SimplePractice Raised Prices 69% in 2025 — Here's What Solo Therapists Are Doing About It

In March 2025, SimplePractice quietly raised the price of its Starter plan from $29/month to $49/month — a 69% increase overnight. For solo therapists running small private practices, the bill went from roughly $350/year to $588/year just for the base tier, before a single add-on or payment processing fee.

If you're searching for answers right now, you're not alone. Thousands of solo and small-group therapists are asking the same questions: why did this happen, is there a better option, and how hard is it to leave? This post answers all of it.

What Changed in the SimplePractice Price Increase?

SimplePractice restructured its pricing tiers in March 2025. Here's what the changes looked like:

• Starter plan: $29/mo → $49/mo — a 69% increase
• Essential plan: stayed at $79/mo
• Plus plan: stayed at $99/mo

The company justified the Starter increase by bundling in integrated telehealth and insurance billing tools — features that most solo private-pay therapists don't need and didn't ask for. If you see cash-pay clients via phone or in-person and don't bill insurance, you're paying for functionality that doesn't apply to your practice.

This is a classic PE-era pricing move: increase the floor price, reduce perceived sticker shock by bundling in features, and make the old, cheaper tier disappear. The therapists who relied on the $29 Starter plan — often newer clinicians building a practice — absorbed the full hit.

Why Did SimplePractice Raise Prices? The Private Equity Angle

SimplePractice is owned by Therapy Brands, a private equity-backed platform that has been consolidating mental health practice management software for several years. PE ownership changes the incentive structure of a software company in predictable ways: growth matters more than retention, revenue per user becomes a primary metric, and price increases become an expected tool for margin improvement.

The pattern here is well-documented. When a company serving a relatively captive professional audience (therapists who need HIPAA-compliant software and have already invested time in a platform) raises prices, many users absorb the increase because switching costs feel high. SimplePractice is betting — correctly, for many customers — that inertia will hold.

The bundling strategy also serves a purpose beyond pricing. By folding telehealth and billing into the Starter tier, SimplePractice can point to "more value" when responding to complaints about the price increase. But value only exists if you use the features. For a solo therapist who sees 15 clients in-office and collects cash, bundled telehealth is noise.

Solo private-pay therapists are effectively subsidizing the enterprise features that SimplePractice needs to compete for large group practices, hospital systems, and multi-provider networks. Your $49/month is helping fund product development that won't serve you.

What Do Solo Private-Pay Therapists Actually Need?

SimplePractice has approximately 85 features across its platform. A solo private-pay therapist in full-time practice uses roughly 35 of them — about 40%. The other 60% includes insurance billing, ERA processing, multi-clinician scheduling, staff management, telehealth with waiting rooms, Wiley treatment planners, and enterprise reporting tools.

Here's what a solo private-pay therapist actually needs from practice management software:

• Client records and contact info
• Session notes (SOAP, DAP, or free-form)
• Appointment scheduling
• Calendar management
• Invoice and payment tracking
• Superbill generation
• Treatment planning basics
• Secure document storage

That's roughly eight core capabilities. You don't need ERA/EOB processing, multi-staff scheduling, a client portal with insurance billing, telehealth waiting rooms, or clinical documentation templates designed for inpatient settings. But you're paying for all of it.

The question isn't whether SimplePractice is a good product — for a group practice billing insurance, it probably is. The question is whether it's the right product for you, at this price, given what you actually use.

SimplePractice Alternatives After the Price Increase

If you're reconsidering SimplePractice after the price increase, these are the most common alternatives solo therapists evaluate. See our full guide to SimplePractice alternatives for solo therapists for deeper analysis of each.

TherapyNotes also raised its own prices 17% in December 2025, moving the Solo tier from $59 to $69/month. It also has no mobile app as of 2026, which is a significant limitation for therapists who want to manage their practice from an iPhone.

SteadyPractice is purpose-built for solo private-pay therapists: session notes, scheduling, client records, invoices, and superbills — without the insurance billing, cloud storage, and enterprise features that drive up costs at larger platforms. At $9.99/month, you save roughly $820–$1,440/year compared to SimplePractice's real all-in cost.

How to Switch from SimplePractice

Switching practice management software feels daunting, but the actual mechanics are straightforward. Here's what the process looks like.

Step 1: Export your data before canceling

Log into SimplePractice and go to Settings → Data Export. You can export client demographics, session notes, billing records, and documents. Do this before you cancel — once your account is deactivated, access to your data ends immediately.

Step 2: Know what transfers and what doesn't

Client names, contact info, and demographic data export cleanly as CSV or PDF. Session notes export as PDFs — they are readable but not importable into other platforms in a structured format. Calendar history and billing records export as downloadable files. What doesn't transfer: intake forms, treatment plan templates built inside SimplePractice, and any telehealth recordings stored on their servers.

Step 3: Set your cutover date

Pick a natural transition point — the start of a new month, or after your current billing cycle ends. Give yourself a week of overlap where both systems are running so you don't lose anything mid-session. SimplePractice bills monthly, so timing your cancellation just after a billing date saves you one extra charge.

Step 4: Getting started with SteadyPractice

Download SteadyPractice from the App Store, create your client list, and start adding notes. Everything lives on your device — no cloud setup, no onboarding calls, no waiting for approval. Most therapists are fully operational within an afternoon. Your first session is free, and the app requires no credit card to try.

The Privacy Angle You Should Know About

Before you decide, there's one more factor worth understanding: what SimplePractice's Terms of Service say about your data.

SimplePractice's ToS grants them a perpetual, irrevocable license to data processed through their platform. In practice, this means that even after you cancel, their rights to previously processed data do not automatically expire. They sign a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement with you — which governs what they can do with Protected Health Information — but the broader data license in their ToS is a separate and broader agreement.

This isn't unique to SimplePractice; most cloud-based software companies have similar language. But it's worth knowing, especially when the data involved is therapy session notes and client mental health records.

The alternative — on-device storage — eliminates this risk entirely. When your data never leaves your device and is never transmitted to a third-party server, there is no Business Associate relationship, no vendor data license, and no cloud database to subpoena or breach. SteadyPractice stores all client data locally on your iPhone. We never see it, process it, or hold a license to it.

For a deeper look at how on-device and cloud storage compare under HIPAA, see our post on what HIPAA compliance actually means for a therapist app.

FAQ: SimplePractice Price Increase 2025

How much does SimplePractice cost in 2026?

In 2026, SimplePractice's Starter plan is $49/month, the Essential plan is $79/month, and the Plus plan is $99/month. When you add card processing fees (2.95% + $0.30 per transaction) and optional add-ons, solo therapists typically pay $100–$130/month all-in on the Starter plan, or roughly $1,200–$1,560/year.

Why did SimplePractice raise prices?

SimplePractice is backed by private equity through Therapy Brands. The March 2025 price increase bundled telehealth and insurance billing into the Starter plan — features many solo private-pay therapists don't use — to justify raising the base price from $29 to $49/month. This is a common PE-era strategy: increase revenue per user while pointing to added features as justification. The therapists most affected are solo, cash-pay clinicians who use roughly 40% of the platform's features.

What is the best alternative to SimplePractice for solo therapists?

For solo private-pay therapists, SteadyPractice is the most affordable alternative at $9.99/month or $79.99/year. It covers session notes, scheduling, client records, and billing — without the cloud storage, insurance billing modules, and enterprise features that drive up SimplePractice's cost. TherapyNotes is another alternative at $69/month, though it has no mobile app as of 2026. See our full SimplePractice alternatives comparison for more.

Can I cancel SimplePractice and keep my data?

Yes, with caveats. You can export your data from SimplePractice before canceling via Settings → Data Export — client records, session notes, and billing history all export as CSV or PDF. However, SimplePractice's Terms of Service grant them a perpetual, irrevocable license to data processed through their platform, which does not automatically expire when you cancel. Your access ends, but their license doesn't. This is why some therapists prefer on-device storage apps like SteadyPractice, where no third party ever holds a license to your client data.