TL;DR

• Pick Actionstep if you are a small-to-midsize firm that wants a highly configurable practice platform and you are comfortable going through a sales conversation to get a quote.
• Pick Clio if you want transparent per-seat pricing starting at $49/seat/month (annual), published tier features, and a product that explicitly serves solos alongside larger firms.
• Core tradeoff: Gated enterprise-style pricing and mid-market focus (Actionstep) vs. self-serve pricing transparency and broader firm-size coverage (Clio).

Side by side

Dimension	Actionstep	Clio
Founded	2004	2008
HQ	Auckland, NZ	Burnaby, BC
Target firm sizes	small, mid	solo, small, mid
Practice areas	general	general
Starting price (lowest tier)	Not published (gated)	$49/seat/month (annual) or $59 (monthly)
Gated pricing	Yes	No
Integrations listed in dataset	0	0

Pricing

Clio publishes four tiers on its pricing page:

• EasyStart, $49/seat/month annual, $59 monthly. Includes core time tracking, billing, document management, trust accounting, e-signatures, and mobile apps.
• Essentials, $89/seat/month annual, $99 monthly. Adds document/matter templates, client portal (Clio for Clients), 250+ integrations, custom fields, accounting integrations (QuickBooks, Xero, TrustBooks), and text-to-pay.
• Advanced, $119/seat/month annual, $139 monthly. Adds automated workflows, custom reporting, SAML SSO, matter budgets, unlimited e-signatures, and priority support.
• Expand, $149/seat/month annual, $169 monthly. Bundles Clio Grow (legal CRM, intake forms, appointment booking, email marketing, website builder) with all Advanced features.

Actionstep, by contrast, does not publish pricing tiers. The pricing page is gated, firms must request a quote. No per-seat number, tier name, or feature breakdown is available in the public dataset.

This is a meaningful difference for buyers doing early-stage evaluation: Clio lets you calculate an annual cost in minutes, while Actionstep requires a sales touch before you know whether the platform fits your budget.

When to pick Actionstep

Actionstep is the stronger candidate for firms that fit this profile:

• Small-to-midsize firms (per its stated target segments) that have outgrown entry-level tools and want a platform with deeper workflow configuration.
• Firms that prefer a consultative sales process, if you want a tailored demo, implementation scoping, and negotiated pricing rather than self-serve checkout, the gated model works in your favor.
• Firms with longer tenure expectations, Actionstep has been operating since 2004, giving it a longer track record than most competitors in the space.
• Buyers outside North America, with HQ in Auckland, Actionstep has historically had strong APAC and UK presence, which may matter for firms in those regions.

When to pick Clio

Clio is the stronger candidate for firms that fit this profile:

• Solo practitioners, Clio explicitly lists “solo” as a target segment; Actionstep’s dataset lists only “small” and “mid.”
• Firms that want price transparency up front, every tier, every feature list, and every per-seat number is published.
• Firms that need a low entry point, EasyStart at $49/seat/month annual is accessible to a single-attorney practice without a sales call.
• Firms that want a marketing/intake bundle, the Expand tier packages Clio Grow (CRM, intake, website builder, Local Services Ads) into a single per-seat price.

Integrations and ecosystem

Neither vendor has integrations enumerated in the structured dataset provided, so a direct count comparison is not possible from this data.

However, Clio’s published tier descriptions reference specific integration categories: QuickBooks, Xero, TrustBooks (accounting, at Essentials and above), and the Essentials tier advertises “250+ app integrations” as a headline feature. Clio also references a built-in client portal (Clio for Clients) and a co-counsel portal.

Actionstep’s integration footprint is not surfaced in the dataset. Buyers who care about specific integrations (accounting, DMS, e-signature, court calendaring) should confirm directly with Actionstep during the quote process.

Historical pricing context

Clio’s pricing_history shows a clear trajectory on its entry tier:

• 2022-01 through 2024-08: Starter / EasyStart held steady at $39/seat/month.
• 2025-08 onward: EasyStart increased to $49/seat/month and has remained at that price through the most recent 2026-03 snapshot.

That is a ~26% increase on the entry tier over roughly three years, with the change landing in mid-2025. The top tier has also shifted in structure, historical snapshots show “Elite” at $129 (2022-2023) and “Top” at $149 (May 2022), while the current lineup tops out at Expand/$149 annual ($169 monthly).

Actionstep has no pricing_history entries in the dataset (consistent with its gated pricing model), so trajectory cannot be assessed from public snapshots.

Citations

Pricing sourced from vendor pricing pages on 2026-04-24. Historical data from Wayback Machine.