RunwayDue vs Dubsado

Pick Dubsado if you want the client side of your business to run itself. On its Premier plan a lead fills in a form on your website and books a call, then picks a package, signs and pays through one link, and a flow sends the welcome questionnaire as soon as the contract comes back. RunwayDue does none of that: it has no workflow builder, no scheduler, no client portal, and no way for a client to pay inside the product.

RunwayDue is the Dubsado alternative to pick if the question that keeps you up is what the next six months of income look like, and you want the books under the invoices rather than in another app, for about half of what Dubsado's cheaper plan costs. Revenue that arrives in lumps is the shape it was built for.

That is the whole comparison. The rest is why.

At a glance

Prices and plan details from each company's own pages, checked 25 September 2026.

Who each one is built for

Dubsado describes itself as client management for service businesses, creative ones above all: photographers, planners, designers, coaches, virtual assistants, from a solo owner to a team of about ten. Its job is the client experience from first enquiry to final payment, under your brand, and it has been doing it since 2015.

RunwayDue is a deal-to-cash tool with books, for a services business whose revenue is lumpy. A proposal becomes a signed contract, the contract holds a dated schedule of what is owed, you bill each instalment as an invoice when it falls due, and the payments you record land in a set of books. It launched in August 2026.

They overlap in the middle and part ways at both ends. Dubsado goes further towards the client; RunwayDue goes further towards the money.

Dubsado's automation is the real difference, and it wins

Dubsado's help centre says the biggest difference between its two plans "comes down to automation", with Premier adding the scheduler and Flows. Nothing in RunwayDue compares with Flows. Each step pairs one of 15 actions (send an email, form, contract, scheduler or invoice; create a task; change a project's status; give the client portal access; start another flow) with a trigger such as a form submitted, a contract signed, an instalment paid or an appointment booked. Any step that sends something can wait for your approval.

The branching happens at the front door: a lead capture form can let the lead pick a service, and that choice decides which flow starts. Inside one flow, steps fire on their own triggers or wait for the ones before them, and Dubsado's help centre says chained holds make an AND, not an either/or. Flows, the scheduler, public proposals and more than one active lead capture form all need Premier.

Around the flows sit tools RunwayDue does not have: a scheduler that syncs your calendar, adds Zoom, Google Meet or Teams links and can take payment to book; questionnaires; and a client portal, which you can put behind a password.

RunwayDue's automation is a short fixed list: reminders on sent invoices and on unsigned PDF signature requests, recurring invoices that raise themselves, and a contract or proposal that changes status when its signature request completes. Invoice reminders are off until you switch them on, and accepting a proposal does not create the contract. Clients never log in; each document has its own private link.

If most of your week is onboarding, that decides it, for Dubsado.

The proposal: Dubsado closes the sale, RunwayDue counts it

A Dubsado proposal is the checkout. The client picks one package or several, adds extras, signs the attached contract, and pays an invoice built from their choices, on a payment plan if you set one. As a public proposal on Premier it can sit on your website or behind a shared link, and each submission creates the project and the contact by itself. RunwayDue cannot do this: optional items are shown to the client but cannot be selected, and accepting takes no deposit.

A RunwayDue proposal is built to be counted. It carries a win probability and an expected close date, so it sits in your forecast as weighted pipeline from the day you send it. The client accepts with their name and a click, not a signature. You then convert it, choosing the billing type, start date and term, into a draft contract with its own billing schedule whose instalments add up exactly to the proposal's subtotal.

After the signature: a payment plan, or a schedule

Both split a project's price into dated instalments. They put the split in different places, and for lumpy revenue that is what matters.

In Dubsado the split lives on the invoice. A payment plan divides one invoice into dated instalments, the client can save a payment method so each is charged automatically, and reminders go out on their own. For getting paid, that is excellent. Its finance reports, as its help centre describes them, show revenue, expenses and net profit for a period, plus one "amount remaining" across every open invoice, whatever its date.

In RunwayDue the split lives on the contract. A signed contract holds a billing schedule, one row per expected billing: monthly, quarterly, one-off, or milestones you type in. Those rows are committed money not yet billed. The dashboard keeps four layers apart (collected, outstanding, committed and weighted pipeline), never adds them into one figure, and its six-month forecast puts each committed row in the month it falls due. A "Bill it" button on each row opens an invoice prefilled with that row's amount, which a person saves and sends; nothing bills itself. The case for never adding the layers together is in forecasting revenue in four layers of certainty.

The trade is plain. With autopay on a payment plan, Dubsado charges instalment four on its due date without you touching it. RunwayDue will tell you in March that August is thin, and will not collect anything.

Signing: both do it, in different shapes

Dubsado includes e-signature on both plans. A contract is a form built from a template you save per service, with signature, initial and countersignature fields. Each project has one contract, signed by the project's primary contact, and any number of sub-agreements for anyone else who needs to sign. Templates are where Dubsado is plainly ahead: RunwayDue has one starting agreement with 11 merge fields and nowhere to save a second.

RunwayDue sends a PDF to several signers, each on a private link, and appends a certificate of completion with consent times, network addresses and the original file's SHA-256; an agreement written in its editor can instead be signed on a share link, with no certificate. Neither is a certificate-based digital signature, and nothing checks a signer's identity beyond the link, apart from an optional access code on PDF signature requests on Business. The certificate's full contents are on RunwayDue's e-signature page.

What the plans cost for this job

Dubsado says its current prices are the rates for new subscribers from 1 December 2025, and that earlier subscribers keep their previous prices. Its team fee, checked 25 September 2026, is a flat monthly total by team size: both plans include the owner and up to three team members; with four to ten team members the fee is $25 a month in all, with 11 to 20 it is $45 and with 21 to 30 it is $60, and past 30 Dubsado asks you to get in touch. Each extra workspace, which is what Dubsado 3.0 calls an extra brand, is $10 a month, billed monthly even on a yearly plan.

The structural point, which will outlive the numbers: flows, the scheduler, public proposals, unlimited lead capture forms, the time tracker, Zapier and the QuickBooks and Xero sync are all Premier. If automation is why you are shopping, Premier is the plan you are buying.

RunwayDue's own prices, checked the same day: Pro is $17 a month for 2 people and Business $60 for 10, or $15 and $50 a month billed yearly, and each extra person is $6 a month on either.

Dubsado's team fee moves in flat steps while RunwayDue charges $6 a head, so the gap does not close in a straight line. On monthly billing, the way Dubsado states its team fee, one or two people pay $17 on Pro against $35 on Starter and $55 on Premier, and four people pay $29 on Pro against $35 on Starter. At ten people Starter with its team fee and RunwayDue Business both come to $60. At eleven, Starter ($60) costs less than Business plus one person ($66). From fourteen people Starter costs less at every size Dubsado publishes a price for, up to 31, and from seventeen Premier does too. Dubsado's help centre states the team fee as a monthly amount and does not say whether it changes on yearly billing; if it does not, yearly prices cross at the same team sizes.

What happens in a quiet quarter

For income that comes in lumps this may be the question that matters most, because the quiet quarter is when subscriptions get cut. The wider checklist is what to ask any vendor about the day you stop paying.

Dubsado's cancellation policy says a subscription renews automatically until you cancel it, and that a cancelled workspace keeps working to the end of the billing cycle and then deactivates. Its help centre says what changes then: you cannot add contacts or create projects, team members lose access, lead capture forms, public proposals and schedulers stop taking submissions, and email and calendar connections drop 30 days later. After 90 days Dubsado may delete the data, which cannot then be recovered, and the policy says it will email you first. None of these pages says whether clients can still pay or sign what you had already sent them.

RunwayDue drops to the Free plan when the paid period ends, and nothing is deleted. Every invoice, proposal, contract and signed PDF still opens, can still be sent, and can still be paid against, and the bills and expenses you recorded stay readable. What changes is what you can start: Free's caps apply to new work, there are no new expenses or bills and no reports, reminders stop, recurring schedules raise nothing, and self-service export stops, though your data is sent on request. Nothing you made is removed unless you delete it yourself.

When Dubsado is the better choice

Pick Dubsado if onboarding is the work. Flows, questionnaires, lead capture forms, a scheduler and a client portal, working together. RunwayDue has none of them.

Pick Dubsado if clients should pay inside the product. Dubsado Payments runs on Stripe and takes cards, ACH, buy-now-pay-later and Tap to Pay in person; PayPal and Square connect too, and autopay charges each instalment. RunwayDue processes no payments; you record each one by hand.

Pick Dubsado if your accountant lives in QuickBooks or Xero. Premier syncs to both, and its Zapier integration connects thousands of other apps. RunwayDue has no integrations, no public API, no import and no bank feeds.

Pick Dubsado if you work from your phone, bill by the hour, or run several brands. It has iOS and Android apps, a time tracker that bills to invoices on Premier, and a separate workspace for each brand under one login. RunwayDue has no mobile app and no time tracking.

Pick Dubsado if you have a long client list or a team past ten. Clients are unlimited against RunwayDue's 25 on Pro and 500 on Business, and on monthly billing Dubsado Starter costs less than RunwayDue at most team sizes from eleven to 31 people.

Pick Dubsado if you want a track record. It has been running since 2015. RunwayDue launched in August 2026 and runs as one process on SQLite.

The honest summary

Dubsado is the better product for the front of the job and for collecting the money: capturing the lead, booking the call, closing on a proposal the client signs and pays in one link, and charging each instalment on its day.

RunwayDue is the better product for what comes after the signature: knowing what is signed but not yet billed, when it falls due and whether next quarter is covered, with bills, expenses and a balance sheet beside the invoices, a free plan, and nothing deleted when you stop paying. For one or two people it costs about half of Dubsado Starter, and it cannot collect a cent.

If your bottleneck is onboarding, buy Dubsado. If it is knowing whether August is covered, RunwayDue is the alternative built for that job. If HoneyBook is your other candidate for booking clients and taking their money, RunwayDue's HoneyBook comparison covers HoneyBook's card fees and its pick, sign and pay file. If you work alone or with two or three people and bill by the hour, RunwayDue's Bonsai comparison weighs per-person pricing, time tracking and templates.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a cheaper alternative to Dubsado?

For one person, RunwayDue Pro is $180 a year against $335 for Dubsado Starter and $525 for Premier, all checked 25 September 2026, and RunwayDue has a free plan where Dubsado has only a trial. It costs less because it does a different job. It has no workflow builder, scheduler, client portal, lead capture forms or payment processing, and it adds a forecast of signed revenue and a set of books.

Does Dubsado have a free plan?

No. Dubsado has two paid plans and a 21-day free trial of Premier with no card, which you can extend once by seven days (checked 25 September 2026). When a trial ends without a subscription, clients can no longer pay, sign or submit forms, though your data stays and can be exported. RunwayDue's Free plan has no time limit: 3 clients, 5 invoices and 3 proposals or contracts a month.

How much does Dubsado cost per month?

Checked 25 September 2026: Starter is $35 a month, or $335 a year; Premier is $55 a month, or $525 a year, at the rates Dubsado set for new subscribers from 1 December 2025. Both include the owner and up to three team members; with four to ten team members the fee is $25 a month in all, and each extra workspace for another brand is $10 a month, billed monthly even on a yearly plan. Flows, the scheduler, public proposals, Zapier and the QuickBooks and Xero sync need Premier.

How do I export my data from Dubsado?

Dubsado's help centre, checked 25 September 2026, says an expired trial account can still log in and export its projects, clients, transactions and invoices. Export before a paid account lapses: when a subscription ends, by cancelling or by a failed card charge, the account deactivates, and Dubsado may delete its data 90 days later, after which it cannot be recovered. Its cancellation and deactivation pages do not say what a deactivated account can still export. RunwayDue has no import, so clients, open invoices and live contracts are entered by hand; a contract signed in Dubsado can be uploaded as a PDF with its billing terms, starting from the first instalment you have not yet billed, marked as sent without emailing and then as signed, which uses one of the month's documents and puts those instalments in the forecast.

Which Dubsado plan includes workflows?

Premier. Dubsado's help centre, checked 25 September 2026, puts Flows, the scheduler, public proposals and more than one active lead capture form on Premier, and says moving down to Starter pauses every flow. Starter keeps payment plans with automatic reminders and autopay, and recurring invoices with autopay. RunwayDue has no workflow builder at all: on Pro and Business it sends fixed reminders on sent invoices and unsigned PDF signature requests, and raises recurring invoices.

What payment methods does Dubsado accept?

Checked 25 September 2026: through Dubsado Payments, which runs on Stripe, clients can pay by credit or debit card, by ACH bank transfer in the US and Canada, with Affirm or Klarna buy-now-pay-later, or in person with Tap to Pay on your phone. PayPal and Square connect directly, and a client can save a payment method so each payment-plan instalment or recurring invoice is charged automatically. Dubsado Payments, PayPal, Square and autopay are on both plans. RunwayDue processes no payments: its invoice shows your bank details and, if you add one, a Pay now button to your own processor's payment link, and you record the payment by hand.

Can Dubsado replace QuickBooks?

Not on its own, by Dubsado's account. Its help centre, checked 25 September 2026, says the built-in bookkeeping has no accounts payable, no bank reconciliation and no double-entry ledger, and points businesses with more complex needs to its QuickBooks Online or Xero sync, which needs Premier. RunwayDue's books go further on their own: vendors and bills, expenses with receipts, profit and loss on a cash or accrual basis, cash flow, a balance sheet and aged debt, on Pro. They stop short of a general ledger with journals and have no bank feeds, so an accountant who posts journals will want a full ledger beside either.