Best EHR for a Solo Mental Health Practice: What You Need and What You Can Skip

You left the agency or the group and signed up for the EHR you already knew. Now you’re paying for supervision workflows and payroll reports in a practice of one. We see it all the time.

The best EHR for mental health solo practice depends on two things: how many sessions you hold a month, and whether you bill insurance. On published pricing, the best fits look like this.

• Very low volume or just starting: Sessions Health’s free tier (up to 3 clients), TherapyAppointment at $10 a month (until you book more than 10 sessions), or Carepatron’s free plan.
• Full-time, private pay: TheraPlatform Basic at $39 or SimplePractice Starter at $49, both with telehealth included. Sessions Health Professional is $39 plus a $10 telehealth add-on.
• Full-time, insurance-based: compare claim fees first. TherapyNotes Solo is $69 with 14-cent claims.

One thing up front. We build websites for therapists; we don’t sell an EHR, and we ran no hands-on tests. Every price and cap below comes from the vendors’ own published plans, checked on September 30, 2026. Prices change often, so confirm on the vendor’s page before you sign up.

What is the best EHR for a solo therapist?

There’s no single best EHR for a solo therapist. On published pricing, Sessions Health, TherapyAppointment, and Carepatron suit a very small caseload at $0 to $10 a month. Full-time private-pay clinicians land between $39 and $49. Insurance-based solo practices should compare per-claim fees, where TherapyNotes lists 14 cents and TherapyAppointment lists 15.

“Best” here means best fit on paper: what one clinician pays, what the plan limits, and what’s included. It can’t tell you which note editor you’ll enjoy writing in at 6 p.m. Only a trial does that, and Jane is the one vendor below that says it has no free trial (it offers a demo account instead).

Best EHR for mental health solo practice: what one clinician pays

Most roundups quote the headline plan and skip the low-volume ones. Here’s every entry plan we could verify, lowest price first, at standard monthly list prices. Time-limited discounts are left out.

Four notes on reading it:

• “No cap listed” means the pricing page states no client or session limit for that plan. That’s our reading of the page, so ask if your caseload is unusual.
• Sessions Health Professional plus the telehealth add-on comes to $49 by our addition, the same as SimplePractice Starter.
• TheraNest’s pricing page lists telehealth as a $12 add-on to Essentials, while another page on its site describes telehealth under a higher tier. Settle that during the trial. There’s also an annual CPT license fee of $19.50 per therapist, billed each December.
• TherapyAppointment’s pricing page lists two telehealth add-ons: TA Integrated Telehealth at $15 a month per provider, or a $5 Zoom integration that uses your own Zoom license. Ask the vendor what the base price covers.

What a single practitioner EHR needs every week, and what you can skip

Say you see 18 clients a week and nobody else touches the account. Five parts of the software earn their keep.

• Scheduling. SimplePractice includes online appointment requests on every plan. TheraNest’s online booking starts at Advanced ($59).
• Notes. Check template limits. SimplePractice Starter limits customizable note templates to intake; the full set starts at Essential ($79).
• Client portal and intake paperwork. Sessions Health lists portal messaging, intake, and e-signature on all plans. SimplePractice puts secure messaging on Essential and Plus.
• Billing or superbills. Read the card rate: SimplePractice lists 3.15% plus $0.30 per transaction, and Sessions Health uses Stripe at 2.9% plus $0.30. If you’re out of network, ask to see a superbill during the trial.
• Telehealth. Included on some plans, an add-on on others. The table has each one.

Then the list you can skip at one clinician: supervision workflows, role permissions, payroll reports, and multi-location calendars. SimplePractice puts team members (additional clinicians, supervisors, billers, schedulers) on Plus at $99. TherapyNotes prices its Group plan at $79 for the first clinician, against $69 for Solo.

Don’t pay for a group tier “to grow into.”

Upgrade the month you hire. Until then, you’re paying for menus nobody opens.

Watch the caps on entry plans

Low prices come with limits, and the limit is where a plan stops fitting.

• Sessions Health Freemium stops at 3 clients. The next step is Professional at $39.
• TherapyAppointment is $10 a month until you book more than 10 sessions in a month, $39 until you pass 39, then $59. The vendor says its tiers don’t move down automatically once you’ve reached a higher one, so a slow August won’t put you back on $10.
• Jane Balance allows 20 appointments a month. Five weekly clients will use that up. Practice, at $79, lists unlimited appointments.
• Zanda Starter allows 1,000 appointments a month, far more than one clinician books. The limit that matters is “1 practitioner.”
• Carepatron’s free plan lists unlimited clients but 1GB of storage.

A free or $10 plan is a fine place to spend your first months. We’d use one. But read the export terms before you put 40 clients in it, because the day you outgrow the cap is the day you find out how portable your records are.

An EHR for solo practice costs more once you bill insurance

Private-pay clinicians can skip this section. If you file claims, a per-claim fee sits on top of the subscription. Most roundups leave it out of the comparison, and they shouldn’t.

• TherapyNotes: 14 cents per electronic claim, plus 14 cents per claim in an ERA.
• TherapyAppointment: 15 cents per claim, with free ERA processing and posting.
• Sessions Health, TheraPlatform, and Carepatron each list 25 cents per claim at solo volumes.
• Zanda charges a $50 enrollment fee for its insurance add-on, then 15 cents a claim.
• TheraNest’s Advanced plan ($59) includes 50 claims a month, then 23 cents each.
• Jane lists insurance billing as a $20-a-month add-on to its Practice and Thrive plans, and you’ll need your own Claim.MD account.

SimplePractice is mid-change. Through September 30, 2026, Starter was listed at $0.50 a claim, while Essential and Plus included 10 and 35 claims a month. The vendor’s help center says that beginning October 1, 2026, claim fees no longer depend on the plan: $0.39 per submitted claim for the first 250 claims each month on all plans, with no free claims included in any subscription. A solo caseload is unlikely to pass 250 claims a month, so treat 39 cents as your rate.

A $69 plan with 14-cent claims can end up closer to a $49 plan with 39-cent claims than the subscription prices suggest. Multiply each fee by your own monthly claim count before you compare.

How a solo practice’s EHR connects to its website

Your website gets a prospective client to the point of asking for an appointment. Then the EHR takes over. That handoff happens in one of two ways.

A widget on your page. Embed code from the EHR lets visitors request a time without leaving your site. TheraPlatform lists a website widget on all plans. SimplePractice’s appointment request widget is on Plus only. Jane provides embed codes for Book Online buttons.

A link to the portal. A button sends the visitor to the EHR’s hosted client portal. SimplePractice includes online appointment requests through the portal on every plan. TherapyNotes documents a portal link. Sessions Health, TherapyAppointment, and TheraNest each describe a link to a hosted portal.

For one clinician, we’d take the portal link and a clear button on every page over a $99 plan bought for the widget. The visitor clicks once either way.

We’ve built 500+ websites for therapists and coaches, and placing that button is part of each one. On a Website in a Week build, your booking link or widget goes where prospective clients look for it, and the site is live in 7 days. For the connection method on every major system, see our best EHR for therapists comparison.

The lowest price today isn’t automatically the best therapy EHR

Here’s the trade-off in everything above: moving EHRs later costs time. An export gives you files. You’ll still rebuild note templates and intake forms, and every client needs a new portal invitation.

So read the exit terms now, while you have no records to move.

• Sessions Health says you can export one client or all clients as PDF and CSV.
• TherapyAppointment describes self-service export to CSV files.
• SimplePractice recommends exporting before you cancel. Its standard export covers client information only; reports and payment data are separate exports.
• Jane says it will help you export your data in a portable format.

We couldn’t confirm export terms for Carepatron, TheraNest, or TheraPlatform from the pages we read. Ask each in writing.

Choose for the caseload you expect in 12 months. If you plan to be full-time by then, paying $39 now for a plan you’ll stay on can beat a free tier you’ll leave in the spring. Already on SimplePractice and wondering whether to stay? We group the options by reason for leaving in our guide to SimplePractice alternatives.

Questions solo therapists ask about EHRs

Is a free EHR plan enough for a solo practice?

For a while. Sessions Health’s free tier stops at 3 clients, and Carepatron’s free plan lists unlimited clients with 1GB of storage. Both vendors say you agree to their BAA at signup. Confirm it covers your plan before you enter client information. This is general information, not legal advice, so check with your own counsel or compliance resource.

Which SimplePractice plan fits a solo practitioner?

Starter, at $49, includes telehealth and online appointment requests. Secure messaging and the full set of note templates start at Essential ($79). Team members and the website widget are on Plus ($99).

What’s the best EMR for a small therapy practice with two or three clinicians?

You’ll see EMR and EHR used for the same products. At two or more clinicians, pricing goes per clinician: Sessions Health adds $29 a month per additional practitioner, and TherapyNotes Group is $79 for the first clinician plus $50 for each one after. Our EHR guide for group practices covers that stage.

The best EHR for mental health solo practice is the one priced for one clinician at the caseload you’ll have a year from now, with exit terms you’ve already read. Once you’ve picked it, your website has to send people to it. If you’d like help with that part, get a custom quote through the Website Inquiry Form. The consultation is free, and we’ll tell you where the booking button belongs.