Dubsado vs HoneyBook: Which CRM Is Right for Freelancers and Creative Businesses?

Dubsado is built for service businesses with specific, multi-step processes that want their CRM to reflect exactly how they work. It gives you more control over workflow logic, form design, canned email sequencing, and automation triggers than HoneyBook. That flexibility is the whole point — and it comes at the cost of a real setup investment.

On the Starter plan at $200 per year (or $20 per month), you get all core features with no per-client limits on paid plans. Dubsado offers a free trial capped at three clients so you can test the platform before committing. The Premier plan at $400 per year (or $40 per month) adds additional features including a client portal subdomain, scheduling, and multiple lead capture form brands.

Where Dubsado wins:

• Workflow automation is genuinely powerful. You can build automations that fire across multiple steps — sending a proposal, waiting for it to be signed, then automatically sending an invoice, then sending a scheduling link, then triggering a follow-up email if no action is taken — all within a single workflow sequence.
• Form and questionnaire customization goes deep. You can build intake forms and questionnaires with conditional logic so clients only see questions relevant to their answers. This matters for businesses with complex service offerings or tiered packages.
• Canned emails can be embedded inside workflows, not just stored as templates. This means client communication can be partially automated at scale without it feeling like a mass email blast.
• Contract templates are flexible and fully editable. Smart fields pull client and project data in automatically.
• Better fit for businesses with a complex intake process — coaches with detailed onboarding questionnaires, photographers with multi-package offerings, event planners coordinating across many project variables.
• Pricing is competitive on an annual basis: $200/year for the Starter plan is one of the lower price points among full-featured CRMs in this category.

Where Dubsado has limitations:

• The learning curve is real. Getting Dubsado to actually run your business — workflows, templates, automations all firing correctly — takes weeks, not an afternoon. If you need something running this week, this is the wrong tool.
• The mobile app is more limited than HoneyBook's — manageable for on-the-go reference, but not ideal for running your business from your phone.
• Built-in scheduling requires the Premier plan. On Starter, you will need to integrate with a separate scheduling tool or link clients to an external calendar.
• The client-facing experience, while functional, is not as visually polished as HoneyBook's out of the box. Getting it to look the way you want takes additional template customization effort.

HoneyBook is built on the idea that most creative freelancers want a system that works well out of the box without weeks of configuration. It prioritizes a clean interface, a solid mobile app, and a client portal that looks professional on day one. The trade-off is flexibility. HoneyBook handles the common cases well. If your workflow has a lot of edge cases, you will eventually run into its ceiling.

HoneyBook offers three tiers: Starter at $19 per month, Essentials at $39 per month, and Premium at $79 per month, billed monthly. Annual billing is available at a lower effective monthly rate. All plans include unlimited clients and projects.

Where HoneyBook wins:

• Onboarding is genuinely faster. The platform is designed to guide new users through setup, and most photographers and event planners can have a functional client workflow running within a day or two — not a week or two.
• Built-in scheduling is available natively, including calendar booking links that clients can use to book calls or sessions without leaving the HoneyBook ecosystem. This is a meaningful advantage for businesses where scheduling is a frequent touchpoint.
• The client portal experience is polished and visually clean from the start. Clients can view proposals, sign contracts, pay invoices, and message you from a single mobile-friendly interface that reflects well on your brand without extensive customization.
• The mobile app is stronger than Dubsado's, which matters for photographers and event planners who are frequently on location and need to manage client communication from their phone.
• UI is cleaner and less overwhelming for new users. The interface is designed to feel approachable, not powerful-but-complex.
• Integrates with Calendly (in addition to its own built-in scheduling), QuickBooks, Google Calendar, and Zapier for custom automation chains.

Where HoneyBook has limitations:

• Workflow automation is available but not as granular as Dubsado's. If your business has nuanced branching logic — different workflows for different package types, conditional steps, multi-path automations — HoneyBook's automation builder will feel constrained.
• Form and questionnaire customization is less flexible. You can create forms and questionnaires, but conditional logic and deep design control are more limited than what Dubsado offers.
• At $79/month for the Premium tier, costs are higher than Dubsado's Premier plan on an annual basis for businesses that need the full feature set.
• Businesses with complex intake processes or highly specific workflow sequences may eventually hit the ceiling of what HoneyBook's automation builder can do without workarounds.