Practice Better: The Ultimate Guide and FAQ

Practice Better is practice management software built for health and wellness professionals, and it’s the platform I see most often on the back end of a private practice dietitian’s business. Scheduling, charting, billing, client messaging, programs, telehealth, all in one login.

I’m not a dietitian. I build the websites that sit in front of these platforms, which means I spend a lot of time in the seams: where the booking link goes, why the client portal URL doesn’t match the domain, what happens to the intake form when someone books from a blog post. So if you want to know whether this thing will play nicely with your site, your brand, and your budget, keep reading.

What does Practice Better cost?

Five tiers, from free to $155 a month. Annual billing knocks about 20% off every paid plan.

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per mo.)	Active clients	Who it’s for
Sprout	Free	Free	3	Students, interns, pre-launch
Starter	$35	$25	10	Brand new solo practice
Professional	$69	$59	300	The workhorse tier for most solos
Plus	$99	$89	Unlimited	Group programs, full white-label
Team	$155	$145	Unlimited	2+ practitioners, $50 per extra seat

But the sticker price isn’t the whole bill. There are some add-ons that catch people off guard:

• SMS appointment reminders, billed per message
• Telehealth AI notetaking, billed hourly after a monthly free allowance
• Extra file storage, billed per GB per month
• Additional practitioner licenses on Team

One thing worth knowing before you pick a tier: below Plus, your client portal lives on a practicebetter.io URL, not yours. If matching your brand end to end matters to you, that’s a real reason to jump a tier, and it’s the single most common upgrade conversation I have with clients after a rebrand.

What does Practice Better actually do?

Appointment Scheduling

With Practice Better’s appointment scheduling feature, health and wellness professionals can easily allow clients to book appointments online while maintaining control over their availability. This feature streamlines the process, making it easier for dietitians and nutritionists to manage their time and reduce no-shows.

Business Software Integrations

Practice Better integrates seamlessly with a variety of tools and apps, enhancing the functionality of this nutrition practice management platform. Clients can sync their Apple Health and Cronometer data, share Dropbox documents, and access diagnostic testing through Evexia Diagnostics. It also provides features like conversion tracking with Facebook Pixel, Fitbit synchronization, and the ability to create protocols using products from Fullscript, Natural Dispensary, Wellevate, and WholeScripts. You can connect to Google Drive, Nutri-Q, Square for payments, and even integrate with existing apps in your workflow via Zapier. Additionally, it supports telehealth sessions through Zoom. Try it out: Practice Better (aff. link)

Client Charting for Dietitians

With note templates and snippets, you can quickly document progress and streamline your note-taking process. The platform allows for customization, letting you create notes that suit your preferences, including multiple-choice questions, checkboxes, tables, and free-form fields. You can also easily share notes with clients while keeping sensitive information private, collaborate with other practitioners by downloading notes to PDF or faxing them, and set favorite templates or sharing preferences for added convenience.

Automations

With customizable automations in Practice Better, dietitians and wellness professionals can streamline client management by setting up rules to manage client access, automate appointment reminders, and simplify form submissions.

The platform helps you stay organized by tracking client interactions, using tags to update clients through their health journey, and setting tasks for both you and your clients. Additionally, it simplifies payment collection by enabling automated payment plans or requiring full payment at the time of booking, eliminating the need for manual follow-ups and awkward money conversations.

Patient Protocols for Providers

Practice Better’s patient protocol feature is ideal for dietitians and nutritionists looking to streamline their client recommendations. The platform allows you to organize and customize recommendations, saving individual advice and creating protocol templates that can be reused and personalized as needed. Additionally, it simplifies the process of ordering supplements, providing clear instructions and integrating with online dispensaries to streamline the fulfillment of supplement recommendations. Try it out: Practice Better (aff. link)

Easy Billing and Payments

Practice Better’s billing and payment system offers a streamlined, secure, and versatile payment solution for dietitians, nutritionists, and other healthcare professionals. Integrated seamlessly with your Practice Better account, it simplifies billing and payments. You can access unified reporting for online and terminal payments within your Practice Better Portal, saving time and effort. The platform provides flexible payment options for clients, including online, in-person, and contactless payments through Apple or Google Pay. It also automates various financial tasks, such as invoicing, receipts, coupons, discounts, and refunds. Additionally, Practice Better Payments supports the process of getting reimbursed, offers Superbills to save clients money and time, and accepts HSA/FSA health cards.

Branding Options for Private Practice Owners

You can create a polished and professional image by offering clients a branded web portal experience, synchronizing it with your business logo and brand colors. Extend your branding further by customizing your portal’s URL to seamlessly integrate with your existing website. This level of customization allows you to tailor communications, emails, reminders, and even documents like forms, waivers, and protocols to match your business’s unique look and feel, ensuring a consistent and professional representation of your practice.

Business Reporting

Easily keep an eye on important aspects of your business and set goals. It helps you track things like missed appointments, notes that haven’t been signed, and outstanding payments. You can also look at reports that show your booking history, payment records, and more to plan for the future. Practice Better allows you to compare your business metrics with past periods to see how you’re doing. Plus, it helps you spot trends among your clients by analyzing common patterns and visualizing data. You can also assess how well your programs are doing by checking engagement metrics and comparing them to other programs. Try it out: Practice Better (aff. link)

Client Portal and Journaling

A user-friendly portal to help clients make positive lifestyle changes with the support they need. It makes it easy for clients to track their food and lifestyle choices, offering access to a vast food database and allowing custom entries or photo journals. This helps clients identify patterns and trends in their habits. Everything clients need to thrive is in one secure place, including tools to help them achieve their goals. The platform also provides a secure chat messaging system, helping you communicate with clients effectively while maintaining healthy boundaries with features like auto-responders and scheduled messages.

Telehealth Appointments

You can host telehealth appointments on various devices, making it accessible for everyone. The platform integrates telehealth seamlessly, allowing you to start secure one-to-one sessions directly from the mobile app or web browser without leaving the platform. During sessions, you can access client history, view past notes, and collaborate using chat or screen sharing. Practice Better’s telehealth is designed to be secure and reliable, complying with important privacy regulations, so you and your clients can trust it for remote consultations.

Secure Messaging

You can send messages directly from your website portal or app, streamlining communication through secure chat. It even offers read receipts so you can be sure your message was received. You have control over your communication, with options like autoresponders to set expectations, scheduled messages, and notification preferences. You can also create group chats to build a supportive community among clients with similar health goals, allowing you to organize and collaborate effectively. Plus, team members can correspond with each other and share resources, enhancing communication within your practice. Try it out: Practice Better (aff. link)

Client Journaling

Clients can search for foods, write down what they eat, and even scan barcodes to track meals. They can also log additional details like where they ate, how hungry they were, and their mood. The platform allows for personalization, letting you choose what nutritional details to show and offer feedback on journal entries. It also helps clients track daily activity, sleep, mood, and more, integrating with apps like Apple Health and Fitbit for accuracy. You can analyze journal entries with built-in tools, view nutrient details, and identify trends to better understand your clients’ habits and support their goals.

Host Programs & Courses

With Practice Better’s courses and programs feature, health professionals can design engaging, customizable learning experiences for their clients. Dietitians can create structured nutrition courses, while wellness coaches can offer memberships and challenge-based programs, all managed within the same platform. From lead magnets to supportive resources like emails, media, documents, chat, and quizzes, you can build comprehensive programs to attract and engage clients. This feature helps you diversify your offerings and work with clients over an extended period, whether it’s through challenges, memberships, or group programs. It’s a tool to package your knowledge and reach a broader audience while providing personalized coaching and support.

Group Sessions

Expand your private practice by offering group workshops, classes, and accountability sessions to both new and existing clients. The platform provides everything you need to run these group sessions efficiently, from booking to billing to communication. You can manage groups with features like scheduling sessions, setting attendee limits, adding buffer times, and providing registration links. Practice Better also integrates with Zoom for hosting virtual group sessions, allowing you to bundle these group sessions into packages and programs to reach a wider audience.

Practice Better vs. Healthie vs. SimplePractice vs. Jane App

	Practice Better	Healthie	SimplePractice	Jane App
Built primarily for	Nutrition and wellness	Nutrition and multi-provider clinics	Behavioral health	Allied health, clinics
Starting price	Free / $25 annual	Higher entry point	Mid	Mid
Food and mood journaling	Native	Native	No	No
Meal planning	Via That Clean Life (separate sub)	Native	No	No
Insurance clearinghouse	Claim.MD only	Claim.MD, others	Built-in	Built-in
Programs and courses	Four formats, limited design control	Yes	Limited	No
Multi-practitioner	Team tier	Strong	Yes	Strong

The short version I give clients: Healthie if you’re running a multi-provider clinic and insurance is the core of your revenue. Practice Better if you’re solo or small, doing nutrition-forward work, and you want the client experience to feel considered. SimplePractice and Jane if you’re in a discipline where nutrition tracking isn’t part of the job.

Does Practice Better do meal planning and nutrient analysis?

Partly. Practice Better acquired That Clean Life in July 2023, but the two are still separate products with separate subscriptions and a native integration between them. So Practice Better on its own does not generate meal plans. What it does natively is food journaling on the client side, with a food database, barcode scanning, and nutrient breakdowns you can review in the chart.

If you want built meal plans, you subscribe to That Clean Life as well, connect the two with an integration key, and then embed plans and recipes directly into a Practice Better protocol or program. Clients see the plan in their portal and can log those meals straight into their journal. Combined, you’re looking at roughly $130 a month depending on tiers.

Most dietitians I work with who do heavy meal planning pay for both. Most who do coaching-style work skip That Clean Life entirely.

How Practice Better can help your nutrition business

So many new business owners try to avoid paying for another platform, but using something like Practice Better can help streamline so many tasks in your business. With platforms like Practice Better, you will also improve your client experience!

Some real-life benefits from using Practice Better (aff. link):

• Save your sanity (and time) by not having to email with clients back and forth to schedule things or send documents back and forth
• Integrates with FullScript which can provide an additional revenue stream, if you are often referring supplements to clients
• Automated billing and contracts = less admin time
• Send onboarding resources and materials to enhance client success

Using Practice Better for nutrition courses or memberships

If the course or membership is for clients only, like an onboarding course or continued support after, Practice Better (aff link) is great! Especially if you are thinking about the client experience, using Practice Better will mean your clients won’t need to sign up for a separate platform.

This isn’t to say Thinkific (aff. link) or similar platforms aren’t great, because they are. I would suggest using Thinkific if the course will be open to the general public. It will be easier to manage dozens (or hundreds) of students in a course platform like Thinkific, and more people are used to taking courses in a platform like Thinkific!

If you want to create a legitimate, scalable online business offering that will attract potentially hundreds or thousands of people who have not yet worked with you directly, I’d go with something more robust like Thinkific.

Can Practice Better run virtual group programs?

Absolutely! Practice Better’s Programs feature offers a comprehensive way for health and wellness practitioners to share knowledge and expertise with clients through a secure platform.

It integrates seamlessly into the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system and is tailored for practitioners, allowing them to track client progress, assign module-specific tasks, provide additional resources, upsell services, and manage everything from one platform.

For a client-only offer, an onboarding course, continued support after a package ends, a small group program, Practice Better is the right call. Your clients are already logging in. Making them create an account somewhere else adds friction for no benefit.

For something open to the public, use a real course platform. Thinkific, Kajabi, whatever you like. Practice Better’s programs are built as a clinical care extension, not a storefront, and it shows in two places: the design control is limited, and the enrollment experience assumes a practitioner relationship that a cold buyer doesn’t have. If you’re planning to sell to hundreds of people who’ve never worked with you, you’ll fight the tool the whole way.

The platform offers various types of programs:

1. Fixed-Date Programs: These have a set start and end date, with modules accessible to clients based on calendar dates. Practitioners can set up program details, including program banner, name, description, dates, and payment options​​.
2. Evergreen Programs: Available at any time, these allow clients to enroll and proceed through modules based on time elapsed since enrollment. The setup is similar to Fixed-Date Programs, but modules unlock based on duration post-enrollment​​.
3. Email-Only Programs: Utilizing either Fixed-Date or Evergreen Program frameworks, these programs deliver content via email on a scheduled basis. They’re beneficial as lead magnets since clients don’t need Practice Better access to receive the content​​.
4. Self-Paced Programs: These are designed for clients to progress at their own pace. Modules unlock based on the completion of previous ones. At least one module must be accessible at enrollment, serving as the program’s starting point. Rules are created for each module to form a sequence based on previous module completion​​.

Overall, Practice Better’s Programs feature provides a versatile and efficient way for practitioners to engage and manage their clients’ health and wellness journeys. Practice Better can’t be as customized (design-wise) as something like Thinkific (aff link) or Kajabi, so that’s something to keep in mind!

Does Practice Better have a mobile app?

Yes! The Practice Better mobile app is so handy for both you and clients. Your clients will love how easy it is to access your recommendations, log journal entries before calls, and complete tasks while on the go. You will have access to all of the same data and features that you can access on desktop.

Practice Better’s telehealth feature allows dietitians and other wellness professionals to start secure, HIPAA-compliant one-to-one sessions directly from the mobile app or web browser. You can customize notifications to your preference and provide clients with a rich experience similar to your desktop platform. Clients appreciate the app’s convenience, as it enables them to access recommendations, log journal entries, and complete tasks with ease, including features like barcode scanning, photo journaling, and the ability to join video sessions right in the app.

Navigating the Practice Better mobile app is user-friendly and intuitive. You can customize your notification preferences and shortcuts in the Settings & Preferences section. For quick access to common actions, there’s a red Fast Action Button on the home screen. To exit sub-pages or return to the previous page, use the back button on the top-left or swipe left. To return to the home screen from any page, simply tap on the “Better” logo​​​​​​​​​​.

Is Practice Better HIPAA compliant for patients?

Yes, Practice Better (aff. link) is a HIPAA-compliant platform for US-based professionals and PIPEDA for Canadian professionals. Practice Better takes data security seriously, ensuring that both your personal data and your clients’ data are kept safe. They follow strict security measures and are fully compliant with important regulations like HIPAA, PIPEDA, PHIPA, and GDPR.

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, including backups and logs. Access controls limit who can see what, network activity is monitored and audited, vulnerability scans run regularly, and data is backed up daily on a 30 day retention. Payments follow PCI standards. Audit logs track account changes and client interactions.

For payments, they follow PCI compliance standards, ensuring credit card data is processed securely. Additionally, secure browser practices, encryption, and data storage on encrypted hard drives in North America further enhance security. Audit logs track account changes and client interactions, providing detailed records to maintain transparency and accountability.

You can check for provincial-specific compliance by Googling “[your provincial privacy legislation] Practice Better compliance” for more information.

Can you bill insurance directly from Practice Better?

Yes, through Claim.MD, which is Practice Better’s only integrated clearinghouse.

With Claim.MD connected, you can run eligibility checks, submit claims, track claim status, receive ERAs automatically, and invoice clients for whatever insurance didn’t cover, all inside your Practice Better portal. Each practitioner has to complete provider enrollment with Claim.MD before submitting, and that enrollment happens in Claim.MD, not Practice Better.

Without a Claim.MD account, you can still build an insurance billing profile, create claims, export CMS-1500 forms (including as an Office Ally text file), and send Superbills. You just have to submit everything externally and you won’t see ERA tracking in Practice Better.

Practice Better has said it doesn’t plan direct integrations with other clearinghouses like Availity or TriZetto, so if you’re committed to one of those, this is a real constraint rather than a temporary gap.

Can you sync Practice Better with QuickBooks?

Not natively, no.

You have two workable options: pull a monthly report from Practice Better and hand it to your accountant, or pay someone to build a Zapier or custom automation to move the data. Most solo practices I’ve worked with do the first one and stop thinking about it.

Does Practice Better integrate with Stripe or Square?

Yes! Practice Better does not store any client information on their servers. All credit card info is stored in your Stripe or Square account. It’s easy to integrate either of these platforms to your Practice Better account. Most dietitians prefer to use Stripe!

What’s the best order to send forms to a new client?

Don’t send everything at once. Nobody signs six documents in one sitting.

1. Contract of services and credit card agreement
2. HIPAA policy and release of liability
3. Once those are signed, unlock booking for the initial session and send the intake form
4. After intake, prompt them to start a food journal or upload what they already track

You can automate the whole chain with rules so each step fires when the last one completes.

Can you track business KPIs in Practice Better?

Yes! Practice Better offers a “Reports” feature that allows you to see initial visits, follow-ups, cancelled appointments, and inquiry calls by custom date ranges. This will allow you track KPIs and can help you track your client calls for insurance purposes as well.

Can you automate client protocols in Practice Better?

Yes! You can create protocols that include all the nutrition, supplement and lifestyle recommendations you typically give for a specific condition and use them for multiple clients. It saves so much time so you’re not reinventing the wheel every time you see someone with the same condition. Although it can take a bit of work in the beginning, the time it continues to save is so valuable!

Other Practice Better Alternatives

• SimplePractice: This is a widely used health & wellness practice management platform that offers features like scheduling, notes, billing, and telehealth.
• TheraNest: TheraNest is another alternative that provides practice management software for behavioral health professionals. It offers scheduling, therapy notes, billing, and a client portal.
• Kareo: This is a complete medical practice management software with robust features including EHR, billing, and patient engagement.
• AdvancedMD: AdvancedMD offers comprehensive tools for independent medical practices, including practice management, electronic health records, telemedicine, patient relationship management, business analytics, marketplace, etc.
• TherapyNotes: Specifically targeted to mental health professionals, TherapyNotes offers practice management, notes, billing, and a client portal.
• ChARM Health: ChARM Health offers an integrated suite of products including EHR, practice management, patient portal, telehealth, and connected devices.
• Jane App: Jane App is an all-in-one practice management platform with online booking, charting, scheduling, and invoicing.

Do you still need Practice Better if you already use Acuity or Calendly?

Probably, because Practice Better can do so much more.

Acuity and Calendly book appointments. Practice Better also signs contracts, collects intake and follow-up forms, stores documents securely, builds supplement protocols with a client-facing cart, shares notes without you hunting for an email address, and keeps all of it attached to one client record. If scheduling is all you need, keep Calendly and save the money.

Customer Support and Learning Resources in Practice Better

Practice Better includes a great Help Center that covers many topics, and allows you to submit questions to the Help team if you can’t find an answer. Plus, they have a yearly Practice Better Summit!

There are also third-party courses from other practitioners like Practice Better Made Simple.