The 17hats alternative — built for wedding photographers, not all small businesses.
17hats has been around since 2014 and serves florists, dog trainers, accountants, and wedding photographers with the same general-purpose toolkit. FrameFlow is built for one audience: wedding and video studios. Every default, every template, every field on the page was designed for someone who shoots weddings — not configured into existence after a paid onboarding seminar.
Part of our guide to wedding CRM software.
17hats charges extra to teach you how to use it
17hats offers onboarding seminars and setup coaching as paid add-ons — an acknowledgement that the platform takes real investment to get running. For wedding photographers, that setup time is compounded by the fact that none of 17hats' defaults are tuned to the wedding workflow. FrameFlow ships with a pre-built wedding pipeline, contract templates, questionnaire builder, and automation sequences that match how wedding photographers actually work.
Three reasons photographers move from 17hats.
- 01
Wedding-specific defaults — no configuration tax
17hats is built for any service business. FrameFlow is built for wedding and video studios. The pipeline stages (Inquiry, Proposal, Booked, Wrapped), the questionnaire fields, the contract merge tags, and the automation triggers all start in the right place. You're tuning, not building from scratch.
- 02
The wedding-day toolkit 17hats doesn't try to build
17hats handles the admin side: quotes, contracts, invoices, scheduling. FrameFlow does all of that, then follows you into the wedding day — offline shot list, group-photo planner, drag-and-drop timeline with conflict surfacing, vendor cheat sheet. 17hats has never claimed to solve Saturday morning.
- 03
A modern interface at a lower annual price
17hats' UI carries the weight of a decade of incremental addition. The feature count is high; the coherence is lower. FrameFlow is editorial, fast, and built for a photographer who spends most of the interface time on a phone. At $240/year, it also costs less than 17hats' Standard plan.
FrameFlow vs 17hats, line by line.
| Capability | FrameFlow | 17hats |
|---|---|---|
| Built specifically for wedding photographers | Yes | No — general small-business CRM |
| Annual price (main plan) | $240/year flat | $375/year Standard ($31.25/mo) |
| Payment processor cut | 0% — manual / bank / Wise / PayPal | Stripe / Square pass-through |
| Time to first booked client (setup) | Afternoon | Days to weeks + paid seminars |
| Wedding-day shot list (offline PWA) | Yes | No |
| Group-photo planner with time totals | Yes | No |
| Drag-and-drop wedding timeline | Yes | No |
| Contracts with e-signature | Yes | Yes |
| Invoicing | Yes — multi-installment, payment instructions | Yes |
| Automation / workflows | Yes — event-relative, all plans | Yes — general triggers |
| Multi-industry flexibility | No — wedding/video only | Yes — any small business |
| Available globally | Yes | Yes |
Where each tool actually wins.
No comparison page is honest if it pretends the competitor has no strengths. Here's where 17hats genuinely wins, and where FrameFlow does.
What 17hats does better
- Multi-industry flexibility — if you run a side business beyond wedding photography (event planning, portrait studio, other services), 17hats can serve all of them from one account
- A decade of bookkeeping-specific features — expense categories, tax summaries, and time tracking that go deeper than FrameFlow's job-level P&L
- More payment processor integrations, including in-person Square tap-to-pay
- Larger template marketplace with community-shared contracts, questionnaires, and workflows
What FrameFlow does better
- Built for the wedding workflow specifically — the setup defaults match what you actually need, without a paid seminar to get there
- The wedding-day toolkit: offline shot list, group-photo planner, timeline with conflict surfacing, wedding-day brief PDF for the second shooter
- 0% payment processor cut — manual recording means the full booking fee is yours
- $240/year flat versus 17hats' $375+ per year, and FrameFlow's free plan gives you 3 real jobs with all features to test before committing
- Photo and video as first-class citizens — second-shooter pay tracking, multi-currency invoicing, couple portal with gallery links
What you'll actually pay.
| Plan | FrameFlow | 17hats |
|---|---|---|
| Free / trial | Free forever (3 active jobs, all features) | 14-day free trial |
| Entry paid plan | $240/year flat ($20/mo) | $31.25/mo Standard ($375/yr) |
| Top plan | (same plan — no upsell) | $50/mo Premier ($600/yr) |
| Payment processor cut | 0% | Stripe / Square pass-through fees |
Should you switch?
Switch to FrameFlow if…
If you've been putting off setting 17hats up properly because the setup feels like a project in itself, switch — FrameFlow's wedding defaults mean you're operational in an afternoon. If you're paying 17hats Premier tier for features that only matter because the Standard tier is so stripped, switch. If you want the wedding day itself — shot list, timeline, group photos — covered by the same tool as the booking, switch.
Stay on 17hats if…
Stay on 17hats if you run multiple service businesses from a single account and need that cross-industry flexibility. Stay if you rely on 17hats' deep bookkeeping features — expense categorisation, time tracking, tax summaries — that go beyond FrameFlow's job-level P&L. Stay if you're a portrait photographer rather than a wedding photographer; 17hats' general workflow fits portrait studios just as well.
Switching questions, answered.
- Can I move my 17hats clients and jobs to FrameFlow?
- Yes. Export from 17hats as CSV and import into FrameFlow. Standard fields — client name, email, event date, job value — map automatically. Custom fields need a one-time mapping step.
- I paid for a 17hats onboarding seminar. Do I have to do that again with FrameFlow?
- No. FrameFlow ships with pre-built wedding defaults — pipeline stages, contract merge tags, questionnaire templates, automation sequences — that match the standard wedding-photography workflow. Most studios are fully set up in an afternoon without paid guidance.
- Does FrameFlow handle the financial reporting 17hats does?
- FrameFlow does job-level P&L (contracted revenue minus crew pay minus expenses = margin), revenue booked vs collected, outstanding invoices, lead-source ROI, and accounting CSV export (cash-basis or accrual, by date range). If you need deep expense categorisation and tax summaries comparable to accounting software, 17hats' bookkeeping features go further.
- Does FrameFlow work for video studios, not just photographers?
- Yes. Photo and video are both first-class. The wedding-day brief PDF covers the videography crew, second-shooter pay tracking works for videographers, and the couple portal shows gallery and video delivery links side by side.
- Will 17hats' existing couple-facing workflows break if I switch mid-season?
- Only the ones you migrate. 17hats stays live until you cancel. We recommend switching new bookings to FrameFlow immediately and migrating active jobs one at a time over a few weeks, so no couple experiences a gap.
Try FrameFlow on this weekend's wedding.
Free plan, no card. Three active jobs is enough to test it on a real Saturday. If it doesn't pull its weight against 17hats, leave.