The Hoowla alternative worth looking at depends on which half of the job is hurting. If the conveyancing production line is the problem, Hoowla is built for exactly that. If the research, the drafting and the reading of documents is where your fee earners lose their week, that is what Writford adds, on the same record as the matter and the ledger.
Everything below about Hoowla comes from hoowla.com, read on 11 September 2026, and nothing about their pricing figures is quoted here, because those move.
What Hoowla is built for
Their own site describes case management software for UK law firms, covering conveyancing, family law, wills and probate, personal injury, litigation, immigration and legal accounting.
The conveyancing feature list is specialist and deep: AML checks, search ordering, SDLT submissions, enquiries management, Land Registry forms, eSignatures and completion packs. Their accounting section names trust accounting, client ledgers, bank reconciliation and accounts reporting. There is a client portal, document automation, letter templates, time recording, audit trails and role-based permissions.
That is a serious product for a conveyancing-led firm, and a firm running high volumes of residential work should take it seriously.
Where the honest advantage runs against us
Two of them, and both matter more than anything we could say about ourselves.
Hoowla sells on a rolling contract with no lock-in. Their pricing page says "Rolling contract", "No lock ins", "No setup fees" and "Free training". Writford does not work that way. Subscriptions are sold on one, three or five year terms, billed up front for the term, and fees for the current term are not refundable. If your firm wants to try a system and walk away in three months, Hoowla's terms are plainly better for you and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Our answer for that buyer is the 14-day free trial, which needs no card, and it is a smaller commitment than either.
Their conveyancing charging suits a low-volume firm. For conveyancing they say they "only charge completed cases", with "no fee for opening cases or fall-throughs". A firm doing a modest number of completions a month pays in proportion to what it completes. Writford charges per seat whatever your volume. For some firms that is the better deal and for others it is not, and the only way to know is to run your own numbers against both.
What Writford adds that their pages do not describe
Their feature pages name no AI, no legal research, no case law or legislation, and no automated drafting. That is a category difference rather than a criticism: case management software is not trying to be a research tool.
Writford is both. On every plan, for every member:
Research cited from live UK sources. Queries run against legislation.gov.uk, BAILII case law, SRA guidance and the court rules, and every answer links to the authority it came from, so a solicitor can open it and check. Not a model recalling law from training data. See how the research works.
Drafting and document analysis on the matter file. Client care letters, correspondence and attendance notes drafted against the actual record, and contracts, leases and bundles read for clauses and risks.
The money on the same record. Client ledgers per matter, ring-fenced balances, a three-way reconciliation across bank, cash book and the client ledgers, VAT and period close. A client ledger cannot go overdrawn, because the decrement is atomic and refuses unless the matter already holds the money. The client account guide goes through it properly.
The other fork against us: one jurisdiction
Hoowla's practice areas include immigration and asylum. Writford is built for the law of England and Wales and nothing else: the research sources, the accounts and the compliance screens are all shaped by the rules an English or Welsh firm is inspected against.
A firm with work in Scotland or Northern Ireland is better served elsewhere. A firm entirely in England and Wales gets a product with no compromises made on its behalf.
How to compare them honestly
Four questions, and none of them is a feature list.
Which half of the job is actually costing you? If it is conveyancing throughput, a specialist production system earns its money. If it is fee earners spending hours on research and first drafts, that is a different purchase.
What does your firm's volume do to the price? Per completed case and per seat behave very differently at ten completions a month and at a hundred. Put your own numbers through both.
How long are you committing for? Ask both. Ours is one, three or five years billed up front; theirs is rolling. That is a real difference and it should be on the table early rather than found at signature.
What happens when somebody posts a payment a matter cannot fund? Ask every supplier who holds your client account. "It appears on an exception report" and "it is refused" are very different answers, and only one of them prevents the thing the rules exist to stop.
If you want the wider view first, the practice management guide covers what replaces what, and the conveyancing AI guide covers the five tools UK conveyancing firms are using this year.