Hint Core vs Gentem vs Elation Passport for DPC Membership Billing

Hint Core vs Gentem vs Elation Passport for Membership Billing

For DPC membership billing, Hint Core and Elation are the two real options in this comparison, and Gentem is a different kind of company. Hint Core is a standalone membership and billing platform for direct care that starts at $110 a month with 100 members included, and it runs recurring invoices, card and ACH payments, failed-payment retries and employer billing beside whichever EHR you use. Elation Passport is Elation's patient app for registration, appointments, messages and records, and the membership billing itself runs through Elation's built-in memberships and payments inside the EHR. Gentem Health is an insurance revenue cycle service for private practices, now part of SimplePractice according to its LinkedIn page, so it fits a hybrid practice that bills insurance rather than a cash-only DPC membership. For a solo DPC doctor, the honest choice is between Hint Core, if you want billing that stands on its own, and Elation's memberships, if you already chart in Elation and want one vendor. Tabflows is neither. It is a dedicated tech team that works between whichever billing tool and EHR you pick.

Every price below comes from the vendor's own website and is dated in the Sources section at the end. Vendors change plans often, so confirm on a demo before you sign anything.

What Each Product Actually Is

The three names get compared because they all show up when a new DPC owner searches for billing, but they solve different problems. Sorting that out first saves a lot of demo time.

• Hint Core is Hint's business platform for direct care. Its pricing page lists member onboarding, membership management, automated billing, practice reporting, employer management, EMR integrations, a member portal, embedded signup pages and unlimited users.
• Elation Passport is the patient side of Elation EHR. Elation describes it as an app on web, iOS and Android with registration in under two minutes, appointments, secure messaging, health records, attachments and family and caregiver access in seven languages. The membership and payment tools live in the Elation EHR your team uses.
• Gentem Health describes itself on its own pages as a service that helps private medical practices with insurance reimbursements and the revenue cycle. Its LinkedIn company page now reads "now a part of SimplePractice." We could not find anything on Gentem's own pages about direct primary care memberships.

Comparison

The prices Hint Core and Elation publish. Elation's are its EHR's per-provider list prices and its Membership Management fees, and it also quotes by practice. Gentem publishes none on the pages we reached.

What the table can't hold:

• What it is. Hint Core: a membership and billing platform. Elation (memberships and Passport): an EHR with built-in memberships and a patient app. Gentem Health: an insurance revenue cycle service, so payment fees don't apply to memberships.
• Recurring billing. Hint Core: yes. Elation: yes. Gentem: not listed.
• Failed payments. Hint Core: retries, notices and dunning. Elation: payment failure alerts. Gentem: not listed.
• Employer billing. Hint Core: yes, on every Core plan. Elation: ask on demo. Gentem: not listed.
• Patient side. Hint Core: a member portal and signup pages. Elation: the Elation Passport app. Gentem: not listed.
• Works with your EHR. Hint Core: EMR integrations listed. Elation: it is the EHR. Gentem: not listed for DPC.
• Best for. Hint Core: billing that stands alone, and employer contracts. Elation: a solo DPC already charting in Elation. Gentem: hybrid practices billing insurance.

Hint Core Membership Billing

Hint built its business on direct care billing, and its billing page reads like a list of the edges that make membership billing hard. You can generate recurring, one-time, patient and employer invoices with flexible billing dates and PDF invoices, and add one-time or ancillary charges onto a member's bill. Card and ACH payments stay tied to the right invoice, and you can record outside payments and issue refunds in the same place. Expiring cards are flagged, failed charges retry and notify you, and automated dunning handles the follow-up messages. Employers can be billed alongside individual members with their own schedules and rates.

Hint Core pricing

Hint's pricing page says you pay nothing until you launch your practice, and then the plan grows with your member count.

Hint's page gives Core Scale two prices: $676 a month in its plan summary and $675 in its plan builder, so confirm which one applies.

ACH fees are capped at $5 per transaction on every plan, and Amex adds a 1% surcharge. Core Scale adds network management, commission and engagement tracking and three eligibility autosync feeds, and Enterprise adds a custom MSA and BAA, unlimited API access and dedicated account management. For a solo practice, Core Growth is the plan to price out. At 300 members, the published numbers work out to the $110 base plus four extra tranches of 50 at $45 each, so $290 a month before payment fees.

Hint Core is best for a solo DPC that wants billing to stay put even if it changes EHRs, that expects to sign employer contracts, or that wants a polished signup page for new members. It is a weaker fit if you want a single system and a single bill for charting and payments.

Elation Memberships and Elation Passport

Elation's direct primary care page describes memberships and payments built into the EHR. It lists integrated memberships and payments, ACH and credit card processing, automated recurring billing with payment failure alerts, patient self-enrollment and flexible plan management, with the pitch of one relationship, one onboarding and one set of tools. Elation's Membership Management help article adds individual or group memberships, automatic payment-due notices and splitting one membership payment across several cards on file, and says the payments run on Stripe. Elation's product guide lists Membership Management at 2.99% of collected card payments and 1% + $0.25 of collected ACH payments, capped at $5 a payment.

Elation Passport is where your members meet the practice. Patients register in under two minutes, sign in with Face ID or Touch ID, book and cancel appointments, message the care team with attachments and read their records, and a parent can manage family members from one login. Elation calls Passport ONC certified and HIPAA compliant. It is a good patient experience, but it is a portal, not a billing engine, so judge Elation on the membership tools inside the EHR.

Elation lists per-provider EHR prices in its product guide, and you can also fill out a form for personalized pricing. Elation is best for a solo DPC doctor who already charts in Elation, or plans to, and wants memberships, payments and the patient app from one vendor. Its DPC page doesn't describe employer billing, so ask for a demo of an employer invoice if that matters to you.

Where Gentem Fits

Gentem Health shows up in this search because it serves small private practices, but its own pages talk about insurance reimbursements and the revenue cycle, not membership subscriptions. Its LinkedIn company page says it is now part of SimplePractice. We could not load gentem.com when we checked, so we have left out any price or feature list rather than guess.

For a cash-only DPC practice, that usually means Gentem is not the tool for memberships. It may still matter for a hybrid practice that bills insurance for some services alongside a membership, in which case you would run memberships in Hint Core or Elation and talk to Gentem or SimplePractice about the insurance side.

How a Solo DPC Doctor Should Choose

• Pick Hint if you sell to employers, take eligibility files from a TPA, or want to keep your EHR and run only memberships and billing. Where it wins: employer billing and eligibility feeds; billing sold on its own, beside another EHR.
• Pick Elation if you put charting first and want a primary care EHR with memberships built in. Where it wins: a chart and billing platform built for primary care; some AI tools included, with Elation AI as a paid add-on.
• What Tabflows does not do: bill memberships or charge cards; chart visits or prescribe.

1. Decide who pays your members. If employers will be a meaningful share of revenue, lean toward Hint Core. If almost every member pays for themselves, Elation's memberships cover the job.
2. Decide where you want to chart. If you love Elation, its built-in memberships remove a vendor. If you are unsure about your EHR, Hint Core keeps billing independent of that choice.
3. Price your real panel. Use Hint's plan builder for your expected member count, and ask Elation for a quote that includes its card and ACH payment fees.
4. Watch a failed payment on the demo. Ask each vendor to show a declined card, the retry, the notice to the patient and what your team sees.
5. Ask about a BAA. Any tool that holds patient information should sign a business associate agreement with your practice.

If you are still mapping the wider market, our DPC membership billing software comparison adds Atlas.md, Akute, Cerbo, Charm and Stripe Billing.

Where Tabflows Fits

Tabflows is not a billing system or an EHR, so it doesn't replace Hint Core, Elation or Gentem. It is a dedicated tech team for DPC, concierge and private clinics that works across the tools you already use and turns the work between them into tracked tasks and automations.

That matters most in the moments where billing and the chart don't talk to each other. With the Hint Core integration, your team can see a patient's membership status side by side with their chart in Elation or another EHR, without another login. The follow-up after a declined card, the kind of work our guide to membership billing decline follow-up walks through, can become a tracked task instead of a sticky note, which protects the recurring revenue a membership practice runs on.

If you would like help choosing or connecting your billing and EHR, you can get matched with a Tabflows team, and pricing is published here.

Sources

Checked on November 5, 2026: elationhealth.com. Checked on November 4, 2026: hint.com/core/find-your-price, elationhealth.com/ehr-product-guide, hint.com/pricing, help.elationhealth.com/articles/Introduction-to-Membership-Management-with-Elation and elationhealth.com/contact-us/pricing. Spot a wrong fact? Email a correction.