Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover creator finance. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Dubsado | Invoice Ninja | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $35 | From $14 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Paid subscription | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier (they differ) | No | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Client workflows that run themselves
Dubsado automates the repeated half of client work: a lead form fires a workflow, which sends the proposal, chases the signature and issues the invoice on a schedule nobody has to remember. Projects and clients are uncapped on both plans, so the tier is about automation rather than about volume. Scheduling, workflows and public proposals all arrive on the second tier. Setting the workflows up is a real afternoon of work, and it is why people either love this or never finish configuring it.
Our note
Premier is the plan worth having, because the automated workflows are the reason to choose Dubsado over anything else and they are not on Starter. Budget a full day for setup before you count the saving, since the automation only pays back once it is actually configured.
Open-source invoicing, free for 5 clients
Invoice Ninja issues invoices, quotes and recurring bills, takes payment through a long list of gateways, and gives the whole thing away for up to five clients with no time limit and no invoice cap. The application is open source, so anybody who would rather hold their own data can run it on their own server instead of paying for the hosted version. Paying lifts the client limit and adds the branding and automation a business wants. Five clients is the ceiling that decides it, and it arrives sooner than most people expect.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
| Data export |
|---|
| Not stated |
| Everything, in an open format |
| Their cut | Not stated | None |
|---|
| Runs on (they differ) | Web | Web, iOS, Android |
|---|
| Covers | Creator Finance | Creator Finance, Accounting & Tax |
|---|
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
|---|
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
|---|
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
|---|
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
|---|
Our note
Count your clients rather than your invoices, because that is the limit that actually bites and it arrives sooner than the free plan suggests. Self-host only if you were going to maintain a server anyway, since the hosted Pro plan costs less than the hours will.
Only on this side