Replace a subscription · every price cited

The self-hosted Bonsai alternative

Invora: Self-hosted recurring invoicing for freelancers and small firms: every cycle lands as a draft you approve before it goes out, and each unpaid invoice carries your own payment link. Own it once, run it on your own server, and stop paying Bonsai every month.

Own Invora for $99 Try the live demo

Stop renting Bonsai.

Rented Bonsai Essentials (the tier with invoices and payments) $19 per user per month billed annually, $25 month-to-month; Basic $9/$15 has no invoicing; Premium $29/$39; Elite $49/$59 with a 3-user minimum ^[1] billed every month, for as long as you use it; your data in their cloud

Yours

Invora

$99 once · self-hosted · your data on your server

6 months of Bonsai costs what Invora costs once.

Buy once

How we counted: The lowest tier that actually invoices, per user, at its lowest published price: $19 a month billed annually ($25 month to month; re-read 2026-10-11). The cheaper Basic tier tracks time and tasks but sends no invoices. Invora is one payment for any number of users.

How Bonsai pricing grows

Bonsai meters PER USER per month, and invoicing only begins at the second tier.

“$25 /user/month”, their own page, read 2026-08-30

What Bonsai does that we don't

Bonsai is an all-in-one freelancer suite: proposals, contracts, time tracking, CRM and payments around the invoice.

“Easy from day 1 – no learning curve required, so your team can create projects, track time and invoice clients within minutes of logging in.”, their own page

Who should stay with Bonsai

Stay with Bonsai if you want contracts, proposals and payments handled in one hosted workspace. Invora is invoicing — estimates to numbered invoices, payments recorded, branded PDFs — on your own server.

What Invora deliberately doesn't do is on its product page.

Why owning beats renting Bonsai.

One payment

No monthly, per-seat or per-location fees. The license is perpetual.

Your data stays on your server

It never lives in Bonsai's cloud.

No plan ceilings

Records and users are limited by your hosting, not by a pricing tier.

It keeps working if the vendor doesn't

Self-hosted software can't be sunset or repriced out from under you.

The fair trade-offs: you host it, back it up and apply updates yourself. See the product page for its limits, and the full Invora vs renting comparison.

Questions about moving off Bonsai.

Does Invora support recurring invoices?

Yes — weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly or yearly schedules. Each cycle generates a draft for your review, and nothing is sent until you press Send.

Does it email invoices automatically?

It emails an invoice when you press Send — through your own SMTP server, with the client's public link and your payment link. Since 3.2 it can also send payment reminders on a schedule you approve once: off until you switch it on, with a preview of exactly what would go out today, stopping when the invoice is paid, and paused per invoice or per client. Every attempt is recorded in a send log.

Can it collect online payments?

Invora never touches a card. Paste your own Stripe Payment Link, PayPal.me or bank page and it becomes a Pay button on the client's invoice; you record the payment when it lands. Nothing to PCI-certify, nothing to breach.

What do I need to run it?

PHP 8.1+ with PDO and MySQL/MariaDB or SQLite, on Apache/LiteSpeed (mod_rewrite) or Nginx/VPS.

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Sources

Bonsai: price checked 2026-10-11, source“'Billed annually Essentials $19 /user/month' ... 'Essentials $25 / month $19 / month (if paid annually)' ... '3 users minimum'”

Competitor prices change, so always confirm on the linked page. We only print figures we could verify on the date shown. This vendor is tracked in the Price Observatory: every figure verbatim, dated, re-checked quarterly.

Replace Bonsai with Invora.

Open the live demo first; it costs nothing.

See Invora Invora vs renting All alternatives