amplifyOMS vs CounselEAR
Until December 2025, CounselEAR was the most technically credible audiology PMS in the named competitive set. Then Fullsteam acquired them. amplifyOMS is the independent alternative, built in 2016 by a board certified hearing instrument specialist who was running 22 hearing care clinics across Texas at the time and still runs his multi-location practice on amplifyOMS today. Here's the honest comparison.
What CounselEAR gets right.
CounselEAR has been the most technically credible audiology PMS we've evaluated in the named competitive set, and any comparison page that didn't say so wouldn't be honest. Founded in 2006 in Evanston, Illinois by Brian Urban, Au.D., the platform earned its reputation honestly over twenty years. Three things in particular stand out.
Audiologist-founder leadership and clinical depth.
Brian Urban is an audiologist. He completed his Au.D. at Salus University in 2006, served as ADA President in 2014, and built CounselEAR while running his own private practice in Evanston as a testing ground. The product reflects clinical depth from someone who actually saw patients, which is structurally different from PMS systems built by founders from outside the field. amplifyOMS shares that foundation. Dusty Potter is a Board Certified Hearing Instrument Specialist (NBC-HIS) and past president of the Texas Hearing Aid Association, twenty-five years in hearing care, who built amplifyOMS while running 22 hearing care clinic locations across Texas. Both founders are credentialed hearing care professionals who built their platforms from inside the practice. The structural difference isn't who knows the field. It's the scale of practice the product was built around: a single-practice clinical documentation tool that grew into an OMS, versus a multi-location OMS built by someone who was running 22 clinics simultaneously.
Clinical documentation depth.
The CounselEAR Patient Report is genuinely well-designed. Familiar-sounds audiogram interpretation, automated threshold-to-loss-pattern matching, layman's-term descriptions of degree, type, and configuration of hearing loss. The reports were developed in collaboration with Kim Cavitt, Au.D., a recognized authority on audiology compliance and report writing. Three universities studied the patient report's impact on patient education and follow-through. The clinical reputation is earned, not marketed. amplifyOMS bet on a different layer of the practice workflow: the multi-location dashboard, the lifecycle automation orchestration, and AI capabilities throughout the platform including a native AI Medical Scribe, AI Speech-to-Text Dictation, and a Personal AI Assistant. Clinical documentation is part of the platform. The structural emphasis is on the owner-facing layer that didn't yet exist as a software category when CounselEAR was being built.
Open architecture.
CounselEAR was built to connect, and that is real. It supports real-time partner integrations, runs on a modern data schema, and speaks HL7 for EHR integration with hospital systems like Epic, eCW, and NextGen. That openness set CounselEAR apart from older systems whose connections are locked to a named partner list. amplifyOMS was built for integration from the same starting point. Native integrations cover the tools a hearing care practice actually runs, from Noah and Noah ES to QuickBooks Online, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, and Zoom, and a configurable menu of outbound connections lets your team push your practice data to any compatible external tool you choose. On external connectivity the two platforms are at parity. The difference is everything amplifyOMS builds around it: the multi-location architecture, the lifecycle automation, and the AI throughout the platform.
CounselEAR earned its position honestly. The platform built by Brian Urban over twenty years is real. The structural question for a practice owner evaluating CounselEAR in 2026 is whether the platform you sign onto today is still the platform that earned its reputation, given what changed in December 2025.
Where the structural choices diverged.
Three pre-acquisition structural choices distinguish CounselEAR from amplifyOMS, beyond the acquisition story itself.
Marketing and lifecycle automation as a paid add-on.
CounselEAR offers marketing automation as a paid module, not as a native lifecycle layer. A practice that wants lifecycle automation configured to its specific patient base, provider mix, device mix, and operational patterns has to bolt on additional partner spend on top of the base CounselEAR subscription, or integrate with a separate marketing automation vendor like BlueWing. The Growth Engine inside amplifyOMS is the opposite bet: lifecycle automation belongs inside the OMS, configured per practice during onboarding, AI-powered throughout, and included as part of the platform's structural design rather than a paid module on top.
AI capability scoped primarily to clinical documentation.
CounselEAR has documented AI-assisted report generation per third-party software listings. The specific implementation details, vendor partnerships, and model architecture are not publicly documented. What's clear from CounselEAR's public marketing is that the AI emphasis sits in the clinical documentation surface, which is the company's flagship reputation. amplifyOMS bet on a wider AI surface: native AI Medical Scribe and AI Speech-to-Text Dictation for clinical workflow, AI Text-to-Speech and a Personal AI Assistant for accessibility and day-to-day productivity, plus the AI capabilities flowing through the Growth Engine for lifecycle automation. CounselEAR's AI is competent in its scope. amplifyOMS's bet is that AI throughout the practice workflow matters more than AI concentrated in clinical documentation alone.
Single-practice origin rather than multi-location origin.
This is a structural difference that doesn't disparage either choice. Brian Urban built CounselEAR while running one private practice in Evanston, and the product reflects the priorities of an audiologist documenting patient encounters and producing professional reports. Dusty Potter built amplifyOMS while running 22 hearing care clinic locations across Texas, and the product reflects the priorities of a practice owner managing multi-location patient flow and KPIs from a phone between clinic visits. Both founders are credentialed hearing care professionals (Au.D. and NBC-HIS, respectively) who built their platforms from inside the practice. The products land on different surfaces because the scale they were built for was different.
What changed in December 2025.
On December 30, 2025, Fullsteam acquired CounselEAR. The acquisition was advised by Covington Associates and publicly announced through both the Fullsteam and Covington channels. Brian Urban remains as President of CounselEAR and the operating team remains in place. The structural character of the company shifted overnight.
What Fullsteam is. Fullsteam is a vertical SaaS roll-up backed by Aquiline Capital Partners, with more than seventy portfolio companies, $294 million in revenue, and an explicit playbook of acquiring founder-led vertical SaaS in the $1 million to $10 million ARR range. The core monetization model is embedded payments processing. Fullsteam acquires a vertical SaaS company, holds it long-term, and integrates Fullsteam payments processing into the platform's commercial infrastructure. The acquired company's product roadmap, support model, pricing structure, and strategic priorities are then aligned with Fullsteam's commercial logic, which is EBITDA growth driven by payments processing volume.
What that means for CounselEAR. Brian Urban remains as President, and the clinical-depth reputation that earned CounselEAR its position is still intact today. But the commercial direction of the company is now governed by Fullsteam's portfolio playbook rather than by Brian Urban's independent product vision. The predictable transitions for a Fullsteam-acquired company include payments stack migration toward Fullsteam payments processing, shared services consolidation across support functions, and product roadmap reprioritization aligned with parent-company commercial metrics. None of these transitions are unusual for PE-owned vertical SaaS roll-ups. All of them are well-documented in the vertical SaaS industry analysis literature on Fullsteam specifically.
The structural question for a practice owner. The reason this matters is straightforward. The CounselEAR you sign onto in 2026 is not the same company that earned its reputation. It's a Fullsteam portfolio company whose commercial trajectory will be defined over the next twelve to twenty-four months by parent-company priorities. The clinical-depth reputation built by Brian Urban over twenty years is the asset most directly exposed to those priorities. Whether that depth survives the transition fully intact is an open question. CounselEAR currently integrates with Gravity Payments as its payments provider. Whether that integration remains the default for new and existing customers is also an open question, given Fullsteam's monetization model.
This isn't a pile-on. The CounselEAR product today is still credible, Brian Urban is still respected, and many practices on CounselEAR will be served well in the near term. The structural question is what the platform looks like a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, under Fullsteam's commercial direction. That question is structural, not opportunistic.
What amplifyOMS does differently structurally.
Four structural differences from CounselEAR.
Independent, with no parent company.
amplifyOMS has no PE roll-up parent, no payments processor parent, no manufacturer alliance, no shared services center governing the support model. The company is owned and led by a practice owner. The product roadmap is set by what the practice needs, not by EBITDA targets handed down from a portfolio playbook. The architectural choice is permanent because independent ownership doesn't have a strategic exit through PE acquisition or manufacturer-aligned roll-up.
Native AI built into the platform itself.
amplifyOMS includes native AI throughout the clinical and operational workflow. AI Medical Scribe records and processes clinical notes inside the platform. AI Speech-to-Text Dictation puts a microphone button on every text field. The Personal AI Assistant is a conversational AI built into the top navigation. AI Text-to-Speech reads patient-facing content aloud for accessibility. The AI is part of the platform itself, not a partner add-on, and not scoped to one workflow surface.
AI-powered lifecycle automation configured to your practice.
The Growth Engine is amplifyOMS's lifecycle automation layer. It includes the AI capabilities of one of the world's fastest-growing small business automation platforms: AI conversation handling across SMS, web chat, and social messaging; AI voice agents that answer inbound calls, handle inquiries, and take appointment requests for your team to book; AI-generated email and marketing content; AI workflow automation; AI review responses. Twelve Modules covering recapture, post-fitting care, retention, upgrade, and database activation. Configured during onboarding to your practice's patient base, provider mix, device mix, and operational patterns. Configured per practice. AI-powered throughout. Included as part of the platform, not a paid add-on.
Multi-location architecture as a first-class primitive.
The data model is unified across clinics with three levels of aggregation: Region, Clinic, and Provider. Filters apply across the entire dashboard and reporting layer. The architecture was designed for a practice owner running multiple clinics, not retrofitted onto a single-clinic model.
Feature comparison.
Side-by-side on the structural surfaces that matter for an OMS evaluation in 2026.
The practice owner's question for 2026.
CounselEAR was the most technically credible audiology PMS we faced in the named competitive set. We won't pretend otherwise. The structural question for a practice owner evaluating CounselEAR in 2026 is what the platform looks like a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, under Fullsteam's commercial direction. amplifyOMS is the independent alternative built by a practice owner, with native AI throughout the platform, AI-powered Growth Engine, multi-location architecture as a first-class primitive, and no PE roll-up parent governing the trajectory. The platform is built by a practice owner who runs his own multi-location practice on it daily, and his work in hearing care touches over 400 clinics across the industry today. The next step is a demo where you see the platform with your specific patient base, provider mix, device mix, and multi-location context in mind.
This comparison reflects publicly available information and feedback from practices switching to amplifyOMS, accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of writing. Product details change often, so contact each vendor directly for the most current information. This comparison is provided as a courtesy.