Nookal vs coreplus: Which Practice Management System Fits an Australian Clinic?

Two Australian-built allied health platforms compared on pricing, Medicare and NDIS claiming, telehealth, integrations and where patient data sits.

Australian allied health clinics comparing practice management software usually shortlist the same Australian names. Nookal and coreplus are two of the biggest. coreplus launched in 2009, founded by Yianni Serpanos and Mark Pirotta, and has stayed an Australian product for Australian practices. Nookal followed in 2010, founded by a trio of allied health industry experts, and now publishes pricing for eight regions from the same product.

A Nookal vs coreplus comparison is closer than most. Both systems serve allied health only. Both charge per practitioner rather than a flat band, and both let admin staff in free. Both put Medicare claiming inside the product. The real differences sit one level down: which plan carries which feature, what each side meters, and what the two ecosystems look like.

Both vendors list BookedSolid's AI receptionist in their own directories, and it connects to both systems, so this guide gains nothing by favouring either one. Every figure that follows was read from the two companies' own pages in October 2026. It covers pricing, claiming, telehealth, daily workflow, integrations and data security.

Nookal at a Glance

Nookal is practice management software for allied health, in development since 2010. It calls itself the trusted all-in-one platform for allied health professionals, and names physiotherapists, psychologists, osteopaths, chiropractors, speech therapists, podiatrists, occupational therapists and dietitians on its site. The product covers the diary, online bookings, client records, clinical notes, classes, invoicing, payments and reporting.

Nookal pricing runs per practitioner, and the rate falls as the team grows. Essentials starts at AUD $49 a month for a solo practitioner, excluding GST. Professional starts at $60 and adds advanced reporting and KPI dashboards, automated recalls and waitlists, two-way SMS, invoice automation and customisable intake forms. Enterprise is quoted, aimed at groups that want multi-account management and API access. Admin and reception staff are free on every plan. The trial runs 30 days with no card, with no setup fees and no lock-in contracts.

Recent development has gone into add-ons. JAN, Nookal's AI assistant, drafts notes, letters and reports and reads dashboard numbers, at $34 a month for each practitioner who uses it. A patient portal, secure messaging and single sign-on are priced the same way. Claiming runs through integrations with Medicare, DVA, NDIS and HICAPS, with Medicare claims charged per claim. Telehealth is not built in; Nookal links out to partner platforms instead.

coreplus at a Glance

coreplus is allied health practice management software built for one market. The company launched in 2009 and says it empowers the allied health community to provide digital-first healthcare services. Its professions run from psychology and physiotherapy to dietetics. The Australian focus shapes the product. Medicare, DVA, NDIS and the Hearing Services Program are product features rather than afterthoughts, and all client data is stored in Australia.

coreplus pricing is per user, in AUD and excluding GST, at flat rates. CORE is $35 a month per user. It covers the calendar, client records, case notes, invoicing, online bookings, reminders, reporting and integrated telehealth, with add-on integrations limited. PLUS is $49 and unlocks the rest: unlimited add-on integrations, free Medicare claiming, free DVA claiming, secure messaging and referral programmes. GROUP discounts the per-practitioner rate for teams of eight or more, priced on application. Admin users are free, data migration is free, and the trial is untimed with no card and no contract.

Claiming is the signature strength. A direct Medicare Online integration processes bills and claims straight from the client's invoice. Invoicing is NDIS enabled, with links to participant funding, time and item codes. Secure messaging connects the practice to more than 75,000 Australian practitioners for referral correspondence. Audiology clinics can add Hearing Services Program workflows for $5 a user. Two limits are worth noting: telehealth is metered at $0.01 per participant per minute on every plan, and CORE caps add-on integrations.

Nookal vs coreplus: Feature by Feature

Sources: Nookal's Australian pricing and integrations pages; coreplus's pricing and add-ons pages. Verified October 2026; both vendors update their pages, so figures should be re-checked before deciding.

Nookal Pricing vs coreplus Pricing: Two Per-Practitioner Models

The two models sound identical in a demo: pay for practitioners, admin staff free. They behave differently as the clinic grows. coreplus holds its price flat. Every practitioner adds $35 on CORE or $49 on PLUS, until GROUP pricing enters from eight practitioners. Nookal's rate falls as the team grows. A solo practitioner pays $49 a month on Essentials, but six cost $208, which is under $35 each. On current published figures, monthly totals land like this:

All figures are AUD a month, excluding GST. coreplus CORE is the cheapest way in at every size shown. The comparison most clinics actually face is a different one, though, because free claiming and unlimited integrations sit on PLUS. Against PLUS, Nookal Essentials is level at $49 for a solo practitioner. From two it pulls ahead: $96 against $98, then $125 against $147, then $180 against $245 at five. Even Professional, Nookal's fuller tier, overtakes PLUS at three practitioners.

The usage charges run in opposite directions, too. Nookal bills for Medicare claims, at $0.30 each on Essentials and $0.20 on Professional. At 200 claims a month, that adds $60 or $40 to the bill. coreplus includes Medicare and DVA claiming free on PLUS, but meters telehealth at $0.01 per participant per minute. SMS barely separates them: $0.12 a message on Nookal Essentials against $0.10 on coreplus PLUS.

From eight practitioners the comparison moves off the published pages. coreplus switches to quoted GROUP pricing with a per-practitioner discount, and Nookal's rate keeps falling with size. A larger clinic should get both numbers in writing. Clinics working to a tight budget can see where both sit against the wider market in the cheap practice management software roundup for Australian clinics.

Medicare, DVA and NDIS Claiming Compared

Both vendors treat Australia's funding schemes as core product territory, which already sets this comparison apart from most. coreplus folds claiming into the plan price. Nookal connects it through integrations and charges by the claim.

On coreplus, Medicare and DVA claiming are free on the PLUS plan. The direct Medicare Online integration submits from the client's invoice and returns results quickly. Invoicing is NDIS enabled, with participant funding, time codes and item codes attached, which strips manual reconciliation from a heavy NDIS caseload. Private health fund claims run through HealthPoint on a paired Tyro terminal, and Pin Payments covers online cards. Audiology practices can add Hearing Services Program workflows for $5 a user, a capability with no published equivalent on the Nookal side.

On Nookal, Medicare claiming is available on every tier and priced per claim. Essentials pays $0.30 a claim, Professional $0.20 and Enterprise $0.10, and bulk billing is supported from the entry plan. Integrations with DVA, NDIS, HICAPS and Tyro Health sit alongside it, and an ACC integration covers New Zealand practices. Nookal publishes no per-claim fees for those, so a clinic should confirm the claim types it uses on a demo.

Claim volume decides how much of this a clinic feels. A clinic lodging a handful of Medicare claims a week will barely notice Nookal's per-claim fees. At 50 claims a week, the fees reach roughly $65 a month on Essentials. On coreplus PLUS, the same claiming sits inside the subscription. Practices where Medicare, DVA or NDIS carries most of the revenue should run their own claim counts against both pricing pages.

Telehealth: Metered Minutes or a Partner Platform

coreplus builds video in. Telehealth by coreplus is integrated on every plan, charged at $0.01 per participant per minute. The metering is small per session. A 50-minute one-to-one consultation costs about a dollar, and ten a week add roughly $43 a month. There is no second subscription and no separate account for the clinic to manage.

Nookal takes the partner route. Video consultations run through its telehealth integrations with Coviu, Doxy.me and Zoom rather than inside the product. Those platforms carry their own pricing and strengths, from Coviu's clinical call tools to Zoom's familiarity. The real cost depends on the platform chosen. A clinic already paying for one of them loses nothing. A clinic starting from scratch is signing up for a second system.

Telehealth-heavy practices, psychology and speech pathology among them, should model a month of real sessions on both. That means coreplus's cents per minute against a partner subscription on Nookal.

Daily Workflow: Reporting, Messaging and Classes

Reporting is Nookal's clearest daily edge. The dashboard shows live occupancy, reports track occupancy trends, and dedicated charts analyse individual clinician performance. Advanced reporting and KPI dashboards arrive with the Professional tier. Practice owners who manage utilisation and practitioner economics actively get more to work with here. coreplus publishes reporting on every plan and offers Huddle, an analytics add-on, for practices that want deeper numbers.

Messaging runs the other way. coreplus includes secure messaging on PLUS, carrying referral correspondence across its 75,000-plus practitioner network. On Nookal, secure messaging is an add-on at $7 a practitioner a month, and two-way SMS sits on the Professional tier. Both sides now offer AI help with paperwork. Nookal's JAN add-on drafts notes, letters and reports, at $34 for each practitioner using it. coreplus lists Dorsum, a clinical documentation assistant, in its directory.

Classes separate the two as well. Nookal includes classes and group events on every plan, which suits clinics running group rehabilitation, exercise classes or pilates alongside one-to-one care. coreplus publishes no group appointment type.

Integrations and APIs: Two Australian Ecosystems

Nookal's directory is the broader one, with more than 35 integration partners. The categories span accounting, payments and claiming, public health services, AI scribes, patient acquisition, reporting, exercise prescription, telehealth and ePrescribing. Stripe, Square, PayPal, HotDoc, HealthEngine, Physitrack and Heidi all appear. API access is listed on the Enterprise tier, pitched at organisations connecting their own systems.

coreplus runs a shorter, deliberately Australian list: 24 add-ons, with Tyro Health, Pin Payments, Xero, MYOB, Physitrack, Snapforms, Clinivid, HotDoc, HealthEngine and Parchment ePrescribing among them. Unlimited add-ons require the PLUS plan. Its developer API is capable, covering bookings, clients, referrals, payments and availability. Access is gated, though. Credentials come through a sandbox application, and the documentation states the API is for server-to-server transactions, not public applications.

Neither ecosystem is open in the self-serve sense, and neither approach should put a clinic off. The sensible check: write down the tools the clinic cannot work without, then search for each one in both directories. Phone automation lives in this layer on both sides, with calls answered and bookings written straight into the diary. BookedSolid connects to Nookal and to coreplus, and both vendors list it in their own directories.

Data Security and Australian Hosting

Both systems keep Australian patient data in Australia. Nookal stores client data for Australian accounts in Sydney, and coreplus stores all client data in Australia on AWS infrastructure. For a clinic's privacy review, the starting point is the same on either side.

Nookal is SOC 2 Type 2 verified, encrypts data with AES-256 in transit and at rest, and offers two-factor authentication for all users. coreplus states full compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles. It backs data up every 15 minutes, and signs users in with a one-time password as the second factor. The certificates coreplus cites are its host's, AWS ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, rather than its own. It is candid about two limits. It holds no dedicated cyber insurance policy, and it is not PCI Level 1 certified itself, relying on PCI-compliant payment processors.

The difference is who holds the certificate. Nookal holds its own SOC 2 Type 2 attestation. coreplus leans on its host's. Both publish enough detail to assess, and neither should be ruled out on security alone.

Which System Suits Which Australian Clinic?

On the two vendors' own positioning and pricing, the fits fall out like this; the Australian practice management software roundup covers the wider field:

• A solo practitioner keeping overheads low starts cheapest on coreplus CORE at $35. With claiming needed, coreplus PLUS and Nookal Essentials meet at $49, and the clinic's claim counts and telehealth minutes make the difference.
• A Medicare or DVA-heavy practice gets claiming free on coreplus PLUS. The same volume on Nookal accrues per-claim fees, worth modelling before deciding.
• An NDIS-heavy practice is the clearest coreplus case: participant funding, time codes and item codes wired into invoicing rather than handled by hand.
• An audiology practice has an option on coreplus that Nookal does not publish: Hearing Services Program workflows for $5 a user.
• A growing multi-practitioner clinic finds Nookal's tapering rate cheaper from two or three practitioners on the comparable plans, and should ask coreplus for a GROUP quote past eight.
• A clinic running classes or group programmes leans Nookal, which includes classes and group events on every plan.
• A data-hungry practice owner gets live occupancy, KPI dashboards and clinician performance charts on Nookal; coreplus answers with its Huddle analytics add-on.
• A telehealth-heavy clinic should model the meter: coreplus charges cents per session minute, while Nookal means a partner video platform with its own pricing.
• A clinic with sites beyond Australia, or plans for them, is choosing Nookal by default. It publishes pricing for eight regions, New Zealand included; coreplus is built for Australia alone.

How to Choose Between Nookal and coreplus

Four checks take the guesswork out of it.

1. Run the clinic's own numbers. Set the practitioner count on Nookal's pricing slider, read the total, and multiply coreplus's flat rate by the same headcount. Ask for a GROUP quote near eight practitioners, and use AUD figures excluding GST on both sides.
2. Tally the funding mix. Work out what share of revenue arrives through Medicare, DVA or NDIS, and put real claim volumes against Nookal's per-claim fees and coreplus's PLUS inclusions. Add expected telehealth minutes to the same sheet.
3. Audit the current toolkit. Look up the clinic's current tools in Nookal's integrations directory and coreplus's add-ons list. Remember that coreplus caps integrations on CORE, and that Nookal prices its portal, secure messaging and JAN assistant as add-ons.
4. Put a real week through both trials. Nookal's trial runs 30 days with no card; coreplus's is untimed, with free data migration on every plan. Give each one a genuine week: bookings, notes, invoicing and, for scheme-heavy clinics, a test claim.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Nookal or coreplus cheaper?

coreplus starts cheaper. CORE is AUD $35 a month per user against Nookal Essentials at $49, both excluding GST. The picture changes with claiming and with growth. Free Medicare and DVA claiming sit on coreplus PLUS at $49 per user. Nookal's rate falls as the team grows, so the comparable plans cross at around two practitioners. From there Nookal stays cheaper, and past eight practitioners coreplus quotes discounted GROUP pricing on application. The usage fees then decide the rest: Nookal charges from $0.30 per Medicare claim, and coreplus meters telehealth at $0.01 per participant per minute.

Which is better for Medicare, DVA and NDIS claiming?

Both were built around Australian claiming. The packaging differs. coreplus builds it in. Medicare and DVA claiming are free on PLUS, through a direct Medicare Online integration, and invoicing is NDIS enabled with participant funding, time and item codes. Nookal offers Medicare claiming on every tier at a per-claim fee, from $0.30 on Essentials. DVA, NDIS and HICAPS are covered through integrations, with no published per-claim fees. A practice where scheme work carries most of the revenue should demo its exact claim types on both before deciding.

Do Nookal and coreplus include telehealth?

coreplus does, with a meter. Telehealth by coreplus is integrated on every plan, at $0.01 per participant per minute. A 50-minute one-to-one consultation costs about a dollar. Nookal does not build video in. It integrates with Coviu, Doxy.me and Zoom, so a Nookal clinic runs telehealth on a partner platform with its own pricing and account. Telehealth-heavy practices should cost a real month of sessions on each model.

Can clinics outside Australia use Nookal or coreplus?

coreplus is built for Australia alone. It publishes no overseas pricing, stores all client data in Australia, and shapes its billing around Medicare, DVA, NDIS and the Hearing Services Program. Nookal publishes regional pricing for Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Canada, the US and South Africa. An ACC claiming integration covers New Zealand practices, and a Healthcode integration covers UK insurer billing. A clinic operating beyond Australia, or planning to, ends up weighing Nookal against systems outside this comparison.

Do Nookal and coreplus have open APIs?

Neither offers a fully open, self-serve API. Nookal lists API access on its Enterprise tier and runs its ecosystem through more than 35 partner integrations. coreplus runs a developer API that covers bookings, clients, referrals, payments and availability. Its access is gated: credentials come through a sandbox application, and the documentation states it is for server-to-server transactions, not public applications. Partner integrations exist and work well on both. The route to building one runs through the vendor.

Do Nookal and coreplus work with AI receptionists?

Yes, both. Nookal lists AI tools, BookedSolid among them, in its integrations directory. coreplus lists BookedSolid in its add-ons directory, described as AI-powered virtual reception and appointment automation. On either system, calls answered by an AI receptionist become bookings in the diary the team already uses. Front-desk automation stays open whichever way the PMS decision goes.

Sources: Nookal's Australian pricing, integrations, telehealth and security pages; coreplus's pricing, add-ons, invoicing and payments, security FAQ and developer pages. All read in October 2026.