Choose HoneyBook if…
- You take bookings. Photographers with a calendar, event people, anyone whose clients need to pick a slot
- You want one system for leads, questionnaires, brochures, email sequences and the money, and you will spend a weekend setting it up
- You want a large template marketplace and a product that has been around long enough to have answered most edge cases
Choose North if…
- The thing you put off is the proposal. You want it drafted from the notes, with the price defended in plain sentences
- You want the contract to arrive with the yes rather than as a second document a week later
- You want card payments to land on your own Stripe account with nothing taken on top of Stripe's fee
- You want a tool that drafts and watches, and never emails your client on your behalf
HoneyBook pricing, as checked
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $29/mo | same price billed yearly or monthly |
| Essentials | $49/mo | billed yearly; $59 billed monthly |
| Premium | $109/mo | billed yearly; $129 billed monthly |
| Payment fees | 2.7% + 10¢ cards · 1.5% bank transfer | on money collected through HoneyBook |
HoneyBook figures fetched from its pricing page on 11 August 2026; it raised prices in February 2025, so check the page before deciding. 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.
Different centres of gravity
HoneyBook grew from client management outward. Its centre is the pipeline: an enquiry arrives, gets a questionnaire, a booking, a file, an automation, and somewhere in the file list is a proposal. North grew from the deal inward. Its centre is the hour after a call, when you know the most about the job and have the least energy to write it down, and everything else (the contract, the room, the invoice) hangs off the proposal that hour produces. North does not do lead capture, scheduling or marketing automation, and is not trying to.
Where they disagree about automation
HoneyBook's automations can send emails and files to your clients on triggers you set. North will not. It drafts the follow-up, the reminder and the invoice, tells you they are ready, and stops; a build rule in the code forbids the drafting parts from touching the sending parts. Which you prefer is a real fork and not a matter of one being better. If you want a sequence running while you sleep, HoneyBook has it. If you think a late-paying client should hear from you rather than from a robot with your name on it, North is built around that opinion.
What the money costs
HoneyBook charges the subscription and then 2.7% plus ten cents on card payments it processes. North charges $0 or $39 a month and the card payment runs on your own Stripe account, so Stripe's ordinary fee applies and North adds nothing. On sixty thousand dollars a year of card volume, a 2.7% platform fee is about sixteen hundred dollars before Stripe's own cut; the sum is worth doing for your own mix, and it is the one place the two products' prices are not comparable on the headline.
Common questions
- Is North a HoneyBook alternative?
- For the proposal, contract and invoice spine of a freelance project, yes, and North drafts those from your notes where HoneyBook gives you a file to fill in. For the rest of what HoneyBook does (lead pipelines, scheduling, questionnaires, email automations), no. North does not have those and does not plan to, so a photographer who lives by their booking calendar should not switch.
- Which is cheaper, North or HoneyBook?
- On the subscription, North: the free plan carries unlimited proposals and invoices, and Pro is $39/month against HoneyBook's $29 to $109 billed yearly (checked 11 August 2026). On payments the gap widens, because HoneyBook takes 2.7% plus ten cents of each card payment and North takes nothing beyond Stripe's own fee. The fair caveat is that HoneyBook does far more, and a cheaper tool that does not do the thing you need is not cheaper.
- Can North replace my CRM?
- No. North is not a CRM: no lead scoring, no pipeline stages, no marketing automation. It keeps your clients, projects, documents and money in one place, and if you genuinely need pipeline management you would run a CRM alongside it. Most solo freelancers with eleven clients a year do not.