Choose Dubsado if…
- You like building forms, workflows and automation logic, and you want control over every step of how a client moves through your process
- Your business runs on intake questionnaires; Dubsado's form builder is a genuine strength
- You want trigger-based, client-facing automation that sends on a schedule you designed
Choose North if…
- You do not want to become your own operations department to send a proposal
- Every job is a little different, and a template with variables in it does not know what this client said
- You want the price defended in sentences rather than filled into a field
- You want nothing sent to a client unless you pressed the button
Dubsado pricing, as checked
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $335/yr | annual figure from the pricing page |
| Premier | $525/yr | annual figure from the pricing page |
| Add-ons | extra brand $10/mo · extra users $25–60/mo by band | three additional users included |
Dubsado annual figures fetched from its pricing page on 11 August 2026. No monthly price is published (the page says only that annual saves the equivalent of two months), so none is quoted here; any monthly Dubsado figure you read elsewhere was inferred. North, for the same table: everything is free while it is in beta. At launch, Free is $0 forever (unlimited proposals drafted from your notes, contracts with e-signing, the client deal room with your own branding, unlimited invoices sent and tracked and marked paid by hand, reminders drafted for you, full export) and Pro is $39/month (your client pays by card on your own Stripe account, delivery stages, deposits and milestones, retainers, euros and pounds, the money view). Accounts that exist before launch keep $20/month for as long as they exist. North takes no cut of any payment, at any volume, ever; Stripe's own processing fee is Stripe's.
Setup is the product, or the absence of it is
Dubsado's depth is real and so is its learning curve. It is a system you build, and the detail-oriented creatives who invest the setup weekend get a machine tailored to how they work. North starts from the other end: the first useful thing it does, a scoped and priced proposal from your notes, happens in the first session, because the intelligence is in the drafting rather than in workflow configuration you author. Neither is wrong. They suit different temperaments, and it is worth being honest with yourself about which one you have.
A template with variables, or a reading of the call
Dubsado fills your templates with fields. North reads the notes: the goal, the constraint, the number the client dropped in passing, the competitor they keep mentioning. The proposal it drafts restates their situation in their own words, prices three genuinely different amounts of work, and defends each price by naming the scope it rests on. You edit and send. If your projects are identical every time, a template is efficient and you should use one. If every deal is a little different, understanding beats mail-merge.
What each one lacks
North has no intake forms, no scheduler and no automation canvas, and it is young; Dubsado has years of edge cases handled. Dubsado has no drafting, no help with what to charge, and its depth is the same thing as its overhead. Count what your week actually contains before choosing.
Common questions
- Is North easier to set up than Dubsado?
- That is the whole design bet. Dubsado rewards significant configuration, which is the point of it; North produces a scoped, priced proposal from your call notes with no setup beyond an account and, if you want it, your logo and colour. What you give up is the ability to design a bespoke client workflow, because there is no workflow builder to design it in.
- Which is cheaper, North or Dubsado?
- Dubsado publishes $335 or $525 a year (11 August 2026) and no monthly price. North's free plan is unlimited proposals and unlimited invoices at no cost and no annual commitment; Pro is $39/month, billed monthly, for card payment on your own Stripe, stages and the money view, with no cut taken on payments either way. Over a year the two paid plans land in the same neighbourhood; the difference is what you are paying for.
- Can North do Dubsado-style workflows?
- No, and deliberately. North has no user-built automation canvas. It watches your deals and drafts the next thing (a follow-up, an invoice, a reminder) for you to approve, and it never sends anything to a client on its own. If trigger-based client-facing automation is what you want, Dubsado is the better fit and this page will not talk you out of it.