Cliniko vs Jane vs Practice Digital — a clinic owner's decision guide

I see a lot of clinic owners arrive at our door already trapped on a per-practitioner SaaS that priced fine when they were two physios in one room and now hurts when they're eight. That conversation has happened often enough that I want to lay out the actual comparison — honestly — and let you make your own call.

This is written from the perspective of someone who has signed off on clinical pages for NHS general practice, dental, physiotherapy and aesthetic-medicine sites; it's not a SaaS reviewer's take. Where we compete with Cliniko or Jane, I'll say so. Where they're a better fit, I'll say that too.

The decision before the decision: booking-only, or booking + clinical record?

The first split is not about brand. It's about what you actually need.

A booking-only stack handles: patients self-serving appointment booking, calendar sync to your practitioners' diaries, treatment menus, automatic confirmation and reminder emails or SMS, no-show tracking, and a front-desk admin view. That's it. Notes, consent forms, treatment plans — you keep those on paper, in another tool, or in your own clinical record.

A full clinical stack adds: treatment notes, consent forms with e-signature, treatment plans, patient history, file attachments, outcome measures, document and letter templates, audit trail and regulator-ready export. This is where the per-practitioner pricing starts to bite, because every clinician needs their own login and their own seat.

If you only need booking, the right move is the cheapest tool that does booking well. If you need the clinical record, the question becomes total cost of ownership over a 36-month horizon at your projected practitioner count.

Cliniko

Where it shines. Cliniko's UI is the cleanest in the category and the integrations are well-documented. The patient experience is solid. SOAP-style notes are flexible. The reporting is properly thought through and the team-management features (commission splits, room booking, classes) are mature. Cliniko has been doing this for fifteen years and it shows.

Where it doesn't. Pricing is per practitioner. As of 2026 UK rates run roughly £35 to £95 per practitioner per month depending on tier. A four-practitioner clinic on the full-stack tier is around £380 per month. Add another two physios for the autumn and you're past £500.

Who it fits. Solo or two-person clinics where one tool, one workflow, and one tidy UI is worth the per-head premium. Established multi-room practices that are already committed and where switching cost is high.

Jane

Where it shines. Canadian-built, very strong in physio and chiropractic, and the clinical charting workflow is loved by therapists. Telehealth is built in and works well. The community of clinicians using Jane is large and helpful.

Where it doesn't. It's per practitioner, in the same band as Cliniko. Some UK-specific things (NHS letterhead conventions, UK GDPR-aware export language, Welsh-language interfaces) aren't first-class. The hosting region is North American by default.

Who it fits. Physio, chiropractic and movement therapy practices that don't mind paying for the polish and want a tool with a strong user community.

Semble

Where it shines. Semble (formerly HeydoChi) is built squarely for UK private GPs and consultants. Document-templating is strong, integrations with private medical insurance billing are real, and the secretary/practice-manager workflow is treated as a first-class user, not an afterthought.

Where it doesn't. Still per practitioner; the price climbs steeply with consultant counts. Treatment-plan workflow is less natural for allied health (physio, chiropractic) than for medical consultants.

Who it fits. Private GP, consultant and private hospital outpatient settings.

Practice Digital

Where we fit:

• You want a website plus booking, not a tool that bolts a booking widget onto a brochure site. Every Practice Digital clinic plan includes a full bespoke website — design, hosting, SSL, accessibility, six languages, the lot — with booking woven through it.
• You don't want to pay per head. Booking-only is £30 per month flat per clinic. Full clinical stack is £99 per month flat per clinic. Unlimited practitioners. A four-physio clinic that would pay £380/month on a per-head full-stack pays £99/month with us. An eight-physio clinic still pays £99/month.
• You want a clinician on the other end. Practice Digital is owned and built by working NHS doctors and practice managers. We sign off clinical pages, we read the regulator's bulletins, and the person on the other end of your support thread is a clinician or a practice manager who has worked alongside one.
• You're starting from scratch or rebuilding. If you already have a website you love and just need the booking layer, Cliniko's standalone booking widget is fine and possibly enough.

Where we don't fit:

• If you have an established, deeply customised Cliniko or Jane workflow with team commission splits and complex room booking, the migration cost outweighs the saving for the first 12 months.
• If your clinical record needs to integrate natively with a specific private medical insurer's billing pipeline, Semble has a head start there.
• If you're a single-practitioner clinic, per-head pricing is competitive and you're not the audience for flat-per-clinic.

The maths over 36 months

Most clinic owners weigh the per-month sticker price. The honest comparison is total cost of ownership over a three-year horizon, because that's the period over which switching cost is amortised.

Take a representative four-practitioner physiotherapy clinic on full-stack Cliniko. At £95 per head per month, that's £380/month, or £13,680 over 36 months. Practice Digital at £99 flat per clinic is £3,564 over the same period. The saving is £10,116 over three years. Hire a sixth physio and the saving widens to £14,000+.

Now swap that physio clinic for a four-consultant private GP practice on Semble at the upper end — £130 per head per month, £520/month, £18,720 over 36 months. Versus £3,564 on Practice Digital. The delta is over £15,000.

If your projected practitioner count is going up, not down, flat-per-clinic compounds faster than per-head every quarter.

What the comparison hides

Three things the price comparison doesn't capture:

1. The website itself. Cliniko and Jane don't include a website. You build that elsewhere — typically a Squarespace, Wix or WordPress site at £200–500/year — and embed their booking widget. Practice Digital bundles the website at no extra cost. Comparing booking-software-only to booking-plus-website is apples-to-oranges; include the missing website cost on the per-head columns when you do your maths.

2. The hosting region. Practice Digital hosts in the UK and EU only. Some of the bigger competitors host primarily in North America, which creates an awkward DPIA conversation if you take it seriously.

3. Who fixes things when they break. The Practice Digital team are clinicians. When something feels wrong about an aesthetic-clinic gallery flow or a GP triage-redirect or a Welsh-language phrase, you can describe it in clinical or operational language and the person on the other end already speaks it.

How to choose, in fifteen minutes

Three questions:

1. How many practitioners will you have in 24 months? If the answer is 3+ and you need the clinical record, flat-per-clinic mathematically wins. If you're staying solo or two, per-head pricing is competitive.

2. Do you already have a website you love? If yes, a standalone booking tool that embeds is fine. If no, bundling website and booking saves you a project.

3. How specific is your workflow? If you have a years-long Cliniko or Jane setup with custom forms and integrations, the cost of moving is real. If you're starting from scratch or your current setup is bare-bones, switching is mostly a content lift.

If you want to look

We have a working demo at main.riverside-physio.pages.dev — a fictional Manchester physiotherapy clinic running on our stack. You can open the booking flow, see the practitioner pages, walk through the patient journey. Built on exactly what your site would run on.

Full clinic pricing is on the pricing page. If you want to talk it through, the team has a 20-minute discovery call slot at contact us — or run the application wizard if you're ready to start.

About the author. Our team includes practising NHS GPs and a BCUHB Cluster Lead in North Wales. We sign off clinical content for GP surgeries, aesthetic clinics and allied-health practices, and reads regulator bulletins for fun on Sunday evenings.