HoudiniESQ 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

Peace of Mind. My information is secure and isn't going anywhere. It is always available to me. I have a very good rapport with my Houdini IT Department.

I have used HoudiniESQ for over seven years. The product absolutely works, contrary to what another reviewer said. The challenge is that HoudiniESQ is designed with the very large office in mind, for example, 5,000+ seats. It assumes that the user will have high-end tech support in-house. I guess I am able to use HoudiniESQ successfully largely because decades ago I coded my own law practice management software, and have at least minimal understanding of what must be "under the hood." For that reason, I would only recommend HoudiniESQ to a very large organization that can truly take advantage of the extensive, advanced features or a solo with a coding background.

Generally speaking, the software offers everything you want in a practice management software. It does trust accounting, billing, general practice management, calendaring, e-mailing, and task management. However, every single one of these features is clunky and slow. The database constantly breaks and you lose information by clearing your cache and refreshing your page. The database will, occasionally delete or lose entries on its own but when you call tech support they blame you for it. Randomly, during updates, the developers decide that you should have been doing something (billing, trust accounting, etc.) their way and change the software to force you to do it that way in the future. Often, this breaks all of the entries that you put into the system in the past. For example, if a client had a carry over credit balance from a small overpayment; houdiniesq now doesn't use that in calculating the client's current balance. Many of the search features simply don't work correctly, particularly when trying to search for an invoice. You used to be able to print invoices when you generated them. Now, you have to go search for the invoices, after it is generated and on a search platform that doesn't operate properly, and then print them adding an entirely wasteful extra step to billing. Really, this software is a complete headache. The developers don't own up to these problems or offer solutions. They often don't answer the support phone line and seem to work limited hours. The price is on the lower end, although better companies are now competitive price-wise. The only reason I still have this software is because I don't have the time to move all of my data over to new software.

We unexpectedly updated to Houdini 2.0 so the difference was quite a shock, but we have found it to be much more user friendly than previous versions. The response time is also much faster when adding notes, contacts, events, and matters. We are only on day 3 here with version 2.0 but the ease of use is biggest improvement we could have asked Houdini for. Also, the customer service has been absolutely amazing. Since we had no warning of the upgrade from our system administrator, we were caught on our heels on a busy Monday morning; however, every time we called for help, which we did multiple times over the course of the day, we were given outstanding service and attention. I wish I could rate the customer support higher than 5 stars.

Houdini makes my life easier and my practice more productive and profitable.

Organization and a sense of control over my case load. This software has really changed the way I track and work my files. I absolutely love it!

The ease of having everything in one place that does everything a firm needs. I haven't found anything that our firm needs that Houdini does not already do!

I have used others, most recently Amicus Attorney, and Houdini is a better product in almost every way. They also have a fairly extensive knowledge base, which is a great source for ideas and learning the program in general. Busy day, phones ringing, I am not sure what I did, but I completely chuffed my installation. In desperation I called for help. (1) I am still a free user, no staff. (2) I was making changes without a good back up, even though they warned me. (3) I had a trial, so not a lot of time to wait around. I sent an email, they called back (a couple of times) and they spent literally a couple of hours saving me from myself. Not so many companies will go the extra mile to save one from themselves especially after having failed to heed their explicit warnings. Thanks again!