Sessions Health vs SimplePractice: A Practical Comparison
Value and simplicity against polish and ecosystem
Mohamed Badran5 min read
Key takeaways
- Sessions Health includes core features in the base plan rather than gating them.
- Administrator accounts are free, which matters if you employ non-clinical staff.
- Reporting on revenue, retention and outcomes is the consistent limitation.
- SimplePractice wins on mobile, ecosystem and breadth of practitioner types.
- Thin reporting often means paying for a second analytics tool.
Short answer: Sessions Health is the better value for solo therapists and small practices, at roughly $39 a month for the first clinician and $29 for each additional one, with everything included and free administrator accounts. SimplePractice is the better choice if you need a mature mobile app, a large ecosystem, or support for practitioner types beyond mental health. The trade-off is reporting: Sessions Health's analytics on revenue, retention, and outcomes are thinner.
We make a competing product, so read the closing section as an advertisement. Oasys sits at the infrastructure layer of working practices, and from our ongoing conversations with therapists and group practice owners, the pattern below is consistent enough to be useful.
At a glance
On pricing. SimplePractice publishes Starter at $49, Essential at $79 and Plus at $99 a month. Group practices need Plus, with additional clinicians tiered at $74 each for two to five, $72 for six to fifteen, and $69 for sixteen or more. Sessions Health is about $39 a month for the first clinician and $29 for each additional one, with free administrator accounts. Verified 30 July 2026; confirm before you sign anything.
Why practices pick Sessions Health
Price, honestly stated. Core features come in the base plan rather than being gated upward. For a small practice, the difference between "included" and "available on the higher tier" is most of the annual cost.
Free administrator accounts. If you employ an office manager and a biller, paying full clinician seat price for people who do not see clients is a real annoyance on other platforms. This is a small thing that practices mention unprompted.
Simplicity. Reviews consistently describe it as uncluttered and quick to learn. In a category where onboarding is measured in weeks, that has value.
Support. Fast responses and a team that visibly acts on clinician feedback come up repeatedly in public reviews.
Why practices pick SimplePractice
Mobile. Not close. If you chart between sessions on a phone, this matters daily.
Ecosystem. A large user base means answers already exist.
Breadth. Support for practitioner types beyond mental health, useful for mixed clinics.
Client portal maturity. Intake completion tends to be smoother.
The reporting gap is the thing to test
If you are a solo therapist, Sessions Health's lighter reporting is a non-issue. You know your numbers.
If you are running a practice as a business, it becomes the constraint. Revenue by clinician, retention by cohort, outcome trends, and no-show patterns are the numbers you need to make staffing and pricing decisions, and thin reporting means you either go without or you buy a second tool.
That second path is more common than people expect. One practice we spoke with pays $300 to $400 a month for a separate analytics platform because their EHR does not provide what they need. That is a real line item created by a reporting gap, and it is worth pricing into any comparison.
What neither solves
Both are built primarily around one clinician and one caseload. Past roughly fifteen clinicians the same three gaps show up:
- Supervision by credential status. Neither reliably distinguishes an intern from a
provisionally licensed clinician who is independently credentialed with payers and does not legally require a co-signature.
- Role-based permissions beyond fairly coarse admin and clinician roles.
- Payroll modeling. One group practice puts about 20 hours a week of a
billing manager's time into converting EHR data into a payroll ledger, because the software has no way to express a contractor revenue split or a salaried arrangement with an hourly minimum plus commission.
Which should you choose?
Choose Sessions Health if you are solo or under about eight clinicians, price matters, you want everything in the base plan, and you do not need deep reporting.
Choose SimplePractice if mobile matters, you want a large ecosystem, or you see practitioner types beyond mental health.
Consider neither if you are running a group practice where supervision, permissions, or payroll is the daily friction.
On switching
Whichever you pick, ask how you would get your data back out in three years. The answer tells you how the vendor thinks about lock-in, and it is the question practices most often wish they had asked.
Migration is the question we are asked about most. Rather than make promises in a blog post, ask us directly what moving your particular system would involve, what comes across, and what happens to appointments already booked.
Our position, labeled
We make Oasys, an EHR for mental health group practices, at $80 per clinician per month on an annual contract with no add-ons. If you are a solo therapist watching costs, Sessions Health is a genuinely good answer and we would say so.
Frequently asked questions
- How much does Sessions Health cost?
Roughly $39 a month for the first clinician and $29 for each additional one, with core features included and free administrator accounts. Confirm current pricing on their site.
- Is Sessions Health better than SimplePractice?
For solo and small practices focused on value and simplicity, often yes. SimplePractice wins on mobile, ecosystem, and breadth of practitioner types.
- Does Sessions Health have AI notes?
Yes. AI Assist drafts notes, transcribes sessions, and produces pre-session summaries. As with any AI documentation, confirm how session audio and transcripts are retained.
- What are the limitations of Sessions Health?
Reporting is the most cited one. Analytics on revenue, client sessions, retention, and outcomes are limited compared with larger platforms.
- Is Sessions Health good for group practices?
It works for small groups. Larger practices needing credential-aware supervision, fine-grained permissions, or payroll modeling will find it thin.
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