Atlacare vs Cliniko: Which Is Right for Your UK Physio Practice?

Cliniko is one of the most established names in allied health practice management: a well-liked, mature product built in Australia. Atlacare is newer, built in the UK and EU for solo practitioners and small clinics.

This comparison won't pretend Atlacare wins on everything. It doesn't. But there are real differences worth understanding before you decide.

Pricing

Cliniko's paid plans start from roughly £37 a month (checked against cliniko.com/pricing in July 2026), charged in your local currency. There is no free plan.

Atlacare's paid plans are set and billed in pounds, and paying annually gets you two months free. Current prices are on the pricing page. There's also a Free plan with no card and no time limit, covering your first 20 patients.

For a solo physiotherapist, Atlacare is cheaper. For a small team, compare carefully based on your actual practitioner count.

Where your data lives

Cliniko lets you choose a hosting region, and its public documentation lists an EU option.

Atlacare stores all data in EU-region infrastructure on every plan, so residency is not something you have to request or think about. UK and EU GDPR tooling is part of the core product rather than a policy document: consent capture, country-aware retention, audit logging, data export and right-to-erasure handling.

Clinical notes and setup

Cliniko gives you SOAP-style templates and a flexible template builder. You can add sections, paragraph fields, multiple choice questions, body charts, whatever structure suits your clinical style. Some practices need that level of control.

The cost of flexibility is setup time. Someone has to decide what fields belong in each section and shape the template before it fits the way you work.

Atlacare ships with SOAP, DAP, BIRP and ADIME note shells pre-configured across 17 professions. Physiotherapists get SOAP by default, psychologists and counsellors get DAP, dietitians get ADIME, and body charts and pain scores are there for the professions that use them. You open the app and write your first note.

How quickly can you actually use it?

This tends to be underweighted in most comparisons, which is odd because it's often what practitioners notice first.

A lot of practice management software was built to be comprehensive and then adapted to be usable. Cliniko is better than most at this, but configurable software requires configuration. There's always another setting.

Atlacare is designed to be ready on day one. Online booking, note shells and patient records are all set up without a configuration phase. If you want to spend your time on patients rather than software, that gap is real.

Patient-facing features

Both products include an online booking page and a patient portal.

Atlacare's portal is included from the Solo plan upward. Patients receive a magic link, log in, and can view their clinical notes (anything you mark as patient-visible), invoices, forms, exercises and upcoming appointments. No app to download.

Telehealth

Cliniko's telehealth is built, working and included on its plans.

Atlacare's video consultations are not live yet. If video is central to your practice right now rather than something you plan to add, Cliniko is ahead on this.

Reminders

Atlacare sends email appointment reminders on every plan. SMS reminders are priced pay-as-you-go at 5p each on Solo, with an allowance included on Clinic (150 a month) and Practice (300 a month).

Cliniko includes email reminders, with SMS charged per message on top.

Switching

Atlacare imports patients, contact details and history from a standard Cliniko export and matches them to your practitioners. Nothing is deleted from Cliniko in the process, so you can move across at your own pace.

Scale and ecosystem

Cliniko has years of reviews, integrations and community resources behind it. If that matters to you, it has more.

Atlacare is newer and has a smaller ecosystem. That's the straightforward trade-off between a mature product and one built for the UK and EU market from scratch.

Which one suits you

Cliniko makes more sense if you run a larger multi-practitioner clinic, want full control over how your note templates are structured, or use telehealth regularly today.

Atlacare makes more sense if you're a solo practitioner or small clinic who wants to be running on day one, wants pricing in pounds and EU-region data by default, or wants pre-built clinical note shells and a patient portal ready to go.

For the side-by-side table, see Atlacare vs Cliniko.