Looking for a SimplePractice Alternative? Here’s What Growing Practices Need
In March 2025, SimplePractice raised its starter plan 69%, from $29 to $49/month, with minimal warning.1 For solo therapists, that stings. For group practice owners already stretched thin, it was the final push to start looking for a SimplePractice alternative.
SimplePractice works well for what it was designed to do: serve solo therapists and small wellness practices. But if you’re running group therapy, planning an IOP track, or billing for substance use treatment, you’ve likely hit its ceiling already. This post covers the specific limits that matter for behavioral health practices, what to look for in an alternative, and why PIMSY was built for exactly this situation.
Why Behavioral Health Practices Start Shopping for Alternatives
The 2025 price hike opened the conversation. But for most practices, the real frustration came before the invoice.
Three specific limits keep coming up. First: SimplePractice can’t process group notes for sessions of three or more clients.2 Picture a clinical director at a 12-clinician outpatient practice in Charlotte who adds group therapy to their IOP track. Their admin is now writing 14 individual notes for every Thursday session. Every week. That’s not a minor inconvenience. It’s a structural problem that compounds.
Second: SimplePractice only supports CMS-1500 professional claims. Practices that bill for IOP, PHP, or residential services need UB-04 institutional claims, and SimplePractice can’t generate them.3 So you’re either turning away higher levels of care or running a second billing system alongside your EHR.
Third: there’s no API access, no webhooks, and no third-party automation capability at all. Want to connect your EHR to your scheduling tool or billing system? Not an option. That’s a hard ceiling that becomes more painful as the team grows.
None of this means SimplePractice is a bad product. It was designed for a different type of practice. The problem is when your practice outgrows it and the platform doesn’t grow with you. Many practice owners started solo on SimplePractice four or five years ago. Now they’re running eight therapists, a prescriber, and a waiting list. The tool that got them here won’t get them where they’re going.
What Your Behavioral Health EHR Actually Needs to Handle
Growing practices need four things from their EHR. Not all platforms deliver them. Not even most.
Both claim types. CMS-1500 for outpatient sessions, UB-04 for IOP, PHP, and residential. A single system that handles both means no second billing tool when you expand your levels of care. Practices that piece this together across two platforms pay for it in staff time and claim errors.
Group documentation that actually works. One facilitator writes the session note; individual client progress gets tracked within it. Not 14 individual notes per session. Mental health practice management software that can’t handle group documentation isn’t built for behavioral health. It’s built for private-pay solo therapy and stretched to fit.
Authorization management. If you’re running IOP, you’re renewing authorizations every few weeks per client. A system without this creates billing gaps and constant manual tracking. It’s not glamorous, but it’s where the revenue leaks.
Scalable pricing. Per-clinician costs that don’t punish you for hiring. SimplePractice charges $74/month for 2-5 additional clinicians on the Plus plan, with no differentiation between full-time and part-time staff.1 For a 10-person practice, that math gets uncomfortable fast.
Reporting matters here too. As a practice grows, you need productivity by clinician, not just a revenue summary. Weak reporting is a hidden cost that shows up as billing surprises at the end of each month.
What Sets PIMSY Apart as Group Therapy Software for Behavioral Health
PIMSY has been built specifically for behavioral health since 2007. Not adapted from general wellness, not retrofitted from primary care. The clinical workflows, billing requirements, and documentation patterns in behavioral health are genuinely different, and a platform built around those specifics handles them well.
Take group documentation. PIMSY’s multi-facilitator group note structure handles it natively: one note per group session, individual client progress tracked within it. The Charlotte practice writing 14 individual notes every Thursday? That workflow doesn’t exist in PIMSY.
Billing works the same way. PIMSY handles both CMS-1500 and UB-04 in a single system. When a practice adds an IOP track or a residential bed, they don’t bolt on a second billing platform. They keep working in the same system they already know.
ONC-Certified status matters for grant-funded programs, Medicaid participants, and practices that need to demonstrate compliance to funders or licensing bodies. PIMSY is one of very few behavioral health EHRs with this certification. For those organizations, it’s often a funder requirement, not a nice-to-have.
PAISLY, PIMSY’s AI for therapy notes, helps clinicians finish documentation faster. It takes your session details and drafts the note, so you’re not staring at a blank text field at 7pm trying to remember what the client said two hours ago.
Pricing scales too. Prime at $99/month covers small practices. Professional fits 6-50 clinicians. Platinum handles enterprise, multi-location, and residential programs. No per-clinician surprises when you add staff, and no features gated behind plan tiers you’d never use.
What Switching Your EHR Actually Looks Like
Switching EHRs is stressful. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Clinicians worry about losing notes. Practice owners worry about billing gaps. Office managers worry about retraining a team that already has enough to do.
PIMSY’s implementation runs six weeks. It’s a phased rollout: each level is verified before moving to the next, which means billing doesn’t go live until the team is ready. The train-the-trainer model means you build internal expertise from day one rather than depending on support calls indefinitely.
US-based support is available Monday through Friday, 8AM to 8PM EST, with a 24/7 emergency line for urgent issues. That matters during a transition. Real people, not a ticket queue.
Data migration is part of the process, not an afterthought. Most practices are fully operational within six weeks. Some go faster. The goal isn’t a perfect launch day. It’s making sure billing keeps running, clinicians stay confident, and nothing falls through the cracks.
A practice owner in Nashville held off switching for two years because of transition fear. They went live in five weeks. “I lost way more time staying on the wrong system than I did switching,” she said.
The Right SimplePractice Alternative Grows With You
Group practice management gets harder when your EHR wasn’t built for it. SimplePractice built something good for a specific type of practice. If your practice has grown beyond that footprint, it’s not a criticism of the platform. It’s just a mismatch.
PIMSY handles the billing complexity, group documentation, and authorization management that behavioral health practices actually deal with. Whether you’re running a 10-clinician outpatient practice in Denver or planning to add an IOP track in the next six months, the system was built for this.
Ready to see what PIMSY looks like for your practice? Start with a 30-day free trial or request a demo. No pressure, just a real look at whether it fits.
Sources
1SimplePractice Price Increase 2025: What To Do, SteadyPractice
2SimplePractice vs Group BH Practices, Behave Health
3SimplePractice Limitations That Matter for Behavioral Health Practices, PIMSY
