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bestCRM
Medical software#5 of 10 in clinics

SimplePractice

Practice management EHR for health and wellness — scheduling, notes, telehealth, insurance tools, client portal, and public monthly plans aimed at behavioral health and allied clinicians.

Best for
Therapists, counselors, and health-and-wellness practitioners running outpatient practices
Price
From $49/month (Starter; Essential and Plus higher)
HQ
United States
Profile updated
September 26, 2026

Worth it for your operation?

Pros

  • Clear public plans from $49/month with a documented free trial
  • Integrated telehealth, templates, and insurance tools for therapy practices
  • Fast onboarding story for solo and small group clinicians
  • Client portal, messaging, and billing without a hospital EHR project

Watch-outs

  • Built for behavioral health and wellness — not a multi-specialty medical ambulatory suite
  • No Meta WhatsApp inbox
  • E-prescribing and some clinical extras sit outside the core “every MD specialty” expectation
  • Insurance depth is real for BH; complex multi-payer medical RCM is not the pitch

Score by criterion

The dark mark on each bar is the average of the 10 systems in this ranking. Criteria with higher weight pull the overall score more.

Charting and careweight 1.4×
7.2

Native electronic health record with history, notes, and attachments — not a contact card with a PDF on the side.

Insurance and billingweight 1.3×
7.0

Eligibility, claims, denials, and patient payments inside the product — not a separate billing company as the only path.

Patient relationshipweight 1.1×
8.0

Recalls, campaigns, portals, or acquisition tools that keep the panel full after the first visit.

Messaging and confirmations
5.0

Native SMS or messaging inbox on the patient record, with team history. WhatsApp Business API also counts. One-way reminder blasts, portal-only chat, and marketplace apps do not.

Price and transparencyweight 0.8×
8.5

Public plan in USD, trial, and what sits outside the monthly fee. Percent-of-collections quotes without a rate card lower the score for opacity.

Learning curveweight 0.8×
8.8

English UI, clinical vocabulary, and time until the front desk and a provider can work without a long implementation project.

What ships natively

We only mark “yes” when the feature is part of the product — marketplace integrations or third-party apps do not count.

  • Yes

    Electronic health record

    Native electronic health record with patient history and attachments

  • Yes

    Online scheduling

    The patient books themselves via the vendor’s link, site, or app

  • No

    E-prescriptions

    Prescriptions and certificates with digital signature without leaving the system

  • Yes

    Insurance billing

    Insurance claims and batch billing for US payers

  • Yes

    Clinic billing

    Accounts payable/receivable, cash, and provider payouts

  • No

    Native messaging

    Native SMS or messaging inbox on the lead/contact card (history preserved). WhatsApp Business API also counts. Marketplace apps, Zapier, browser extensions, website chat buttons, and sibling-SKU modules do not

  • Yes

    Telehealth

    Telehealth visit inside the product, not a link to another tool

  • Yes

    Patient acquisition & recall

    Acquisition pipeline, campaigns, or patient recall sequences

Editorial analysis

SimplePractice in detail

SimplePractice is the behavioral-health and wellness operating system on a medical-clinic ranking: notes, telehealth, insurance, and a price card you can actually read.

Who it is for

Therapists, counselors, SLPs, and similar outpatient clinicians. A multi-specialty medical group shopping ambulatory EHR should not treat the $49 Starter plan as a substitute for athenaOne.

What drives the score

Price and learning curve pull hard. Patient relationship is solid for portals and retention. Charting is honest for BH — not scored like a hospital ambulatory EHR. Messaging mid — portals and client comms help; a native two-way SMS inbox is not the headline claim.

How we read the sources

Based on simplepractice.com and the pricing page. Client and practitioner counts on marketing pages are vendor claims.

Frequently asked questions

Can a primary-care MD run on SimplePractice?

Some clinicians do, but the public product is aimed at therapists and health-and-wellness practitioners. If you need full medical e-prescribing, specialty order sets, and ambulatory RCM depth, shortlist Tebra, athenahealth, or Elation instead.

Why is e-prescribing marked false?

The conservative rule only marks presence when the core product story is clearly native e-prescribing for medical practices. SimplePractice’s strength is BH documentation, telehealth, and insurance billing — not a Surescripts ambulatory eRx suite.

Sources consulted

Everything on this profile comes from the pages below. We did not lab-test the platform.

Profile updated September 26, 2026. Found something outdated? Corrections are welcome.