next step
If your practice sits on the medical side of that line, see what an AI-native, all-in-one practice management platform looks like when prescribing, eligibility, claims, charting, and the front desk live in one system. Book a 15-minute demo with Ona, or start the 14-day free trial with no credit card and full access to every feature, including e-prescribing. Migration from any EHR is free, typically inside one business day, with full cutover usually one to three weeks for smaller practices. No setup fees, no long-term contract.
Written by
Ona Health