Pipefy is a business process management platform. Teams model processes as BPMN-style flows with gates, fields, and automations. For a large operations group, that flexibility is the point. For a small medical clinic, flexibility without clinic-specific content means a lot of setup work and a lot of judgment calls about what counts as a safe PHI field.
The BAA Problem
HHS’s position on business associates is plain: if a vendor creates, receives, maintains, or transmits PHI on your behalf, you need a Business Associate Agreement. That agreement is the legal ground your compliance program stands on.
Pipefy’s pricing page describes tiered plans aimed at general business process automation. Public materials do not describe a BAA as a standard part of self-serve plans. A covered entity therefore has to negotiate and verify that separately, which is an extra layer of work before any clinical process can safely live in the tool.
What Changes With PHIGuard
PHIGuard does not ask you to build a HIPAA program from a blank BPMN canvas. It ships the program.
- BAA included on every plan
- Ready-built clinic compliance content: risk analysis, workforce training, policy reviews, incident response, vendor management
- PHI-aware task fields and notification handling, so patient identifiers do not leak into emails or export files
- Immutable audit trail on every task, policy, and incident action, aligned to 45 CFR 164.312(b)
- Clinic-role access model (front desk, clinical, billing, admin) instead of generic workflow actors
If your team is tempted to “just model the clinic as a Pipefy process,” the question is whether you want to spend your time designing compliance from scratch or running the practice.
Pricing Comparison
| Pipefy | PHIGuard | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Generic BPMN workflow platform | Clinic compliance program with PHI-aware tasks |
| BAA included | Public materials do not describe a BAA offering | Included on every plan |
| Pricing model | Per-user tiers; see Pipefy pricing | Per clinic: $99 / $249 / $499 per month |
| HIPAA audit trail | Not described publicly | Built in, immutable |
| Clinic content out of the box | No | Yes |
Per-user pricing is the wrong model for a clinic whose compliance obligation is set by its status as a covered entity, not by its headcount. PHIGuard’s per-clinic pricing matches the shape of the work.
Who Should Use PHIGuard Instead of Pipefy
Pick PHIGuard if your clinic:
- Needs a BAA at signup, not after a procurement conversation
- Wants clinic compliance content on day one, not a blank process canvas
- Has 3–50 staff and wants flat monthly pricing
- Needs an audit trail an auditor or regulator can actually read
Pipefy is still a reasonable pick for operations teams at larger organizations with in-house compliance and engineering staff who want to build a custom process platform. That is not a small clinic.
FAQ
Does Pipefy sign a BAA? Pipefy’s public pricing pages do not describe a standard BAA offering. If you want to run PHI-touching processes on Pipefy, contact the vendor and confirm BAA scope, subprocessors, and data-handling commitments in writing before onboarding.
We could build a HIPAA workflow in Pipefy ourselves, right? Technically, yes. Practically, you would rebuild what PHIGuard already ships and carry the ongoing maintenance burden. That is a large hidden cost for a small clinic.
Is per-clinic pricing actually cheaper? It depends on your headcount, but the bigger point is predictability. A flat per-clinic price does not change when you hire. See our HIPAA software comparison for a category view.
How do we verify vendor HIPAA claims before signing? Our vendor HIPAA audit guide walks through the documents to request and the red flags to watch for.