Therapist Website Design: Builder, Platform or EHR Site

Therapist website design means choosing among four routes: a general builder, a therapist website platform, the site that comes with your practice software, or a designer. Three jobs decide it: take a consult request without collecting clinical details, carry the notices your license requires, and stay under your control.

Quick answer

• Test each route against the three jobs first. Compare looks and templates last.
• Ask vendors whether forms fall under a business associate agreement (BAA), required by HIPAA when they handle health data.
• Add the self-pay estimate notice, and your license number where your board requires it.
• Count consult requests and held consults from day one, with no health details in the tracking.

Check your current site on your phone

Six checks on your own phone show which of the three jobs your site misses.

1. Open your site in a private tab on your phone, on mobile data.
2. Tap the consult button. Count taps until a client could send something.
3. Read the form fields. Any field asking what brings them in is a health detail.
4. Search your practice name plus "good faith estimate" and see whether the notice is found.
5. Find your license number on the page, and remove testimonials if your board bars them.
6. Log in to your registrar. Your name and email should be on the domain.

The four routes and what their pages state

Each row below comes from the vendor's own pages, read on 2026-10-27, with prices in US dollars. Where a page says nothing, the cell says so.

I rank none of these. The empty cells are questions for the vendor. The fourth route, a designer, has no row here, so the closing questions are for them too. For software costs, see SimplePractice pricing.

Where the general builders stop

A general builder is fine for pages and a plain contact form. It stops being fine once a form or booking tool takes in what a client writes about themselves.

Squarespace says its form block can't be used for a HIPAA setup. Only Acuity Scheduling can be covered, on the Powerhouse or Premium plan, with a separate BAA for each account. Acuity's pricing page lists the BAA under Premium, at $55 a month billed yearly or $69 monthly, on top of the website plan.

That Wix limit matters to a practice that wants to know which page brought a consult. Which forms are safe is a longer walk through the same question.

What the therapist platforms add, and what they leave out

A therapist platform sells design, hosting and support in one monthly fee. Both platforms here sell secure forms as an add-on.

TherapySites lists "HIPAA-compliant" under its $69 Core plan, yet its pricing page sells "Secure emails & forms" as an add-on from $15 a month. Ask whether the Core line covers forms, or only the add-on does.

Brighter Vision's pricing page sells Hushmail email and forms as an add-on from $14.99 a month, and includes them on Flourish, at $299 a month billed yearly. Its Startup and Business add-ons cap secure web forms at 3.

Notices and title rules a therapy page carries

Three rules apply to what the page says, whatever template you choose.

• Self-pay estimates (US). The federal rule on good faith estimates says the availability notice must be prominently displayed and easily searchable from a public search engine on the provider's website. It covers uninsured clients and insured clients who don't want a claim filed. Estimates are due within 1 or 3 business days of scheduling, depending on how far ahead the visit is, and within 3 business days of a request.
• License number (California example). The Board of Behavioral Sciences requires your name as filed, license title and license number in any advertisement, under amended rules in effect since April 1, 2026. Its fact sheet says a website is a type of advertising. The rule (16 CCR section 1811) covers LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs and LEPs; associates must also name their employer and say they are supervised. Other boards and states set their own rules.
• Canada. The estimate rule is US-only. In Ontario, registered psychotherapists follow CRPO Standard 6.2, which bars testimonials and superlatives in advertising and defines advertising to include your website.

This is not legal advice, and I am not a lawyer.

One month of a site, with and without booking

The example below changes only one step, the share who send the request. Consults held = visits × open rate × send rate × held rate.

Run it with your own counts. Count the open, the send and the held consult as three separate events, with no names or concerns attached; counting a consult without health details is covered there.

Questions for whoever builds it

• Whether they sign a BAA for the forms and the scheduling tool, on which plan, and at what price.
• Which analytics and integrations stop working if I switch protection on.
• Who the domain registrant is, and what happens if I cancel.
• The contract term, and what cancelling costs.
• Whether I can add a notice page and my license line without a support ticket.
• How they will report consult requests and held consults without health details.

Prices and rules checked on 2026-10-27.