I'm on Grow Therapy but want clients of my own too. Who can help me set up a practice website that brings them in?

Anyone who will build the site for a separate practice of your own, not as a second door into your Grow profile. Grow's terms keep the clients Grow sends you on Grow, so your website's job is to bring in different clients: people who pay you directly or use an insurance panel you hold yourself, and who book and pay through your own systems. A freelance designer, an agency or a done-for-you platform can build that, as long as they set it up that way from the start.

Grow's help page on managing client referrals says referrals provided by Grow "must be managed and billed through the Grow platform as outlined in your Provider Agreement." Providers who deviate receive warnings, and the same page says multiple violations end the partnership. It also asks you not to refer a client who is not a good fit outside the Grow network, and to use Grow's own referral process instead.

The reason is in Grow's Clinical Services and Practice Policies Agreement (last updated December 7, 2023), the terms clients accept. A client who books through Grow becomes a patient of Grow Professionals: the Grow Healthcare Group entities and their affiliated professionals. Grow Care, Inc. does not provide clinical services; it handles administration and payment for them. The same agreement says insurers and other third parties pay the Grow Professionals entities directly.

So a Grow client is not your private client who happened to find you on Grow. They are Grow's patient, and you see them as a Grow Professionals clinician. A website cannot turn Grow clients into clients of your own, and it should not try.

Your own provider agreement decides whether you may keep a separate practice alongside Grow, and what that practice may do. Read it, and ask Grow in writing about any part that is unclear.

On Grow, a client finds you through your Grow profile or Grow's matching, books and is billed on Grow, becomes a patient of Grow Professionals, and any review they leave sits on your Grow profile. In your own practice, a client finds your website, books through your own booking and intake, pays you directly or through a panel you are credentialed with yourself, and nobody is asked for a testimonial.

The point that trips people up is the booking button. If the button on your website goes to your Grow profile, the person who books becomes a Grow client. That can be the right choice for someone whose insurance Grow covers and you do not hold yourself. It is not a client of your own.

• A way to be paid. Decide whether the practice is private pay, uses insurance panels you are credentialed with in your own name, or both. Whether it also needs its own business entity is a question for your accountant or attorney.
• Its own booking and intake. A scheduler or EHR of your own, so a new client never lands in Grow's system by accident. Our private practice checklist covers the rest of the setup.
• A Google Business Profile for the practice. Google's guidelines for representing your business say an individual practitioner should have their own profile when they work in a public-facing role and can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours.

A site for a practice that runs beside Grow has one job a general therapist website does not: it has to make clear which practice the visitor is booking with. That comes down to four things.

• Who you see in your own practice, in the words a client would use.
• How payment works: your private-pay fee, any panels you hold yourself, and what a client needs if they plan to use out-of-network benefits.
• One way to book or ask a question, and it goes to your own booking and intake.
• Your Grow profile only if you want it there, labeled as a separate route for the insurance Grow covers.

Our therapist website examples show the rest of what a good practice site does, judged on seven criteria.

Reviews cannot be carried over. Grow's help page on provider ratings and reviews says only clients with confirmed appointments can leave one, the Grow team moderates every review before it is added, and approved reviews appear on your public Grow profile. The page says nothing about using them anywhere else.

Asking those clients to post the same words on Google or on your website runs into a separate rule. APA Standard 5.05 says psychologists do not solicit testimonials from current therapy clients or from others who are vulnerable to undue influence because of their circumstances. The new site launches without reviews or testimonials, and earns trust with what it says about how you work.

A website can carry an advertising pixel on every page, contact form included. Ask whoever builds your site which tracking scripts run on the pages where people book or write to you.

There are three kinds of help, and the questions to ask each are the same.

• Yourself, on a builder. Cheapest in money, most expensive in evenings. Our Squarespace, Wix and WordPress comparison covers the trade-offs.
• A freelance designer or an agency. They build it. Ask who keeps it updated after launch, and what that costs.
• A done-for-you platform. One monthly fee covers the build and the upkeep.

Whichever you pick, ask four things before you start:

1. Does the booking button go to my own booking and intake, not my Grow profile?
2. Who writes the pages, and do they know the ethics rules a therapy site is held to?
3. Which tracking scripts run on the contact and booking pages?
4. Can I leave with the site and the domain, and is any charge tied to my sessions?

Because Grow's terms make every client Grow sends you a patient of Grow Healthcare Group, managed and billed on Grow, your website has to bring clients into a separate practice of your own (private pay or your own panels, its own booking and intake, no Grow reviews reused), and WebsiteTherapy builds and runs that site for $99 a month with no setup fee and no cut of your session fees.

How that compares with Grow itself is on our Grow Therapy comparison page.

Start with your Grow provider agreement and its section on referrals, then decide how your own practice is paid. The website comes after those two decisions, not before. If you want WebsiteTherapy to build and run it, the next step is a short call, not a download, and nothing goes live until you say so.

• Grow Therapy Help: Manage your client referrals
• Grow Professionals Clinical Services and Practice Policies Agreement (last updated December 7, 2023)
• Grow Therapy Help: Provider ratings and reviews
• APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (2017), Standard 5.05 Testimonials
• Google Business Profile Help: Guidelines for representing your business on Google