Billed vs 17hats

Billed vs 17hats is a comparison worth exploring if you are a solopreneur, freelancer, or small business owner trying to decide between a dedicated billing platform and an all-in-one business management suite. Both tools aim to reduce the number of separate apps you need to run your business, but they approach the problem from opposite directions. 17hats bundles CRM, lead management, contracts, scheduling, questionnaires, bookkeeping, email automation, and invoicing into a single dashboard built for solopreneurs who want to manage every stage of the client lifecycle without juggling multiple subscriptions. Billed starts with invoicing and layers project management, time tracking, expense management, and team collaboration around it — purpose-built for service businesses that bill clients for delivered work.

This guide breaks down every meaningful difference: user experience, invoicing depth, CRM and client management, contracts and proposals, time tracking, bookkeeping, payments, integrations, customer support, pricing, and the specific scenarios where each tool is the better choice.

Company Background and Target Audience

17hats launched in 2013 as a business management platform designed exclusively for solopreneurs. The platform is named after the idea that solo business owners wear many hats, and 17hats aims to simplify at least seventeen of those roles. Over the years it has built a loyal following among photographers, event planners, consultants, coaches, and creative professionals who run their businesses alone or with minimal staff.

Billed was built as an invoicing and project management platform for freelancers, agencies, and service businesses that bill clients regularly. Rather than trying to cover every aspect of running a business, Billed focuses on the billing workflow — creating invoices, tracking time, managing projects, logging expenses, and collaborating with team members — and does those things exceptionally well.

The key difference is scope versus depth. 17hats covers more ground with broader functionality across CRM, contracts, scheduling, and bookkeeping. Billed goes deeper into billing, time tracking, and project management. Your choice depends on whether you need a wide all-in-one suite or a focused billing-and-projects tool.

Quick Summary

17hats is an all-in-one business management platform that combines CRM, lead capture, contracts, scheduling, questionnaires, email automation, bookkeeping, and invoicing into a single solopreneur-focused dashboard. Its strength lies in managing the complete client lifecycle from first inquiry through final payment, with particularly strong bookkeeping features that reduce the need for separate accounting software. Billed is an invoicing and project management platform that includes native time tracking, expense management, and team collaboration — features 17hats lacks. Billed offers a permanent free plan and paid plans starting at $9/month, while 17hats starts at $15/month with no free tier. If managing the entire client relationship from lead to ledger is your priority, 17hats covers more ground. If accurate billing, hourly time tracking, and project-based workflows matter most, Billed delivers more depth at a lower price.

Pricing Comparison

17hats: From $15/mo

Billed: Free plan available, paid from $9/mo

17hats starts at $15/month (Essential) with contracts, questionnaires, lead management, basic bookkeeping, and email templates. The Standard plan at $35/month adds advanced workflow automation, scheduling, and email sequences. Premier at $60/month includes priority support and full automation. There is no permanent free plan — only a limited trial.

Billed's Free plan ($0/month) includes unlimited invoices and clients with no time limit. Pro at $9/month adds time tracking, project management, team collaboration, expense tracking, and reporting. Business at $24/month adds multiple business support and priority support. Billed does not charge per user.

Cost Comparison by Scenario

Solo photographer: 17hats Essential at $15/month vs. Billed Free at $0. Annual difference: $180 — though 17hats includes contracts and scheduling the photographer likely needs.

Freelance consultant billing hourly: 17hats at $15/month plus a separate time tracker at $10/month vs. Billed Pro at $9/month. Annual savings with Billed: $192.

Small agency with 4 team members: 17hats Premier at $60/month vs. Billed Business at $24/month. Annual savings with Billed: $432.

Feature-by-Feature Breakdown

Invoicing

Both platforms offer professional invoicing with custom branding and electronic delivery. 17hats creates invoices within client projects alongside contracts and questionnaires. Billed treats invoicing as its primary function — creating an invoice takes under two minutes with custom templates, automatic payment reminders, multi-currency billing, and recurring schedules. Billed also converts tracked time and expenses directly into invoice line items.

Payments

Both platforms support online payments. 17hats integrates with Stripe and Square, with payments tracked automatically in its bookkeeping system. Billed integrates with Stripe and PayPal, giving you direct control over your payment processor. 17hats ties payments into bookkeeping; Billed ties payments into project management.

Time Tracking

17hats does not include built-in time tracking — hourly billers need a separate tool like Toggl or Harvest, adding cost and manual data transfer. Billed includes time tracking natively: start a timer, assign it to a project and client, and convert tracked hours directly into invoice line items. This integration eliminates transcription errors and saves significant administrative time.

Bookkeeping

17hats includes built-in bookkeeping that goes beyond basic expense tracking. You can categorize income and expenses, generate profit-and-loss statements, and track tax-deductible expenses without leaving the platform. For solopreneurs with straightforward financial needs, this is a genuine strength — many can manage their finances entirely within 17hats without paying for QuickBooks or Xero.

Billed includes expense tracking and financial reporting — log expenses by project, attach receipts, and generate revenue reports. However, Billed does not offer double-entry bookkeeping, bank reconciliation, or tax preparation. If your bookkeeping needs extend beyond expense tracking, you will need a separate accounting tool alongside Billed.

CRM and Lead Management

17hats includes CRM with lead capture, contact management, and pipeline tracking — when a prospect fills out your contact form, 17hats automatically creates a lead record and triggers follow-up workflows. Billed includes client management but is not a CRM — no lead capture, no sales pipeline, no automated follow-ups. Billed manages clients from the billing stage, not from first inquiry.

Contracts and E-Signatures

17hats includes contract templates with electronic signatures — create reusable templates, customize them per client, and send for digital signing within the same platform. Signed contracts are stored alongside the client's project file. Billed offers estimates convertible to invoices but does not include contracts or e-signatures. If you need signed agreements before beginning work, 17hats handles this natively while Billed requires a separate tool like DocuSign or PandaDoc.

Scheduling and Questionnaires

17hats includes an online scheduling tool with a branded booking page, calendar sync, availability rules, and automated follow-ups triggered by confirmed appointments. It also offers customizable questionnaires — a wedding photographer can send a questionnaire to gather shot lists and venue details, with responses stored in the client's project file. These are features most invoicing tools do not offer, and they add genuine value for service providers who need structured client onboarding. Billed does not include scheduling or questionnaires — you would use separate tools like Calendly and Google Forms alongside it.

Workflow Automation

17hats shines with workflow automation. You can build multi-step automated sequences triggered by events — a lead fills out a contact form, triggering an automatic response email, a follow-up two days later, and when they book a call, an automatic contract and questionnaire. For solopreneurs managing everything alone, this automation is essential for maintaining responsiveness without burning out. Billed includes automatic payment reminders and recurring invoice scheduling but does not offer the same depth of lifecycle automation.

Project Management

Billed offers dedicated project workspaces with task assignment, timelines, team collaboration, and direct connections to invoices and time entries — every project shows its profitability. 17hats organizes work around client projects within its CRM, adequate for solopreneurs but lacking depth for team-based project management. If you manage a team across concurrent projects, Billed provides more capable tools.

Reporting and Analytics

Both platforms offer reporting. 17hats provides financial reports including profit-and-loss statements and expense summaries integrated with its bookkeeping. Billed offers reports covering outstanding invoices, revenue by client and project, expense summaries, and time tracking analysis. Billed's project-level profitability reporting is particularly useful for service businesses tracking which clients and projects generate the best margins. Neither platform replaces dedicated business intelligence software, but both cover the essentials.

User Experience

17hats consolidates CRM, contracts, scheduling, questionnaires, bookkeeping, and invoicing into one dashboard. The setup process walks you through connecting your email, creating templates, and configuring workflows. The platform covers a lot of ground, which means more to learn upfront — some users find the interface visually dated and the feature density overwhelming during the first week. However, once configured, the automated workflows save significant daily time.

Billed offers a cleaner, faster experience focused on billing and project management. The dashboard surfaces pending invoices, active projects, recent time entries, and outstanding balances. Creating an invoice takes under two minutes. Starting a timer takes one click. The learning curve is shorter because the tool does fewer things with more polish and speed. For users who need breadth, 17hats is worth the learning curve. For users who want focused billing tools, Billed is faster to adopt.

Customer Support

17hats offers email support and a comprehensive help center with written guides and video tutorials. Response times are generally within 24 hours, and community forums provide peer support. Billed provides email and live chat support on all plans including the free tier — no paywall between you and live help, with most inquiries answered within a few hours during business days.

Integrations Ecosystem

17hats integrates with Stripe and Square for payments, QuickBooks for accounting, Google Calendar for scheduling sync, and Zapier for connections to thousands of additional tools. Billed integrates with Stripe and PayPal for payments, with a deeper direct Stripe integration that gives you full access to Stripe's dashboard and transaction data. For businesses embedded in a broad technology ecosystem, 17hats' Zapier connection provides wider reach. For businesses that primarily need reliable payment processing, Billed's focused integrations cover the essentials.

Mobile Experience

17hats offers mobile access through iOS and Android apps covering invoicing, contracts, scheduling, and client management. Billed provides mobile access for invoicing, time tracking, and expense management — start timers, log expenses with receipt photos, and create invoices from your phone. 17hats' mobile app spans a wider feature set; Billed's mobile experience is focused on the billing and time tracking workflows service professionals use most on the go.

When to Choose 17hats

17hats is the better choice if you are a solopreneur who wants one platform to manage the entire client lifecycle — from the moment someone inquires about your services through the final payment and beyond. If you currently juggle separate tools for scheduling, contracts, CRM, email automation, questionnaires, invoicing, and bookkeeping, 17hats consolidates all of that. The platform is particularly strong for creative professionals like photographers, event planners, and coaches whose workflow follows a predictable sequence: lead capture, consultation booking, contract signing, questionnaire completion, service delivery, and final invoicing. The built-in bookkeeping is a genuine differentiator — many solopreneurs can manage their finances entirely within 17hats without paying for separate accounting software.

When to Choose Billed

Billed is the better choice if your daily work revolves around tracking time, managing projects, and sending accurate invoices based on delivered work. Freelancers who bill by the hour, agencies managing multiple concurrent projects, and service businesses that need team collaboration tools will find Billed's capabilities more relevant than 17hats' CRM-focused features. The native time tracking that connects directly to invoicing eliminates the manual data transfer that causes billing errors and lost revenue. The free plan lets you start immediately with no financial risk, and the substantially lower pricing — $9/month versus $15/month minimum for 17hats — makes Billed more budget-friendly. If you do not need contracts, scheduling, questionnaires, or CRM lead tracking, Billed delivers more billing and project management value for less money.

Migration: Switching from 17hats to Billed

Export your 17hats client data, invoice records, and financial history as CSV files. Import client lists into Billed through Settings > Import and map your data fields during the process to ensure client names, email addresses, billing history, and outstanding balances transfer correctly. Recreate any active recurring invoices in Billed before canceling 17hats to avoid missed billing cycles. 17hats-specific features — contract templates, workflow automations, scheduling configurations, questionnaire templates, and bookkeeping data — do not have direct equivalents in Billed and will need to be handled by separate specialized tools if you still require them. The core data migration takes 30 to 60 minutes for most businesses. We recommend running both tools in parallel for one billing cycle to confirm everything transferred accurately before fully switching.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does 17hats offer a free plan?

No. 17hats starts at $15/month for the Essential plan with no permanent free tier — only a limited trial period. Billed offers a permanent free plan with unlimited invoices, unlimited clients, and no credit card required. You can use Billed's free tier indefinitely and upgrade to the $9/month Pro plan only when you need time tracking and project management.

Which is better for freelancers, 17hats or Billed?

It depends on your freelance workflow. If you need contracts, scheduling, and CRM lead tracking, 17hats covers more client management ground. If you bill by the hour and need integrated time tracking that connects directly to invoicing, Billed provides a more efficient billing workflow. Most hourly freelancers will benefit more from Billed's time-to-invoice pipeline.

Does 17hats include time tracking?

No. 17hats does not include built-in time tracking. If you bill by the hour, you need a separate tool like Toggl, Harvest, or Clockify alongside 17hats, then manually transfer hours into invoices. Billed includes native time tracking that converts tracked hours directly into invoice line items, eliminating this manual step entirely.

Is 17hats good for bookkeeping?

17hats includes built-in bookkeeping features that cover income and expense categorization, profit-and-loss reporting, and tax-deductible expense tracking. For solopreneurs with straightforward financial needs, 17hats can handle basic bookkeeping without requiring separate accounting software. This is a genuine strength of the platform compared to most invoicing-focused competitors including Billed.

Can I migrate from 17hats to Billed?

Yes. Export your 17hats data — clients, invoices, and financial records — as CSV files and import them into Billed through Settings > Import. The migration typically takes 30 to 60 minutes. 17hats-specific features like contract templates, workflow automations, and questionnaires will need to be handled with separate tools after switching.

Is Billed or 17hats better for small teams?

Billed is more practical for teams. Billed does not charge per user — team members are included in the plan price. 17hats is designed primarily for solopreneurs, and team collaboration features are limited or require higher-tier plans. For teams of three or more, Billed's flat pricing and built-in team collaboration tools make it more affordable and functional.

Does Billed include contracts and e-signatures?

No. Billed focuses on invoicing, time tracking, expense management, and project management. If you need contracts with e-signatures, you would use a separate tool like DocuSign, PandaDoc, or HelloSign alongside Billed. 17hats includes contracts and e-signatures natively as part of its all-in-one platform.

Does 17hats include scheduling?

Yes. 17hats offers built-in scheduling with a client-facing booking page, calendar sync, availability rules, and automated follow-up workflows triggered by confirmed appointments. Billed does not include scheduling — you would need a separate tool like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling for client booking.

Can I use 17hats for email marketing?

17hats includes email templates and automated email sequences for client communication — booking confirmations, follow-ups, payment reminders, and post-project check-ins. It is not a full email marketing platform like Mailchimp or ConvertKit, but it covers the client communication automation that solopreneurs use most frequently.

Does Billed include accounting features?

Billed covers invoicing, time tracking, expense management, and project management — not full accounting. If you need double-entry bookkeeping, bank reconciliation, or tax preparation, pair Billed with a dedicated accounting tool. 17hats offers more built-in bookkeeping than Billed, which may reduce the need for separate accounting software for solopreneurs with simple financials.

Which platform has better workflow automation?

17hats offers significantly deeper workflow automation. You can build multi-step sequences triggered by client actions — lead inquiry triggers an email response, booking confirmation triggers a contract, signed contract triggers a questionnaire. Billed's automation is focused on billing — payment reminders and recurring invoice scheduling — rather than the broader client lifecycle.

Can I manage multiple businesses in either platform?

Billed supports multiple businesses from a single account on the Business plan, useful for entrepreneurs running several brands. 17hats is designed around a single business identity per account. If you operate more than one business and want unified management, Billed offers more flexibility.

The Bottom Line

17hats and Billed serve overlapping audiences with fundamentally different approaches. 17hats is a genuine all-in-one platform that covers CRM, lead management, contracts, scheduling, questionnaires, email automation, bookkeeping, and invoicing in a single solopreneur-focused package. Its breadth is its greatest strength — and its bookkeeping and workflow automation features are legitimately useful for solo business owners who want to minimize the number of tools they pay for and manage.

Billed is a focused billing-and-projects platform that does invoicing, time tracking, project management, expense management, and team collaboration with more depth and at a lower price point. Its strength is the seamless connection between tracking work and billing for it — a workflow that 17hats cannot match without third-party time tracking tools.

Choose 17hats if you need to manage the entire client lifecycle from inquiry through bookkeeping in one place, and you do not bill by the hour. Choose Billed if accurate time-based billing, project management, and team collaboration are your daily priorities, and you are comfortable using separate tools for contracts and scheduling if needed. Both are capable platforms — the right choice depends on which problems you need solved most.

Try Billed free today and see if it fits your workflow.