Liveplan
Simplify business planning with Liveplan
Best For: Small and medium-sized enterprises, consultants, educators, and SBA partners.
Pricing: $40
Top Features
- 4.5 Budgeting & forecasting
- 4.4 Financial reporting
- 4.3 AI Assistance
- 4.6 Collaboration
- 4.4 Support
Other Users Choose
- 4.7 Budgeting & forecasting
- 4.6 Financial reporting
- 4.6 AI Assistance
- 4.5 Collaboration
- 4.4 Support
Overview
Liveplan by Palo Alto Software is a business planning and management software created to help entrepreneurs and small business owners succeed through strategic business planning.
With tools like Liveplan with advanced forecasting capabilities, creating a business plan takes only a few hours, which used to take several weeks to complete.
Liveplan simplifies professional business plan creation with its instruction manuals, tutorials, and expert guidance, whereas its automated financials built-in with formulas ensure precise financial forecasting.
With its robust financial and budgeting capabilities, users can easily track financial projections, create and manage budgets, and track the company’s financial health. In contrast, AI assistance helps write or improve content using artificial intelligence.
Overall, Liveplan provides a comprehensive suite of features including one-page plans, budgeting, financial reporting, collaboration tools, AI assistance, automatic financials, and others to create a seamless business planning experience.
Liveplan Rating
| Ratings |
Liveplan
|
Upmetrics
|
|---|---|---|
| Ease-of-use |
|
|
| Features & Functionality |
|
|
| Value for money |
|
|
| Customer support |
|
|
| Overall rating |
|
|
| Likelihood to recommend |
|
Liveplan Review
Positive
- Writing a business plan is easy with its step-by-step guidance, AI assistance, and industry-specific business plan examples.
- It helps you organize your thoughts, data, and expectations in a way that helps you plan, budget, and forecast.
- It can help you create clean, modern, and professional-looking one-page business plans.
- It provides industry benchmarks and suggests budget items to help you understand your market and make informed decisions.
- The “what if” type questions can be easily played after entering the basic revenue streams and costs.
- Liveplan offers a supported integration with QuickBooks and Xero.
- Its automated financials, built-in with formulas, help you automatically project your cash flow.
Negative
- It only connects to Xero and Quick Books, and you have no control over the data or time period it syncs.
- You can’t roll back the sync; you must manually delete these synced entries.
- Some users may not find its example business plan templates easily accessible.
- Some users may find Liveplan challenging to try and figure out even after watching video tutorials and guides.
- Customizing reports and dealing with a few areas, such as payroll and fixed assets, is difficult.
- The ability to easily create a business plan is excellent, but the price may be prohibitive for some users.
- Liveplan’s formatting options are a bit limiting in certain aspects of formatting. i.e., not providing font selection options.
- The financial forecasting feature is relatively complex, not fully customizable, and covers limited scenarios.
Liveplan Pricing
The renowned business plan software Liveplan is an ideal solution for startups, mid-sized enterprises, business consultants, educators, and SBA partners. Liveplan offers two pricing plans to cater to its audience: standard and premium.
Today, many entrepreneurs and business owners often ask—is Liveplan free, or do they offer any free demo or trial? So no, Liveplan is neither free nor has any demo or trial as part of their subscription model. However, they offer a 35-day money-back guarantee on all their subscription plans.
Liveplan pricing plans may sound a bit on the expensive side, but the advanced features they offer compensate for it.
Have questions related to Liveplan’s pricing plans? Let’s see both their subscription plans, pricing, and features included:
Standard Plan: Liveplan’s standard plan is best suitable for early-stage startups or anyone who needs a tool to create a professional business plan. This plan allows max. up to 5 users to collaborate and manage your business plan, whereas there are no limitations for guest viewers.
The standard plan comes with basic business planning features, including step-by-step guidance, lender-ready statements, financial forecasts, a one-page plan builder, Liveplan Assistant, and access to 500+ sample business plans.
Premium Plan: This plan is best suitable for well-established entrepreneurs, mid-sized enterprises, business consultants, and those that also need financial tools along with business planning features. Like the standard plan, max. 5 users can collaborate and manage your plans without limitations for guest viewers.
Besides the standard plan features, the premium plan includes advanced features and financial tools, like benchmark data, “what if” scenarios, integrations with accounting software, a performance dashboard, and more.
Check out this pricing table to compare both plans, their pricing, and the features included:
Standard
$20
Per Month
Features
- Step-by-step instructions
- Lender-ready statements
- Full financial forecast
- One-page pitch builder
- 500+ sample plans
- Liveplan assistant
Professional
$40
Per Month
Standard features+
- Industry benchmark data
- “What if” scenarios
- Performance dashboards
- Real-time profit & cash forecasting
- Export to Excel
- Syncs with QuickBooks Online & Xero
Price Comparison
As we recently discussed Liveplan’s subscription model and pricing plans, we can say that it’s relatively expensive compared to other tools in the market.
With tools like Upmetrics, you can get a wide range of features required for comprehensive business planning at less than half of Liveplan’s cost.
In short, Upmetrics can be an affordable, reliable, and beginner-friendly Liveplan alternative.
Standard
$15.00/Per Month
Premium
$30.00/Per Month
Money-back-guarantee
Yes
Free Demo
Not Available
Starter
$7.00/Per Month
Premium
$14.00/Per Month
Money-back-guarantee
Yes
Free demo
Not Available
*pricing is based on annual billing.
Features
1. One-page Business Plan
What is a one-page business plan? It’s a simple business plan that fits on one page and allows you to explain your business to anyone in 60 seconds, making it memorable for readers.
One-page business plan is a quick and easy way to gain a better understanding of the fundamentals of your business idea.
Liveplan helps you clearly explain who your customers are, your marketing and sales activities, and what products or services you will offer to your customers.
In addition, this isn’t something you need to keep tapping on for overwhelming edits and timely changes—you can quickly update and refine your business plan anytime.
2. Liveplan Assistant
As they say, this AI-powered Assistant combines the power of ChatGPT with the expertise of a professional business plan writer.
It helps you auto-improve, shorten, or expand your text and change the tone to make it more professional or persuasive. Unlike ChatGPT, you don’t have to spend hours figuring out the perfect prompt or refining your response—it’s all taken care of with Liveplan Assistant.
Furthermore, it can adjust the tone of your plan to resonate with a specific audience. It can check for grammar, spelling, and common errors, and provide a polished plan in simple language for non-native English speakers.
So, now all you need to do is write down your basic thoughts and use Liveplan Assistant to expand upon them.
3. Budgeting & Automatic Financials
With Liveplan’s automatic financials, you don’t have to worry about navigating complex spreadsheets or remembering Excel formulas. It offers a step-by-step process for creating powerful financial reports for your business plan.
It supports all popular forecasting options, including product sales, subscription revenue, hourly rates, and more; whether you’re a coffee shop, a SaaS business, or a plastic manufacturer, Liveplan can help.
Some of Liveplan’s other financial features include drag-and-drop financial forecasting, step-by-step help for budgeting, automatic charts and graphs, country currency formatting, and more.
4. Performance Dashboards
Liveplan’s performance dashboard provides an easily-to-understand overview or a visual representation of key business and financial metrics. This dashboard helps entrepreneurs keep track of the company’s performance and see progress in real-time to make informed decisions.
All you need to do is connect your accounting software (Xero or QuickBooks), and you will get instant insights into your business.
This feature is the easiest way to monitor your revenue, keep an eye on your expenses, and make adjustments to make sure you reach your goals.
5. Step-by-step Guidance
Liveplan simplifies the business planning process with its step-by-step instructions, video and text tutorials, and definitions of key business terms. You receive step-by-step instructions when you log in to help you get started.
You also get a free copy of Tim Berry’s (Founder of Liveplan) best-selling book, The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, with the Liveplan subscription.
With 500+ sample business plans and templates, timely guidance, and an advanced feature list, Liveplan is truly one of the easiest-to-use business planning tools in the market.
Conclusion
With growing competition in almost every industry, business planning is not an option anymore. In fact, having a comprehensive business plan is a must for any business wanting to stay relevant to the market and succeed.
And tools like Liveplan and Upmetrics help them to easily create business plans, so they can spend less time planning and more time growing their business.
We hope now you know Liveplan and its features inside-out to make an informed decision. So, go get your business plan done!
Say No to Expensive Business Planning Software!
Get Affordable and Feature-Packed Business Planning with Upmetrics
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Liveplan used for?
Liveplan is a tool used for business and financial planning. With Liveplan, you can create a business plan, organize & pitch your ideas, and create accurate financial reports. It’s a one-stop business plan solution for entrepreneurs and business owners.
Is it worth paying for Liveplan?
Although Liveplan offers many comprehensive business and financial planning features, its cost is relatively high compared to other tools in the market. You can easily get similar or better functionalities at much lower costs.
What is better than Liveplan?
Upmetrics is comparatively a better alternative to Liveplan. It’s an incredible business planning tool with a similar feature line. Upmetrics’ Starter and Premium plans cost $7 and $14 respectively, whereas Liveplan’s equivalent plans cost $20 and $40.
Does Liveplan have a free version?
No. Liveplan doesn’t have any free plan or trial. However, they offer a 35-day money-back guarantee, so you can try the tool and ask for a refund if you don’t find it suitable for your requirements.
How much is Liveplan monthly cost?
Liveplan has two pricing plans as a part of their subscription model: Standard plan and Premium plan. The Standard plan costs $20 a month, whereas the Premium plan costs $40 per month.
