TaxDome is an all-in-one practice solution for tax and accounting firms. So is Canopy Tax. Because of that, we are often asked ‘How does TaxDome compare with Canopy?’
This post is not your traditional feature vs feature type of comparison (although we will get that out of the way too). Rather, the goal here is to provide an insight into the philosophy behind each product and what makes them different.
Features
Created for Tax & Accounting Industry
Unlimited Clients, Storage, Projects
Unlimited E-signatures and KBA
Automated Actions & Workflow
Unlimited Contacts CRM
Secure Document Storage
Choose your own domain name
QuickBooks Online Sync
Bulk Mail
Zapier Integration
Calendar Sync
The two companies are actually pretty close in their product vision — they both aim to be an all-in-one tool for managing tax and accounting firms. That makes them distinct from most other firms in the practice management space that focus on one particular area of operations (such as workflow or billing). You could say they’re playing in the same league. Kind of like the New York Knicks and Utah Jazz — same sport, different teams.
The main difference between them comes down to company focus and pricing.
Canopy Tax has 158 reviews on Capterra with an average score of 4.5/5.
TaxDome has over 2,700 reviews on Capterra with an average score of 4.7/5.
TaxDome offers two pricing plans — NZ$600 per year per user for growing firms and NZ$300 per year for solopreneurs with unlimited storage, clients, e-signatures and free training.
The company philosophy is that its pricing model should be as simple and transparent as possible and once you are their client, you are never asked to pay extra. There are no price tiers or ‘usage counters’ - once you are paying for the service, it’s all included.
The reason is simple — the only costs for a software company are writing the software and marketing it. It costs them zero to offer a feature to a client after it’s already added to the product. Therefore they aim to make the product fairly priced and increase revenue by getting more firms on their platform.
Canopy Tax follows a ‘tiered plans’ model that splits its features across a number of plans. The more features you use — the more you pay. Bear in mind that pricing is always changing. The Practice Management started at NZ$800 per user in 2017, rising to NZ$1,000 in 2019.
In 2020, Canopy changed the pricing model and started charging by the number of CRM contacts. Assuming a firm with 4 members (1,000 contacts) your firm would pay:
For a total NZ$7,012 or NZ$3,628 per firm user.
In short, the basic pricing difference between Canopy and TaxDome comes down to:
TaxDome was built from day one with one product vision — practice management. This was the only product the company has been working on from its inception.
Canopy Tax was initially launched as a Tax Resolution tool. Then it was expanded to include tax practice management. Then they made a major effort to move into tax preparation. Unfortunately that didn’t work out, which caused the company to lay off half of its staff in late 2019 and bring the focus back to the practice management.
Canopy Tax has an extensive salesforce. While it’s possible to sign up for a trial account online, you would need to speak to an account manager on the phone to upgrade to a paid plan or to cancel the subscription.
TaxDome does not require you to talk to a salesperson because there are none. You can attend a daily 2pm demo or watch the recorded version. You can sign up for a fully functioning trial right on the website as well as do all account management, without calling anyone.
Both companies offer free online and phone support as well as account managers who will help you make the most of each product.
TaxDome also offers free, unlimited white-glove onboarding, that includes screen-sharing sessions аnd help with transitioning and setting up your firm in TaxDome.
Canopy Tax charges a NZ$199 ‘implementation fee’.
Great question.
Yes — if you have an existing account with Canopy Tax, we have multiple import tools that allow you to bring your firm over to TaxDome quickly and easily.