Therapist Scheduling Software: Booking, Reminders and HIPAA

• SimplePractice Essential suits solo therapists who want booking and notes in one system. For $79 a month, it includes free text, email and voice reminders, calendar sync and a waitlist. Starter costs $49 and sends reminders only for telehealth sessions.
• Jane Practice offers instant booking and free text reminders for $79 a month. Healthie includes uncapped texts on every plan, with Essentials costing $49.99 for up to 250 active clients.
• Acuity offers a standalone booking page, but you need Premium at $69 a month to sign a BAA. Calendly’s terms, effective 5 August 2026, prohibit protected health information.

Scheduling software should make it easier for clients to book and for you to manage appointments. The differences become clearer when you look at how each system handles booking requests, reminders and client information.

Some tools let clients book immediately. Others give you a chance to review each request first. An EHR’s built-in calendar also connects appointments with the client’s notes and billing, which can save you from managing a separate booking system.

Check the plan details before signing up. Lower-priced plans often leave out text reminders: SimplePractice Starter sends them only for telehealth, Jane Balance includes email only, and Practice Better’s two lowest tiers do not send texts. Because booking records contain client names and appointment times, a covered practice also needs a signed business associate agreement (BAA) with the company storing that information.¹

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Best therapist scheduling software

This list is ranked by fit for a solo or small practice. When two tools fit equally well, the ChoosingTherapy partner appears first.

1. SimplePractice: For therapists who want to screen new clients before confirming a booking.
2. Jane: For instant booking and no-show fees charged to a card on file.
3. Healthie: For the lowest price on uncapped text reminders.
4. Practice Better: For two-way Google Calendar sync and a free plan for 3 clients.
5. TherapyNotes: For client booking requests and one-way calendar sync.
6. Carepatron: For online booking on a free plan.
7. Acuity Scheduling: For a standalone HIPAA booking page.
8. IntakeQ: For intake forms that go out automatically when a client books.

Scheduling features compared by plan

These are monthly US prices for one clinician. The table shows the lowest-priced plan with text reminders, excluding low-volume plans capped at 10 active clients or 25 appointments.

Jane, Healthie, Practice Better and TherapyNotes prices were read between 22 and 25 September 2026. The remaining prices were read on 19 October 2026.

EHRs with scheduling built in

SimplePractice, Jane, Healthie, Practice Better, TherapyNotes and Carepatron connect appointments with the same client record used for notes and billing. Our roundup of the best mental health EHRs compares all of these except Jane as complete systems.

SimplePractice

SimplePractice treats online bookings as requests on every plan. Clients choose an open time, and you accept, decline or suggest another. You can stop new clients from booking, add a prescreener or require a card first. To add a booking widget to your own website, you need Plus at $99 a month.

Essential (79)andPlusincludefreetext,emailandvoicereminders.Whenaclientrepliestoatexttoconfirmorcancel,thecalendarupdates.Starter(49) sends reminders only for telehealth appointments, including the video link.²

Essential also includes a waitlist and calendar sync with Google, Outlook and Apple. Plus displays your personal Google events and blocks those times from appointment requests.

You can set a cancellation window of 24, 48 or 72 hours. Appointments canceled after that window are marked Late Canceled. Both Late Canceled and No Show appointments add the full session fee to the client’s balance.

You accept the BAA when you open the free trial. Capterra reviewers rate SimplePractice’s booking features 4.4 out of 5. Our SimplePractice review covers its notes and telehealth features.

See SimplePractice’s plans and trial offer

Jane

Jane offers instant booking on every plan. Clients book through your branded booking site, and the appointment goes straight onto your schedule. Capterra reviewers rate its booking features 4.8 out of 5.

You can require a card, a deposit or full payment when someone books. Jane charges a stored card only when you choose to do so. For no-shows and late cancellations, you can set up a flat fee or a discount off the session price. Staff select the fee when marking the appointment.³

Balance costs $54 a month, allows 20 appointments a month and sends email reminders only. Practice costs $79 and adds unlimited free text reminders where available. Thrive costs $99 and adds a waitlist that notifies clients by text or email when an appointment opens.

Jane sends appointments to any iCal calendar. Google events appear in Jane as anonymous Busy blocks. A BAA is available on request.

Compare Jane’s plans

Healthie

Healthie’s Core plan costs $19.99 a month for up to 10 active clients. Essentials costs $49.99 for up to 250. Every plan includes online scheduling and text and email reminders, with no message cap or per-message charge.

Plus costs $129.99 and lets clients confirm or cancel by replying to a text. It also automatically charges a set no-show or late-cancellation fee to the client’s card.⁴

Healthie connects with Google, iCal and Outlook calendars. You agree to the BAA at signup.

Try Healthie Plus free for 14 days

Practice Better

Every Practice Better plan includes a booking page, widgets and reminders, including the free Sprout plan for 3 clients. You sign the BAA within your account.

Text reminders start on Professional, which costs $69 a month for 300 clients. Texts cost 5 cents each. If you send two texts for each of 80 sessions, your monthly total would be about $77. Plus costs $99 and includes 750 texts a month.

Google Calendar sync works both ways. Client names appear in Google events by default, but you can turn that setting off. When you mark an appointment as a no-show, you can charge the saved card or send an invoice.

See Practice Better’s plans

TherapyNotes

TherapyNotes lets clients request, reschedule or cancel appointments through its portal. A clinician or scheduler then approves or denies the request.

Email reminders are free. Texts and calls cost 14 cents each, so 200 texts would add $28 to the $69 Solo plan.

Calendar sync runs one way, from TherapyNotes to your outside calendar. TherapyNotes says this is for security.

Carepatron

Carepatron’s Free plan includes online booking with a 100-appointment limit. It does not include automated reminders or calendar sync. The BAA accepted at signup covers every plan.

Plus costs $31 a month and adds reminders and calendar sync. It includes 150 texts per user each month, with additional texts costing 5 cents each.

Carepatron has a 3.6 out of 5 rating across 41 Trustpilot reviews. Bugs and email-first support are the most common complaints.

Standalone HIPAA scheduling software

A standalone scheduler manages bookings and reminders alongside an EHR or paper chart. It can be useful if you want to keep your existing recordkeeping system.

Acuity Scheduling

Acuity is owned by Squarespace. It becomes HIPAA-enabled on Premium once you sign a BAA.⁵ Premium costs $69 a month, or $55 a month when billed annually.

Standard costs $34 and is the first tier with text reminders and a waitlist. However, the BAA is available only on Premium.

Turning on HIPAA mode disables Office 365, Outlook.com, Exchange and iCloud sync. It also turns off invoices and Reserve with Google. Reminder templates include client names and appointment types until you edit them.

IntakeQ

IntakeQ’s Forms Only plan costs $54.90 a month and includes a BAA, but it does not include booking.

For a booking widget, reminders and telehealth, you need Practice Management at $84.90 a month. A $59.90 version is also available, capped at 25 appointments every 30 days.

You can assign an intake package to each appointment type so the right forms go out when a client books. Clients can choose email, text or voice reminders. Google Calendar sync works both ways.

Do therapists need a BAA for scheduling software?

A covered therapy practice needs a BAA with a scheduling service that stores its client information. HHS guidance identifies a cloud service as a business associate when it maintains or transmits a covered provider’s electronic protected health information. This applies even if the service holds only encrypted data. Using that service without a BAA violates the HIPAA Rules.¹

A booking service that stores client names and appointment times fits that description, although HHS does not name specific scheduling tools.

HIPAA covers providers who send information electronically through a standard transaction, such as an insurance claim. A cash-only practice is covered only if it sends information through that kind of transaction.⁶

Practice Better and Acuity both explain that signing a BAA alone does not make a practice compliant. Your settings matter, too. For example, calendar sync may send client names outside the scheduling system.

Google says Workspace customers must have a signed BAA before putting protected health information in its services. That agreement does not cover third-party add-ons. Google does not describe a BAA for free personal accounts.⁷

HHS permits email reminders with reasonable safeguards, including limiting the information a message reveals.⁸

Appointment reminders and no-show policies

Research suggests that text reminders help people attend appointments. A Cochrane review of seven trials involving 5,841 participants found better attendance with text reminders than with no reminders, with a risk ratio of 1.14. Text reminders worked about as well as phone calls.⁹

A 2021 trial followed 183 outpatients with major depressive disorder. After two months, attendance was 76.8% among those who received a reminder the day before, compared with 56.4% among those who did not.¹⁰

Therapists also use scheduling routines to manage attendance. In professional forums, many describe keeping clients in recurring weekly or biweekly slots. Some turn off self-scheduling. Some solo therapists book a few extra slots each week to account for one or two cancellations.

No-show fees require attention to the client’s coverage. According to Colorado’s Medicaid agency, federal rule 42 CFR 447.15 prohibits charging Medicaid members for missed appointments.¹¹

Is an EHR calendar enough?

For most solo and small practices, an EHR calendar is enough. It keeps appointments in the system you already use for client records.

A standalone scheduler may make sense if you keep paper notes or want to stay with a system that does not meet your scheduling needs. It can also suit therapists who work within someone else’s practice and need only reminders.

Compare the cost with what you would get from a full EHR. Acuity’s HIPAA tier costs $10 less than SimplePractice Essential, which also includes notes and telehealth.

The booking process is another way to narrow your choice. SimplePractice’s approval step suits therapists who want to screen new clients. Jane, Practice Better and Carepatron offer instant booking.

On 19 October 2026, our SimplePractice link offered 50% off four months when you started a paid plan within the first 7 days of the free trial. The public pricing page offered 50% off three months.

If you also need to submit insurance claims, our comparison of billing software for mental health covers per-claim fees.

Start your SimplePractice free trial