Raoura vs 17hats (2026): the $17 flat plan or the $60 all-in-one?

TL;DR: As of July 2026, 17hats costs $60 per month or $600 per year on one all-inclusive plan, with paid add-ons like Bank Connect at $5 per month and an SMS module from $10 per month plus a $60 registration fee. Raoura costs $17 per month on one flat plan with everything included. 17hats wins on automation depth, scheduling, SMS, and bookkeeping. Raoura wins on price, setup time, and having exactly five features instead of fifteen. Neither adds a markup on your payments.

Disclosure up front: Raoura is our product, so read our half of this comparison with the same skepticism you would apply to any vendor grading its own homework. We have tried to make the 17hats half accurate enough that a happy 17hats customer would nod along.

One more thing worth saying before the table: as of July 2026, nobody else has written this comparison. We checked. The pages that rank for 17hats research are review aggregators and alternatives roundups, and the top-ranking roundup still lists 17hats at $13 per month, which is 2016-era pricing for a product that now costs $60. So we did the thing we wished existed: both products, current prices, sources for everything.

Side-by-side comparison#

As of July 2026, 17hats costs $60 per month or $600 per year on a single all-inclusive plan, while Raoura costs $17 per month flat.

Pricing sources: 17hats' pricing page and Agency Handy's March 2026 breakdown, both checked July 2026.

Two different bets on what freelancers need#

17hats ships more than a dozen modules (automations, scheduling, SMS, pipelines, bookkeeping, lead capture); Raoura ships five, on purpose.

17hats has been at this since October 2014, and its bet is that a service business should run itself: a lead fills out a form, gets an auto-response, books a call, receives a quote-contract-invoice in one document, and gets nudged by SMS, all without you touching anything. For its core audience of photographers, wedding pros, and other appointment-driven businesses, that bet pays off. Its about page says over 25,000 members run on it, and its review scores are solid: 4.4 out of 5 across 136 reviews on Capterra and 4.6 across 114 on G2, checked July 2026.

Raoura's bet is depth on a shorter list: proposals, e-sign contracts, invoicing, projects with client approvals, and a branded client portal. No automation builder, no scheduler, no SMS, no bookkeeping, no lead pipeline. Not "coming soon", just not there, on purpose.

The practical question is which bet matches your week. If your business runs on booked sessions, follow-up sequences, and text reminders, 17hats built its product for you. If your business is fixed-price project work where the real problems are chasing approvals and overdue invoices, most of 17hats is surface area you will pay for and never touch.

Price: what you actually pay over three years#

Over three years on annual billing, 17hats costs $1,800 at full price, or $1,500 with its 50% first-year promo, versus $612 for Raoura: a difference of at least $888.

Here is math nobody on either side of this comparison publishes. Three years, annual billing where available, no add-ons:

A few footnotes that change the totals. 17hats' two-year option is $800, which works out to $400 per year and narrows the gap. In the other direction, the add-ons widen it: Bank Connect is $5 per month, time tracking is a $5 per month module, and the SMS Texting module carries a one-time $60 registration fee plus a monthly fee starting at $10 for 100 texts, US and Canada members only. Use two add-ons and you are at $70 per month before texting.

To be fair in both directions: 17hats offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, runs aggressive promos (it is currently courting HoneyBook customers with a dedicated switcher sale after HoneyBook's price increase), and there is also a genuinely free 17hats CRM tier, though it caps you at 4 invoices per quarter, which is one invoice a month with a month off.

Raoura has no promos and no add-ons other than optional AI credit packs (30 credits per month are included; packs are 25 for $5 or 100 for $15). $17 per month is the whole story, which also means year two costs what year one did.

Day-one setup and the learning curve#

17hats gives you a 7-day trial to evaluate a platform that reviewers say takes days to set up; Raoura gives you 14 days for a setup designed to take an afternoon.

The most consistent complaint in 17hats reviews is not about features. It is about the on-ramp. "It was really hard to set up and took me days to figure it out", wrote one reviewer on Capterra in March 2025, adding that they are very tech savvy. Others call the interface dated and the initial configuration cumbersome. None of this is fatal: 17hats' support gets praised specifically for answering within minutes, and people who push through the setup tend to stay for years. But it is a real cost, and the 7-day trial (restartable once) is a tight window for it.

Raoura's setup is the opposite trade. Point it at your website and it matches your brand across proposals and the client portal automatically. Pick a proposal template or let the AI draft one from a short brief. Connect Stripe and invoicing is live, with deposits, payment plans, and automatic overdue reminders on by default. There is no workflow engine to design, which is either the whole point or a dealbreaker, depending on which paragraph of this article you nodded at.

Getting paid#

Neither tool takes a percentage of your payments: both process through Stripe with a 0% platform markup on current plans.

This matters more than it sounds, because much of this industry monetizes payment processing. 17hats partners with Stripe and states it does not add an additional fee on card transactions, with one footnote worth knowing: some grandfathered legacy 17hats plans do pay added processing fees, so if you are an old-plan customer, check your rate. Raoura connects your own Stripe account and passes Stripe's fee through at cost, always. If you want the longer argument for why this should be a hard requirement in any tool you pick, we wrote it up in why your client tool should never touch your money.

On invoicing depth for fixed-price work, Raoura treats deposits, partial payments, and payment plans as first-class workflows: take 50% up front, or split a $6,000 project into three payments, without faking it with separate invoices. 17hats counters with recurring billing and the quote-contract-invoice combined document, which is a slick close for bookings, plus ACH for US members.

The client experience#

Both tools include a client portal; Raoura's uses magic links, so your clients manage exactly 0 passwords.

17hats gives clients a secure portal for documents plus project dates, times, and locations, and its scheduling and SMS reminders mean clients get nudged through the process automatically. For appointment businesses, that reminder layer is the client experience.

Raoura's portal leans on friction removal. It is branded to you (matched from your website, not rebuilt by hand), and clients log in with a magic link, so nobody ever resets a password. Inside, clients review proposals, e-sign contracts, pay invoices, and approve milestones. That last one is Raoura's quiet favorite: scope sign-off becomes a recorded click instead of an archaeology dig through email.

Where 17hats is genuinely better#

If you need any 3 of the following, 17hats is worth its $60 and Raoura will not replace it.

• Automations. Workflows, triggers, and if/then logic deep enough to run a studio hands-free. Raoura has no automation builder.
• Scheduling. Built-in booking with Zoom links, group bookings, and pay-at-booking. Raoura leaves scheduling to whatever you already use.
• SMS texting. Two-way client texting, booking reminders, past-due nudges (as a paid add-on, US and Canada only). Raoura has none.
• Bookkeeping. Expenses, P&L, sales tax reports, aged receivables, bank sync at $5 per month. Raoura does not do bookkeeping.
• Lead capture and pipelines. Forms with auto-responders and pipeline tracking. Raoura deliberately has no lead pipeline.
• Track record. Eleven years of shipping, 25,000+ members, and strong review scores. Raoura is new and has to earn that; we will not quote you invented social proof.
• Support. "They answer within minutes" is a recurring review quote, per Capterra.

Who should pick which#

Pick 17hats if:

• Your business runs on appointments, sessions, and bookings rather than open-ended projects
• You want leads captured, auto-responded, scheduled, and reminded without touching anything
• SMS reminders measurably reduce your no-shows
• You want bookkeeping in the same tool as your invoices
• You have the patience for a real setup phase, and $60 per month clears your bar

Pick Raoura if:

• You bill fixed-price projects with deposits, payment plans, or milestones
• You want proposals, contracts, invoices, projects, and a portal on one $17 flat plan
• You want setup measured in hours, not days, and a 14-day trial to prove it
• Your clients should log in with a magic link and never manage a password
• You would rather have five features you use daily than fifteen you audit quarterly

If you are leaving 17hats over price but want to keep automation breadth, neither of us is your answer: see our roundup of 7 17hats alternatives, where Moxie in particular covers that middle ground, or the direct Raoura vs Moxie comparison.