SimplePractice is one of the most popular practice management platforms for therapists, and for good reason. It's well-designed, purpose-built for behavioral health, and does a solid job as an all-in-one platform for solo practitioners. At $49 to $99 per month for a single clinician (SimplePractice pricing, checked October 2026), it's a reasonable investment.
The math changes when you grow.
Group practices are on SimplePractice's Plus plan: $99 a month for the first clinician and $74 for each additional one, published for groups of 2 to 5. A 5-clinician group pays $395 a month at list price. Groups of 6 or more are quoted by SimplePractice's sales team, so there is no published price past that point. At the same $74 rate, 10 clinicians would come to $765 a month and 15 to $1,135. Paid add-ons, such as ePrescribe and the AI note tools, come on top.
At 10 clinicians that's $9,180 a year before add-ons, and every new clinician adds $888 a year. Not catastrophic, but not trivial either — especially when you consider that most of your team uses only a fraction of the platform's features.
Where the Money Actually Goes
In a typical group practice on SimplePractice, the feature usage breaks down roughly like this:
Used heavily by every provider: Scheduling, calendar management, and session notes. These are core clinical functions that every therapist uses daily.
Used by the practice owner and billing staff: Insurance billing, claim submission, payment processing, and financial reports.
Used by front desk and intake coordinators: Intake forms, consent document distribution, and client communication.
Used occasionally or not at all by most staff: Telehealth (many use Zoom instead), the client portal (many clients don't engage with it), treatment planning libraries (many clinicians write their own), and advanced reporting (most practices need simple metrics).
The problem: every clinician seat costs the same regardless of which features that clinician uses. An associate who only writes session notes costs the same $74 a month as a clinician who uses billing, reporting and the client portal.
The Split-Stack Alternative
Instead of running everything through one all-in-one platform, group practices can split their software into two purpose-matched tools:
Clinical EHR (per-provider pricing is justified here): Keep SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, or your EHR of choice for session notes, treatment plans, and insurance billing. These are provider-specific tasks that justify per-provider pricing. Don't assume moving intake out will drop you to a cheaper plan: on SimplePractice, group practices are on Plus, and Starter and Essential are listed for solo practices only. Check what your own EHR charges for notes and billing alone before you count on a saving.
Operations platform (flat-rate pricing): Move intake forms and patient records to a healthcare account, set up by hand with a signed BAA: healthcare forms, patient records, order tracking and fax run in a separate HIPAA environment. Healthcare accounts start at $199 a month per practice, with unlimited staff users. Staff paperwork that never contains patient information, such as compliance checklists and employee onboarding, can sit on the same platform outside the HIPAA environment. E-signature and payments are outside it too, so keep them for documents and charges that carry no patient information. Everyone on your team gets access — therapists, assistants, front desk, billing, office manager — without a per-seat charge.
The Real-World Cost Comparison
Scenario: 10-clinician group practice with 3 admin/support staff
All SimplePractice (Plus, the plan offered to groups):
- First clinician $99 + 9 additional clinicians × $74 = $765/month at published group rates
- Groups of 6 or more are quoted by SimplePractice, so your actual price may differ
- The published group price is per clinician; the 3 admin staff aren't counted above
- Total: about $765/month ($9,180/year), before add-ons
Split stack:
- EHR for notes and billing only: whatever your EHR charges for that
- Healthcare account for intake forms, patient records, order tracking and fax: from $199 a month per practice, unlimited staff users
- Total: your EHR bill plus a healthcare account from $199 a month per practice ($2,388 a year at that price)
When the split saves money: only when taking intake out of the EHR lets you pay less for the EHR. For 10 clinicians, the EHR bill has to fall by more than $199 a month — about $20 per clinician — before the split comes out ahead. On SimplePractice itself it doesn't, because groups stay on Plus. Suppose your EHR does have a tier $50 per clinician cheaper, the gap between SimplePractice's $99 Plus and $49 Starter list prices for a solo clinician: 10 × $50 = $500 a month saved, minus $199 = $301 a month, or $3,612 a year.
That's real money, but it depends entirely on your EHR having that cheaper tier. Run it with your own numbers before you switch anything. For the general shape of the calculation — which costs scale with headcount and which don't — see why per-clinician pricing adds up.
What You Lose vs. What You Gain
What you might lose: The convenience of everything in one platform. One login, one dashboard, one support team. There's real value in simplicity, and for some practices, that's worth paying for.
What you gain:
- Lower software costs, if your EHR has a cheaper tier once intake moves out (see the break-even above)
- More flexible intake forms (built from blank templates and published from a BAA-covered healthcare account)
- Records management with compliance checklists for staff and practice documents
- Flat-rate team access (add staff without software cost anxiety)
- Payment collection outside the EHR (standalone payment links you can copy into a text message), at card processing plus a small per-payment platform fee, deducted from each payout. Payments are an add-on we turn on by request, including for healthcare accounts. They run outside the HIPAA environment, so payment descriptions stay neutral, such as an invoice number, and never name a diagnosis or service
- Employee onboarding and HR form management
Who Should Stay on SimplePractice
To be fair, SimplePractice remains a good choice for:
Solo practitioners who want one tool and minimal complexity. The per-provider cost is manageable at one seat, and the all-in-one approach eliminates decision fatigue.
Practices that rely heavily on SimplePractice's billing module. If your insurance billing workflow is deeply integrated with SimplePractice's claim submission, ERA processing, and reporting — switching the billing component is disruptive. Keep SimplePractice for billing and consider splitting only the operational components.
Practices where every provider actively uses telehealth, the client portal, and clinical tools. If your team genuinely uses 80%+ of the platform's features, the per-provider cost is delivering proportional value.
Who Should Consider Alternatives
Practices growing past 5 clinicians. That's where SimplePractice's published group pricing stops, and every added clinician adds to the bill.
Practices adding non-clinical staff who need to see intake and patient records. A healthcare account has unlimited staff users, so front desk and intake coordinators don't change the price.
Practices that need compliance tracking, employee onboarding, or records management for staff documents — work a clinical EHR isn't built around.
Practices in growth mode where every new clinician means another software seat. Flat-rate pricing removes software cost as a factor in hiring decisions for the work it covers.
The decision isn't about whether SimplePractice is good. It is. The decision is about whether it's the right tool at your current scale — or whether your practice has outgrown the per-provider pricing model.
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