A solo counsellor in Hyderabad messaged me last month asking which of these three she should pick. Her question had the specific kind of confusion only software shopping produces: she’d watched all the demos, read all the reviews, and was now further from a decision than when she started.
The three apps are the most-Googled options for an Indian therapist starting out: MindMaster (us), SimplePractice (American major), and TherapyNotes (the other American major). They’re not actually the same kind of tool. That’s the first thing nobody tells you in the comparison videos. Different design philosophies, different intended users, different ideas about what a “practice” is.
Disclosure straight away: we make MindMaster. This isn’t a neutral comparison and pretending otherwise would be insulting. What I’ll try to do is be honest about where we lose. There are cases where SimplePractice or TherapyNotes is the right pick. Knowing those cases is more useful to you than another marketing post.
The pricing question, since it’s first
| Tool | Entry plan | Mid plan | India considerations |
|---|---|---|---|
| MindMaster | ₹999/mo (one practitioner) | ₹1,999/mo (up to 5) | INR pricing native, GST handled |
| SimplePractice | USD 29/mo (~₹2,400) | USD 69/mo (~₹5,750) | USD only, GST workaround |
| TherapyNotes | USD 49/mo per clinician | (no tiers) | USD only, GST workaround |
For a solo practitioner in India, the spread is roughly ₹999 to ₹4,100 per month for the most-used plan. That’s a ₹37,000 annual difference. It compounds over years. Not a small thing.
The counter-argument is “you get more for the higher price.” Sometimes you do. Mostly you get more features you won’t use. Below is the actual breakdown.
What each tool is really for
SimplePractice is built for a small clinic that bills insurance. The product is wide. It has telehealth, automated billing, claims submission, insurance verification, intake forms with custom fields, secure messaging, document storage, and an iPhone app. It tries to do everything a small American mental-health practice does. If you’re using more than half of those features, the price makes sense.
TherapyNotes is built for clinicians who care most about clinical documentation. The note templates are deep. Treatment plans link to ICD diagnoses. Progress notes have structured fields. If you trained in US- style clinical documentation, this product fits your hand. The trade-off is depth in everything else feels secondary.
MindMaster is built for what most Indian therapists actually do: see clients, book appointments, write notes that they’ll re-read before the next session. The product is narrow on purpose. Three core surfaces — clients, calendar, notes — designed to be fast and obvious. INR-first, GST-aware, no insurance billing because there’s nothing to bill in India today.
If you read those three paragraphs and one of them sounds like your practice, you have your answer.
Where each one shines
SimplePractice shines when you have international clients, you bill in USD, you run a telehealth-heavy schedule with intake forms, automated reminders, and you want one tool for all of it. Power users get genuine value from the integrations.
TherapyNotes shines when documentation is the thing that takes you the longest, and you want note templates that handle treatment plans, ICD codes, and progress notes as first-class objects. If your supervisor or insurer demands SOAP/DAP structures and you write a lot of long notes, TherapyNotes earns its keep.
MindMaster shines when you’re solo or a 2-to-4-person practice, you don’t bill insurance, your notes are concise (less than a page typically), and your monthly software budget needs to make sense alongside your room rent.
Where each one loses
SimplePractice loses on: Indian context. The USD pricing isn’t subtle when you’re billing INR. GST is a manual add. The product is designed around an American clinical workflow that doesn’t quite map onto an Indian one. Insurance features are dead weight here. You’re paying for capabilities you won’t use.
TherapyNotes loses on: learning curve and ease. The first month is steep. The interface is dense. If your note-taking style is “two paragraphs, plain English,” TherapyNotes’ template-heavy design pushes you into a structure you don’t need. Also: US pricing, US workflows, same as above.
MindMaster loses on: breadth. We don’t do insurance claims (because there’s nothing to claim against in India today). We don’t have a native mobile app (web is responsive, but it’s not an installed app). Our intake-form builder is basic. If you need 14 custom intake fields with conditional logic, we’re not yet your tool. If you need to bill USD-paying international clients with automated invoice translation, we’re not your tool.
The decision tree
This is the conversation I had with the counsellor in Hyderabad.
Where do most of your clients live?
- Mostly outside India, paying USD? → SimplePractice.
- Mostly in India, paying INR? → Continue.
How much time do you spend on notes per session?
- Over twenty minutes, structured templates matter to me? → TherapyNotes.
- Under fifteen minutes, plain prose works? → Continue.
Are you a solo or small practice (1–4 people)?
- Yes? → MindMaster is the tighter fit.
- 5+ practitioners, multiple locations? → SimplePractice’s group features become useful.
That’s it. Three questions, one verdict.
The thing nobody tells you about switching costs
The hardest thing about practice software isn’t picking it. It’s leaving. Every product I’ve named here will let you export your data. The format and completeness varies. We test our own export every release; I cannot tell you how SimplePractice’s or TherapyNotes’ export looks in 2026 — only that both have export options and both are reportedly fine.
The discipline that pays off is exporting once a quarter regardless of which tool you’re on. You keep a clean CSV of clients, a clean PDF of last quarter’s notes, and a copy of your fee structure. That’s your insurance. It costs you twenty minutes every three months. If your vendor disappeared tomorrow, you’d have your practice back inside a day.
This is a habit no software vendor will recommend, including us. But it’s what an honest comparison demands.
A frank “we’d send you elsewhere if”
There are two situations where I’d tell you to skip MindMaster.
One: if you’re serious about insurance billing internationally. We don’t do that yet. SimplePractice does. Go.
Two: if your clinical documentation style requires deep structured templates and you’ve already settled into SOAP/DAP/treatment-plan-linked notes. TherapyNotes is built for that. We’d be a downgrade.
If neither of those is you, we built MindMaster for the version of you who hasn’t picked yet. The 30-day trial is free and doesn’t ask for a card: mindmaster.modoware.com.
If you’ve read this far and have a specific question — “I run a group practice in Pune, what about us?” — email contact@modoware.com. I read every message that comes in. We’re not at the size where a contact form just disappears into a queue.