Kip Therapy Online Therapy Review

Nothing about living in New York is cheap, and the cost of pretty much everything is rising, from rent and electricity to food and even (or maybe especially) therapy. Finding an affordable therapist in New York is pretty much impossible, and often involves a lot of trial and error. The average price of a therapy session in the U.S. is between $60 and $200, while in New York, that number is consistently closer to $200. These high prices and limited availability make therapy inaccessible to many lower-income New Yorkers–especially for people of color, and those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and/or gender expansive.

Aiming to address these issues, Kip Therapy’s diverse set of therapists offer culturally sensitive, LGBTQIA+ inclusive therapy to New York State residents, from individual adults and families to adolescents and groups. As of mid-2023, Kip has transitioned from being largely self-pay to being almost entirely insurance-based. To assess Kip Therapy, we surveyed 105 current users of the company and we tested Kip’s services ourselves to evaluate two therapists at different price points. We looked at how easy it is to schedule and cancel appointments, use the website, and communicate with customer service—although testing was completed before Kip began accepting insurance. We also enlisted the help of subject matter experts Amy Marschall, PsyD; Nic Hardy, PhD, LCSW; and Hannah Owens, LMSW, to understand our findings. Here’s everything you need to know about Kip Therapy.

What Is Kip Therapy?

Kip started out in 2013 as an in-office therapy practice that went fully virtual from 2020 to 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was founded by Ryan M. Kull, PhD, an educator, researcher, and therapist with over 20 years of experience focused on sexual orientation and gender identity issues. He believes that one of the biggest hurdles preventing people from seeking therapy is the stigma attached to it, especially for those in some marginalized communities. So he created a therapy practice devoted to combating that stigma by offering accessible, culturally sensitive therapy with sliding-scale payment options. 

In 2023, Kip began accepting most major insurance.

Kip prides itself on offering a diverse selection of therapists to choose from, all with a strong foundation in trauma-informed therapy. According to representatives from the company, therapists who choose to work with Kip also need to have “a commitment to (and, preferably, experience in) working with marginalized communities, with a commitment to social justice.”

There are three tiers of therapists at Kip—associate (tier 1), resident (tier 2), and senior (tier 3)—and all providers are either clinically licensed or in the process of obtaining licensure in fields such as social work, psychology, or counseling. Each therapist has a bio that shares a little about their background and the kinds of issues they treat. All Kip providers (about 30 of them, as of fall 2023) are fully vetted; there are no “life coaches” or other vague credentials here.

What Services Does Kip Offer?

Kip Therapy offers weekly 45-minute therapy sessions for individual adults and teens, couples, and families. It also offers therapist-led support groups.

Kip was founded and is still led by primarily LGBTQIA+ clinicians, hence its specialty in affirming therapy. This therapy type aims to help members of the LGBTQIA+ community—and people who are questioning—heal from trauma and discrimination and claim their authentic identities. The practice is also more racially and ethnically diverse than some of the other platforms we’ve tested, featuring therapists who are well-versed in helping a wide range of people work through racial trauma.

Who Is Kip For?

Kip serves individual adults, adolescents over the age of 13, couples, families, and groups residing in New York, although the practice intends to become available in additional states. Kip therapists can help with a wide range of concerns, including:

• Anxiety 
• Body image and disordered eating
• Bullying and school difficulties
• Career and life transitions
• Depression
• Family conflicts
• Identity 
• Loneliness and isolation
• LGBTQIA+ issues (including gender dysphoria)
• Personality disorders
• Relationships (monogamous, non-monogamous, and polyamorous)
• Self-esteem issues
• Stress and burnout
• Substance use
• Trauma and abuse

Over the course of our research and testing, we’ve seen a number of transgender and/or nonbinary providers available at any given time, and the majority of providers are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer, with only a handful of therapists identifying as straight. So it seems Kip is especially well positioned over many competitors to provide services to the LGBTQIA+ community. However, all New Yorkers are welcome to try a consultation call to see if Kip might be a good fit.

How Much Does Kip Therapy Cost?

When Kip was still a largely self-pay practice, its rates were slightly lower than or at least comparable to the average rates charged by all the therapy companies and platforms we evaluated.

Still, even before the percentage of clients using insurance increased so greatly, over two-thirds of survey respondents told us they found Kip to be either a good, very good, or excellent value for what they’d paid. We imagine that this level of satisfaction has only increased further now that Kip accepts insurance. For those who don’t have insurance, Kull said, the providers offer sliding-scale rates as low as $80 per session.

Does Kip Therapy Accept Insurance? 

When we conducted our surveys, research, and testing, Kip was self-pay only—though 43% of our survey respondents still reported being able to get some form of out-of-network reimbursement.

However, in mid-2023, Kip began accepting insurance. As of November 2023, Kip therapists are in-network with:

• Aetna
• Cigna
• Healthfirst
• UHB

The practice also works with out-of-network insurance. The team will submit claims to your insurer on your behalf, for you to be reimbursed (minus your copay) later. We love the sound of one less obstacle along the road to getting affordable therapy.

Does Kip Therapy Offer Discounts? 

Kip does not offer any free trials or discounts, but if you choose a tier 1 therapist, some consultations are free. 

You can also schedule consultations with therapists on other tiers for $25. 

We didn’t see an instant insurance lookup tool like some of its competitors offer, but the team is available by phone and email to help you figure out what your final costs will be. You can also submit your policy information via the contact form and the team will reach out via email to confirm your coverage.

Kip does offer financial assistance to people with an annual income of under $35,000. People experiencing financial hardship can reach out to the team via email or fill out this form to apply for low-fee online sessions with a (less-experienced) Kip therapist.

Navigating the Kip Therapy Website

Kip’s homepage greets you with eye-catching illustrations and primary-colored shapes that move dynamically as you scroll. The homepage advertises the practice’s ability to provide “therapy for every identity.” Clicking on “begin your growth” takes you to a page that explains the practice’s focus and what it can treat, with large stock images of diverse individuals and couples who are implied to represent Kip’s target clientele.

Scrolling further down the homepage, you’ll see more info about Kip’s practice—which has the goal of “redefining what therapy is and can be”—including that it accepts most major insurance carriers. There’s a brief blurb about its inclusivity, accompanied by a link to a page that explains its LGBTQ+-affirming therapy offerings and notes that “the majority of [Kip] therapists also have lived experiences as LGBTQ+ people.”

The footer of the page lists Kip’s address, contact email, and links to its profiles on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These pages, which don’t have huge followings, are updated relatively infrequently. 

Just under half of the users we surveyed told us the site was either easy or very to use, with only 10% calling it difficult to navigate.

Does Kip Therapy Have an App?

At this time, Kip Therapy does not have an app.

Signing Up for Therapy at Kip

You can view and filter therapist bios to see if any providers sound like a good fit, or you can get a Kip specialist’s help with the process. Either way, you’ll just call or email the team to get started. If you have phone anxiety, you can also use the contact form to share your insurance policy details and get ahold of the team via email. (Be sure to keep an eye on your spam folder in case your email provider accidentally flags the response as such.)

However, you should note that Kip requires clients to attend sessions weekly—providers cannot schedule biweekly (or less frequent) sessions.

Matching With a Therapist 

The Therapists page on the website showcases the 30-plus therapists who make up the practice. The staff is diverse in terms of gender, sexuality, therapy focus, age groups served, and in-person or online availability—and you can narrow your results by any of these categories. 

To help you choose someone who fits your needs, each therapist’s profile features their pronouns, experience, and availability, as well as a description of their approach to mental health care, giving you a personal glimpse into their styles. Unfortunately, though, the bio templates seem to be lacking some important information that therapy seekers need to know—namely, state licensing information, language(s) spoken, and times of day and days of the week that the therapist is typically available to clients. It would also be helpful to be able to sort and filter the therapists using these additional categories.

One of the things that is different about Kip is that it prioritizes education, so the practice provides training, education, and supervision for emerging psychotherapists, such as graduate student interns, post-graduate fellows, and therapists seeking to get the clinical experience they need to qualify for full-time licensure. As a result, some of its therapists are not yet fully licensed, but they are under supervision, and they charge less per session. The company provides these therapists with foundational training, as well as training in “specialized” topics, such as gender and sexuality.

Once you’ve spoken with the team and scheduled an intake appointment with a therapist who seems like a good fit—and you’ve provided your payment information—the team will reach out with documents for you to sign to become a Kip client.  You’ll also have to confirm that you live in New York state, as the company doesn’t work with patients outside of the state. Three out of five users surveyed were satisfied with the therapist they were matched with, and 72% felt their therapist's qualifications were either good, very good, or excellent.

How Do Therapy Sessions Work at Kip?

Before committing to weekly sessions with a Kip therapist, you’ll meet with them for a consultation session—usually virtually, via a HIPAA-compliant Zoom video call. This is a nice personal touch and also replaces the need to fill out a questionnaire on your own, as you would with most online therapy services. If you’re planning to meet with an associate therapist, this consultation is generally free; however, it’s $25 to have an initial meeting with a resident or senior therapist. If you prefer, you can also opt for a provider who offers in-person services at the practice’s West 58th Street location, just a four-minute walk from Columbus Circle in New York City.

In our first consultation, the therapist gave a detailed rundown of the company’s cancellation and privacy policies. Both of the providers we saw asked thorough questions about what we were currently dealing with and what we hoped to get out of therapy; they also both walked us through their own backgrounds, their approaches to therapeutic work, and how they had assisted past clients.

Individual Sessions

If you and the therapist who did your consultation session agree the two of you are a good fit, you can schedule sessions with them. Providers are available to anyone 13 or older. Kip only offers weekly sessions (bi-weekly or less frequent sessions are not currently available). We ended up trying both a resident and a senior therapist, both online, to see how the experience might differ.

We were generally impressed with the resident therapist and the senior therapist we saw. With 45 minutes in each session, we had plenty of time to discuss our thoughts and concerns. Both therapists were non-judgemental, active listeners who deftly handled issues like family trauma, anxiety, and depression. 

While both were knowledgeable and easy to talk to, the senior (Tier 3) provider was quicker to recognize patterns and connections in our past and present issues. This therapist was also more focused on problem-solving, rather than simply talking about our feelings. This came at a trade-off, however: Contacting and rescheduling with the senior therapist was more challenging than with the resident therapist. But once a session started, this senior therapist was attentive and provided impeccable service.

Family Therapy

A number of Kip therapists can use their experience working with people of various ages to provide family therapy to groups of two or more.

Couples Therapy

Kip providers can work with two or more partners who are having relationship issues. In addition to being sensitive to the particular concerns of marginalized sexualities and genders, providers are inclusive of all sorts of relationship structures, whether you’re monogamous or polyamorous (or non-monogamous).

Group Therapy

Group therapy at Kip is dedicated to specific topics and marginalized communities. As of January 2024, the Kip site does not feature any details about its support groups. However, Kull let us know in an August 2023 email that two therapist-led groups—a transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) group and a queer men’s group—were scheduled to start up in fall 2023.

Switching Therapists

Most users found switching therapists to be pretty simple, although Kip advises new clients to stick with their initial therapist for three to six sessions before requesting to see someone new. It’s a bit unclear if or how you can go about meeting with a new therapist immediately after the initial consultation.

To switch therapists, you’ll email customer support and wait for a response, which generally takes a few days, and then have that awkward conversation with your current therapist about not scheduling further sessions. You can then choose a new therapist or work with customer support for their recommendations, and then start over by scheduling a new consultation. We switched therapists once while testing the service.

Four in 10 Kip users told us they’d found it either easy or very easy to find a therapist they liked, which is a lower score than some of the other companies we evaluated. (For instance, over half of Growing Self users found it easy or very easy to find a good fit on that platform.) Still, most Kip clients we surveyed were ultimately happy with the care they received, even if it required switching therapists once (as a quarter of respondents had) or more. (Twenty-five percent had switched two or three times, and another 25% switched four or more times.)

In our testing, we found the switching process to be easy overall, but slow—and our survey found similar results. Just under a third of Kip users told us it took a few weeks to get a new therapist, another third said it took just a few days, and 19% said it took a week. But 17% were assigned a new provider within a day, so your wait time may vary widely.

Canceling and Rescheduling Sessions at Kip

You can book different time and day slots each week if you need to and your therapist has availability. That flexibility is helpful, but Kip has a strict attendance policy. 

There’s no charge to cancel sessions, as long as you can do so with at least one business day of advance notice. (Meaning, if you know you can’t attend a Monday session, you’ll need to cancel or reschedule it by the previous Friday—before the weekend.) If you cancel with less notice, you’ll be charged a $100 fee.

If you want to reschedule an appointment, you’ll need to do so with at least 12 hours’ notice. Each appointment can only be rescheduled once, and the rescheduled date must be within one week of the original booking—and if you miss that appointment, you’ll be charged $200 (to also cover the original missed session). 

To cancel or reschedule, you’ll need to reach out to the team; there’s no self-service option. We recommend calling, rather than hoping your email will be reviewed in time.

Stopping Therapy at Kip

You are free to stop scheduling future sessions at any time without additional charges, after a conversation with your therapist. When we discontinued therapy, the provider asked why we were canceling, but did not pressure us to continue therapy with them as an individual or with Kip as a platform.

Quality of Care and User Satisfaction

Kip’s sliding scale costs are possible because it employs therapists of varying skill levels. But users were generally happy with the quality of care they received, regardless of the tier of therapist they worked with, which lines up with our testing experience. Seven in 10 clients we surveyed said that most or all of their needs were met by their Kip providers, and the same amount agreed that Kip providers are well qualified. An additional 38% told us the clinicians were more qualified, more experienced, or had more specialized training than providers at other companies. Finally, over four-fifths of users said that Kip Therapy was better than other services they had tried in the past.

Kip strives to ensure that everyone on staff is well qualified and has manageable case loads so that they can give consistent, personalized care to each client. Representatives of the practice informed us that this is accomplished through a vetting process that involves professional references, an interview, and license or certification verification. Each newly hired therapist also has to complete an internal training program. As an education-focused practice, Kip also has weekly staff meetings where therapists discuss their techniques, giving them an opportunity to learn from and offer feedback to one another.

The FAQ page on Kip’s website features very short answers to a few questions before providing simplified explanations of the platform’s policies. For instance, it notes that the service is not intended to be used by people under 13 years of age and that the platform only breaks confidentiality if a client is suicidal or homicidal or if child abuse or neglect is suspected, as is required by law.

The full text of the Notice of Website Privacy Policy is featured at the bottom of the FAQ page, as an expandable dropdown drawer that is easy to miss, in our opinion.

Privacy Policies

Kip’s privacy policy is not posted as prominently on its website as similar policies are on competitors’ sites. Under “Fees & Policies,” the company states that “confidentiality is one of the most important parts of building a strong relationship between client and therapist” and that it only breaks confidentiality if a client is suicidal, homicidal, or if child abuse or neglect is suspected, as is required by law.

On its “Current Clients” page, you can view a Google form outlining Kip's practice policies, including your rights to privacy under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which you will sign prior to beginning treatment. In these policies, the company outlines its legal confidentiality requirements. Clients are asked to sign a standard informed consent form, as well as a consent to record form. Kip therapists ask clients to allow their therapy sessions to be recorded for the provider to review. Recordings can be accessed only by Kip staff and may be used to improve your treatment or for staff training and development.  However, you have the option to decline to have your sessions recorded when you sign this form. These records—and any other health records the company creates about you—cannot be used or shared without your permission unless federal privacy rules and regulations allow it. Nothing in your file will be used for marketing purposes. 

Nothing in your file will be used for marketing purposes, although the Kip Privacy Policy does note that its site, like many competitors’, uses cookies and other tracking technology. Kip also states that, with user consent, it “may disclose aggregated information … and information that does not identify any individuals, without restriction.” We wish the policy went into more detail as to what that means and how the company ensures that the data truly can’t be associated with identifiable individuals.

Kip Therapy vs. Its Competitors

Kip Therapy has a few key competitors in the mental health space, the biggest being BetterHelp and Talkspace. One major difference with Kip is that it only serves New York residents, while Betterhelp and Talkspace serve all of the U.S.

Founded in 2012, Talkspace offers easy access to thousands of licensed therapists (and psychiatrists) via messaging and live video sessions. To keep things affordable, it has several different subscription plans with tiered pricing, starting at $65 a week for a weekly live video session plus unlimited messaging to your provider. Kip’s associate therapists are available for the same starting per-session rate, but Kip does not offer subscriptions or messaging. If you prefer text-based therapy—or if it’s an access need because you are d/Deaf or can’t communicate with verbal speech—Talkspace is the better choice in this regard. Both platforms accept insurance, though Talkspace also provides psychiatry and medication management services in addition to therapy, which Kip does not.

BetterHelp was founded in 2013, the same year as Kip, and has grown to a network of over 30,000 independent therapists. Considering what a membership includes—live video, audio, or chat-based therapy, plus unlimited messaging with licensed therapists—BetterHelp is more affordable than many of its competitors (including Talkspace), although it does not accept insurance. Kip has far fewer therapists on staff, but all of them have been vetted and come with a variety of experience levels, with education and experience being the company’s highest priorities. Kip’s staff is also much more diverse, and the company focuses more on inclusivity and cultural sensitivity, particularly for the LGBTQIA+ community. 

Our survey results for Kip were slightly inconsistent, however. While the majority of users said they were happy with the services they’d received—and 54% would recommend the practice to someone like them—only a third said they were either likely or very likely to still be seeing a Kip therapist in a year. In comparison, 77% of BetterHelp users said they were either likely or very likely to recommend the company to someone else; 82% of Talkspace users said the same about that platform. Interestingly, the same number of users (42%) of both Talkspace and BetterHelp felt that they were likely or very likely to still be using the respective services in a year’s time.

Final Verdict

If you live in New York and you’re looking for a diverse, culturally sensitive therapy practice for you—or you and your partner(s) or family—Kip might be a good choice, especially if your insurance is accepted. It has a diverse stable of qualified therapists, but lacks some of the flexibility that makes online therapy platforms so attractive to many users. Becoming a Kip patient requires committing to weekly live sessions, which may not work for everyone's budgets and/or schedules. Kip doesn’t give clients the ability to reach their therapists easily outside scheduled appointments. It can also be hard to get in touch with customer support to cancel or reschedule sessions, which clients may find frustrating, especially since Kip has a pretty strict cancellation policy.

Overall, however, the quality of the therapists is excellent, and thanks to the range of provider rates, you can pick someone who is more affordable to you. We were impressed by how educated, compassionate, and non-judgmental our resident and senior therapists were. From our testing experience, we would highly recommend Kip to New York-based friends and others like ourselves, provided they don’t mind the inflexibility of weekly sessions.

How We Tested and Reviewed Online Therapy Services

We evaluated a total of 80 online therapist directories and therapy companies, including Kip Therapy.

Firsthand Experience

As part of our research, we signed up for talk therapy at all 55 online therapy companies we reviewed. We tested each company's therapy services, and if the company offered other services (such as couples therapy and kid or teen therapy), we tested those too. Our testers are located all across the United States and abroad, meaning we have extensive information about each company's services in a variety of areas.

User and Brand Surveys

In addition, we surveyed more than 10,000 therapy users: 105 at each of the 55 online therapy companies and 180 at each of the 25 therapist directories. We collected over 100 different data points in which we asked users to evaluate each company's services, from their therapist's qualifications to whether they found a therapist who met all their needs to how they'd rate the company overall. We also sent questionnaires to each company we considered, asking for their perspectives on the services they provide, and we interviewed former patients and therapists at the companies where possible.

Research

In addition to the extensive research we performed on each of the 55 online therapy companies we reviewed, we also researched dozens of therapy directories. We tested each by searching for appropriate therapists for 37 hypothetical scenarios that might lead someone to search for a mental health provider across 18 ZIP codes. We then rated the results by how well the therapists we found in each directory could address each scenario, looking into whether it had competent, licensed therapists who were qualified to treat these issues.

Expert Recommendations

Once we completed this testing and these surveys, we evaluated our findings with the help of three licensed therapists—Amy Marschall, PsyD; Nic Hardy, PhD, LCSW; and Hannah Owens, LMSW—to make our recommendations. These therapists provided extensive insight into the ethics and efficacy of online therapy as well as information about relevant therapeutic modalities and approaches.