Psychport: a therapy platform that matches Canadians with the right therapist in one sentence
The brief
A Canadian mental-health platform that matches people with licensed therapists — and gives those therapists a professional home.
Psychport is three products in one: a plain-language, AI-assisted search for Canadians looking for care; a subscription panel where therapists build their profile, manage referrals and grow their practice; and a content hub of guides, glossary and articles that explains a system most people meet for the first time on a hard day.
We designed and developed all of it — from the first user flows and design system to the production platform, its AI search and its billing.
The problem
Finding a therapist in Canada means trawling a directory during the worst week of your year.
The default option is a pay-to-list directory: hundreds of profiles, weak search, little that is specific to Canada. People arrive unsure what kind of help they need — often on a phone, often having a hard day — and are handed fifty profiles to compare. Titles change by province (registered psychotherapist, social worker, psychologist, counsellor), and nothing explains the difference or what a session costs.
Therapists have the other half of the problem. Solo and early-career clinicians in particular have no affordable, modern place to be found, to present themselves credibly, or to build a referral network — and the tools that exist treat them like gig workers.
The solution
Say what’s going on in your own words — and get a short list of verified Canadian therapists who fit.
Search in a sentence, not a filter wall
The search starts with plain language — “I’m anxious and looking for a therapist in Toronto who speaks French.” AI pulls out the concern, the place, the language and the session format, then ranks verified clinicians by what their profiles actually mean, not by matching keywords.
Show the reasoning
Results explain themselves: “We found 4 strong matches on Anxiety, French, Toronto.” The matched filters appear as chips you can remove. A five-tier location model and a never-empty fallback mean there is always a sensible answer — and the page says plainly when it had to widen the search.
Earn trust through specificity
Profiles lead with what a mental-health decision actually turns on: province, credentials, languages, in-person or virtual, fees per session, and a verification badge. Real photos, real availability, real prices — because vagueness reads as untrustworthy here.
Reach out without an account
Clients never have to sign up. They can message a therapist directly or follow the therapist’s own booking link, so the first step is a conversation, not a form.
Calm, private by default
We assumed the reader might be having a hard day: no autoplay, no alarm colours, gentle and specific empty states, and reduced motion respected everywhere. What someone types into the search is never written into the address bar or sent to analytics.
Product design & development
One platform, three sides — clients, therapists, and the team that keeps it credible.
Clients get search, profiles and content with no account needed. Therapists get a professional panel for running their practice. Behind both sits a content system where the Psychport team reviews articles and resources before anything is published. We designed and built each side on the same data, so a therapist’s edit shows up in search the moment it goes live.
AI search & matching
Plain-language extraction and semantic ranking across therapist profiles, faceted filters for location, concern, therapy type, language, format, age and faith, and match chips that explain every result.
Therapist panel
A dashboard, a multi-tab profile editor for qualifications, treatment approach, fees and locations, one-click publishing with availability, real-time peer chat, a referral network and moderated endorsements.
AI Bio Coach
Scores a therapist’s profile and offers guarded rewrites in three tones — helping clinicians present themselves clearly while giving search more to match on.
Resource Centre
A professional library for therapists: sections and categories, province-by-province credentialing references, bookmarks and full-text search.
Sign-up & billing
A short, stepped sign-up with a free trial, monthly, six-month and annual plans through Stripe, and billing therapists can manage — or cancel — without a fight.
Content hub
A blog, guides, a glossary and comparison pages written for Canadians, province-aware, with a published editorial and clinical-review process behind them.
Design works in two registers under one brand. The public site is a brand surface — a committed forest green, generous space, editorial type, and real therapist cards as the only proof. The therapist panel is a working tool: restrained neutrals, green reserved for primary actions, lists over cards, and nothing gamified. No leaderboards, no upsell nudges — therapists are clinicians, not gig workers.
Development follows the same care. A Next.js front end serves the public site and the therapist panel from one codebase, on a Node and Express API with MySQL, real-time chat over Socket.io, Stripe billing, private file storage and a headless CMS on the same data. Sign-up is transactional: if payment or account creation fails, the whole thing rolls back, so no one is ever charged for an account that doesn’t exist.
What launch is measured on
Psychport is in its pre-launch stretch — so this is what the work will be held to, not a highlight reel.
- Clients contacting a therapist within their first two visits, not their tenth.
- How often a plain-language search ends in a message or booking, compared with filter-only browsing.
- Therapists who complete and publish their profile, and who stay subscribed after the trial.
- Organic visibility for Canadian therapy searches, province by province.
Questions people ask
What is Psychport?
Psychport is a Canadian mental-health platform that connects people with licensed, verified therapists through AI-assisted matching, and gives those therapists a professional panel to manage their profile, referrals and practice.
How does AI therapist matching work on Psychport?
You describe what you are going through in plain language. The search picks out the concern, location, language and session format, then ranks verified Canadian therapists by how well their profiles fit — and shows the matched filters, so you can see why each therapist is on the list.
Do clients need an account to find a therapist?
No. Anyone can search, read therapist profiles and contact a therapist directly without signing up. Accounts are for therapists, who use the Psychport panel to manage their listing and practice.
What did Autograph do on the project?
We designed and developed the platform end to end: product design from user flows to a design system, the AI-assisted client search, therapist profiles, the therapist panel with chat, referrals and the AI Bio Coach, subscription billing and sign-up, and the content hub of guides, glossary and articles.
About the author
Written by Autograph Media — an independent digital and AI studio in Oakville, Ontario, working with businesses across the Greater Toronto Area on web design, development, AI integration and SEO.
