StudioHaus vs DesignFiles.
Last updated · August 2026
Two tools built specifically for interior designers — one that grew up around the design board, one that grew up around the practice.
Unlike the general construction platforms, StudioHaus™ and DesignFiles share a customer: the working interior design studio. Both do design boards, product sourcing, client portals, and invoicing. The honest difference is center of gravity. DesignFiles is an established, board-first platform — its presentation tooling is polished and deep. StudioHaus starts from the operations side — the books, the schedule, the communication trail — with design boards as one part of a practice-management whole. It is also the newer product, generally available with a self-serve free trial.
What DesignFiles is
DesignFiles has served interior designers for years and its public materials lead with presentation: drag-and-drop design boards with background removal, a product clipper, curated product and paint libraries (including major paint brands), questionnaires, and white-labeled client portals with proposals, invoicing, and online payments. Studios that live inside their boards — sourcing, composing, presenting, selling — are its home crowd, and it earns its reputation there.
What StudioHaus is
StudioHaus is a practice-management platform: projects and phases, tasks and workflow automation, a per-project communication log, time tracking, site-visit mileage booked as a project expense at the IRS standard mileage rate, and invoices that push to QuickBooks Online in one click, with client payments by card through Stripe once the studio connects its own Stripe account. Its design boards are genuinely capable — clipping from any retailer with a Chrome extension, one-click background removal, fonts and annotation marks, item-by-item client approvals — and they feed the same system that runs the invoices and the schedule. StudioHaus also connects to your own AI assistant read-only, so tools like Claude can summarize a project’s week or draft a client update from real activity.
Where each one is strong
Choose DesignFiles if the board is the business — you want the most mature presentation workflow, brand-name paint libraries, and a sales flow built around boards, and your back-office needs are covered elsewhere.
Choose StudioHaus if the practice is the business — you want one system carrying the project from inquiry through install: boards and approvals, yes, but also the money pushed through to QuickBooks, the tasks and workflows, the communication record, and the mileage log at tax time. Pricing is published and flat: one plan at $69 per month with every feature and one seat included, additional seats $20 per month each — $89 for two, $109 for three, $149 for five. Billed monthly, no annual contracts, 14-day free trial with no card required.
At a glance
| DesignFiles | StudioHaus | |
|---|---|---|
| Center of gravity | Design boards & presentation | Practice management, boards included |
| Design boards | Mature, board-first tooling; paint-brand libraries | Clipper, one-click background removal, fonts & marks, client approvals |
| Client portal | White-labeled portals with proposals & payments | Branded portal per client, all their projects inside: boards, approvals, invoices, messages |
| Accounting | Invoicing & online payments | Invoicing + one-click push to QuickBooks Online + Stripe client payments |
| Operations | Project tools around the board workflow | Tasks, workflow automation, time tracker, IRS-standard-rate mileage as project expense, communication log |
| AI access | — | Read-only connection for your own AI assistant (MCP) |
| Pricing | Published on their site | $69/mo incl. 1 seat; +$20/seat/mo |
| Maturity | Established, large designer community | Newer — generally available, self-serve trial |
DesignFiles capabilities per their published materials, August 2026 — verify current plans and features with them directly. Also comparing the generalists? See StudioHaus vs Houzz Pro and StudioHaus vs Programa.