HoneyBook is where a service business runs its clients: a proposal, a contract, an invoice that takes a deposit now and the balance later, a portal, card payments. On the money it does the job — deposits and instalments are its own words for it. The gap for a maker is everything either side of the invoice: there is no product, no production and no cost, so nothing in the file can say what the piece cost to build or what the order earned. Its payments are also live in four countries only.
HoneyBook · 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.
| HoneyBook | Ordamo | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | Clients and projects for a service business | Orders, deposits and production batches for physical goods |
| Deposit and balance on one order | Yes — deposits and flexible instalments on an invoice | Both, with dates, recorded on the order without issuing anything |
| 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 |
| Taking the card payment | Yes — from 2.7% + 10¢ by card, 1.5% by bank | No. Your details or a payment link sit on the customer's page |
| Contracts and e-signature | Yes | No |
| Where it works | The U.S., Canada, the UK and Australia | Anywhere — no money moves through us, so there is nothing to license |
| A page the customer can open | A client portal, built around documents and invoices | One link per order: what is paid, what is owed, when it will be ready |
| Entry price | $29/mo billed yearly, plus a percentage of everything collected | $29/mo, one plan, no percentage |
| Trying it | 30-day trial, 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.
The subscription is modest and the processing fee is a percentage of every deposit and every balance — from 2.7% plus 10¢, and their page says fees start there rather than end there. That is fine on a $400 job and a different conversation on a commission worth several thousand, because the cost scales with the piece while the software's value does not. Ordamo never touches the money, so there is no percentage: your bank details or your own payment link sit on the customer's page.
Proposals, contracts, invoices: the record is complete on the revenue side and empty on the cost side. Nothing on HoneyBook's own feature pages covers products, materials, production or cost of goods, which is exactly right for a photographer and exactly wrong for someone who paid a workshop for a run of six. Revenue you can already see in your bank; margin is the number you cannot.
HoneyBook's pricing page says it is available to business owners in the U.S., Canada, the UK and Australia. A studio in Buenos Aires, Madrid or Mexico City is not in a grey area there — the half that mattered, taking the client's money, is not on offer. Ordamo has no such boundary because it never handles the payment.
A client portal is a shared folder with invoices in it, and on a job that takes a fortnight that is enough. On an eight-to-sixteen-week build it is not: the twenty messages an order generates are about the date, and answering them is the job the customer-facing order page exists to take off you.
$29/mo billed yearly
Starter, billed yearly. Essentials is $59 monthly or $49 billed yearly, Premium $129 or $109. Clients and projects are unlimited on every plan, and the trial is 30 days with no card. On top of the subscription, card fees start at 2.7% + 10¢ and bank payments cost 1.5% of everything you collect.
$29/mo
One plan, per business, everything included. $0 today, first charge after 7 days, cancel in one click. 14-day money-back on the first month. Nothing is metered, and no percentage comes off the money.
What is in the planWe are not the only answer, and pretending otherwise wastes your afternoon.
Contracts, forms and payment plans that chase the client for you. $335 a year, billed annually.
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 — plenty of makers do, and the proposal-to-invoice flow works whatever you sell. What it will not tell you is what a piece cost to make or what an order earned, because products, materials and production are not in it. If your problem is getting paid on time, it is a reasonable tool. If your problem is that you cannot see the margin, it cannot answer that.
Its published plans are Starter at $29 a month billed yearly, Essentials at $59 monthly or $49 yearly, and Premium at $129 or $109. Clients and projects are unlimited on all three. Card fees start at 2.7% + 10¢ and bank payments cost 1.5% on top. Confirm the current position on honeybook.com before deciding on the strength of a number here.
Its pricing page says it is currently available for business owners in the U.S., Canada, the UK and Australia. If you invoice from anywhere else, that is the end of the comparison rather than a footnote to it. Ordamo does not process payments, so it has no country list — you put your own bank details or payment link on the customer's order page.
The subscriptions are the same at the entry tier: $29 a month each, theirs billed yearly. The difference is the percentage — HoneyBook's card fees start at 2.7% + 10¢ on everything you collect, and Ordamo takes nothing because the money does not pass through it. Whether that adds up to a saving depends on what you invoice, not on the subscription.
Nothing on its own feature pages covers products, materials, production or cost of goods. It is built for service businesses, where the cost is your time. If you buy oak, or pay a workshop for a run of six, that cost has nowhere to live and the margin cannot be worked out from what is in the file.
Neither. Your bank details or a payment link go on the customer's order page and the money moves outside the tool; there is nothing to sign and no e-signature. If either of those is central to how you sell, HoneyBook does them and this does not.
Yes, and it is a sensible split: HoneyBook for the contract and the card, Ordamo for the order, the production cost and the margin. Nothing gets recorded twice except the customer's name and the agreed total.
If you kept HoneyBook for the invoicing and want the same thing cheaper, this page is not the answer — Dubsado and the other client-management tools are, and they compete on that ground. If what you actually need is the order behind the invoice, with a deposit, a readiness date, a production cost and a margin, that is a different category, and $29 a month with no percentage on the money is what it costs here.
One page per order rather than one per client, and no login: it shows what was ordered, what has been paid, what is still owed and when the piece is due to be ready, and it updates itself when the order does. It is not a document store, and files do not go on it.
There is little to migrate: enter your open commissions with what was agreed, what has been paid and the readiness date, then add what each piece costs you and the batches currently in production. Signed contracts and past projects stay in HoneyBook as history, and you can keep the subscription for the signature and the card if those still earn it.
Plans, prices, processing fees, the 30-day trial and the four countries where it is available read from honeybook.com/pricing on 10 September 2026; the deposit and instalment wording from its own invoices page on 9 September. That products, materials, production and cost of goods are absent is the absence of any mention of them across its features and invoices pages, not a claim from the vendor. 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