After running several courses, our founders realized that most course platforms focus on helping coaches close more clients. For example, many offer email marketing automation, upsell and downsell options, and other features that enable coaches to close more clients.
However, we’ve found that most of them fail to focus on the delivery aspect.
As a result, most professional coaches that care more about clients transformation than just selling more seats have to piece together:
- A course platform to host videos
- A community platform for accountability
- A project management platform to track client progress
- Other apps like habit trackers, to-do lists, and meeting scheduling software.
This creates a poor user experience with multiple logins, leading to poor course completion rates, low NPS scores, and minimal transformation.
Therefore, we created a coaching platform that focuses specifically on improving the delivery aspect.
Below, we’ll discuss our platform, upcoach, and then discuss several other online coaching platforms that might be a good fit for your coaching business.
1.) upcoach
Upcoach is designed for coaches that want to deliver transformational results to their clients. It was created after founder David Henzel was disappointed to see that only about 7% of his clients completed the course. While he had plenty of sign-ups, he was bothered that it didn’t have the impact he envisioned.
To improve engagement, he started tracking client habits, creating accountability groups, and assigning weekly to-dos. As a result, his course completion rate soared to a stunning 94%. However, the user experience was subpar as he was piecing together:
- A course platform
- Project management software
- Habit trackers
- Google doc worksheets
- Various other apps
Juggling various platforms confused clients, and some assignments weren’t completed because clients lost their login or simply didn’t have the motivation to search several different platforms to find an assignment.
Therefore, David created upcoach – an all-in-one platform that includes:
- Lesson modules
- To-do lists
- Habit tracker
- Calendar for meeting scheduling
- Embedded worksheets
- Accountability groups/community
Below we’ll dive into an overview of the platform’s key features and how you can use it to help improve your user experience.
Or, if you know this is what you’re looking for in a coaching platform, you can schedule a demo now.
Key Features
Habit Tracking and Accountability
Most coaching programs provide information that clients need to succeed. However, if all people needed to succeed was information, everyone would eat healthily and exercise every day.
The real recipe for success is incorporating daily habits that will eventually lead to the desired outcome.
That’s why top coaches focus on execution.
Therefore, one of upcoach’s key features is the habit tracker. Habits can be created and added:
- By the clients
- By the coach
- Automatically following a completed lesson
When creating a habit, users can define how many times per week they execute the habit and then check it off or mark it as incomplete.
This way, clients are inside the platform daily, which improves engagement as they see the material and to-do lists every day. Clients also get a dopamine hit every time they check off a habit, which can help them stay motivated and continue engaging with the program.
To further improve client engagement, upcoach also offers an accountability group section. This way, coaches can assign clients to accountability groups that can meet on their own outside of coaching calls with the coach.
By leveraging other members in the course, you’ll be able to connect like-minded people with one another, which will foster the right kinds of friendships and even potentially lead to deal flow.
In addition, peers offer a unique perspective to problems that most coaches can’t offer.
For example, the tactics that helped a coach grow his or her personal brand ten years ago might not work anymore. However, other peers in the group can share what they are doing right now to grow their personal brand.
Smart Docs
In most coaching platforms, you can attach worksheets to the bottom of the lessons. However, our founders learned the hard way that trying to track how much of a document clients have completed is quite difficult.
In many cases, clients make their own copy of the worksheet to fill out, so even if you open each individual document to track progress, it probably won’t be accurate.
That’s why we built the Smart Docs feature. It allows the coach to easily design their own stunning worksheets and embed them into the platform. By embedding them into the platform, the clients won’t be able to take it offline, making it easier for you to track exactly how much of the worksheet has been completed and which questions stump your clients.
To see a broad overview of how many clients completed the worksheets, coaches can navigate to the Worksheets section, click on “others,” and see what percentage of the worksheet clients completed.
To-Dos
Most coaches tell clients their homework verbally or email them assignments. Unfortunately, if you verbally tell clients what their homework is, there’s a good chance they will forget about it. On the other hand, emailing assignments is time-consuming, and clients still have to search through their emails to find the homework.
In addition, you don’t have any visibility into how clients are doing with their assignments during the week.
Therefore, we built a to-do feature into upcoach that enables you to assign to-dos to all clients at once. This saves you time and makes assignments easy for clients to remember as everything is stored inside the same platform.
You can also set to-dos to appear on a client’s to-do list either:
- After they complete a lesson module
- On a specific date/time
You’ll also have full visibility into which clients have completed to-dos (you can sort by status as well) so that you can reach out and check in with clients that are falling behind before the coaching call.
Lesson Modules
As a core aspect of any coaching platform are video lessons, upcoach offers lesson areas that enable you to embed videos and clients can check off each lesson as they complete it.
This way, you can teach clients basic information on their own time and instead use coaching sessions to answer higher-level information.
You’ll also have full visibility into which clients have completed the lessons.
Detailed Client CRM
The average online coaching platform has a CRM that keeps track of clients’ contact information and whether they have completed a lesson or not. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really tell you how well a client comprehended the material or whether or not they executed any of the advice.
However, the upcoach CRM does offer plenty of detailed engagement information, such as:
- How many to-dos a client has completed: This lets you see if clients are practicing what you teach them. More importantly, this feature allows you to encourage lagging clients to catch up.
- What percentage of a worksheet a client has completed: Sometimes, clients start a task and get stuck. This feature allows you to see which clients need help.
- How many habits they are tracking and how they are doing with those habits: This feature helps you nudge your clients to be consistent in building their daily habits.
- How many videos they have watched: This helps you track clients’ progress and monitor your course completion rate.
This makes it easy to understand which clients are falling behind and which ones are highly engaged. For clients that are falling behind, you can easily send them a chat message and ask where they need more help.
If you want a platform that is focused on helping you deliver transformational results, sign up for a demo today!
Additional Features
- Live Chat – Clients can send you a message directly inside the platform, making it easy to view all messages in one place.
- Meeting Scheduler – Schedule coaching calls directly inside upcoach and sync it with your calendar.
- General Discussion Board – Keep the group active by posting weekly announcements or enabling clients to post public questions or news.
To see how upcoach can help you deliver better client results, sign up for a demo or try upcoach risk free today!
Coaches With These Problems Are a Good Fit For upcoach:
- You’re driving sales, but you really want to deliver transformational client results.
- You want to improve NPS scores and course completion rates.
- You’re currently using multiple different platforms for your coaching business.
- You want to automate administrative and support tasks that are currently devouring hours of your time.
- Your clients leave reviews like “Good material, but difficult to navigate. Not what I expected.”
- You want a platform that enables you to scale your team seamlessly.
If your goal is to have a bigger impact on your clients and you need a platform that supports your purpose, sign up for upcoach today.
Pricing
upcoach pricing starts at just $29 per month (billed yearly) or $39 per month (billed monthly).
2.) Kajabi
Kajabi is a name that always pops up when talking about online coaching platforms. The platform has good UI and allows anyone—technically skilled or not—to create and host a course program with a few clicks.
Kajabi has different templates to choose from, and you can further customize them with their simple editor (and more technical people will enjoy their advanced editor). In addition, Kajabi allows you to design your own sales funnels, sales pages and create email marketing campaigns directly inside the platform.
Kajabi has many features including:
- A course/membership area
- A website builder
- Email marketing capabilities
- E-commerce capabilities
- Sales funnels and landing page capabilities
While these features allow you to create websites and nurture your audience, they don’t allow you to effectively monitor and improve your clients’ engagement.
For example, Kajabi doesn’t have any habit or to-do tracking features, let alone an accountability feature. As a result, you’ll probably still need to invest in the following tools:
- Trello or Basecamp: To collaborate with your clients
- Stickk: To track accountability
- Google Docs: To check on projects that have been completed
Key Features
- Build and host websites without resorting to WordPress or Squarespace
- Email marketing features
- Launch and sell membership programs without resorting to third-party tools
- Create quizzes to assess your clients’ understanding of the materials.
Pros
- Build a website, host your course, create email marketing campaigns and landing pages inside just one platform
- Stream your course materials using Kajabi’s integrated Wistia.
- Leverage plenty of templates for mini-courses, fully online courses, and drip courses
- Set different pricing models (one-time purchase, additional fees, multiple payments, and subscriptions)
Cons
- Very expensive
- No habit tracking or automated to-dos
- No accountability features
- No community features
Pricing
Kajabi is one of the most expensive platforms, with pricing starting at $119 per month (billed annually). It offers a 14-day free trial to test it out.
3.) Paperbell
Paperbell is an online coaching platform that focuses on the administrative side of a coaching business. It has a suite of features that range from receiving payment, signing contracts, and managing clients.
Paperbell also offers a meeting scheduling feature that allows you to schedule meetings directly inside the platform.
It also gives you access to a client management dashboard that lets you see:
- All upcoming appointments
- How many appointments are left in their package
- The complete history of appointments
- Private client notes
- All signed contracts
- Survey responses
As mentioned above, Paperbell doesn’t help you provide an unparalleled experience for your customers; it facilitates operations. Therefore, you’ll still have to purchase a course platform to store your content along with other tools like community management software, habit trackers, to-do lists, and more.
Key Features
- Sell single packages, payment plans, or subscriptions.
- Easily sign a legally binding digital contract
- Customize your material with your brand and logo
- Build landing pages for your offers
- Schedule meetings with your customers or let them organize themselves
Pros
- Integrates with third-party tools for payment, video conferencing, and scheduling tool
- Easily create coaching packages and bundles that benefit you and your clients.
- Revenue analytics. See how much revenue came through a particular client or coaching package.
Cons
- You can’t deliver online courses (there isn’t anywhere to store content)
- It’s not suitable for managing in-person coaching sessions.
- Scheduling is focused on Google Calendar integration.
Pricing
Prices start at $50/month, and all plans include an unlimited number of customers.
4.) CoachAccountable
Like Paperbell, CoachAccountable focuses on the primary admin side of running a coaching business, including accepting payments, scheduling sessions, and creating coaching plans for clients. However, unlike Paperbell, you can deliver courses through CoachAccountable.
One of the notable benefits of this online coaching platform is that it allows you to take meeting notes in a worksheet that you can share online with your clients.
With CoachAccountable, you can also set goals for your clients, or they can do it themselves. It is also possible to set automatic reminders in case clients miss their deadlines. The problem is this: what is the point of setting goals if you can’t be consistent in creating habits?
CoachAccountable does not have an accountability feature, which leads to clients procrastinating on tasks. Even when they perform the tasks, at the end of the coaching program, there’s a good chance that the change won’t be lasting if they never built the habits.
Key Features
- Appointment setting: Your clients can easily schedule coaching sessions from within the app.
- Invoicing: This feature is useful for coaches with a structured subscription plan. You can set the invoices to send automatically every month.
- Coaching packages: This feature lets you offer customized packages to your clients according to their specific needs.
- Client management: You can see if your clients have paid you, how many sessions you have scheduled with them, and how many hours of coaching they took.
Pros
- You can create and sell coaching bundles or packages.
- You can sync your calendar with that of your clients.
- You can white label the CoachAccountable dashboard with your branding.
Cons
- When you create an offer, free or paid, and someone signs up, they automatically get added as a client, which is sometimes confusing.
- Reviews say the worksheet feature can be buggy.
- You still need to use third-party video tools for coaching sessions.
- No habit tracking
- No accountability features
Pricing
Their initial tier starts at $20/month, which allows you to manage two clients and includes all base functionality. They have a 30-day free trial as well.
5.) Satori
Satori allows coaches to automate onboarding processes, design packages, send questionnaires, and sign contracts. In addition, you can also schedule meetings and process payments without leaving the platform, to relieve much of the administrative stress of running a coaching business.
For coaches who want to fill their pipeline, Satori allows you to use its email integration to link your email account and keep track of your contacts and emails in one easy-to-navigate interface. You can also use the automatic follow-up feature to follow up with prospects who are not responding.
Using Satori, you can automate your billing system with due invoices and subscription payments. All payments are then centered in the metrics dashboard to give a 360-degree view of your business performance.
Key Features
- Automated emails.
- Automatically remind clients to schedule sessions, complete tasks, and provide assessments.
- Sync your calendar with your Google account to update your availability and avoid double-booking.
- Know where prospects are in your sales funnel.
- Track the coaching process and improve communication with your clients using the shared note-taking feature.
Pros
- Beautiful and user-friendly interface ideal for first-timers
- Effective scheduling with calendar integration
- Tailor coaching packages to suit individual clients and email personalized agreement proposals.
- Create and send customized and detailed questionnaires.
Cons
- It does not integrate with Zoom
- Some users complained that it has bugs that interrupt the experience
- No way to offer discounts on services without creating a new offer
- No habit tracking or accountability feature
Pricing
Satori’s pricing starts at $23/month and caps at $56/month.
6.) TrueCoach
TrueCoach was designed to help personal trainers and fitness organizations launch remote coaching and training services. With TrueCoach, you can quickly create training modules and track your clients’ fitness progress.
TrueCoach also allows your fitness coaching clients to easily record their workouts and track nutrition. It also has a built-in calendar that gives an overview of your client’s previous workout regimens, allowing you to quickly adapt and iterate the training, if necessary.
It also sends email alerts to your clients to remind them of scheduled workouts, which reduces the chances of them missing sessions.
The biggest drawback to TrueCoach is that clients can’t pay online for sessions, and live video conferencing isn’t available either.
Key Features
- Customizable forms that allow you to document any follow-up and interaction.
- Automatic reminders to keep track of all tasks.
- Track nutrition and training progress
- Program generator to create custom workouts
Pros
- Easy to customize
- Easy to track and measure progress
- Extensive video library
- Easy to set up and use
Cons
- It’s expensive
- No android app for users
- No community feature
- It may not be suitable for coaches with few clients
Pricing Plans
Truecoach has three price tiers:
- Starter plan: $19 per month for up to 5 active clients
- Standard plan: $49 per month for up to 20 clients
- Pro Plan: $99 for up to 50 active clients
Which Online Coaching Platform Is The Best?
If you are looking for a coaching platform that provides the features you need to reduce administrative work, deliver a seamless client experience and ultimately deliver the transformational results you promised, consider trying upcoach.
While other platforms are focused on building and selling courses, upcoach is the only solution that focuses on helping professional coaches effortlessly scale their impact.
To see for yourself if upcoach is the tool you need to take your business to the next level, sign up for a demo or try it out for yourself today.
