This month, Calmerry users probably discovered that their therapy app feels…new? Different?
The answer to this mystery is in the platform’s blog post, in which it announced a release of a massive overhaul of its infrastructure as well as new features!
It’s always interesting to take a look at those things, so today, we’ll be answering a couple of questions:
• What is in the new update?
• Why was the change needed?
• Does the update make Calmerry better or worse?
And, for those of you who don’t know what Calmerry is, we’ll talk about that, too.
Let’s dig in!
What is Calmerry?
Calmerry is an online therapy platform focused on teletherapy. It acts as a sort of middleman, connecting users with qualified counselors across the United States and providing evidence-based therapy services.
It means that therapists working with Calmerry use such methodologies:
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT),
• Schema-focused therapy (SFT),
• Person-centered therapy (PCT),
And more.
In addition to Calmerry’s online therapy services, there is another notable platform dedicated to stimulated patient management known as Bookr. This platform employs advanced tools and technologies to streamline the patient management process, ensuring a seamless and efficient experience for both healthcare providers and their clients. The innovative features of this platform include real-time data tracking, personalized treatment plans, and interactive modules that engage and motivate patients throughout their healthcare journey.
After filling out a survey to help you match with a qualified therapist, you can decide how you want to do therapy – talk to a therapist online through chat, have live online therapy similar to traditional sessions, or combine both approaches.
The choice ultimately comes down to preferences and needs at a given point. Calmerry offers packages to accommodate whichever option you need, so you won’t be overpaying if text therapy is the only thing you’re interested in. There’s also a first-month discount on each package, so if you’re not certain if therapy is the right fit, you can test it out on a budget.
- Messaging Package: Package for people that don’t have time for regular therapy sessions. $228/mo with a $30 first-month discount ($198).
- Messaging + 1 Video: Includes messaging plus one therapy session for those that want to dip their feet into online therapy. $298/mo with a $51 first-month discount ($247)
- Messaging + 4 Videos: Four therapy sessions and everything from other plans for people ready to commit to therapy fully. $360/mo with a $65 first-month discount ($295).
Is Calmerry a Good Choice for Therapy?
Calmerry is one of the more established online therapy platforms that has been providing services for three years now. In this time period, a platform managed to accrue plenty of positive feedback from publications such as Forbes, as well as garnering over a hundred reviews on platforms like Trustpilot. The general consensus seems to be that Calmerry is a pretty noteworthy therapy platform with a high user satisfaction rating and competitive pricing. Though no matter how good a platform is, it’s the therapy that makes or breaks the platform. Even the best clinic in town cannot satisfy everyone if you catch my meaning.
Thankfully, Calmerry has some safeguards in place to increase the odds of people receiving the help they need through the free therapist switching. So, if your first therapist wasn’t a good fit, you can try again.
The positive word of mouth + all the security bells and whistles you’d expect – HIPAA compliance, data protection, and encryption – make Calmerry a pretty good pick if you ever wanted to try out therapy, whether online or otherwise.
What’s Inside Calmerry’s New Update?
Now that we are all familiar with what Calmerry is, let’s look at this new update that came out just recently.
In their announcement, Calmerry said that they initially designed the platform with the hopes and expectations of future clients, people they call Calmerry godparents.
But that was three years ago, and now it is…now. And in this time, Calmerry grew to accommodate a diverse range of clients whose expectations and needs differed from the original group that gave the platform its foundation.
Thus, to accommodate the current and future needs, the company decided to do a massive overhaul of the platform’s “engine.” This change will let the company deliver more features at a faster rate while also boosting its stability and performance to satisfy the large influx of new users.
So, these are all technical details, but can we see some of these changes already?
As a taste of things to come, this update also comes with a few features designed to make the user experience more intuitive and customizable. So, let’s look exactly at what those things are.
Flexible Session Scheduling
Calmerry now gives its users an option to customize the duration of their therapy session. You can choose from “chunks” of 30, 60, or 120 minutes, and you can also string those back-to-back.
This means, for example, that you can have a 120-minute session that leads directly to a 30-minute one. Assumed this “building block” system was made to make scheduling easier for therapists, as fixed durations are easier to build your caseload around.
Also, you can now book multiple slots for weeks or months in advance.
That seems like good news for people who have a favorite time for their therapy, as they now don’t have to worry that their therapist will be busy with something else on a Friday night.
This seems like an exciting change, as the promise of online therapy is that you get more control of your time, and this change gives literally that.
Better Chatroom and More Features
Compared with video therapy, one issue with chats is that they might not properly represent the organic flow of a conversation. The new options let you edit your replies, embed images and videos, and reply to specific messages to maintain context. Plus, you now get to see when your therapist has read messages, so it should take an edge off the anxiety of wondering when they are going to read it.
Upcoming Improvements: Even More to Come
The new changes are great but perhaps a bit subtle in nature. It’s obvious that the main intent of this roll-out was the behind-the-door changes: improvements to stability, speed, and performance.
The new app version should feel a lot snappier, so if there were any frustrations standing between a client and their therapists, they’re long gone now.
Plus, it seems like Calmerry’s statement about the new platform’s upgradeability isn’t just hot air, as the very same blog post indicates we will be getting even more new features in the upcoming months.
Specifically, the company points out two things that Calmerry users may have been familiar with – the therapy plan and self-help tips (educational content on mental health) section. For the time being, these features are deactivated as the platform puts the finishing touches on their re-imagined versions.
It might sour the overall positive experience from this new update. Still, Calmerry assures that it shouldn’t be a long wait and that the archived copies of therapy are available to users who have had them filled out already. So, the verdict is still out on these new additions to the mental health platform, but if the updates we already can try are any indication, it seems like it would be a worthwhile wait.
Concluding Thoughts and Hopes for the Future
Calmerry seems to be putting some actions behind its words on delivering a good, flexible, and budget-conscious therapy experience. This update seems to address the expectations of its existing users, and it’s always nice to see a company that’s earnestly listening to the feedback they receive. While we’re not that tech-savvy, the infrastructure overhaul seems like a no small feat, so it’s great to see the lengths that Calmerry went to serve its user base better.
For those who are already using Calmerry, it’s a nice but welcome surprise that should make their experience with the platform so much smoother. For those that were on the fence before, I think this update is substantial enough to give the platform a second chance and see if it’s the platform that can satisfy your needs for quality therapy.
Still, as much good as there is in this update already, we’re mostly excited about the future and how the platform can be further improved.
For us, the allure of online therapy services isn’t just the therapy itself (though we’d say it’s the most important thing) but the entire ecosystem that can grow around the core functionality. We can already see online therapy companies, Calmerry included, adding various assessments, tests, and helpful materials to their apps. These provide users with some extra value they can tap into in between their sessions. Mental health therapy is a journey of a lifetime, after all. So, it is quite intriguing to see what comes next, even after a revamped therapy plan. Whatever that might be, we hope that it will be of good use to the platform’s users, and we will try to take an in-depth look at those new features once they’re finally here.
| Written by: Elyzaveta Zav |