- We spent more than 10,000 hours researching over 70 online therapy platforms and our testers signed up for the 26 most popular platforms to bring you our top picks.
- Our testers used Calmerry for at least four weeks, focusing on the sign-up process, therapist selection, therapy session quality, and customer service interactions.
- We surveyed over 2,000 online therapy users, held focus group interviews with both users and therapists, and consulted over 60 mental health experts.
- We score each platform according to affordability, data privacy, availability, and inclusivity.
- Our pages are updated regularly to update pricing and service information, and to reflect our ongoing testing of new online therapy platforms and retesting of platforms we’ve researched before.
- Learn more about how we tested Calmerry.
Key takeaways
- Calmerry is an online therapy platform with plans for messaging therapy and live video sessions.
- Calmerry doesn’t take insurance, but it is one of the more affordable online therapy options, with plans starting at $228 per month.
- Our testers encountered technical difficulties with the platform and a lack of diversity in therapist choice.
Calmerry is an online therapy platform that offers plans for live video therapy and messaging therapy. Our team signed up for the service to find out if it is one of the top online counseling platforms. In this article, we review our experience from using Calmerry over four weeks and comparing it to other platforms in terms of cost, plans, and features. Despite its potential, we discovered a few areas of concern when using Calmerry. Read on to understand if this online therapy service is right for you.
Calmerry highlights
In a mental health emergency
Online therapists may not be the most appropriate resource to help in a mental health crisis. If you or someone you know is a danger to themselves or others, it is an emergency and cannot wait for an online therapist’s response. Don’t wait. You can find help immediately by:
- Calling 911.
- Visiting your local urgent care or emergency room.
- Calling or texting 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
- Chatting online at 988lifeline.org.
- Calling the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 or texting your zip code to 435748.
All the above options will connect you with trained professionals who can provide crisis support. You can find even more resources, including international options, on our helpline directory page.
What is Calmerry?
Calmerry is an online therapy platform that offers four different plans with messaging and video therapy. The platform has a mobile app and a desktop version, and users access their care through their account dashboard on both.
| Plan | Messaging | Four live videos | Messaging + two live videos | Messaging + four live videos |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unlimited messaging with therapist included | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Minutes of live video sessions per month | 0 | 120 | 60 | 120 |
| Cost per month | $228 | $250 | $310 | $360 |
Those who aren’t ready for a monthly plan can book a 60-minute live video session with a provider to try out the platform for $150.
How does Calmerry work?
The platform’s messaging plans guarantee provider responses five days a week, but Calmerry does not offer live messaging. Live video plans include two or four 30-minute live video sessions. If users prefer, they can allocate their total monthly live video minutes to extended video visits. When booking an appointment, users can choose a 30-, 60-, or 90-minute session with their provider, but this will affect the number of total live sessions for the month. For example, if you subscribe to the Messaging + two live video sessions plan, you can select one 60 minute session instead of two 30 minute sessions when booking your appointments.
All of the plans include:
- A symptom tracker for anxiety and depression.
- A therapy goals tracker.
- A mood tracker.
- A digital journal with daily prompts.
Calmerry users also get access to a reflection chatbot named Coa. The tool provides daily mood check-ins and journaling prompts and then tracks your mood journal over time.
How to sign up for Calmerry online therapy
Here are the steps to sign up for Calmerry online therapy:
- Enter your email address and read through the site’s privacy policy and terms and conditions.
- Once you have verified your email address, you’ll be taken to a page where you can enter your personal details.
- Calmerry will then ask you to describe what you’re looking to get help with, your medical history, , and how you’re currently feeling.
- Next, you’ll be asked for your counselor preferences.
- You’ll then have the opportunity to view therapist profiles based on your preferences. You have the option of choosing up to three of the therapists you like best, or you can skip the page by clicking “Find me a counselor.”
- Next, you’ll be given the option to select the plan you want to start with or sign up for a one-time session.
- If you’re ready to begin a subscription, you’ll be taken to a payment page and get matched with a therapist to schedule your first session.
When one of our testers signed up for Calmerry, they encountered technical issues while attempting to verify their email address and had to contact customer service. Though it took them about 24 hours to actually sign up, our tester notes that customer service through the Calmerry live chat was helpful and responsive.
How to match with an online therapist
Based on our testing and research, Calmerry matches users with a provider based on the provider’s gender identity and what issue or issues they want to work on. The platform then gives users a choice between getting matched by the internal system, or choosing from a handful of providers.
After starting their subscription, one of our testers was matched with a provider, but they were disappointed that they couldn’t choose their therapist based on other identities, such as race or sexual orientation. Even after reaching out to customer service with their preferences, they were only given three providers to choose from, none of which matched their preferences. Another tester specified that they wanted to work with a female therapist, but was still shown one male therapist in their list of recommendations.
From one of our Calmerry testers
“I was only given three options and still couldn’t get the type of therapist I was looking for, since they didn’t have any Black therapists available for my state.”
For some, sharing a social identity like gender or race with their health care provider can help them to feel more comfortable in their interactions. Research suggests that sharing similar social identities has the potential to improve therapy outcomes. It’s why our team wasn’t impressed with Calmerry when our testers weren’t able to find a therapist that matched their therapist preferences beyond gender identity.
We noticed that therapists on Calmerry had a wide variety of licenses, however. In addition to the common therapist credentials, such as licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), licensed mental health counselor (LMHC), licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), and licensed professional counselor (LPC), we also saw providers who were licensed certified art therapists (LCAT), rehabilitation counselors (CRCC), and credentialed alcohol and substance abuse counselors (CASAC).
Live video sessions
Our testers attended their live video sessions without much problem.If a therapist was late to join a session, they added more time at the end to make up for that delay.
Additional features
The Calmerry platform also offers a Therapy Kit section with four sections:
- Assessment: A depression and anxiety symptom tracker.
- Therapy plan: A section that outlines problems and objectives your provider has identified.
- Mood: A section that tracks your mood entries.
- Journal: A section that tracks your journaling habits.
The mood tracking and journaling are done through the reflection chatbot, Coa. It asks about your mood, the factors that contribute to your mood (e.g., work, relationships, pets, etc.), the emotions associated with your mood, and where it shows up in your body. You can choose whether to share the entry with your therapist or not.
Though a subscription comes with “guided journaling,” our tester didn’t encounter any assistive prompts when they were using Coa for journaling, aside from the open prompt, “Feel free to express yourself in words.” Journal entries are called Notes and are tracked through the Journal tab in the Therapy Kit. You can choose to share notes with your provider to inform your session or keep them private.
Data privacy on Calmerry
We read through various versions of Calmerry’s privacy policy and terms of use. Depending on whether users are logged in or not, they may be accessing different versions of the platform’s data and privacy documentation. We found links to versions as old as October 28, 2020, and as recent as June 15, 2024.
The most updated versions of the documents provide more detailed information about Calmerry’s data policies, but we didn’t like that outdated documents on the website were less clear.
General data privacy tips for using online mental health platforms
The Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) only protects the interactions and records between you and your provider during the visit. However, online therapy platforms may still collect data on their users to use for marketing or research. We recommend understanding how your data is collected and used before signing up for a platform. To do this and guard your private data in general, we recommend the following basic steps that we learned from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) and Mozilla Foundation’s *Privacy Not Included project:
- Attend your online therapy appointment in a private location, preferably not on a public Wi-Fi network.
- Use your personal computer when possible.
- Look for checkboxes during sign-up to opt out of data tracking or medical information disclosure.
- Sign up with your email, not by using a social login like Facebook.
- Choose a strong password to create a secure account login.
- Review the platform’s privacy guidelines, typically found on the website’s Privacy Policy page, to understand whether and how the platform collects, stores, and shares private information.
What other users are saying
In February 2024, our Handbook Team surveyed 100 Calmerry subscribers to learn more about user experiences. Most respondents indicated that they preferred to be matched with a therapist who tailored their care to their main mental health concerns. We like that the platform matches users to providers that specialize in treating certain conditions or concerns, such as anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and relationship issues.
Despite one of our testers not being able to find a therapist based on their identity preferences, we found that, overall, 84 percent of the Calmerry users we surveyed are satisfied or very satisfied with their providers on the platform.
How much does Calmerry cost?
Calmerry’s plans start at $228 per month for the messaging plan. Compared to popular platforms such as BetterHelp, Talkspace, Brightside, and Online-Therapy.com, which all offer monthly subscriptions for online therapy, Calmerry’s plans tend to be more affordable.
We calculated that the average per-session cost for one 30-minute live online therapy session across these five platforms was $88.25. Calmerry offers live online therapy sessions that cost between $62.50 and $90 per session, depending on the subscription plan.
| Messaging | Four Live Videos | Messaging + Two Live Videos | Messaging + Four Live Videos | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per week | $57 | $62.50 | $77.50 | $90 |
| Cost per month | $228 | $250 | $310 | $360 |
| Discounted first month cost* | $198 | $218 | $264 | $295 |
| Percent discount from first month (dollar amount) | 13 percent ($30) | 13 percent ($32) | 15 percent ($46) | 18 percent ($65) |
* Cost without insurance and no extra promotion code applied.
Our testers noticed that as of August 2024, the platform offers a one-time therapy session for $150 (or $120 after a $30 automatically-applied discount for new users). The session is a one-time trial of a 60-minute live video session with one of its therapists.
Is Calmerry covered by insurance?
No, but Calmerry may be able to provide an invoice you can submit to your insurance carrier for reimbursement. It’s best to check with your insurance company to confirm this benefit before paying out of pocket for services with Calmerry, or any other therapy service provider.
If you want to use your insurance benefits to help pay for mental health support, read our review of the best online therapy platforms that take insurance.
How to save money on Calmerry
Calmerry doesn’t offer financial aid, but the site often offers an automatic discount for your first month and ongoing promotions in the form of a discount code. For example, our Handbook Team initially received about 15 percent off our first month while signing up, but we found a separate code (CARE20) for 20 percent off. The platform will apply the discount with the highest value at checkout.
Our experience with Calmerry customer service
In our testers’ experience, Calmerry customer service is responsive and easy to reach via multiple methods. Users looking for more information can call (844-740-2144), email ([email protected]), or live chat (button on the bottom right side of the Calmerry webpages) with the support team, which is available 24/7, according to the platform.
We found the live chat to be the most helpful in our research. Calmerry customer service responded within minutes of us starting a chat, and our testers were able to use the chat feature to maintain their accounts and to find and switch therapists.
Our Calmerry testing experience
Our Handbook Team has spent over 10,000 hours collectively researching online mental health platforms. With Calmerry, we had testers sign up for the platform, surveyed 100 of its users, and compared it against other similar online therapy platforms.
Our team of testers signed up for Calmerry to explore the platform, get matched with a provider, attend therapy sessions for four weeks, and interact with customer service. Testers interact with providers through online therapy sessions and the platform’s asynchronous messaging, noting any features or technical difficulties.
Our team surveyed over 2,000 online mental health platform users, which included at least 100 Calmerry users. These surveys informed our understanding of the online platforms beyond our tester experience, providing context for who is actually using the platforms and how they benefit from them.
We compared data on Calmerry, such as the included features, user experience, therapist diversity, and affordability, to those of other online therapy platforms we’ve tested.
Since online mental health platforms handle user health information, we investigated Calmerry’s terms of use and privacy policy documentation to find out how they’re using subscribers’ personal data. We note whether they call out what information they gather, how they use it, and who they share it with. If platforms are gathering personally identifiable information (PII) and personal health information (PHI), as Calmerry does, we look for whether they implement standard procedures in proper data handling to keep this information protected.
Learn more about our online therapy testing and review methodology.
Fill out the intake assessment.
Subscribe as a new user.
Get matched with a therapist.
Schedule and attend sessions on the platform for one month.
Go through the steps to switch therapists.
Contact customer support with questions.
Explore platform features such as journals, symptom trackers, and goal trackers.
Cancel subscription.
Compare Calmerry to other online therapy platforms
Compared to other platforms, Calmerry’s messaging support plan has the most affordable starting cost at $228 per month. Platforms like Online-Therapy.com and Talkspace also offer messaging support plans, but these are slightly more expensive per month. When comparing costs per live virtual session, Calmerry also has the lowest average cost per session compared to similar monthly plans from BetterHelp, Talkspace, Brightside, and Online-Therapy.com. Calmerry sessions are 30 minutes, BetterHelp and Talkspace sessions can range from 30–45 minutes, while Brightside and Online-Therapy sessions last 45 minutes.
Though it doesn’t have as many self-guided resources as Online-Therapy.com or Brightside Health, Calmerry offers tracking features for users who want to track their mental health progress.
| Monthly cost for online therapy | $228–$360 | $260–$400 | $276–$436 | $299–$349 | $200–$440 |
| Average cost per live online therapy session | $76.25 | $85 | $104 | $81 | $95 |
| Average length of live therapy sessions | 30 minutes | 30–45 minutes | 30 minutes without insurance; 45 minutes with insurance | 45 minutes | 45 minutes |
| Insurance accepted? | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Services | Individual therapy | Individual therapy | Individual therapy for adults and teens; couples therapy; psychiatry | Individual therapy; psychiatry; crisis care | Individual therapy; couples therapy |
Our final verdict
Calmerry offers monthly plans for online therapy with its licensed providers. We like that users can choose a plan that suits their preferences for live therapy sessions and that the platform has features to track users’ mental health progress. We also like that users can adjust the length of their monthly sessions to get longer individual appointments instead of four 30 minute sessions if they prefer. Though it doesn’t accept insurance, Calmerry’s plans can be more affordable compared to similar platforms like BetterHelp and Talkspace because they offer different session lengths. For people who are looking for diversity in therapists, we found its therapist-match system limited in what they were able to offer to our testers. The Calmerry messaging plan also does not include live chat sessions with a therapist, and you will have to wait for them to respond to your messages when they get to them. There are other platforms that offer live chat messaging therapy if you prefer to communicate through text.
Frequently asked questions
No, Calmerry only offers online therapy sessions with licensed therapists, which cannot prescribe medications. You will need to see a psychiatrist to be assessed for medication treatment. To see options for online psychiatry, read our review of the best online psychiatry platforms.
To switch therapists on Calmerry, users can contact the customer service team through its live online chat function.
No, Calmerry doesn’t accept insurance, but it can provide you with an invoice to submit for out-of-network benefit reimbursement with your insurance provider. Check with your insurance company to confirm this benefit before paying out of pocket for Calmerry services.
Yes, Calmerry is a legitimate online therapy platform with licensed providers.
- Modi, H., Orgera, K., & Grover, A. (2022, October 10). Exploring Barriers to Mental Health Care in the U.S. Association of American Medical Colleges Research and Action Institute. Link
- Cruwys, C., Lee, G.C., Robertson, A.M., Haslam, C., Sterling, N., Platow, M.J., Williams, E., Haslam, S.A., & Walter, Z.C. (2023, July). Therapists who foster social identification build stronger therapeutic working alliance and have better client outcomes. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 124, 152394. Link