About kinako.
Built by a solo founder for solo founders.
kinako is freelance business software for solopreneurs and one-person teams. It exists because running a freelance business shouldn't require five tools, three subscriptions, and a Friday spent on admin.
Why this exists
Most freelancers run their business as a stack: Notion for projects, a spreadsheet for invoices, HoneyBook or Dubsado for proposals, DocuSign for contracts, and some combination of email and Calendly to glue it all together. The tools are fine individually. The stack is the problem.
Each tool charges separately. Each one has its own learning curve. Each one stores client data in a different place. And every Friday — for a lot of freelancers — gets consumed by the operational tax of switching between them. The work that pays gets squeezed into the time left over.
kinako is the opposite premise: one tool that covers the operational core of freelance work — proposals, contracts, invoicing, scheduling, client portal, and expense tracking — so you can stop running a stack and start running a business. It's built for the solopreneur who wants their tooling to disappear into the background, not be the thing they manage.
Where the name comes from
Kinako (きなこ) is Japanese roasted soybean flour — a finishing element used to transform plain mochi or warm rice cakes into something elevated. It's not the main ingredient; it's the layer that makes the rest of the work feel finished.
That's the role we want this software to play. You do the work. kinako is the layer of polish that makes it land — the proposal that looks like it came from an established firm, the contract that gets signed in 20 minutes, the invoice with a Stripe payment link, the client portal that makes you look like you have an operations team behind you. The work is yours. The finish is kinako.
From the founder
I'm building kinako solo because the freelance tools market has interesting gaps that big-team software is structurally bad at filling. The biggest gap: most freelance CRMs are designed for the agency that grew out of a freelance practice, not the freelancer who wants to stay one. The result is software that's too heavy for the audience that needs it most.
kinako is opinionated in the other direction. Fewer features, better defaults, faster setup. If you're a solopreneur trying to operate at a level above your weight class — without hiring a VA or paying $90/mo for a stack — this is built for you.
— The team at kinako.
What's inside
Invoicing
Stripe payments, automatic reminders, recurring invoices
Contracts
E-signatures included, branded templates, share-via-link
Proposals
One-click client approval, auto-trigger contract + deposit
Client portal
Branded space where clients track everything
Expense tracking
Bills, receipts, categories, deductible tracking
Revenue dashboard
Income, expenses, net profit, by client and month
Project + task tracking
Status, deadlines, files, time tracking
Scheduling links
Public booking from your profile
Contact
Questions, feedback, or noticed something inaccurate on a comparison page? The fastest path is in-app — every account has a feedback widget that goes straight to the founder inbox. We read everything.
We're a small operation. Replies usually land within one to two business days.
Try kinako free
Free plan available — 3 clients, 3 projects, no credit card required.