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PaloWorks

Dubsado alternative for freelancers — PaloWorks vs Dubsado

An honest comparison. Dubsado's workflow automation is deeper than anything PaloWorks has; PaloWorks is faster to set up and counts scope, revisions, and change orders.

Written by the people who build PaloWorks, so read it with that in mind. The rule we hold ourselves to is that everything said about Dubsado has to be something you could check, and everything said about PaloWorks has to be true of the product today.

Where Dubsado is better

Dubsado's workflow automation is the deepest thing in this comparison. Multi-step workflows that fire on triggers, scheduled and conditional emails, forms that branch on the answers, canned email libraries, and per-client automation that keeps running while you are asleep. PaloWorks has scheduled reminders and notifications, and nothing resembling a workflow builder. If your work is repeatable enough to automate and you actually enjoy building the machine, Dubsado will do more for you than we will — and the people who invest that setup time tend to be glad they did.

Where PaloWorks is better

  • You can be sending a real client link the same afternoon. The trade for Dubsado's automation is a genuine setup project, and that cost is paid up front whether or not the automation ever earns it back.
  • Revision rounds and change orders are first-class records, not something you model out of forms and workflow steps. The scope sells rounds, the log counts them, and the dashboard flags a project that has gone over.
  • A change order carries its own price and its own extra rounds and is approved by the client typing their name. Nothing pending is counted as money you are owed.
  • Card payments are a direct charge on your own Stripe account, with no PaloWorks fee on the payment and no balance we hold.
  • Every client-facing surface is a share link with no account behind it, and the contract locks the first time it is opened so the version they read cannot change.

Side by side

These are the dimensions freelancers actually decide on — not feature counts.

PaloWorks compared with Dubsado across setup, client friction, payments, scope changes, revisions, signing, learning curve, and pricing model.
DimensionPaloWorksDubsado
Setup before your first client linkAbout five minutes to a real link, by design. There is no automation to configure because there is no automation engine.A project. Workflows, canned emails, forms, and templates all have to exist before the automation does anything, and that is widely the hardest part of adopting it.
What the client has to doOpen a link and act on it. No account on any surface.Dubsado offers a client portal alongside link-based forms and documents. More capable than ours if your clients will use a portal.
Where the payment money landsYour own Stripe account, as a direct charge. We are never in the money path.As their published documentation describes it, Dubsado connects your own payment processor, so funds land in the account you connect. Confirm the current list of supported processors against their docs.
Extra work beyond the scopeA change order: priced, dated, approved by name, with its own round count. Only approved orders move money.Modelled with forms, invoice line items, and workflow steps you build. Very flexible, and correspondingly more of it is yours to design.
Revision roundsSold in the scope, counted in a log, flagged on the dashboard once a project runs past what it sold.Not a built-in counter as far as their published features describe. You would represent rounds in a form or a contract clause and track them yourself. Verify against their current docs.
Contract signingTyped-name signature with IP, browser, timestamp, and a SHA-256 hash of the signed text. Locks on first client view; a change means a superseding document, and that link is recorded.E-signature on contracts and proposals, with automation that can fire the moment a document is signed. That trigger-on-signature behaviour is something we do not have.
Learning curveLow, because the product is narrow. If you want conditional logic and multi-step automation, we are the wrong tool and you will feel it quickly.Steep, and openly so. An industry of tutorials and setup services exists because of it — which is both a warning and a sign of how much people get out of it.
Pricing modelThree plans. Free carries one client and three active projects through intake, scope, revisions, invoicing, and card payments; contracts with e-signature, time tracking, the calendar, and Gantt planning are Pro, one monthly price for unlimited clients and projects. Studio adds three team seats and your branding on client documents.Subscription tiers, with the client and project ceiling as a factor on the lower tier. Check where that ceiling sits today before you commit.
Switching an existing client list overA CSV importer maps your columns — name, email, phone, company, notes — to ours, previews exactly which rows it will create, and skips anything that already matches an existing client by email, or by name and company. Running the same file twice creates nothing twice.Not something we can verify from outside the product. Check their current import options if a client list is what is holding you back from switching.

On the payments row: No PaloWorks fee on client payments — you pay only Stripe's standard processing fees, and the money goes straight to your Stripe account.

Pricing

Both products sell a subscription, so the model difference is narrower here than elsewhere on this site — the real cost difference is setup time, not licence fee. Dubsado prices in tiers with limits on the entry tier; PaloWorks has three plans, with a free first client and nothing sold as an add-on. No Dubsado figure is quoted on this page because their pricing changes and we have no live view of it. Before you decide, price both against the hours you would spend building workflows, because for most solo freelancers that is the larger number.

This page quotes no Dubsado price. It describes how their pricing is structured, from their public pages as we read them on Aug 26, 2026 — read theirs before deciding, because plans change and nobody tells us when they do.

Test it on one real job

The free plan runs one client and three active projects from brief to paid invoice — intake, scope, revisions, change orders, invoicing, and card payments. Contracts with e-signature, time tracking, and the calendar are on the paid plan. What is free is still enough to find out whether the scope, revision, and change-order records are worth anything to you before you pay for anything or migrate anything.

Start freeSee pricing

Switching from Dubsado

  1. Save your client list as a CSV file. It does not matter what Dubsado or your spreadsheet calls the columns — you match them up in the next step.
  2. In PaloWorks, open Clients and choose “Import clients”. Upload the file or paste the rows, and the preview lists every client it would create before anything is saved.
  3. Name, email, company, and notes are read from the usual column names, and you can pick the columns yourself when yours are named differently. Anyone already in your workspace — same email, or same name and company — is skipped, so importing the same file twice is safe.
  4. On Free the import stops at the plan's 1 client and tells you how many rows did not fit.
  5. With time tracking (Pro), hours exported from a time tracker as CSV import into a project from its Time tab.
  6. Projects, contracts, and invoices are not imported. New work starts in PaloWorks; nothing moves until you import it.

Step by step, with the column names it recognises: Import clients and time from a CSV.

Questions

Can I move my clients from Dubsado to PaloWorks?

Yes, as a CSV file. On the Clients page, “Import clients” previews every row, reads the name, email, company, and notes columns (or the ones you pick), and skips clients you already have. Projects, contracts, and invoices are not imported.

Can I try PaloWorks before leaving Dubsado?

Yes. The free plan runs 1 client and 3 active projects from brief to paid invoice — intake, scope, revisions, change orders, invoicing, and card payments — with no card to start. Contracts with e-signature, time tracking, and the calendar are on Pro.

Does this page quote Dubsado's prices?

No. It compares how the two are priced — the model, not the number — because we have no live view of Dubsado's pricing and it changes. Read their pricing page before you decide.

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Dubsado and all other product names on this page are trademarks of their respective owners. PaloWorks is built by Ferrier Industries LLC and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any company named here. Statements about other products describe our reading of their publicly available documentation on the date shown above and may be out of date; verify anything that matters to your decision with the vendor.