Dubsado is the tool a photographer or a designer runs their whole client relationship in, and on the money half it is more capable than we are: payment plans by percentage, by amount or split evenly, with reminders that chase the client for you. What it has no concept of is a thing. There is no product, no production, no cost, so nothing in Dubsado can say what the piece cost to make or what the order earned — and its portal shows documents rather than where your build has got to.
Dubsado · checked 10 September 2026
We make Ordamo, so we are an interested party. What we can be is checkable: written by the people who built it for their own furniture studio in Buenos Aires, every price taken from the other side’s own page with the date we read it, and their wins listed above ours.
| Dubsado | Ordamo | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | Clients and projects for a service business | Orders, deposits and production batches for physical goods |
| Payment schedule | By percentage, by amount or split evenly, with automatic reminders | Deposit and balance with dates on the order — no reminder sequences |
| What the piece cost to make | Not part of it | On the order line, and a received batch writes what the run really cost onto its products |
| Margin per order | Not part of it | Per order, after the real cost lands |
| Contracts and forms | Yes — this is the centre of it | No |
| A page the customer can open | A portal of documents, forms and invoices | One link per order: what is paid, what is owed, when it will be ready |
| Where production status lives | Nowhere | On the order, and on the customer's page with it |
| How you pay | $335 a year up front; no monthly option published | $29 a month, cancel in one click |
| Who is included | 3 users, then $25 to $60 a month by band | The business, on one plan |
| Trying it | 21 days of Premier, no card | $0 today, first charge after 7 days, cancel in one click |
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver, start in a message and get paid in parts.
Add a customer and their order
Deposit taken, balance still owed, and the date you promised.
Send your customer their order page
One link that updates itself, instead of twenty messages.
Record what the batch cost
What a run really cost, over the pieces it produced. One button puts that on the products it made.
See what you actually made
Revenue, cost and margin per order. Money in, money out, cash on hand.
Dubsado's record of a job is complete on the revenue side — proposal, contract, invoice, payment plan — and empty on the cost side, because for a photographer the cost is their own time. If you bought oak, or paid a workshop for a run of six, that number has nowhere to live, and the margin you actually want cannot be worked out from what is in the file.
A client portal full of contracts and invoices is exactly right for a wedding booked eight months out and wrong for a table being built over ten weeks. What the buyer wants is small: what they ordered, what they have paid, what is left, and when it will be ready. That is one link per order here, built from the order rather than maintained beside it.
Dubsado will chase the client on a schedule you set once; Ordamo will not, and we are not going to pretend otherwise — the balance and its date sit on the order and on the customer's page, and sending the nudge is a button you press. If automatic chasing is the reason you are shopping, this comparison ends with you staying.
The published price is annual: $335 for Starter, $525 for Premier, and users beyond the third arrive in monthly bands from $25. For a workshop where the bookkeeper needs a look in January and a part-time assistant needs one in March, per-business pricing at $29 a month is a different shape of commitment, and cancelling is a click rather than a renewal date.
$335/year
Starter, billed annually — its pricing page shows no monthly option — with one lead capture form, unlimited projects and clients, invoicing, templates and client portals. Premier is $525 a year and adds unlimited forms, scheduling, workflows, public proposals and Zapier. Three users are included; 4 to 10 users cost $25 a month, 11 to 20 $45, 21 to 30 $60, and a second brand $10. The trial is 21 days of Premier with no card.
$29/mo
One plan, per business, everything included — however many of you there are. $0 today, first charge after 7 days, cancel in one click. 14-day money-back on the first month. Nothing is metered.
What is in the planWe are not the only answer, and pretending otherwise wastes your afternoon.
The bigger tool in the same category, in four countries. $29 a month billed yearly, plus card fees from 2.7% + 10¢.
Invoice NinjaFree invoicing with a deposit field and a client portal, up to five clients. Then $14 a month.
Google SheetsThe incumbent: free, endlessly flexible, and the arithmetic is yours to keep right.
The whole categorySix families of tool, what each one answers, and the three questions that pick between them.
For the client-facing half, yes: the proposal, the contract, the invoice and the payment plan all work whatever you sell, and plenty of makers use it that way. What it cannot tell you is what a piece cost to make or what an order earned, because products, materials and production are not in the model. If getting paid on schedule is the problem, it is a good tool; if you cannot see your margin, it cannot help.
Starter is $335 a year and Premier $525, both billed annually — its pricing page publishes no monthly option. Three users are included, with 4 to 10 at $25 a month, 11 to 20 at $45 and 21 to 30 at $60, and an extra brand at $10. The trial is 21 days of Premier with no card. Ordamo is $29 a month for the business. Confirm the current position on dubsado.com before deciding on the strength of a number here.
They are neighbours: HoneyBook is bigger, priced monthly, and processes payments itself in four countries; Dubsado bills annually and its forms and workflows go deeper. Neither has a product, a cost or a production status, so if you sell physical things made to order, the choice between them is not the decision that matters.
Not on a schedule. The order holds the balance and the date it is due, the customer's page shows both, and there is a one-click message you send from the order. Dubsado automates that chase properly, and if automation is what you are buying, this is the honest reason to stay.
No — nothing here gets signed, and there are no questionnaires or proposals either. If every job in your business starts with a signature, keep the tool that does it and let this hold the order, the cost and the margin.
Yes, and it is a clean split: Dubsado for the agreement, the forms and the card, Ordamo for the order, the production cost and the margin. Nothing is recorded twice except the customer's name and the agreed total.
If you want the same job cheaper or monthly, HoneyBook and the other client-management tools compete on that ground. If what you actually need is the order behind the invoice — deposit, readiness date, batch cost, margin — that is a different category, and it is $29 a month here with no percentage on the money.
There is little to migrate: enter your open commissions with what was agreed, what has been paid and the readiness date, add what each piece costs you, then the batches currently in production. Signed contracts and past projects stay where they were signed, and you can keep the subscription until its renewal date if the paperwork still earns it.
Plan prices, the annual-only billing, the included and banded user prices, the extra-brand price, what Starter gates and the 21-day trial read from dubsado.com/pricing on 10 September 2026; the payment-plan behaviour — percentage, amount or even splits with reminders — from Dubsado's own help article on payment plans. That products, materials, production and cost of goods are absent is the absence of any mention of them on those pages. Software pricing moves; confirm before deciding on the strength of a figure here.
$0 today · first charge after 7 days · cancel in one click
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver