Both of these tools sell the same promise: one login for your leads, contracts, invoices and follow-up, instead of five apps taped together. And on a pricing page they look like a simple decision — Dubsado starts at $35 a month, 17hats charges $60. Case closed, right?
It isn’t, because the $35 plan doesn’t automate anything. Dubsado’s Starter tier has no workflows, no scheduler and no public proposals. The moment you want the tool to do something while you sleep, you’re on Premier at $55/month — and the real comparison becomes $55 versus $60, with a pile of add-on modules on the 17hats side that can flip the winner either way.
So this comparison ignores headline prices and asks a narrower question: what does each platform cost, per year, at the point where it actually automates your business? That’s the number that matters, and it’s the number neither homepage shows you.
What each one costs in 2026
17hats changed its model in 2025. The old Essentials / Standard / Premier ladder is gone for new signups; there is now a single plan that includes what used to be Premier-only — Zapier, client portal, advanced workflows, conditional questionnaire logic. Dubsado went the other way: after the 3.0 release on 1 December 2025 it kept two tiers and raised both, with subscribers from before that date grandfathered at the old $20/$40 rates.
| Plan | Monthly | Paid annually | Automation included? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dubsado Starter | $35 | $335/yr | No — no Flows, no scheduler, no public proposals |
| Dubsado Premier | $55 | $525/yr | Yes — Flows, scheduler, Zapier, bookkeeping sync |
| 17hats (single plan, monthly) | $60 | $720/yr | Yes — workflows and portal included by default |
| 17hats (single plan, yearly) | — | $600/yr | Yes |
| 17hats (two-year prepay, $800) | — | $400/yr | Yes |
Read the last row twice. Prepaid over two years, 17hats works out to $400 a year — the cheapest automating plan on this page, and $125/year less than Dubsado Premier. Read the first row twice as well: $335/year buys you a very good filing cabinet with contracts and invoices in it, and zero automation.
Dubsado Starter is not the plan you think you’re buying
This is the single most common mistake we see people make with Dubsado, and the pricing page does nothing to prevent it. Starter at $35/month gives you unlimited projects and clients, contracts, invoices, payment plans, client portals, email and form templates, basic reports, three user seats and the 3.0 inbox. That is a complete client-admin system.
What it does not give you:
- Flows — Dubsado 3.0’s name for automated workflows. Premier only.
- Scheduling. No built-in booking calendar, so you’re paying for a separate scheduler on top. Our roundup of scheduling tools for freelancers covers the free options, but it’s still another login.
- Public proposals — the shareable, pick-your-package page that most people picture when they think “proposal software”.
- More than one active lead-capture form, which is a hard ceiling if you sell two different services.
- Zapier, QuickBooks and Xero sync.
If your bottleneck is that you keep forgetting to send the follow-up, Starter does not solve it. Starter solves “my paperwork is scattered”. Those are different problems with a $190/year gap between them.
What 17hats charges extra for
17hats’ one-plan pitch is genuinely simpler — but “one plan” is not the same as “one price”. Several things that read like core features are sold as separate modules at roughly $5 to $10 a month each: the recurring-billing module, the advanced scheduling module, time tracking, bank connect, and QuickBooks Online sync.
That matters because of what it does to the comparison. At list, 17hats’ yearly plan ($600) already costs $75/year more than Dubsado Premier ($525). Add one $5/month module and the gap becomes $135/year. Add two and it’s $195/year. If you bill retainers and need recurring billing plus scheduling, you should price 17hats at $70/month, not $60.
The flip side: Dubsado charges for things too. Extra brands are $10/month each, and while three seats are included, users four through ten cost $25/month. Neither of these is a solopreneur problem — but if you run two business names out of one account, Dubsado’s $10/month brand fee lands before 17hats’ module fees do.
The three-year math nobody runs
Software comparisons almost always stop at the monthly number. Since both companies discount heavily for prepayment, and since the discounts are structured differently, here’s what each option actually costs over one and three years. All figures below are arithmetic on the published 2026 prices, done for this article.
| Option | Year 1 | 3-year total | Saved vs paying monthly (3 yr) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dubsado Starter, annual | $335 | $1,005 | $255 |
| Dubsado Premier, monthly | $660 | $1,980 | — |
| Dubsado Premier, annual | $525 | $1,575 | $405 |
| 17hats, monthly | $720 | $2,160 | — |
| 17hats, yearly | $600 | $1,800 | $360 |
| 17hats, 2-year prepay then 1 year | $400 (avg) | $1,400 | $760 |
Three things fall out of that table. First, prepaying annually is worth more on Dubsado Premier (20.5% off, $135/year) than on 17hats (16.7%, $120/year) — but 17hats’ two-year option beats both by a distance. Second, over three years the cheapest automating setup is 17hats prepaid at $1,400, $175 less than Dubsado Premier. Third, and least intuitive: Dubsado Starter over three years ($1,005) costs more than most people’s mental budget for “the cheap plan”, and it still hasn’t automated anything.
The two-year prepay is also the riskiest line in the table. $800 up front on a tool you’ve used for a week is not a bargain, it’s a bet. Take it in year two, not year one.
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Intake and forms: where Dubsado earns Premier
Dubsado’s reputation rests on one thing — it lets you build a genuinely conditional intake process. Questionnaires with if/then logic, forms that branch by service type, Flows that fire on a trigger and chain actions together. If your sales process is “lead fills in a form, gets the right proposal, signs, pays a deposit, gets an onboarding packet”, Dubsado Premier does that end to end without you touching it.
The cost of that power is setup time, and it is not small. Dubsado has a real learning curve; there is an entire cottage industry of paid Dubsado setup specialists, which tells you something. Budget a weekend, not an evening. We go through this in more detail in our full Dubsado review, and the head-to-heads against its closest rivals are in Dubsado vs HoneyBook and Dubsado vs Bonsai.
One important caveat on Starter: because public proposals are Premier-only, a Starter user who wants a proper package-selection page needs standalone proposal software alongside it — which usually costs more than the $190/year upgrade to Premier would have.
Daily admin, and the case for 17hats
17hats is less ambitious and more finished. The workflows are linear rather than conditional — step one, step two, step three — which is a limitation if you run branching intake and a relief if you don’t. Everything is switched on from day one, so there’s no tier-shopping and no discovering mid-project that the feature you need is one plan up.
For a freelancer whose sales process is “someone emails me, I send a quote, they say yes”, that linearity is not a downside. You’re paying for contracts, invoices, a client portal and a follow-up sequence you’ll set up once. Dubsado’s conditional engine would sit unused.
17hats is also the easier tool to hand over. If you eventually bring in a VA, “click the next step in the workflow” is a five-minute training; “here’s our Flow architecture” is not.
Trials, migration and lock-in
The trials are structured very differently, and Dubsado’s is much better for evaluation. Dubsado’s free trial has no time limit — it caps you at three clients instead, so you can run real work through it for as long as it takes to decide. 17hats gives you seven days, which is enough to click around but not enough to run a full client lifecycle from enquiry to final invoice.
Practical advice: start the 17hats trial only when you have a live enquiry to push through it. A seven-day window spent poking at a demo account tells you nothing about whether the workflow fits your business.
On lock-in, both platforms will export your client and invoice data, but neither exports the thing you spent the weekend building — your templates, forms and automation logic. That work does not transfer. It’s the strongest argument for testing properly before you commit, and for not prepaying two years on either.
Payments are one place Dubsado has a clean edge worth naming: it adds no platform markup, so you pay Stripe, Square or PayPal their standard rate directly and nothing to Dubsado. That is not true of every tool in this category.
Who should buy which
Buy Dubsado Premier if…
Your intake is the bottleneck. You sell more than one service, you want the form to branch, you want the proposal and contract and deposit to fire as a chain, and you’re willing to spend a weekend building it. At $525/year it is the most capable automation on this page, and the free three-client trial means you can prove it works before paying.
Buy 17hats if…
You want one plan with everything on, a linear follow-up sequence, and no tier anxiety — and you don’t need the metered modules. $600/year at list, or $400/year equivalent if you prepay two years once you’re sure. It’s the better pick for anyone who will eventually delegate the admin to someone else.
Consider Dubsado Starter if…
Your problem is filing, not follow-up. Contracts, invoices, payment plans and a client portal for $335/year is a fair deal — as long as you go in knowing you’re buying a system of record, not an assistant, and you have a separate scheduler.
Skip both if…
You have three or four long-running retainer clients and no real intake funnel. A CRM with an automation engine is overhead you’ll pay for and never use; an invoicing tool plus a contract app will cost you a third as much. Our free CRM roundup and the wider best CRM for freelancers guide cover those lighter setups, and standalone contract software handles the signing side on its own.
More head-to-heads and reviews in this silo are collected on our proposals, contracts and CRM category page.
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Frequently asked questions
Is 17hats cheaper than Dubsado?
Not at list price. 17hats is $60/month or $600/year against Dubsado Premier’s $55/month or $525/year, so Dubsado is $75/year cheaper. 17hats becomes cheaper only on the two-year prepay ($800, or $400/year equivalent). Dubsado Starter at $335/year is the cheapest plan overall, but it has no automation.
Does Dubsado’s $35 Starter plan include workflows?
No. Flows — Dubsado 3.0’s automated workflows — are Premier-only, as are the scheduler, public proposals, Zapier and the QuickBooks/Xero sync. Starter also limits you to one active lead-capture form. If automation is why you’re buying, Premier at $55/month is the entry price.
Which has the better free trial?
Dubsado, clearly. Its trial has no expiry date and caps you at three clients instead, so you can run genuine work through it. 17hats gives you seven days. Start the 17hats trial only when you have a live enquiry ready to push through the whole cycle.
Can I move my data from one to the other?
Client records and invoice history export from both, usually as CSV. Your templates, forms, questionnaires and automation logic do not transfer — that’s a rebuild in the new tool. It’s the main reason to test thoroughly before committing and to avoid long prepayments in year one.
Are there extra costs on top of the plan?
On 17hats, yes: recurring billing, advanced scheduling, time tracking, bank connect and QuickBooks Online sync are metered modules at roughly $5-$10/month each. On Dubsado, extra brands are $10/month and users beyond the three included run $25/month for seats four to ten. Dubsado adds no markup on payments — you pay your processor directly.
What if I was already paying for Dubsado before December 2025?
Existing paid subscribers were grandfathered at the old $20/$40 rates when the 3.0 pricing took effect on 1 December 2025. If that’s you, the comparison changes completely — a grandfathered Premier seat at $40 is the best value in this category, and worth protecting rather than cancelling and resubscribing.
Prices verified September 2026 from the vendors’ published plans. Software pricing changes; check the current page before you buy.