Overlapping windows you did not see coming
Two clients due nine days apart looks fine in March. In September, one goes to 41 weeks and the other starts early, and you are at two births in nineteen hours.
Roughly 2 declined inquiries per seasonOn call scheduling for doulas
Know who is on call, who is covering and who has paid, before the phone rings at 3 a.m.
DoulaDay holds every due date window, every backup pairing and every deposit in one place. The late night text thread stops being your scheduling system.
- 1,140 births supported through DoulaDay windows since 2023
- 312 US doula practices scheduling on call weeks here
- One evening to move a full client roster across
Window open: Sept 12 to Sept 26Backup confirmed, deposit cleared, contract signed.
The night problem
The scheduling never fits in the calendar you were given
A due date is not an appointment. It is a window that moves, overlaps the next client and lands on the one weekend you promised your own family. Most doulas run that on memory, a paper contract folder and a text thread that goes quiet at the worst hour.
Backup that was only ever a verbal favor
You have a colleague who said yes in a coffee shop last spring. She is not in your contract, she is not on your calendar, and she may be at a birth herself.
$1,800 refund risk per uncovered birthDeposits you have to go looking for
The retainer landed in one app, the balance in another, and the client swears she sent it. Chasing that down is unpaid admin at the end of a long week.
4 to 6 hours a month of chasingContracts scattered across three inboxes
A signed agreement in a scanned PDF, an amended fee in an email, and a postpartum add on agreed by voice. Nobody can find the current version at 2 a.m.
1 in 9 clients on outdated termsHow it works
Four steps from a signed client to a covered window
The whole product is built around the due date window rather than the appointment slot. Everything else follows from that one decision.
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Step one
Open the window, not a date
Enter the estimated due date and DoulaDay opens the on call window you set, commonly 38 to 42 weeks. The window shows on your calendar as a filled band, not a single pin.
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Step two
Pair a named backup
Every window needs a second doula attached before it goes live. She sees the same client brief, the same birth preferences and the same address, and she is notified the moment you go into a birth.
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Step three
Send the contract and the deposit request together
The agreement, the fee schedule and the retainer request go out as one link. The client signs on her phone and pays the deposit in the same pass, and the window turns from pending to confirmed.
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Step four
Watch the season fill
Load capacity, overlap warnings and outstanding balances sit on one screen. When a fifth client asks about October, you can answer her in under a minute with a number you trust.
Features
Built for the way a doula practice actually runs
Six things you do every week, held properly. Nothing here was borrowed from a salon booking tool or a therapy practice manager.
Due date window calendar
Each client occupies a band of days you define, not a single point, so a 41 week client is visible as the load she really is. The band fills in softly as the window opens and dims once the birth is logged.
Guaranteed backup pairing
A window will not confirm until a named backup doula has accepted it in writing. She gets the client brief, the birth preferences and one tap access to the address when you hand over.
Contracts that sign on a phone
Your own agreement text, your fee schedule and your cancellation terms, sent as one link and signed with a finger. Every amendment is versioned so the current terms are never in question.
Deposit and balance tracking
Retainer, second installment and postpartum hours each carry their own due date and status. Anything unpaid within fourteen days of the window opening is flagged on the dashboard.
On call handover log
When you go into a birth you mark the window active and your backup is paged with the timeline so far. Hours, transfers and postpartum visits log in the same thread the client already signed.
Season capacity view
Set the maximum number of overlapping windows you will carry per month and DoulaDay refuses to confirm past it. Inquiries beyond that go to a shortlist you can offer to a paired colleague.
September on call board
One doula, three clients, two paired backups
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Your open on call windowBackup doula coveringEverything else is yours to sleep through
Practice outcomes
What changes in the first three months
These figures come from 312 US practices that have run at least one full season on DoulaDay, measured against the season they logged before switching.
96%
Windows opened with a confirmed backup
Because a window cannot be marked confirmed without a signed second doula, the verbal favor turns into a booked commitment before the client pays anything.
11 days
Faster deposit collection
The retainer request travels with the contract instead of following it a week later, so the client pays in the same sitting she signs.
5.5 hrs
Admin hours returned each month
No more rebuilding the schedule in a notes app, cross checking two payment apps and rewriting the same intake questions for every new inquiry.
$4,300
Added revenue per doula per year
Capacity limits make it safe to say yes one more time a month, and the shortlist keeps the inquiries you cannot take inside your own paired network.
Doulas using DoulaDay
Three practices, three ways of working
I stopped keeping the calendar in my head the week my two January clients both went early. The window view showed me the collision in advance and my backup was already signed to it.
Deposits used to be the part of this work I hated. Now the contract and the retainer go out as one link and I have not had to send a reminder about money in seven months.
We are nine doulas sharing call. Before this we ran three spreadsheets and a group chat. Now a client is either covered by a named pair or she is not on the board at all.
312US doula practices on DoulaDay
1,140Births supported through the platform
4.8 of 5Average rating from reviewing practices
Inside a window
Everything a covered window carries
A window is confirmed only when all six of these are true. That rule is the whole product, and it is why doulas stop keeping a parallel list in a notebook.
The signed agreement
Your own terms, timestamped, with the fee schedule the client actually agreed to and every later amendment kept beside it.
The retainer status
Paid, partly paid or outstanding, with the date it cleared and the balance still due before the window opens.
The named backup
A second doula who accepted this window in writing, with her own view of the brief and a direct line to you.
The client brief
Birth preferences, provider, planned place of birth, support people and the two things she asked you never to forget.
The access details
Address, parking, door code, pets and who else will be in the house, released to the backup only when the window is live.
The postpartum plan
Contracted postpartum hours, the visit pattern you agreed and the point at which extra hours are billed.
Who this is for
Three practices that fit, and one that does not
The solo doula at capacity
Four to six births a month, one regular backup, and a diary that has quietly become the riskiest part of the business.
The reciprocal pair
Two doulas who cover each other by long standing agreement and want that agreement written into every window rather than assumed.
The metro collective
Six to twelve doulas sharing inquiries and call, needing one board that shows coverage gaps before a client is ever promised a date.
Not a fit: hospital staff scheduling
If you are rostering shifts inside a hospital department, a shift scheduler will serve you better. DoulaDay is built around client owned due date windows.
Pricing
Priced against one birth, not against a software budget
Every plan is billed monthly in US dollars and can be cancelled at any time. Nothing is charged per client and nothing is taken out of your fee.
Solo Doula
$25 per month
For the independent doula carrying her own call, with one trusted backup she works with regularly.
- Unlimited due date windows
- One paired backup doula seat
- Contract signing and versioning
- Deposit and balance tracking
- Handover log and birth timeline
- Email support within one business day
Doula Pair
$59 per month
For two doulas who share call properly, cover each other by agreement and want one board between them.
- Everything in Solo Doula
- Two full doula accounts, shared board
- Reciprocal backup pairing on every window
- Season capacity limits per doula
- Shared client briefs and birth preferences
- Combined revenue and outstanding balance view
Collective
$119 per month
For a group practice or agency running a shared on call roster across a metro area.
- Everything in Doula Pair
- Up to twelve doula accounts
- Roster wide coverage board and gap alerts
- Inquiry routing and internal shortlist
- Per doula payout and deposit reporting
- Onboarding session for the whole team
All three plans are billed monthly, in USD, and can be cancelled at any time from your account settings. Your client records, contracts and payment history stay exportable for as long as your account is open.
Questions
What doulas ask before they move a roster over
The price is per plan, not per client and not per birth. Solo Doula at $25 per month covers one working doula and the backup seat she pairs with. Doula Pair at $59 per month covers two full accounts sharing one board, and Collective at $119 per month covers up to twelve doulas on a shared roster. If your group grows past twelve, write to us and we will quote the next step rather than charging you a surprise overage.
Most solo doulas finish in one evening. You enter each active client with her estimated due date, attach the contract you already have signed and mark the deposit status, which takes about four minutes per client. Collectives usually spread it over two sittings because the roster and the backup pairings need agreeing between people. We will do the first five clients with you on a shared screen if you want a second pair of eyes.
Only you, the backup doula named on that specific window, and the client herself. Nobody at DoulaDay reads client notes, and we do not sell, share or train anything on your records. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, hosting is in the United States, and access is logged so you can see exactly which paired doula opened which brief. If you close your account you can export everything as PDF and CSV first.
Windows and appointments push to Google Calendar and Apple Calendar by subscription link, so your partner can see when you are on call without seeing client names. Deposits and balances connect to Square and to Stripe accounts you already own, and the money lands in your account, never in ours. Intake forms can be fed from your existing website form by email parsing. For anything else, there is a plain CSV export.
You cancel from your account settings and the plan stops at the end of the month you already paid for. No notice window is required of you and no cancellation fee is charged. Before your access closes, export your client records, signed contracts, payment history and birth logs in one archive. We keep the archive available for thirty days after closure in case you need it again, then it is deleted.
It asks you to write down what you already agreed, which is usually the whole change. Your backup accepts a window with one tap and can decline any window she is not free for, so nobody is signed up to something she did not choose. Doulas tell us the awkward conversation happens once, at the start, and then never again at 2 a.m. If your colleague does not want an account, you can record her as an external backup with contact details and a signed availability note instead.
How we hold your records
Handling standards we will put in writing
Doula records hold birth preferences, home addresses and health history. Here is exactly how they are treated, and you are welcome to hold us to it.
US
Hosted in the United States
Application data sits with US based infrastructure providers, encrypted in transit with TLS and at rest with AES 256.
0
Advertising trackers on this site
No advertising pixels, no third party analytics cookies and no data broker sharing, on the marketing site or in the product.
30 days
Deletion window after closure
Close your account, take your export, and everything is erased from live systems and backups within thirty days.
The Call Bag
Working notes from the magazine
The Call Bag is where we write down the operational side of doula practice: the backup clause that holds, the fee model that matches your call capacity, and the paperwork that decides whether you get paid on time.
Talk to us
Bring one messy September and we will map it with you
Send the shape of your practice, the clients you are carrying and the backup arrangement you have now. We will show you the same season on a DoulaDay board and you can decide whether it is better than what you already have.
- Walkthroughs run 25 minutes, by video, at an hour that suits a doula schedule.
- We answer every request within one business day, in US business hours.
- No sales sequence and no automated follow up. One reply from a person.
One reply from a person, within one business day. If a birth is imminent and you would rather skip the form, email us straight at jimenezjulien42@gmail.com.