SmartVault Alternative for CPA Firms

Tax season puts client portals to the test. SmartVault is built for accounting firms — document request workflows, a branded client interface, and compliance features that cover a lot of ground. But per-user pricing with seat minimums means the monthly bill can outpace your actual client growth. If the pricing model is the friction, not the software itself, it is worth looking at what else exists.

Why Does SmartVault's Pricing Add Up So Fast?

SmartVault's Accounting Pro plan starts at $65 per user per month on annual billing, with a two-user minimum. As of September 2026, a solo practitioner or two-person firm pays at least $130 per month before add-ons — and a five-person firm is at $325 per month. These are internal staff seats, not client accounts.

The math is straightforward: SmartVault prices by staff seats. A boutique tax practice with three staff and 80 active clients pays for three seats. As that firm grows from 80 to 200 clients without adding staff, the SmartVault bill does not change. But the moment they hire one more person, it jumps by $65 per month. The pricing model does not match how an accounting firm actually scales.

There are also add-ons to account for. SmartRequestAI, SmartVault's AI-assisted document request feature, runs $12.50 per return in bundles of 50. For firms that process high volumes of returns but want a lean portal for the rest of the year, the cost structure can feel misaligned.

What Should You Compare Before Switching?

Before committing to any alternative, compare four things: how pricing scales with client count rather than staff count, what branding looks like for your clients, whether the audit trail is exportable for your WISP, and what happens to your data if you close your account.

Here are the five criteria worth checking on any client portal you evaluate:

• Per-client-account pricing — you pay for active clients, not for how many people are on your internal team
• White-label branding — your logo, your domain, no third-party name visible to your clients
• Exportable audit trail — a log of every file access and download, ready for compliance review and WISP documentation
• Data portability — your files and client list belong to you; the exit should be as clean as the onboarding
• Open source backing — if the software is open source, the code is the exit plan; lock-in risk goes to zero

How ProjectSend Cloud Lines Up Against SmartVault

ProjectSend Cloud is the official hosted version of ProjectSend, an open source client portal platform with 4.8 million Docker downloads and more than 4,000 active self-hosted instances worldwide. Here is how the two platforms compare on pricing, branding, and the things that matter most to CPA and tax firms.

Pricing model

SmartVault charges per internal user. The Accounting Pro plan is $65 per user per month on annual billing, with a two-user minimum (September 2026 — verify at smartvault.com before making a final comparison, as pricing can change). A five-person firm pays $325 per month. A ten-person firm pays $650 per month, regardless of how many clients they serve.

ProjectSend Cloud charges per active client account — the number of client-side users who have access to your portal. The Free plan is a personal file-sharing account at $0 (a real plan with no time limit, no credit card), without client accounts. Pro is $19 per month with 25 accounts and 3 workspace seats included; Business is $49 per month with unlimited accounts and SSO. A five-person firm managing 25 client accounts on Pro pays $27 per month (2 extra seats at $4 each). The same firm on SmartVault Accounting Pro: $325. See the full breakdown at our plans page.

Branding and white-label

Every ProjectSend Cloud plan includes your logo on the client-facing portal. The Free plan adds a small badge reading "Powered by ProjectSend"; full white-label — your domain, no badge — is coming in Pro. SmartVault includes branded portals on its accounting plans; the depth of white-labeling varies by tier, so confirm the details at their site.

Data portability and the open source exit

This is where ProjectSend Cloud is genuinely different. The software that powers it is open source on GitHub under the GPLv2 license with over 1,900 stars. Your data is portable by design: export at any time. If you want to migrate to a self-hosted instance — or anywhere else — the ProjectSend team handles it for free in under 48 hours. The exit is part of the product.

What If You Already Self-Host ProjectSend?

If your firm is already running a self-hosted instance from projectsend.org, the migration to ProjectSend Cloud is the most straightforward upgrade you will make. It is the same software, built by the same team: projectsend.org is the open source project (GPLv2), and projectsend.cloud is the official hosted version. Your client accounts, files, and folder structure migrate in under 48 hours — for free.

More than 4,000 firms and professionals worldwide already run self-hosted ProjectSend. Many switch to the cloud version when they want the team to handle hosting, SSL certificates, email delivery, and backups — without rebuilding their existing client portal workflow from scratch. The migration goes in both directions: if you later want to return to self-hosting, the exit is just as easy.

Not sure where to start? You can read about how it works, or start with our origin story: Hello there: a new era for ProjectSend explains how the .cloud came to be.

What Does the IRS Say About Securing Client Files?

Tax professionals are required under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to maintain a Written Information Security Plan — a WISP — documenting how their firm protects client financial data. The IRS has been clear that this requirement applies to every tax practice, including solo preparers. How you exchange files with clients is part of your WISP's scope.

According to IRS guidance on WISP requirements, a WISP should address employee training, information systems, and system failure detection. A dedicated file-exchange portal — one with enforced 2FA, encrypted storage, and a complete access log — is considerably easier to document in a WISP than a mix of email threads, shared drives, and expired transfer links.

ProjectSend Cloud encrypts data in transit and at rest, supports enforced 2FA by policy, and logs every file upload, download, and preview in a full audit trail. It is not SOC 2 or HIPAA certified at this time. For certification requirements specific to your practice, consult your compliance advisor.

Which Plan Fits Your Practice?

If you are just getting started — a solo bookkeeper, a new tax preparer, or a small firm evaluating options before tax season — the Free plan ($0, no credit card, no time limit) gives you a personal account with 2 GB of storage and a private link for every file, kept for 30 days. It is a real plan, not a trial, but it has no client accounts. When you want clients signing in under your name, the Pro plan at $19 per month covers 25 active accounts.

For larger practices that need SSO via OIDC, enforced 2FA across the full team, and audit log export to CSV for compliance review, Business at $49 per month covers all of that — with unlimited client accounts and priority support. None of these are trial periods. The pricing is what it says it is.

The model is simple: pay for the client accounts you actively manage, not for the number of people on your team. Your clients never pay. Archive an account when the engagement ends, and it stops counting toward your plan.

If you are evaluating options this tax season, start on the Free plan and test it with a few real clients. When you are ready to compare tiers in detail, see what each plan includes. Start free — no credit card, no time limit.