BestNotes vs Zanda

Carepatron

EHR YOUR WAY

Alleva

All your healthcare work in one place: Notes, Clients records, Appointments, Billing, Payments, Transcription, Communication & more.

EHR YOUR WAY is a fully integrated behavioral health and clinical care EHR software. It is configurable for mental health and clinical health specific needs and is an ONC certified cloud-based EHR. EHR YOUR WAY is trusted by mental health professionals nationwide and is suitable for behavioral health agencies with 15 or more users.

Our state-of-the-art platform will take your center into the 21st century and streamline the entire process of EMR. Our platform provides more efficient workflows, reducing burn-out, and improving the quality of care. Insights offers real-time data for better business decisions and easier reporting.

BestNotes is a cloud based electronic health record management solution for the behavioral health and substance abuse industry. Features include: scheduling, patient portal, audit-compliant documentation, medication administration, outcome tracking, e prescribing, lab tracking, and reporting

HIPAA Compliant

Document Management

Patient Portal

Charting

Initial Assessments

Medical Billing

Claims Management

E-Prescribing

Proprietary

BestNotes

Web-based

iPhone

Windows

iPad

Android

1-10 Users

11-100 Users

101+ Users

Director of Operations

I like having the ability to create templates that are suitable for providers without having to contact BestNotes for support. When I have needed to contact support they were very helpful in completing the task I needed, but they also educated me on their system and how to better use it for our needs.

Director of Clinical Operations

We use other products for the patient portal in terms of documents (besides appointment reminders), so I can't provide a comprehensive review on it.

Clinical

The interface often feels outdated and cluttered, which makes navigating between notes, client information, and documentation tools slower than it should be.

APSS CSA

I like how user-friendly BestNotes is—it keeps everything in one place from progress notes, treatment plans, and assessments to scheduling and client communication.”

Quality Services Director

Best Notes is customizable and the Best Notes support is great for brainstorming and creating new forms or edits.

Director of Technology

We've acquired several businesses over this time, and we during the integration periods we have had to interact with other EMR systems from an operational, administrative, and billing perspective.

Admin

I like the color coordination of appts, the ability to pin notes and seeing multiple schedules at once in an orderly way

Chief Operations Officer

The interface is a bit outdated, and the EMAR system can use more updates to streamline the medication input process.

Outpatient Supervisor

Inability for clients to request appointments/cancellations/reschedules through the platform while looking at availability on provider calendars.

From our experience, BestNotes is an easy system to work with, billing is straight forward, and it's easy to maintain once you've set up a solid foundation. Since we have internal development capabilities, we're able to use the BestNotes API to automate our processes, and it's proven to be a game changer for us.

Director of Clinical Services

Lack of ASAM 4th Edition updates in Clinical paperwork that coincided with the Kentucky start date of 7/1/25 to begin utilizing the 4th Edition.

For example, I can even write a note on a client's file that indicates which bedroom they are staying in.

Quality Assurance Manager

I taught myself a lot with all of Best Notes Instructions/Videos/Support and I can google a question and usually get an answer right away.

There is one adjustment I would really like them to make, to allow the user to use the "command A" shortcut to select all text.

I love that I can create treatment plan templates that are specific to certain diagnosis and measurable.

It made documentation and communication more efficient, and once I got used to the system, it really streamlined my workflow.

Owner

The customer support is excellent; when I have an issue I get to talk to a human right away, and you've usually got an answer for me.

From implementation to daily use, the platform has proven to be reliable, intuitive, and tailored to the complex needs of behavioral health programs.

Client Care Coordinator

User interface could be better and ability to upload multiple documents at one time would be helpful.

I wish the patient portal was easier for patients to navigate.

Administrator

Bestnotes is very easy to use; when used to its full potential and correctly, it is an amazing tools where clinicians are very happy to spend minimum time on the platform to document interactions and administrative staff can pull the data to analyze.

Clinical Director

I struggle with how the calendar doesn't let you send invitations outside the organization.  

I have had frequent episodes of the application slowing down or stalling out completely lately.

Occasionally it felt like too many clicks to finish a note or find the information I needed quickly.”

It is hard to describe although I will say the EMAR (BN in the browser) as well as the mobile app do NOT look old 1990s to me.

Targeted Case Manager

I think that its very well secured, i like that it logs you out after a short period of being away for the clients confidentiality.

Program Director

It saves time compared to doing things on paper and helps with communication across staff.

Intake Coordinator

Not being able to pull up past patients by last name that are no longer with the company.

I used Kipu at another facility but did not know the functionality, from what I saw it seemed like a lot of extra work for underwhelming reporting.

Scheduling can be a big barrier for clients getting services, as providers are quite busy and cannot answer their phone any given moment.

Coach mentor

I've used BN for 5 years now and the interface hasn't undergone major changes, which has allowed me to efficiently document without relearning an application.

Mental Health Counselor

Very glitchy. When navigating client ledgers, it can be hard to find documents, even if you search for them in the search bar/

Billing

The system is customizable, allowing us to tailor documents to our specific needs.  

BestNotes is so valuable but I dont know where to look and it looks like MySpace or one of the first blogs or google pages ever.

Bestnotes software is easy to utilize and provides a variety of pathways to document, pull data and analyze it.

Seeing everything from assessments to group notes right on the first screen made it easy to find things.

Very intuitive and professional looking chart notes/reports for use with appropriate external providers.

Clinical Coordinator

It would be much easier for each customer to be able to edit their own templates.

The reminder texts are often the wrong time zone, I would like to be able to go to a clients chart by clicking on their name from the 'tasks'

Administrative Assistant

I don't like that I can't see a report of who is scheduled and who came to their appointments without manually adding it in

DIrector of counseling

We do not use the billing aspect, nor the patient portal.

Intake Doc Coordinator

I love that you can create a Q-log and it will directly notify the person needing that information.

IT Director

The layout is not the most intuitive and there is no cloud version (yet), only the client/app you must install.

I like how when I call someone can help me right there vs a ticket.

I like that if you go between Reports, Contacts, Calendar - it retains what you were previously looking at.

The team at Bestnotes is always there to help, to listen to our suggestions, and to implement in a way that allows us to work smarter, not harder.

IT BN Administrator

Also the limitations on customizable reporting.  

I appreciate that they can resolve most issues fairly quickly.

I like that it keeps everything in one place, making it easier to stay organized and compliant.

HITECH Security Officer and Billing Coordinator

The clearinghouse claims being auto submitted to insurances.

Customer Support

Patient Management

Calendar and Scheduling

Ease of Use

Documentation

Note Taking

Customization

Integrations

Bugs and Issues

Small Business

Mid-size Business

Large Enterprises

Freelancers

Goldie

Goldie is a comprehensive software designed for salon and beauty professionals. The platform offers appointment scheduling, automated client reminders, and integrated payment processing capabilities to help reduce no-shows and streamline business operations. Beauty professionals can manage their calendars, create branded online booking websites, and track business performance through detailed reports.

Doctoralia for Specialists

Doctoralia Pro provides solutions to manage communication between health centers and patients. It is designed for any type of clinic: therapeutic, pediatric, ophthalmology, dental, fertility, or respiratory. It helps to optimize time and increase revenue.

Zanda is a practice management platform designed to help allied health professionals run clinic operations with calendar management tools, automated appointment reminders, treatment note templates, invoicing, online bookings, 2-way SMS chat, telehealth, secure AI-powered session transcription & more

Appointment Management

Patient Scheduling

Patient Intake

EMR/EHR

Physician Scheduling

The Zanda integrations most frequently cited by reviewers are: Stripe (a payment processing product rated 4.6 out of 5 for its integration with Zanda) and Xero (an accounting product, 4.9).

By industry, Zanda reviewers are most commonly professionals in health, wellness and fitness (44%). The most frequent use case for Zanda cited by reviewers is appointment scheduling (56% of reviewers).

Zanda

Chromebook

Linux

 Health Practice Starter Plan

 Health Practice Growth Plan

 Group Practice Growth Plan

This is despite the error logs of your browser, which you never even knew existed prior to becoming Zanda's trouble shooting staff by proxy (with well under market rate compensation mind you, IE ZERO), showing an issue which a simple Google search demonstrates is on the developer (ie ZANDA's) end, not your computer.

Allied health professional

Wide range of features including integrated telehealth, SMS reminders, customisable forms and note templates, online bookings and client portal.

See above, pretty well sums it up. When the software is working it's fantastic. When it doesn't, it's like pulling teeth to be heard or seen by the developers, while they treat you like a junior staff member in their office because they're too lazy to do anything for themselves.

There's not much left wanting, except the ability to manage and track batch numbers on herbal products.

Practice Manager

When applying a note or comment to an invoice, I do not like that the receiver can not view these. If we have sent an invoice multiple times (we record every time it is sent in this comment section), it would be beneficial if the receiver could see this as well.

Would like the option of phone support rather than only email or chat - you can book a phone session but booked out for weeks so this doesn't work for urgent issues.

Psychologist

The templates are easy to personalise, with fields I can merge into my emails. While I was setting up my business on this platform I was able to have all my questions answered through the chat function or the knowledge base.

Administrative staff

It's has complex interface find it hard at first.

Practice Administrator

There is not a simple way to do things on this app, everything has several ways to do done and is quite confusing.

Chiropractor

I love that I was able to completely customize my notes to how I practice, and there are many more customizable features that I will continue to integrate to make running and managing my chiropractic practice easier and more efficient.

Social Worker

I love that I am able to do everything in one place, it keeps me organized and on track with things that can be overwhelming with business

CBT Therapist

Although I found the learning curb steep at the beginning, I really love PowerDiary and have actually refused becoming an affiliate with various mental health services because I don't want to have to use their system instead of my PowerDiary one.

Speech and Language Therapist

Clinical notes are quick and you can make templates to speed up the admin process.

Founder

Personally don't find much dislike but I have used both desktop and mobile versions and can say that the mobile version lacks most of the amazing features which can be improved.

I wish each invoice could be done individually based on my accounting system

Clinical Psychologist

The letter/report templates don’t autosave and sometimes I have lost work.

It integrates with sms, email, and Telehealth.

Physical Therapist

Having Stripe made transactions very easy once the client's credit card information was entered.

Counselor

The calendar filters are amazing easy to use every new pops up and you only see that day (unless scheduling)

A bit tricky (as a sole trader with a bit of a social life) to use it as a personal diary, to put in the different activities, with whom etc  I just block out those times I need away and hope I remember what they were for

counselor

Not as smooth as the other similar I have for the past.

Counsellor

Zanda has proven to be user friendly, affordable, intuitive and so much better than any expectation had for it.

I like the easy navigation, calendar filters, invoicing

It has met all my needs and the customer service when first starting was so helpful!

FL Administrative

Accessibility to make bookings straight away virtually online

Therapist, Counsellor

We are still under using Power Diary, but it is easy to show others what to do to get started.

Business  Development Admin

Prior to using Power Diary I was using systems that have several disjointed parts that were not necessarily moving together in sync.

Psychotherapist

I use it for scheduling and for EMR and my Telehealth platoform.

Unable to use bulk send emails without a template, emails I send via this are unique everytime.

Nowadays we don't waste our time raising issues for most thingsThe reporting options are weakDoesn't manage "Couples" as a client well - but no competitors do eaither

Some of them seemed to be inconveniently cobbled together. Since using Power Diary, we have not seen the need for a "receptionist" or be stuck to a desk in order to manage the practice.

Therapist

I have found power diary to be really easy and useful to use. If I have ever had a problem, the support team always respond pretty quick.

Using the calendar; all of the hyperlinks to other records; the invoicing.

I don't manage the program but it seems that it is highly customizable, which is not always an option in other EHR systems.

The user interface is intuitive and usable.

Owner and LMHC 

The confidential, secure billing, communication, portal, and private mode are immaculate.

I cant import my reqs into the system to type and text

I have used half a dozen other practice management systems.

Nurse Practitioner 

I love the scheduling, records section, customisable forms, invoicing, simplicity of Medicare, client portal, everything.

Speech Pathologist

PD also have a great range of helpful staff and webinars who assisted me on setting up my practice management from the start.

President

Power Diary offers LOTS for features: built-in CRM for email & SMS marketing, appointment reminders, and client correspondence; HIPAA compliant EMR for SOAP notes; customizable templates for SOAP notes and intake/consent forms; the flexibility to create your own SOAP notes and forms; automatic invoices generated when appointments are created; easy scheduling in-person & online through a client portal; capability of clients to pay in advance when they schedule online; Stripe integration with payment processing; reporting for KPIs to understand practice management; ability to create session packages; ability to create 1-on-1 sessions or group classes

reflexologist

The appointment reminders have proved invaluable and I believe improved no-shows and forgotten appointments.

BestNotes vs Zanda Comparison (2026)

BestNotes

Zanda

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives