The whole stack:

• Registration with your regulatory body

• Professional liability insurance

• One records subscription, on its lowest tier

• A domain and a mailbox on it

• Blocked outbound caller ID on the phone you already own, and no published phone number

• One directory profile

• A payment method that issues a proper receipt

• Practising under your own name

That is a complete, defensible solo practice. The recurring cost is registration, insurance, one software subscription, a mailbox, and a percentage of what you bill. Nothing on that list is a corner cut. It is what a practice with one clinician and no staff actually requires, and the reason it looks sparse is that most of what gets sold to new practitioners is sold for a practice that has staff.

Cheap is a legitimate requirement here, not a failure of ambition. Practitioners say plainly that they cannot afford a second line on their phone plan, or cannot sustain the platform they are on. Designing around that is the sensible response.

Which corners can I actually cut?

A website. A directory profile will find clients faster than a site nobody has a reason to visit. Build one when you have something to say the profile cannot hold.

A business name. Practising under your own name costs nothing and, in a referral-driven practice, is arguably better — yours is the name people repeat.

An office. Virtual-first is an ordinary way to start, and it removes the single largest fixed cost in a first year.

A published phone number. Blocking your outgoing caller ID is free and keeps your personal number off client phones when you call out. Clients reach you by email or a booking link. Real practitioners run this deliberately, and the Canadian setup advice that circulates among therapists names it as a legitimate first step — block outbound, then decide separately whether an incoming business line is worth it.

A fax number. Get one the day a referral source asks.

Separate scheduling, forms and video tools. Whatever your records software includes on its lowest tier is enough at a small caseload.

Which corners can't I cut?

Registration and insurance. Not a place to shop on price and not a place to wait.

Records. Notes need somewhere secure, backed up and exportable. Documents on a laptop is not a records system, and the cost of fixing that later — after two years of clients — is enormous compared to a basic subscription now.

A work email you control. A mailbox on your own domain costs very little and means the address on five years of consent forms never has to change.

A consent form. Free to write, and it covers the fee, confidentiality and how you communicate between sessions.

A truthful statement of when you reply. Free. Skipping it is what turns a cheap setup into an unresponsive one.

What does "no phone number" actually cost me?

The callers who will phone but will not type, and there are more of them than therapists tend to assume.

Be honest with yourself about which practice you are running. If your referrals come from a colleague, a physician's office or a directory whose messaging people use, no published number costs you almost nothing. If your clients are older, less comfortable online, or in crisis when they first reach out, the phone is doing more work than you think.

The mid-price answer, if you decide you need one: a second line from your mobile carrier on the phone you already own. It is a real number on a real network, it costs less than most software, and there is nothing to go wrong that your carrier cannot fix. Say plainly that it will not answer for you and will not text you a transcript — it is a phone line, and that is all it is.

Buy more than that only when the problem you have is not "I need a number" but "I need something to happen while I am in session."

What's the first thing to add when there's money?

In this order:

1. A way to be reached that answers when you can't — because the most expensive thing in a cheap practice is the inquiry nobody returned.

2. A bookkeeper or an accountant, once the tax question gets interesting.

3. Consultation or supervision beyond whatever you are required to have.

4. Everything else.

Note what is not near the top: a website redesign, a logo, a fancier software tier. Those feel like investments and behave like expenses.

How do I keep it cheap as it grows?

Re-run the audit once a year: list every recurring charge, write the job it does beside it, and look for any job with two names against it. Video and forms are the usual duplicates. Check the tier you are on, because signup-day choices persist for years.

And prefer monthly billing and exportable data over annual discounts. The saving on an annual plan is real; so is the cost of being stuck in a tool for eleven more months after you have outgrown it.

The short version

Registration, insurance, one records subscription, a domain and mailbox, blocked outbound caller ID, a directory profile, and your own name. That is a real practice. Everything else waits for a specific problem that has happened twice — and the first one that will justify spending is almost always the call you could not answer.

About Rivet

Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.

One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.

See what's included · Start the trial