526,376 participants now use a plan manager — 29% more than two years ago — while the number of plan managers has barely moved. The growth is already happening. Visibility and referrer trust decide whose book it lands on.
At 31 March 2026, 526,376 of the scheme’s 774,456 participants used a plan manager for some or all of their funding, up from 408,652 two years earlier (NDIA Quarterly Report Q3 2025-26). Over the same two years the number of plan managers operating stayed roughly flat, between 1,443 and 1,481 (Figure 27). More participants, same number of firms: the sector is growing whether or not you market.
The question this page answers is how a plan management business positions itself to capture a larger share of that growth. One clarification before we start: if you are a participant comparing plan managers, this page is not for you — the NDIS guide to plan management explains your options. This page is written for the businesses.
Source: NDIA Quarterly Report Q3 2025-26, Figure 27 and Table 9.
Plan management is a fixed-fee business. You are paid a set monthly amount per participant, funded from the Improved Life Choices budget in their plan (NDIS), whether that month’s invoices were simple or a mess. That has two blunt consequences for how you grow.
First, profitability is throughput. Your margin is decided by participants per staff member, so new participants only help if your processes absorb them without adding headcount at the same rate.
On the NDIA’s published figures, the average book per plan manager grew from roughly 281 to roughly 355 participants in two years — about 26% — and that is our arithmetic on Figure 27, not an NDIA-published statistic. The whole sector is being asked to do more volume with the same number of firms. Firms built for throughput are growing by default; the others are quietly losing share.
Second, acquisition cost has to be measured against a fixed fee, not an open-ended service order. A SIL provider can justify a high cost per participant because one participant is worth a lot; a plan manager cannot. Every channel we run for plan managers starts with the same sum: what does one signed participant cost from this channel, and how many months of your fee does that represent?
If the payback is too slow, we say so and put the money elsewhere. Our free cost per participant calculator runs exactly this comparison, channel by channel, and the marketing budget calculator works backwards from a signup goal to the spend it implies.
| Activity | What it does |
|---|---|
| Referrer visibility | Keep your service in front of support coordinators and referring providers in your regions |
| Decision-moment SEO | Rank your site for the searches participants run at plan activation, reassessment and switching |
| Google Ads | Paid search on high-intent plan management terms, run against a cost-per-signup ceiling |
| Signup conversion | Fee transparency, fast online signup and review proof that convert comparers |
| Reporting | New signups by source, and cost per signed participant against your fee |
SEO and content for plan management. The decision-moment searches — plan management explained, fees, how to switch, plan manager plus your regions — are where participants and the people advising them actually look.
We build the pages, the local visibility and the Google Business Profile presence that put you in those results, and we write to the NDIS Code of Conduct rather than around it. You can test any headline or ad line in our free NDIS marketing compliance checker before it goes near the public.
Google Ads for plan management. Search volume on plan management terms is modest, but the intent is sharp: someone searching for a plan manager usually needs one this week.
We run tightly scoped campaigns with a cost-per-signup ceiling agreed in advance, derived from your fee — not from what the budget “should” be. When the auction gets too expensive against a fixed fee, we cap it and shift spend rather than defending it.
Facebook ads for plan managers. We will be straight with you: nobody impulse-buys plan management from a social ad. Facebook earns its keep as reinforcement — staying visible to carers and family decision-makers, retargeting people who read your fees page but did not sign up, and distributing genuinely useful guides.
It is rarely the first dollar we recommend, and we will tell you if it should not be in the mix at all.
Plan management website design. Most plan manager websites are interchangeable: a stock photo, a claims turnaround promise, a contact form. The site that wins comparers does three things: shows fees and service promises plainly, lets a participant or coordinator start signup online in minutes, and meets accessibility basics — which for an NDIS audience is not optional.
If your site cannot do those three, we rebuild it as part of the programme; see our NDIS website design service for how we approach it.
If you are comparing operational platforms rather than marketing help, that is a different decision — our guide to the best NDIS plan management software covers claiming, provider payment and participant portals, and uses the same NDIA caseload data you have read on this page.
We help NDIS plan management businesses grow their participant book through referrer visibility, decision-moment search and signup conversion. Get a growth plan.
Through four paths: support coordinators who are asked for suggestions at plan activation, providers who refer participants to plan managers that pay invoices cleanly, participants searching and comparing at plan activation or reassessment, and word of mouth. Marketing that only covers the search path and ignores the referrer paths misses most of the market, so we build for both.
They can, with a caveat: search volumes for plan management terms are small but the intent is high, because someone searching for a plan manager usually needs one now. The deciding factor is arithmetic.
You are paid a fixed monthly fee per participant, so a click cost only makes sense if the resulting cost per signed participant pays back against that fee within a period you can live with. We run that maths with you — our cost per participant calculator is the same model — before spending anything.
Facebook is a supporting channel for plan management, not usually the first dollar. It works for staying visible to carers and family decision-makers, retargeting people who visited your fees or signup pages, and promoting genuinely useful guides. Nobody impulse-buys plan management from a social ad, so we treat it as reinforcement around the referral and search work.
Yes. Participants choose how their funding is managed and can change plan managers, subject to any notice period in their service agreement (NDIS). That matters for marketing because switch-intent searches happen all year, not only when new plans are approved, and clear switching content is one of the most useful pages a plan manager can publish.
It depends on how many regions you target and which channels carry the load, and we will not quote a number before understanding that. What we will do first is run the acquisition maths against your fixed monthly fee per participant using the free cost per participant and budget calculators, so any budget we propose is justified by payback rather than habit. Month-to-month, no lock-in.
A specialist maps the referrer channels and decision-moment searches in your regions, and runs the acquisition maths against your fee.
A specialist reviews your visibility against the providers competing in your catchment, and sends a written growth plan within two business days. You keep it either way.