Cliniko vs Jane vs Zanda for UK Physios: An Honest Comparison (and Where Capra Fits)

Most UK physiotherapy clinics shortlist the same three names: Cliniko, the incumbent; Jane, the Canadian platform growing here fast; and Zanda, the renamed Power Diary from Australia. All three are capable, all three have clinics who love them, and each has a specific set of things UK physios complain about in reviews. This post lays those out honestly, row by row, and says where Capra fits beside them; the Capra vs Cliniko page goes deeper on the incumbent.

A note on sources: the complaints below are paraphrased from public reviews and the vendors' own sites, with links at the end. Where we could not verify a detail, the table says "check with vendor" rather than guessing.

The three in one paragraph each

Cliniko is the default in UK private MSK. Reviews praise its simplicity, its reliability and the speed of its email replies. The reasons clinics give for leaving are consistent: patients cannot cancel or rebook themselves, support is email only, there is no WhatsApp, packages and memberships are missing, reporting is thin and the data export needs a support request.

Jane is well liked for ease of use and for phone support that practitioners can actually reach. The reasons they give for moving on are specific: charting slows down on high-volume days, new patients must create a full profile before booking, the booking page lives on Jane's domain rather than the clinic's site, care plans and re-exam alerts are missing, and a group with several clinics ends up with several accounts.

Zanda is Power Diary under a new name, built in Australia, with a client portal, calendar management, reporting and a partner directory running to hundreds of entries. Its own site concentrates its profession pages on psychology, counselling, social work and therapy, which tells you where its roadmap leans. We found fewer UK physio reviews to draw on, so the table marks more of its cells as things to check.

The comparison

What UK physios ask for	Cliniko	Jane	Zanda	Capra
Online booking without a patient account	Yes	Full profile first (reviews)	Check with vendor	Yes
Self-serve cancel and rebook from the reminder	Cancel from a link; rebook is a new booking	From the patient account	Check with vendor	Yes
WhatsApp on the clinic number	No	No	Check with vendor	Yes
Two-way SMS conversations	Reply to confirm only	Text reminders	Check with vendor	Yes
Notes, templates and body charts	Yes	Yes; slower on busy days (reviews)	Yes	Yes
Packages and memberships	Missing (reviews)	Packages	Check with vendor	Yes
Multi-location in one account	Yes	Several accounts (reviews)	Check with vendor	Yes
Reporting owners can act on	Thin (reviews)	Reports	Reporting feature	Diary use, rebooking, DNAs
Integrations	Self-serve app directory; accounting one-way (reviews)	Directory	Partner directory	Built for you during onboarding
Support channel and hours	Email only, fast	Phone, Canadian hours	Check UK-hours coverage	Human, UK and UAE hours
Data export	Via support request (reviews)	Check with vendor	Check with vendor	Exportable at any time

Two rows deserve a word. The rebooking row is the one that drives the most DNAs: a patient who can cancel from a link but has to phone to rebook often does neither. And the support row is the one clinics underestimate until reminders fail at 8am on a Monday.

Choosing between them

Choose Cliniko if your clinic is small, your patients are happy to phone to rebook, an email reply within a couple of hours is enough, and you want the simplest possible system. It is the safe default for a reason.

Choose Jane if phone support is your deciding factor, your patients will create a profile before booking, and you run one clinic rather than a group. Its ease of use is real.

Choose Zanda if your practice is multidisciplinary with a psychology or counselling lean, and you have checked that its support hours and export process work from the UK.

Choose Capra if you want the things the three are criticised for, together: self-serve cancel and rebook from the reminder, WhatsApp on the clinic number with a shared inbox, packages and memberships, reporting on diary use, rebooking and DNAs, integrations built for you during onboarding, human support in UK and UAE hours and your data exportable at any time. The physiotherapy page shows the setup.

Questions to ask all four

Whichever way you lean, ask each vendor the same five questions and write the answers down:

1. Can a patient rebook from the reminder without phoning, and can we see that they did?
2. Which channels can patients reply on, and where do the replies land?
3. Show me the report an owner opens on a Monday morning.
4. Who builds our accounting and calendar connections, and in which direction do they sync?
5. Run the export now, while I watch.

The answers separate the four more honestly than any feature list.

Where each one shines

A fair comparison says what each is good at, not only what reviewers complain about.

Cliniko is simple to learn, rarely goes down, and its email support is fast and knowledgeable. For a two-physio clinic whose patients phone to book, it does the job with almost no setup and almost no surprises, which is why it has stayed the UK default for years.

Jane is pleasant to use every day. Its charting templates and phrases are quick once learned, its phone support is reachable, and practitioners describe onboarding as painless. A single busy clinic that values a person on the phone above a shared inbox is well served.

Zanda brings a mature client portal and calendar from its Power Diary years, a large partner directory and a strong lean towards psychology and counselling workflows. A multidisciplinary practice with a mental-health arm should look at it seriously, with the UK-hours and export checks done first.

What UK physio owners actually measure

The comparison only matters against what you are trying to move. For most UK private physio clinics, that is three numbers.

Diary utilisation: booked hours as a share of available hours, per practitioner and per room. The HMDG barometer gives the sector a shared vocabulary for it.

Rebooking rate: the share of patients who leave with their next appointment booked. Self-serve rebooking from the reminder is the lever, and it is the row where Cliniko's cancel-but-not-rebook link costs the most.

DNA rate: missed appointments as a share of booked, per appointment type and per practitioner. Reminder delivery, one-tap confirmation and a waitlist that refills freed slots move it.

Ask each of the four vendors to show you those three numbers on a real report, for a clinic like yours, before you look at anything else.

A note on reviews as evidence

Public reviews skew towards the unhappy and the delighted, and a platform with more UK users collects more complaints simply because it has more users; Cliniko's long list of gripes is partly a measure of its market share. Read them for patterns rather than counts: a complaint that appears across years and countries, such as email-only support or the rebook-means-new-booking link, is a design decision, while a one-off about a slow afternoon is weather. Then weigh the pattern against your own clinic. A practice whose patients are happy to phone loses nothing to the rebooking gap; a practice with a high DNA rate loses a great deal. The table above is a starting point for that weighing, not a verdict.

Switching from Cliniko or Jane

If you move to Capra, your onboarding lead takes the Cliniko or Jane export of patients, appointments, notes, documents and invoices, maps it into Capra and checks the import with you before go-live. Scheduling, reminders and messaging are live within a few days; integrations are built during onboarding. The Capra vs Jane page covers the Jane-specific details, including what happens to patients who had a Jane account, and a demo will walk through the table above with your clinic's numbers.