The Ultimate Hello Bonsai Review: Pricing, Features, and Resources (2024)
The all-in-one freelance management platform to help you manage every aspect of your freelancing.
If you’re reading this article you probably just landed your first client. You might be thinking, “How do I send over a contract?”, or “How do I send over my first invoice to get paid?”
You discovered Hello Bonsai and now you’re wondering, “Can this Hello Bonsai app help me?”
Here are some questions you might be thinking about:
- Can this app help me efficiently get paid by my clients?
- Can this app help me manage contracts and get them signed?
- Can this app help me land more clients faster?
In this ultimate review, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the Hello Bonsai freelance management app. I’ll breakdown the app’s features from a technical standpoint and how they can help you in your freelancing business.
By the end of this review, your questions should be answered and you’ll know if Hello Bonsai is right for you or not.
The Ultimate Hello Bonsai Review: Pricing, Features, and Resources (2024)
Table Of Contents
- What Is Hello Bonsai?
- Why Do You Need Hello Bonsai?
- Hello Bonsai Features & Benefits
- How Hello Bonsai Helps Gathering Project Requirements & Sending Proposals
- How Hello Bonsai Helps You Send Contracts & Get Them Signed
- How Hello Bonsai Helps You With Timelines & Doing Your Best Work
- How Hello Bonsai Helps You Get Paid with Invoices
- Hello Bonsai Resources & Support For Freelancers
- Pricing: How Much Does Hello Bonsai Cost?
- Conclusion
What Is Hello Bonsai?
Hello Bonsai is a freelancing management app. It offers freelance proposals and contracts. It handles your freelance invoices and payments. It helps you with tracking your expenses. It helps you manage your clients and leads. Also, it’s a project management app and time tracker. Essentially, Hello Bonsai is designed to help you with every aspect of your freelancing.
Why Do You Need Hello Bonsai?
Many of us creative types got into freelancing because we just want to do good work, get paid, and work remotely. But, the reality of freelancing is that it often involves more steps than just doing good work.
Freelancing can be thought of as a lifecycle. The entire freelancing lifecycle can be broken down into 8 discrete steps.
Looking at freelancing from this perspective, doing is the work is only about 12.5% of the entire freelance lifecycle. How exactly do you manage the remaining 87.5%?
Hello Bonsai promises to be that one single app that helps you manage every part of the lifecycle in your freelancing.
Freelancing Without A Freelance Management App like Hello Bonsai
Maybe you have a specific problem that you’re facing in your freelancing right now. Maybe it’s proposals, contracts, invoicing, or something else. What are your options?
Many freelancers before you went with an individual app for each of those. An app for contracts, another for proposals, and something else for invoicing. But, you end up in a situation where you’re gluing all these apps together to manage your business.
Ideally though, you just want to be in one place so that you can focus on one thing: Your Freelancing.
How Hello Bonsai Helps You Manage Your Freelancing
Ideally, the part of the freelancing lifecycle you want to focus on is “Timelines & Doing The Work”.
And that’s the big promise of an app like Hello Bonsai. It’ll help you cut down the amount of apps you’re using to manage everything. Hello Bonsai helps you manage every part of the freelancing lifecycle with just one app.
It simplifies the business aspects of freelancing so you can focus on doing great work.
Hello Bonsai Features & Benefits
Hello Bonsai’s freelance management app has features like invoicing, proposals, contracts, expenses tracking, portfolio creation, contact forms, and more…
In this ultimate review, I’ll explore every feature and benefit that Hello Bonsai has. I’ll show you how the app is designed to help you focus only on doing good freelance work.
Let’s jump right into the technical specifics of the app. We’ll start from the top of the freelance lifecycle and how each Hello Bonsai feature helps you in that area.
Create Portfolio, Contact Forms, and Manage Your Clients
The first two parts of the freelance lifecycle is finding clients and pitching clients. Hello Bonsai has a few features to help you right from the start when looking for and pitching clients.
Let’s review those now…
Create A Personal Portfolio Page
Yes, Hello Bonsai can help you set up your own mini portfolio site that you get a link to.
Many freelancers don’t know how important it is to have a singular location where clients can see what you’ve accomplished quickly. Now instead of using time to create another portfolio page or going with another landing page app you can just use Hello Bonsai. It gives you the ability to link up your GitHub, LinkedIn, Dribbble, and anything else that you might need.
To access this first click on the Clients link in your dashboard. Next click on Public Profile from the list at the top.
Create Forms So Clients Can Contact You
How are you capturing inbound freelance leads that come to you? Do you have a form on your website? Do you let clients email you?
Another feature that Hello Bonsai provides that’s closely related to the portfolio is a contact form. Potential clients can use this contact form to reach out to you regarding a gig. You’re able to customize the contact form however you feel looks best. Also, the button on your Hello Bonsai-provided portfolio links to this contact form when clients click the Reach Out button.
To access this part of the app just click on on the Contact Form button right beside the Portfolio button.
Manage All Of Your Clients From Directly Within The App
Professional freelancers use a Client Relationship Manager (CRM) to manage all the clients they interact with for potential jobs.
Hello Bonsai offers you a CRM to help you manage all the clients you interact with for potential jobs. A CRM is a way to manage your relationships with clients and potential clients.
Hello Bonsai’s CRM is hooked up to the contact form that they provide for you. When someone reaches out to you via the form, they’ll be tagged as a lead. You’ll be able to quickly see who you’ve worked with before, who you’re currently working with, and who’s a new lead. You can also add clients in manually using the provided form.
How Hello Bonsai Helps Gathering Project Requirements & Send Proposals
Okay, so now you have a client in the pipeline. You’ve pitched them and they’re ready to work with you. The next step is summarizing all the project’s requirements, setting up a pricing structure, and writing all of that into a proposal. Let’s dive into all the ways that Hello Bonsai helps you write freelance proposals quickly.
Ready-To-Go Interactive Proposal Templates With Hello Bonsai
Hello Bonsai has ready-to-go templates for you to use. They have 6 different templates depending on if you’re a freelance writer, web developer, designer, or a graphic designer. If none of those fit your needs there’s also a generic option for you to start from scratch.
You can quickly get set up with the provided proposal template, tweak it with your specific content, and then hit send.
Send your Proposal To The Client in 3 Different Ways
After you’re done creating and editing your proposal you can send it with a link, email it yourself, or generate a PDF and send that over to the client.
It’s important to have this flexibility, because clients have different ways they like to receive documents. Also, if you let Bonsai send that email out for you, you can customize the messaging that will be sent.
Setup Multiple Pricing Models In Your Proposals
Now, these proposals are also interactive. You can add multiple pricing models for your business depending on what suites the client best. They can choose from that. And here’s what’s neat about that. They automatically get an invoice created for them based on what they chose. There’s no more back and forth between you and the client now. All of that is handled automatically for you by Bonsai.
Edit Your Proposals And Send Them Again
After you write these proposals they’re not set in stone. Sometimes clients get back and want things tweaked a little bit and that’s normal. With Hello Bonsai, you can quickly edit what it is that you’re writing, make some tweaks, and send it back over to the client.
How Hello Bonsai Helps You Send Contracts & Get Them Signed
Sometimes freelancers jump into working with clients without a formal agreement in place. A freelance contract agreement solidifies the conversations that often take place over long email threads or phone and removes any doubt, ambiguity or confusion. Usually, you’d go out there and get a separate app to help you with these documents. That’s a separate monthly fee. Or, you look for a free contract template posted somewhere and hope that it’s verified.
Hello Bonsai makes it easy for you to send a contract to the client to make sure you’re protected legally.
Contract Templates With Hello Bonsai
Just like proposals, they offer similar web design / web development / writer templates that you can choose from. All you have to do is fill in the blank and send it over to your client. They ask you questions in the UI and then everything gets filled in for you and created automatically.
Contracts that are verified by lawyers
Hello Bonsai sets you up with verified-by-lawyer contracts that you can send to your clients. Also, these contracts are verified by contract lawyers and thousands of freelancers who have used them before you.
Contracts that work internationally
These contracts aren’t just optimized for the USA and Canada. If you’re not from those countries, then Hello Bonsai still has your back with International Contracts. They recommend that you still check with a local lawyer either way. Also remember that they’re an app that helps you with this. If you’re truly concerned about the legalities of everything with your client, just reach out to a contract lawyer near you.
Accept e-Signatures on your contracts
The contacts generated for you by Hello Bonsai accept e-Signatures. You sign it on your end and then the client can sign it with theirs as well.
If your client prefers to sign using a physical pen that can be done too. Just save the contract as a PDF and send it over to them so they can print it, sign it, and then send it back over to you.
You’re taken care of no matter how the client wants to take care of their contract signing.
How Bonsai Helps You With Timelines & Doing The Work
This is the part that most of us freelancers wish we could ONLY focus on. This is where we WANT to spend time, not something that’s necessary like the other parts. Even on the funnest part of the freelancing lifecycle, Hello Bonsai still has your back with a built-in project management application.
Built In Project Management
Whether it’s for ourselves or for the client’s sake, it’s important to track what we’re working on. Usually, you’d have to spin up and potentially pay for a separate app like Asana, Trello, or Basecamp to manage your tasks for a particular freelance project. But with Hello Bonsai, you can do it right inside of the app.
A Built In Time Tracker
Also, there’s time tracking built right in the app. Once again, sometimes this is a separate app. You might have to download Toggl, or use RescueTime or some other app like that. With Hello Bonsai you can start a global timer, or go into the “Tasks” section to start a timer specific to the task you’re working on. Now you’re able to track your entire freelance project, its objectives, and tasks right from the same app that you’re using to track leads, send proposals, send contracts, and get paid.
How Hello Bonsai Helps You Get Paid With Invoices
Let’s talk about money. Arguably, one of the most important parts of being a freelancer. According to Hello Bonsai’s website, freelancers using the app get paid on average 13 days faster.
Get Paid in 3 different ways
First, Bonsai provides you with 3 different ways to get money from your client’s bank account into yours. You can connect your bank account, your Stripe account, your PayPal account.
Automatic Invoice Generation and Sending
Another way they help you get paid faster is just by automatically setting things up. For example, once a client accepts a proposal Hello Bonsai can automatically create an Invoice for you and send it to the client.
Invoice Reminders
You can also send over reminders. This is useful if you’re asking the client for a late payment. Or, if the invoice hasn’t been paid yet just hit the reminder button and Hello Bonsai gives you the option to customize your messaging in the email.
All of these features come together to help you get paid, faster.
Hello Bonsai’s Resources For Freelancers
Let’s forget about the fact that Bonsai replaces about 10 apps for you. Even if all Hello Bonsai did was replace apps it would be more than worth the monthly price they task for. But they also throw in a bunch of free tools, calculators, e-books, and guides:
Here’s something else that’s important when it comes to your freelancing: Having a supportive and helpful community there to support you when you need it. Here’s how Hello Bonsai provides that to you.
Help Center Articles
Bonsai has over 136 articles written up on their help page to help you get up and running with the application quickly. If you’re having trouble with something specific I’d type “site:help.hellobonsai.com <your issue>” into Google first to see if it shows up. It most likely will.
Hello Bonsai’s Chat-based Support
But even if all those articles don’t help you with your specific issue, they offer Chat-based Support. This works if you’re on a paid plan. From what I can tell the response times are within a day. Also, they’re available Monday — Friday during American Timezone hours.
Mac OS X, iOS Apps, and Android Apps
Hello Bonsai provides both an iPhone App and an Android app so that you get access to all of your data on the go. Also, there’s a Mac OS X app as well that’s primarily used for tracking time. It’s up there in your tool bar and useful if you don’t want to keep hello bonsai open on a Chrome tab all day.
Email Notifications & Reminders
When you’re working with all of these apps and trying to glue them together, how are they possibly going to make life easier for you rather than harder? When you’re working a client and you’re in the trenches banging out great work you sometimes forget about other stuff. You forget to hit send on the proposal or bill for that invoice. And then 30 days later you’re like, “Hey where my money?”
Hello Bonsai offers you reminders for just about every feature on their app. When a new client comes in, notification. When you send a proposal, the client gets a notification. When they accept your proposal, you get notified. Everything is there for you in your inbox so you’re not constantly having to check the app over and over again.
These email reminders keep you updated with what’s going in with your account. Contracts that haven’t been signed yet, invoices that have yet to be paid, or when a new lead has filled out your form. You’re going to get notified of that immediately in your inbox.
This is a part of how the freelancers using their platform end up getting paid faster. With all the reminder emails that you and your client is getting you’re saving days of back and forth between email.
Zapier Integration
Yep, there’s a Zapier integration for you. If you don’t know what Zapier is yet, it’s an automation platform that helps you connect two or more apps together. Here are some of the triggers that are available for you. Invoice Paid, Proposal Viewed, Contract Viewed, and Proposal Accepted.
There’s a lot of possibility with with what you an do. For example when the invoice was paid automatically send a thank you email to your client. If the proposal was viewed, then wait 3 days if it still hasn’t been paid, and send a follow up email automatically.
There’s so much here that you can do that can make your life easier with Zapier and Hello Bonsai.
Pricing: How Much Does Hello Bonsai Cost?
Hello Bonai includes three plans, Starter, Professional, and Business. The Starter plan is $21 USD a month (if paid annually) and includes everything that we talked about above. The Professional and Business plans include everything in the Starter plan and adds nifty features like white labeling, client portals, and subcontractor management. So, if your business grows into requiring these additional features, you can upgrade your plan within Hello Bonsai and not have to migrate your data to another service.
Pricing compared to other apps.
Hello Bonsai helps you replace a lot of other apps, so if you really want to compare them to other individual apps like Toggl, Asana, or Basecamp then it’s obvious how low it is.
Hello Bonsai isn’t the only other player on the block though. There’s also Fiverr Workspace, which offers similar features and benefits to Hello Bonsai. Fiver Workspace starts at $24 USD per month for a PRO plan. They don’t have anything cheaper.
Even just subscribing to a timer app and an invoicing app is probably going to cost you $20 USD per month or more. With Hello Bonsai you get that and much more for cheaper.
Hello Bonsai: The Verdict
Hello Bonsai is an all-in-one freelance management app designed to help you with all aspects of your freelancing. It helps you create a portfolio, capture client leads, get paid, send legal contracts, and more…
Each Hello Bonsai feature is potentially a separate app and a separate monthly fee. This is the app for you if you’re looking for a single app that streamlines everything into one single package.
This article uses affiliate links from Hello Bonsai at no extra cost to you.
