Solo Private-Pay Therapist Practice Management Under $30/Month

saas real project •• multiple requests

SimplePractice restructured pricing in 2022, moving telehealth out of the $29 Starter plan. Most solo therapists need the $69 Essential plan, which actually costs $89-94/month with clearinghouse fees and payment processing. TherapyNotes offers flat $49/month but is still designed for insurance-billing practices. Solo private-pay therapists who don't bill insurance need scheduling, notes, a client portal, and HIPAA telehealth for under $30/month. CoralEHR launched a free tier but is very new.

builder note

The wedge is private-pay simplicity. Strip out insurance billing entirely. A solo therapist needs: appointment scheduling with reminders, session notes with templates, HIPAA-compliant video calls, a client portal for intake forms, and payment collection. That's it. No claims, no clearinghouses, no ERA processing. Build on Jitsi (open-source video) and Stripe for payments. The HIPAA BAA with your infrastructure providers is the compliance bar, not the feature set.

landscape (4 existing solutions)

Therapist practice management is dominated by SimplePractice and TherapyNotes, both designed for insurance-billing practices. Solo private-pay therapists overpay for features they don't use. SteadyPractice and CoralEHR are attempting to serve this niche but are very early. The gap is a proven, HIPAA-compliant tool that includes scheduling, notes, telehealth, and a client portal at $15-25/month with no insurance billing overhead.

SimplePractice Market leader but $69/month Essential plan is minimum viable tier. $29 Starter lacks telehealth, insurance billing, secure messaging, and treatment plans. True cost with fees: $89-94/month. Overkill complexity for a solo therapist seeing 15-20 clients/week.
TherapyNotes Flat $49/month for all features with no feature gating. Superior clinical note templates. But still designed around insurance billing workflow. Private-pay therapists navigate features they don't need.
SteadyPractice Most affordable at $9.99/month or $79.99/year. But very early stage, limited feature set, and unclear HIPAA compliance depth. May not include telehealth.
CoralEHR Genuinely free tier with unlimited clients, scheduling, client portal, and HIPAA video calls. The most disruptive entry. But brand new, unproven reliability, and unclear sustainability of free model.

sources (2)

other https://www.simplepracticepricing.com/ "Most therapists discover within the first week that they need Essential" 2026-03-01
other https://www.coralehr.com/blog/simplepractice-alternatives-pr... "Best SimplePractice Alternatives for Private-Pay Therapists" 2026-02-15
healthcaretherapypractice-managementHIPAAsubscription-fatigue