If you've searched for practice-management software as a therapist, you've run into SimplePractice. It's the largest player in the US market by a wide margin, and its name shows up in almost every "best EHR for therapists" list. If you're practicing in India or the UK, though, that popularity can be misleading — SimplePractice was built for the US market first, and some of what makes it a strong choice there doesn't translate. This is an honest look at Kith as a SimplePractice alternative for India and the UK, including where SimplePractice is still the better pick.
SimplePractice is a mature, full-featured practice-management platform: scheduling with client self-booking, integrated telehealth with a waiting room and virtual backgrounds, customizable note and intake templates, a client portal, and insurance claim filing. As of this writing, it's priced in three tiers — Starter at $49/month, Essential at $79/month, and Plus at $99/month — with calendar sync (Google, Apple, Outlook) gated behind Essential or higher, and color-coded calendars reserved for Plus. AI-assisted note-taking isn't bundled into any base tier; it's a separate add-on starting at $17.50/month per clinician, or $29.50/month as part of a bundled "Care Aide" package that also includes a session assistant and treatment planner. New signups get 50% off for the first three months, so the sticker price and what you'll actually pay after month three are two different numbers worth checking directly before you commit.
That's a genuinely capable platform, and for a US-based practice billing insurance directly through the software, it's hard to beat — the claims workflow alone is a reason many American therapists stay with it despite the price increases of the past couple of years. The client portal is also worth calling out on its own: clients can book their own appointments within windows you set, fill out intake paperwork before the first session, and message you through the portal rather than over email or text. For a practice that wants clients to self-serve as much as possible, that's a meaningfully different experience than a therapist manually coordinating every booking.
None of this is unique to SimplePractice — several other platforms compete in overlapping ways — but SimplePractice's breadth (scheduling, notes, billing, and telehealth genuinely combined into one product) is a big part of why it's usually the first name that comes up in a search for practice-management software.
The friction shows up as soon as you're practicing outside the US. SimplePractice's electronic insurance claims integration only works with US insurers, so that flagship feature — the thing a lot of the pricing is built around — does nothing for a therapist billing clients directly in India or the UK. Account creation itself is also restricted in some countries, and while an existing account can be accessed from anywhere, the platform's support documentation and billing defaults (USD pricing, US business hours support) all assume a US-based practice.
The bigger issue is compliance framing. SimplePractice is built around HIPAA, the US health-data law. That's not the law that governs a practice in India or the UK. If you're in India, your obligations run through the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — we've written a full breakdown of what that actually requires — and if you're in the UK, they run through UK GDPR, which we've also covered in detail for AI notetaking specifically. Neither of those is the same as HIPAA, and a platform designed around HIPAA compliance isn't automatically covering the specific consent, cross-border transfer, and breach-notification requirements those laws impose. That doesn't mean SimplePractice is unsafe to use from India or the UK — plenty of practitioners do — but you're the one responsible for closing that compliance gap yourself, and it's worth going in with clear eyes about that rather than assuming "HIPAA-compliant" software automatically satisfies a different country's law.
Kith was built with an India/UK-first solo and small-practice therapist in mind, rather than adapting a US platform after the fact. A few differences that matter in practice:
Ambient transcription without a separate AI add-on fee. Kith listens to sessions — through your device mic for in-person sessions, or through a notetaker bot that joins the call for online sessions on Google Meet — and turns the transcript into a structured note automatically. We've written more about how ambient transcription actually works if you want the mechanics. This isn't a bolt-on priced separately from the core plan; it's the core of what the product does.
A two-layer note pipeline, not just a template. Rather than a fill-in-the-blank template, Kith runs the session transcript through a compression pass and then a structuring pass to produce a SOAP note, key points, a session summary, homework, and a next-session plan. You still review and edit — it's a draft, not a finished chart — but the starting point is built from what was actually said in the room, not from a blank template you fill in from memory afterward.
Consent handled as two separate gates. Recording consent and AI-processing consent are tracked separately, server-side, rather than bundled into one generic "I agree" checkbox. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should — a patient can consent to being recorded without automatically consenting to that recording being processed by AI, and treating those as the same thing is a compliance shortcut that catches up with practices later.
DPDP-aligned field encryption and row-level security by default. Sensitive fields are encrypted at rest, and each therapist's data is isolated at the database level (row-level security), aligned to India's DPDP framework specifically rather than retrofitted from a US compliance standard.
Free to start, genuinely. Kith has a free plan with no card required. To be direct about where this stands today: Kith's paid tiers aren't fully live yet, so right now "free" isn't a promotional price waiting to expire — it's the only plan available. That will change as paid plans roll out, but as of this post, there's no hidden step where you're asked to add a card.
It's worth spending more time on this one, because "AI notes" means different things depending on which product you're looking at. On SimplePractice, the AI note-taking add-on sits on top of the base subscription — you're paying for the platform first, then paying again, per clinician, to add AI drafting to it. That's a reasonable way to price an add-on feature layered onto an existing platform, but it means the actual monthly cost of "SimplePractice with AI notes" is the tier price plus the add-on price, not just the headline plan number.
On Kith, the AI note pipeline isn't an add-on — it's the thing the product is organized around. A session transcript goes through two passes: a compression step that strips filler and keeps clinically relevant content, then a structuring step that turns that into a SOAP note, key points, a session summary, homework, and a plan for the next session. Both products still require you to review and edit before anything goes in a patient's chart — neither is pitching a note you should sign without reading it — but the pricing shape is different: one is a base product with AI layered on as an upsell, the other is built around AI from the base plan up.
| SimplePractice | Kith | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $49–99/month, tiered | Free |
| AI session notes | $17.50–29.50/month add-on | Included |
| Ambient transcription (in-person) | Not a core feature | Included, via device mic |
| Ambient transcription (online) | Not offered | Included, via notetaker bot on Google Meet |
| Calendar sync | Essential tier ($79+) only | Included (one-way: pulls your Google Calendar in) |
| Insurance claims | US insurers only | Not offered |
| Compliance framing | HIPAA (US) | DPDP-aligned (India), field encryption + RLS |
| Client self-scheduling | Yes | Not yet |
| Automated client SMS/email reminders | Yes | Not yet — an in-app reminder exists for the therapist, not the patient |
That last row matters if automated no-show reduction is your priority — it's a real gap, not a rounding error, and worth weighing honestly against everything else here.
To be fair to it: if you're a US-based practice billing insurance, SimplePractice's claims workflow alone probably justifies the price. Its client portal and self-scheduling are more mature than what Kith offers today, and if your patients expect to book their own appointments online without you in the loop, that's a real feature gap on Kith's side, not a minor one. SimplePractice has also been in the market long enough to have a large library of note templates, integrations, and community documentation — if you want maximum configurability and don't mind paying for it, that maturity counts for something. A comparison post that pretends otherwise isn't useful to you.
Can I actually use SimplePractice if I practice in India or the UK? You can access an existing account from anywhere, and some practitioners outside the US do use it. But account creation is restricted in certain countries, pricing is in USD, support hours are US-based, and the compliance framing is built around HIPAA rather than DPDP or UK GDPR. It's usable, not built for you specifically.
Is Kith HIPAA compliant? Kith's compliance work is aligned to India's DPDP Act 2023 — field-level encryption for sensitive data and per-therapist row-level security in the database. That's a different framework from HIPAA, built for a different jurisdiction. If HIPAA compliance specifically is a hard requirement for your practice, check directly rather than assuming either platform's compliance work maps onto a law it wasn't built for.
Does Kith support insurance billing? No. If you bill insurance directly and need claims filing built into your practice-management software, that's a real gap on Kith's side today, and SimplePractice's US-insurer claims integration won't help a practice billing outside the US either — so neither product currently solves this for an India- or UK-based practice.
Is Kith really free, or is that a trial? It's a free plan with no card required, not a time-limited trial. Kith's paid tiers aren't fully rolled out yet, so the free plan is genuinely the only option right now rather than a promotional entry point into a paid product.
If you're billing US insurance and want a self-serve client portal, SimplePractice's feature set is built for that specifically, and Kith isn't currently a substitute. If you're a solo or small-practice therapist in India or the UK who wants ambient transcription and AI-drafted notes included rather than priced separately, compliance framing built around DPDP or GDPR rather than retrofitted from HIPAA, and you don't need US insurance billing or client self-scheduling yet, Kith is worth trying — it's free to start, no card required, so the honest way to compare the two is to actually run a session through both.
Sources consulted for SimplePractice pricing and features: the SimplePractice pricing page and third-party pricing breakdowns published in 2026, checked at the time of writing. Pricing and plan structure can change — verify current numbers directly with SimplePractice before making a decision based on this post.
Related reading
A practical guide to running online therapy sessions on Google Meet — link setup, privacy basics, connection backups, and where automatic notetaking fits in.
Why therapy sessions get missed, and which parts of therapy scheduling software genuinely reduce no-shows versus which parts just feel like they should.
How UK GDPR actually applies to AI-assisted session notes — special category data, who's the controller, and the cross-border question AI tools raise.