Dubsado vs HoneyBook: The Transaction-Fee Tiebreaker Has Expired

For about two years, every Dubsado vs HoneyBook comparison on the internet — including an earlier version of this one — leaned on the same tiebreaker: HoneyBook takes a cut of every card payment, Dubsado doesn’t. Pick Dubsado, keep the percentage.

That tiebreaker no longer exists. Dubsado now runs its own payment product, Dubsado Payments, built on Stripe, with a published fee schedule of its own. In the United States it charges 2.9% + $0.30 on domestic cards — five cents more on the fixed component than the rate HoneyBook lists. The argument that decided this comparison for years has quietly expired, and most of the pages still making it haven’t noticed.

So the question has to be re-asked from scratch. Below is what both platforms actually charge and gate as of the dates cited, pulled from their own pricing and help documentation rather than from third-party roundups.

Payment processing, side by side

Both numbers come from the vendors’ own documentation. Dubsado’s are from its help-centre fee schedule (last updated 13 August 2025, consulted 1 November 2026) and apply to US-registered merchants; HoneyBook’s are from its pricing page (consulted 1 November 2026).

US merchant, per payment	Dubsado Payments	HoneyBook
Domestic card	2.9% + $0.30	Starting at 2.7% + 10¢ (processing section and FAQ) or 2.9% + 25¢ (plan table)
International card	4.4% + $0.30	No separate international fee listed
Bank transfer (ACH)	0.8%, capped at $5	1.5%
Chargeback / dispute	$15 per dispute	Not listed on the pricing page
Instant payout	1%	1% for faster access to funds, subject to eligibility
Merchant countries supported	39	Not listed on the pricing page

Read down that table and the old conclusion inverts in two places. On card payments the platforms are close to tied: HoneyBook’s lowest listed rate undercuts Dubsado on the fixed component, but only for accounts that qualify for it. On international cards Dubsado is markedly more expensive — 4.4% plus thirty cents — while HoneyBook’s pricing page says there are no international fees. On bank transfers the order flips again: Dubsado’s ACH rate is 0.8% with a $5 ceiling, so a $6,000 bank-paid invoice costs $5 to collect, where HoneyBook’s flat 1.5% on the same invoice costs $90.

That last line is the one worth internalising. If you invoice in large amounts and can persuade clients to pay by bank transfer, the fee gap between these two platforms is an order of magnitude — and it runs in Dubsado’s favour, for a completely different reason than the one everyone cites.

Where HoneyBook’s own pricing page contradicts itself

One oddity is worth flagging, because it affects any number you read anywhere. On HoneyBook’s pricing page, the plan comparison table states card fees “starting at 2.9% + 25¢”, while the processing-fees section and the FAQ both say card fees start at 2.7% + 10¢. Two different rates, one page, read on the same day. The page also notes that Premium subscribers processing more than $500,000 a year may get discounted card fees, which is a different customer from the one this comparison is written for.

Neither figure is unreasonable and the gap is small, but it means a quoted HoneyBook card rate is only as good as the section it was copied from. Before you budget around either number, open a live invoice and check what your own account is actually billed — that is the only rate that binds you.

Automation is the real paywall on both platforms

The second thing this comparison gets wrong is treating the entry tiers as comparable products. They are not workflow platforms. On both services, the entry plan is a document sender: invoices, contracts, a client portal, templates. The automation that people buy these tools for sits one tier up, on both sides.

Plan	Price as listed	Automated workflows	Built-in scheduling	Live lead forms
Dubsado Starter	$335/yr	No	No	1
Dubsado Premier	$525/yr	Yes	Yes	Unlimited
HoneyBook Starter	$29/mo billed yearly	Not listed	One-session scheduling only	Up to 2
HoneyBook Essentials	$49/mo billed yearly	Yes	Full scheduler, email and SMS reminders	Up to 10
HoneyBook Premium	$109/mo billed yearly	Yes	Yes	Unlimited

Dubsado’s Starter plan also withholds public proposals, Zapier and bookkeeping integration; HoneyBook’s Starter lists automations only from Essentials upward and withholds the full scheduler, QuickBooks Online, SMS reminders, team members and the option to remove the “Powered by HoneyBook” mark from client-facing pages. Its comparison table is hard to read, so confirm the automation line on a live trial before you rely on it. Prices above are exactly as the vendors display them: Dubsado’s pricing page quotes annual figures, HoneyBook’s quotes a monthly figure billed yearly.

This is the same tier-gating pattern we found when comparing 17hats and Dubsado, and when working through the CRM options for freelancers more broadly: the feature that made you shortlist the tool is almost never on the plan whose price you remember.

What the automation tier actually costs per year

Since the vendors quote on different cycles, the comparison only becomes legible once both are annualised. The following are our own arithmetic on the listed prices, not vendor-published totals:

• Dubsado Premier — $525/yr, as published.
• HoneyBook Essentials — $588/yr ($49 × 12, at the billed-yearly rate).
• HoneyBook Premium — $1,308/yr ($109 × 12, at the billed-yearly rate).

Sixty-three dollars a year separates the two plans most freelancers would actually end up on. That is not a decision-grade difference. It is roughly one client invoice, and it will be swamped by whichever platform’s processing fees match how your clients pay.

Run it forward with a plausible year: $60,000 collected across 50 invoices, all by card, all domestic. HoneyBook’s listed rate produces about $1,752 in fees; Dubsado Payments’ produces about $1,755. The subscription gap of $63 is real and the processing gap is three dollars. Now move half that volume to bank transfer and the picture changes completely — Dubsado’s $5 ACH ceiling caps those 25 payments at $125 in total, where HoneyBook’s 1.5% takes $450. The variable that decides this is not the platform. It is how your clients pay.

If a hard monthly ceiling is what you are working against, the tier-by-tier arithmetic in our cheapest freelance software stack breakdown is a better starting point than either of these platforms.

What reviewers complain about

Aggregate ratings put the two within a rounding error of each other: Dubsado sits at 4.3 from 76 reviews on G2 and HoneyBook at 4.5 from 251 (both consulted 1 November 2026). The scores are not the useful part. The complaint patterns are, because they are different complaints.

Dubsado’s recurring criticisms are about effort and polish: a steep learning curve that overwhelms new users, an interface reviewers describe as dated, and occasional staleness where pages serve old data. None of those are dealbreakers, but they all cost you time in the first month.

HoneyBook’s recurring criticisms are about money and lock-in: reviewers call the pricing steep and the transaction fees high, and they report that bulk data export is difficult, with no streamlined path for taking your records with you when you leave.

The export problem is asymmetric

That last complaint deserves more weight than a star rating gives it, because it is the only one on either list that gets worse the longer you stay. A steep learning curve is a cost you pay once. A platform that is awkward to leave is a cost that compounds with every client record you add. If you are choosing a system you expect to run for five years, weigh the exit before the onboarding — and export a test batch during the trial, while leaving is still free.

Who should pick which

Pick Dubsado if a meaningful share of your invoices are paid by bank transfer — the capped 0.8% ACH rate is the single largest financial difference between these two platforms — or if your client intake genuinely branches across service types and tiers, which is where its conditional workflow builder earns its reputation. It is also the more practical answer outside the US and Canada, where HoneyBook’s focus is thinnest, provided your country is among the 39 its payment product supports.

Pick HoneyBook if most of your revenue arrives on international cards, where Dubsado’s 4.4% rate is punishing and HoneyBook charges no international surcharge; if you want a client-facing experience that looks finished on day one without design work; or if you would rather spend an afternoon configuring than a weekend.

Pick neither if you send fewer than about twenty invoices a year. At that volume you are buying an automation engine to run it at a tenth of capacity, and $500-odd a year buys a lot of alternatives. A dedicated invoicing tool from our invoicing software comparison plus a standalone proposal tool from the proposal software roundup will cover you for less, and you can consolidate later when the volume justifies it. If you would rather skip the two-platform decision entirely, our Moxie review looks at an all-in-one that bundles proposals, contracts and invoices under one yearly bill. Everything in the proposals, contracts and CRM silo is organised around that same threshold question.

Start the trials in the right order

Both platforms let you try before paying, and the terms are not equivalent. Dubsado’s trial runs 21 days with full Premier access and no card required. HoneyBook’s runs 30 days across virtually every feature, also with no card required — nine days longer, and long enough to run a real client through it end to end.

So run HoneyBook’s longer trial second, not first, and go in with one question already answered: what proportion of last year’s revenue arrived by card versus bank transfer? Pull that number before you open either signup page. It decides more of this comparison than any feature on either website — and unlike the feature lists, nobody can sell it to you. If you do not have a repeatable intake sequence to test against yet, build that first; our guide to the freelance client onboarding process covers what belongs in it before any platform is involved.

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Sources and disclosure. Plan prices, tier contents and trial terms from Dubsado’s pricing page and HoneyBook’s pricing page; processing rates from Dubsado’s published payment-processing fee schedule and Dubsado’s payments overview, all consulted 1 November 2026. Annualised totals and the worked fee examples are our own arithmetic on those listed prices, marked as such in the text. SoloKitHQ has no affiliate relationship with Dubsado or HoneyBook; the links above are ordinary links and we earn nothing if you sign up. Vendor pricing changes without notice — confirm current figures on the vendor’s own page before you subscribe.