How to choose the right Dubsado subscription tier for your business
Note: this blog post contains affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. However, I recommend Dubsado because I genuinely love it, not because I’m an affiliate!
For a lot of neurodivergent, disabled, and chronically ill business owners, reading through long lists of features for business management tools can be a challenge——there's lots of text to digest, and you need to have the mental energy and focus to be able to review the information critically, and understand how it relates to your needs as an online service provider.
Dubsado is my favourite CRM (Client Relationship Management) tool to recommend to my neurodivergent, disabled, and chronically ill solopreneur clients for keeping track of clients, onboardings, payments——basically, all the client admin that keeps the lights on in our businesses!
If you've been considering signing up for Dubsado to simplify your client management and admin in your small business, but aren't sure whether you need their Starter Plan or Premier Plan, I'm here to help you understand the differences and make the best decision for your needs and finances.
Features covered in both plans:
This part’s easy——here’s what you get in both Dubsado Plans as standard:
Email integration (so you can contact your clients through the platform, keeping your emails for a project centralised in one place, and allowing you to see that emails were received and opened)
Unlimited projects & clients (basically, you're never going to run out of space for new projects, no matter how many clients you work with over the years to come!)
Invoicing and payment plans (both subscription tiers allow you to send invoices to clients and collect payments via Stripe, PayPal, or Klarna, and to split payments over a payment plan schedule)
Form & email templates (allowing you to create standardised templates for client comms and forms like feedback and onboarding questionnaires, so you don't need to start from a blank page with every new client)
Client portals (a space that your clients can access to see all the emails, invoices, forms, and appointment details you send them—so you can avoid having to send important info and comms that get lost in their inbox!)
Calendar connection (so anything that's in your digital calendar shows up in your Dubsado account as well, no double-booking yourself!)
Free email & live chat support (seriously, the team at Dubsado are super friendly, helpful, and responsive)
Mobile app access (see all your clients and projects, invoices, and events on the go)
Whichever plan you go for, ALL these features are included as standard, yay!
The differences between the plans:
Here's where there are differences in the features that will help us understand and decide if Starter or Premier is right for you…
1. Active lead capture forms:
Starter Plan: 1
Premier Plan: unlimited
What does this mean?
If you want to have more than one enquiry form for collecting potential clients' info, you need Premier!
2. Bookkeeping integration:
Starter Plan: not included
Premier Plan: included
What does this mean?
If you use Quickbooks or Xero and want to link up Dubsado to simplify your bookkeeping, you need Premier!
3. Scheduling:
Starter Plan: not included
Premier Plan: included
What does this mean?
If you want to use the Dubsado native appointment scheduler to allow clients and leads to book appointments with you, you need Premier.
Some people like to use a different Scheduler (like Calendly, TidyCal, or Google Scheduling) in conjunction with Dubsado—however, I personally prefer using the native scheduler for the simplicity of having everything in one place!
4. Automated workflows:
Starter Plan: not included
Premier Plan: included
What does this mean?
If you want to automate processes so you don't have to do them manually, you need the Premier Plan!
Some examples of automations I love to use Dubsado for (and so do my clients!) are:
→ Following up automatically with clients who you've sent a proposal to
→ Sending a welcome or onboarding email to a new client who just booked your services
→ Sending a feedback questionnaire to collect client testimonials at the end of a project
5. Public proposals:
Starter Plan: not included
Premier Plan: included
What does this mean?
Proposals are a type of form in Dubsado that functions as a booking page——this is where you can share important information about what's included in your packages, delivery steps, and allow clients to select and customise their package when booking.
You can also add a contract and invoice to a proposal, so the entire booking process happens on one page with 3 separate tabs (SO easy, I love how straightforward this makes the process for my clients!)
Public Proposals mean you can have these booking pages available by shareable link for dream clients to access (rather than only being able to share them with clients inside Dubsado). For example, I have Public Proposals linked on my sales pages so anyone who wants to work with me can book my services without having to fill in an enquiry form first.
6. Zapier integration
Starter Plan: not included
Premier Plan: included
What does this mean?
If you want to connect Dubsado with other tools you use in your business so they can communicate with one another, Zapier is a 3rd party tool that allows you to do that.
You can see an overview of the integrations Zapier offers with Dubsado here, but some examples include Google Drive, Airtable, Notion, ClickUp, and Google Sheets.
How to decide which subscription tier you need:
Review the 6 differences in features in the plans and see how many out of 6 you would like (or need) to have access to when using the platform.
Even if there's only one or two that are essential to your workflow (like automations and scheduling), I'd say it's worth going for the Premier Plan.
Don't feel like your workflow will be helped by having those additional Premier features? You can go for the Starter Plan, and there's always the option to upgrade if anything changes!
Need help deciding or support with understanding what you need from your client management tools?
→ You can book a Systems Diagnostic Session with me and we'll spend 60 minutes together mapping out what you need so you know what action to take next.
Already paying for a Dubsado plan but feel like you're not getting the most out of the features?
→ My Core Systems Co-Build support package is designed to change that, in just 12 weeks! Together, we'll get you confident designing, building, and using your Dubsado account, so workflows no longer feel overwhelming, and setting up forms no longer feels scary!
