17hats vs Dubsado: Which Handles Payment Reminders Better?

You picked 17hats or Dubsado because you wanted one place for contracts, questionnaires, scheduling, and invoices. Then a client went quiet on a second installment, and you realized you were not entirely sure what your CRM had actually sent on your behalf, or whether it had sent anything at all.

That uncertainty is the expensive part. When you do not know whether the software nudged someone, you hesitate to nudge them yourself, and the invoice sits for another week. You end up writing the awkward email anyway, later than you should have.

This post puts the two reminder systems side by side. You will see exactly how each one decides when to email a client, where the settings live, what happens on payment plans and autopay, and the gaps that stay open no matter how carefully you set things up.

The short answer

17hats treats reminders as a global rule: set it once in your account settings and every invoice follows the same schedule. Dubsado treats reminders as part of the payment plan: you attach them to each installment, which gives you more control per project but more places to forget. If you want a set-and-forget default, 17hats is simpler. If you want a different rhythm for a wedding deposit than for a final balance, Dubsado is more flexible. Neither knows about invoices that live outside its walls.

How 17hats handles payment reminders

17hats keeps reminders in one place. According to the 17hats help article on automatic invoice reminders, you configure them under Account Settings, then Email Settings, then Email Reminders. Out of the box, the system emails a client one day before a payment is due and then once a month while a payment is past due. Both are adjustable, but the defaults are already on.

There are three reminder types. The upcoming reminder sends a set number of days before the due date. The past due reminder sends a set number of days after the due date, and you choose whether it repeats never, daily, or weekly, and how many times it fires before stopping. The third type only applies to invoices with payment schedules: when a client has one payment already overdue and another one coming up, 17hats sends a combined message that covers both instead of two separate emails.

Two limits are worth knowing. First, the schedule is account-wide. Every invoice gets the same before-and-after pattern, so a retainer client and a one-off project client hear from you on the same cadence. Second, 17hats does not send reminder emails before an automatic payment when a client is enrolled in autopay on a payment schedule. The reminder trail goes quiet for those clients. The help center notes it may not be available on every plan, so check your tier.

We covered the setup screens step by step in our guide to what 17hats sends to clients automatically.

How Dubsado handles payment reminders

Dubsado approaches the same job from the opposite direction. There is no global reminder switch. Instead, Dubsado's automated payment reminders documentation explains that reminders are configured per installment on a payment plan, either on a payment plan template you reuse or on the plan attached to a single invoice. Without a reminder added, a contact is not told that a payment is coming up or overdue. Silence is the default.

Once you add a reminder, the options are precise. You can set a relative date, such as one week before the due date, three days after it, or zero days before to land on the due date itself. You can also set a fixed calendar date, which Dubsado warns against on templates because it eventually falls in the past, or mark it TBD so it schedules itself once the due date is known. Each installment can carry as many reminders as you like, and each reminder uses either the default Payment Plan Reminder email or a custom template you built first.

The behaviors that catch people are the ones that feel like they should be automatic and are not. Each reminder sends exactly once; there is no repeat-until-paid option, so a persistent follow-up means stacking several reminders on the same installment by hand. Editing a payment plan template does not update invoices that already use it, and editing an invoice's plan does not flow back to the template. And reminders attached to a plan keep sending even when the client is on autopay, the reverse of the 17hats behavior.

If your reminders seem to have gone missing, our troubleshooting checklist for Dubsado reminders that are not sending walks through the usual causes in order.

Head to head: where they actually differ

Strip away the interface and the comparison comes down to five things.

• Default behavior: 17hats wins. Reminders are on from day one with a sensible pattern. Dubsado sends nothing until you add a reminder to the plan.
• Per-project flexibility: Dubsado wins. A deposit, a midpoint installment, and a final balance can each carry their own reminder ladder. 17hats applies one schedule to everything.
• Repeating reminders: 17hats wins. The past-due reminder can repeat daily or weekly for a set number of occurrences. In Dubsado every reminder fires once, so persistence means adding more of them.
• Autopay handling: it depends on what you want. 17hats goes quiet before an automatic charge. Dubsado keeps sending plan reminders regardless, which can be reassuring or annoying depending on the client.
• Message control: roughly even. Both let you edit the reminder templates. Dubsado gives you smart fields for amount due, due date, and an invoice link; 17hats gives you separate templates per reminder type.

Put simply, 17hats reminds people even when you forget to set it up. Dubsado reminds people exactly how you told it to, as long as you remembered to tell it.

The gap both tools leave open

Both systems only know about invoices that exist inside them. A quick PDF invoice for an add-on, a retainer billed through a separate tool, a corporate client on their own portal: none of those trigger a reminder in either CRM. The follow-up simply does not exist for them.

That matters because late payment is the norm, not the exception. A 2026 roundup of late invoice statistics found that close to a third of freelance invoices are paid at least a day late, and that most late invoices are settled within two weeks of a follow-up. The reminder is what recovers the money. When part of your billing lives outside the CRM, that part gets no reminder and quietly becomes the slowest to pay.

There is also the human problem. Both tools send a template, and a third reminder that reads like the first two gets tuned out. Around the two-week mark a short personal note outperforms any automated message, and neither platform writes that for you.

How to set each one up so nothing slips

If you are on 17hats:

1. Open Account Settings, then Email Settings, then Email Reminders, and confirm the invoice reminders are switched on for your plan.
2. Set the upcoming reminder to three days before the due date rather than one. It gives a client time to actually act.
3. Change the past-due reminder from monthly to weekly, ending after three or four occurrences. Monthly is too slow to change behavior.

If you are on Dubsado:

1. Build reminders into your payment plan templates, not individual invoices, so every new project inherits them.
2. Stack at least three reminders per installment: one a few days before, one on the due date, and one a week after. Each sends once, so the ladder is the persistence.
3. Check the autopay clients. If a contact is set to be charged automatically, decide whether you want plan reminders going to them or whether you should remove them from that invoice's plan.
4. After editing a template, update the plans on active projects by hand, since changes do not propagate.

When the reminder layer should sit above your CRM

If every invoice comes out of one CRM and you set it up carefully, either tool will do the job. The trouble starts when billing is spread out, or when the reminders feel too rigid to sound like you.

That is the case for a follow-up layer that sits above your CRM instead of inside it, tracking what is outstanding wherever it originated and sending reminders in your own words rather than a template with a merge field. That is the job DueDrop was built for. It does not create invoices or touch payments; it works alongside 17hats or Dubsado and handles the follow-up so the schedule belongs to your business, not to whichever tool an invoice came from.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does 17hats send payment reminders automatically?

Yes, by default. 17hats emails a client one day before a payment is due and once a month while it is past due, and you can change both intervals under Account Settings, Email Settings, Email Reminders. The feature may not be included on every plan, so confirm it is active on yours.

Does Dubsado send payment reminders automatically?

Only if you add them. Dubsado reminders are attached to individual installments on a payment plan, either on a template or on a specific invoice. Without a reminder added, the client is not notified that a payment is due or overdue.

Can Dubsado keep reminding a client until they pay?

Not with a single reminder. Each reminder sends once. To create a persistent follow-up, add several reminders to the same installment at different relative dates. Reminders stop automatically once the installment is paid in full.

Will reminders still go out if my client is on autopay?

It differs. 17hats does not send reminder emails before an automatic payment on a payment schedule; the client just gets a confirmation once it processes. Dubsado plan reminders continue to send even when the client is enrolled in autopay, so you may want to remove them for those invoices.

Which is better for a photographer or planner with deposits and final balances?

Dubsado, if you are willing to build the payment plan templates once. Being able to give the deposit and the final balance different reminder ladders is worth the setup. If you would rather have something running from day one with no configuration, 17hats is the safer choice.

The takeaways

• 17hats reminders are global and on by default: one day before due, monthly after, both adjustable.
• Dubsado reminders live on payment plan installments, send once each, and do nothing until you add them.
• 17hats can repeat a past-due reminder; Dubsado needs a stack of individual reminders to do the same.
• Autopay behaves differently in each: 17hats goes quiet, Dubsado keeps sending.
• Neither tool reminds clients about invoices sent outside it, and neither replaces a personal note once an invoice is a couple of weeks late.

Pick the model that matches how you work and set it up deliberately. For the same comparison across other tools, our Zoho Books vs QuickBooks reminder comparison and the rest of our invoice reminders and follow-up guides cover the ground for whatever else you run alongside your CRM.