Most life coaching software helps you get more clients with marketing features and automate admin processes like billing and invoicing.
However, we’ve spoken with many life coaches and found that most coaching software doesn’t support the actual coaching process.
As a life coach that cares about delivering transformational results, you’re probably:
- Tracking habits
- Assigning tasks
- Providing video material
- Assigning worksheets
- Communicating with clients frequently
- Scheduling coaching calls and storing call recordings
- Community software for accountability groups
Unfortunately, most coaching platforms don’t offer any of those features natively inside the platform.
We built upcoach to fix that problem. So in this post, we’ll introduce you to our own product, upcoach, as well as some of the other top life coaching software solutions on the market to help you find the best solution for your needs.
upcoach
upcoach was co-founded by two coaches (Todd Herman and David Henzel) who were frustrated by existing coaching solutions that failed to assist with the coaching process. Sure, plenty of different coaching platforms assist with admin work, but there wasn’t a single platform that enabled coaches to manage the entire program from one platform.
In fact, this was Todd’s coaching stack (tied together with Zapier) before upcoach:
- Project management software (To track habits/tasks)
- Course platform (To host program videos)
- Google Drive (For worksheets)
- Slack/Facebook groups (For community/accountability groups)
The list above also doesn’t include other coaching apps he used, like habit trackers, scheduling software, etc.
Tying together multiple platforms is inconvenient for you, and it’s also expensive to pay for so much software.
More importantly, tying together multiple platforms creates a disjointed client experience as they have to remember multiple passwords and search across different platforms for various program materials (“Wait, where was that document?! I never saw it!”).
A poor user experience also makes clients more likely to give up if there’s too much friction. If your clients give up, you probably don’t make the impact you set out to achieve, and your NPS scores will also drop.
With upcoach, these problems disappear. In fact, David and Todd looked at their current tech stacks and then just built the upcoach platform to include all the coaching tools they use.
So if you’re currently dealing with a frustrating and dysfunctional user experience, upcoach might be able to help you. If you want to see the platform for yourself, consider scheduling a demo.
Otherwise, keep reading, and we’ll outline upcoach’s key features that help life coaches deliver transformational results.
Store Lessons and Additional Materials in Programs
If you want to make your program more scalable and deliver more value in your coaching calls, recording video lessons for clients to consume on their own time is essential.
This way, you can spend coaching calls focusing on higher level questions rather than teaching the same concepts on each call.
With upcoach, you can create lesson modules and host your videos directly inside the platform. If you want to keep your clients at the same pace, you can lock future lessons and schedule them to become available at a specific date or after clients complete previous lessons.
You can also add assignments (like tasks, habits, and tasks) so that clients take action on the material rather than passively consuming content.
You can also easily track client progress at a glance in the CRM as it shows you an overview of how many lessons each client has completed. This makes it easy to see which coaching clients are falling behind so that you can reach out and offer additional assistance.
Assign and Track Progress With Tasks, Habits, and Smart Documents
A key differentiator between upcoach and other life coaching platforms is that upcoach does more than just automate admin work – it also offers you tools to be a better coach.
Specifically, you can assign and track:
- Tasks
- Habits
- Worksheet Assignments
The co-founders of upcoach believe that the difference between the top 1% of life coaches and the average life coach is that the top 1% give their clients direction to take action on their material.
upcoach makes it possible to give actionable steps with three key features; tasks, a habit tracker, and Smart Docs.
Let’s take a look at the three features in upcoach that make action happen.
Tasks
A task is usually a one-off task like:
- Email person X by 10am Tuesday
- Post a job on AngelList by Wednesday
- Update the feature page by Friday
You can add a due date and then track client progress directly inside the dashboard:
If you notice that a task isn’t completed, reach out to that client immediately and get them back on track.
Habits
Tasks can help your clients achieve milestones, but habits are the building blocks of permanent change.
So we built a habit tracker directly into the upcoach platform. You can schedule habits to be added automatically at the end of a lesson module, or you or your client can add a habit manually:
Worksheet Assignments (Smart Documents)
Before building upcoach, Todd created all his coaching worksheets in Google Docs. While this worked well enough for the clients, it was a nightmare for him because tracking client progress meant he had to click into each client’s document and scroll through it to gauge engagement. In addition, some people would make their own copy of the Google Doc and complete the copied version, which made it impossible to track engagement.
As Todd believes that accountability and encouragement are two of the three core principles of coaching, this was a major problem.
So when he joined upcoach, a key feature he added was smart documents.
Smart documents enable you to create beautifully designed worksheets, but more importantly, they show the completion rate percentage of each client’s document directly inside the dashboard:
These three features are key to transforming your coaching program from a content-based learning program to an action-based program that delivers results.
Create Accountability Groups and Scale Your Impact
The three features above (task lists, habits, and worksheets) are essential to give your clients direction to take action on your material, but you know that execution is tough.
If everyone executed the advice you gave them, you’d probably have a 100% success rate, and every single client would be a poster child of success.
However, execution is tough.
To help your clients through the hurdles of execution, we enable you to create accountability groups so that clients don’t give up. In fact, accountability groups were the secret that helped David scale his course from a 7% to 94% completion rate.
So upcoach makes it easy for you to create accountability pods of 4-5 clients. This way, the clients can chat through the platform whenever they get stuck and host accountability calls once per week outside of scheduled coaching sessions with you. During accountability calls, clients can review tasks, habits, and worksheet progress.
This benefits you because you can rest assured knowing that clients are executing the assignments and instead focus on scaling your business.
Clients also benefit because they can focus purely on higher-level tactics on coaching calls with you rather than spending time discussing task progress. It also gives them a unique opportunity to connect with others struggling with similar challenges.
So whether you offer a one-on-one coaching program or group coaching programs, upcoach can help you deliver an outstanding user experience.
Automate Admin Tasks Like Meeting Scheduling and Payments
While upcoach is outstanding at empowering coaches with all the tools they need to deliver transformational results in one platform, it also automates tedious admin tasks.
Specifically, you can schedule meetings directly inside the platform and add a pre-call questionnaire to ensure you and your clients are prepared for every call.
Clients can also communicate with you in real-time via upcoach’s chat feature, which makes it easy to quickly resolve support issues.
You can also integrate with Miro, Zoom, and other tools you might use during the coaching process.
Finally, upcoach makes it easy to automate tedious tasks like accepting payments (we integrate with Stripe) and setting up renewals so that you can focus on coaching your clients and scaling your business.
If upcoach sounds like an interesting online coaching platform, schedule a demo today or jump right into the platform and see for yourself if it’s a good fit!
Otherwise, we’ll discuss a few other solutions that might interest you.
Pricing
CoachAccountable
CoachAccountable is another online coaching platform that specializes in helping coaches automate administrative tasks.
Here are a few of the specific tasks that they assist coaches to execute:
- Scheduling sessions online
- Invoice automation (one-time and recurring) and accept payments
- Enable clients to purchase coaching packages online
- Organizational invoicing for corporate engagements
- Host client agreements, contracts, and terms
CoachAccountable also lets you send tasks, store session notes, and share files with clients.
While CoachAccountable is mostly used for one-on-one and group coaching, it can also be used by course creators.
Designing a program is also fairly easy and enables you to customize the branding and layout of the client portal.
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Quenza
Quenza is a coaching platform that makes it easy to create life coaching programs and automate your client management system.
The core of the platform is the pathway builder, which is an automated system that moves your clients through the program.
The platform offers pre-made activities like mindfulness, wellness, and self-compassion training, which you can assign to your clients.
Quenza also offers a mobile app that sends SMS notifications when you assign a new activity, provides a to-do list, and sends reminders. To communicate directly with clients, you can also use the chat feature or access their email in the CRM.
Finally, you can store additional documents and materials you might use during the coaching journey inside Quenza.
Pricing
Paperbell
Paperbell is great for automating administrative tasks like appointment scheduling, client intake forms, billing, follow-ups, and all the other tasks necessary to run your coaching business.
Here are the key features Paperbell offers:
- Scheduling software
- Payment/checkout/billing software
- Contract/e-signature software
- Client management software
- Custom landing pages
- Digital downloads
- Client portal
As you can see, it helps you streamline many administrative and marketing tasks, but it isn’t really designed to assist with the coaching process.
You can use it to run one-on-one and group coaching programs as well as online courses.
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Profi
Profi helps professional service providers (coaches, personal trainers, therapists, etc.) spend less time doing busy work and more time providing an outstanding client experience.
You can create and sell your program directly inside the platform, and customers report that the interface is user-friendly and onboarding new clients is easy.
Profi also offers a handful of basic coaching tools like video conferencing and coaching modules.
It’s also HIPAA compliant and offers secure messaging to ensure even medical professionals (like therapists) can safely host their program.
While it’s a little more basic than some other tools on this list, its simplicity makes it a popular choice.
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Delenta
Delenta is a coaching platform designed to help coaches automate the entire coaching process, from lead capture and payment processing to client tasking and accountability features.
The key functionalities Delenta highlights are:
- Custom branding
- Courses
- CRM
- Calendar and bookings
- Landing pages
- Payments
- Sell your services
- Session management
If Delenta doesn’t offer a feature you need, you can leverage one of their integrations (e.g., Zoom Stripe, Google, Mailchimp, and Outlook) or connect a third-party tool with Zapier.
While plenty of solo entrepreneur coaches use Delenta to host their programs, it also offers solutions for coaching teams and corporate clients.
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Cloverleaf
Cloverleaf specializes in helping coaches better understand their clients and improve communication by providing coaching assessments to coaches, enterprise leaders, and managers.
A few of the assessments Cloverleaf offers include the Enneagram, 16-Types, and DISC.
Cloverleaf also integrates with tools like Google Workplace, Office 365, and Slack so that clients can easily communicate with coaches whenever they need extra help.
It isn’t designed as a standalone coaching platform, but Cloverleaf does make it easy to distribute and analyze assessments.
Pricing
Kajabi
Kajabi is a course platform that many coaches use to host their coaching program.
It enables you to build a landing page or website and email automation to help you generate new leads on autopilot.
However, the platform’s core feature is the course builder. You can select one of their pre-made templates or build a course from scratch and upload your program material (videos, PDFs, worksheets, etc.).
Kajabi also offers basic business analytics like net revenue, purchases, and landing page performance.
If you’re heavily focused on selling more and prefer to automate most of the coaching process, Kajabi might be a good option. It offers a community forum, but it’s not really designed for group coaching or accountability groups. It also doesn’t provide habit trackers, to-do lists, and other basic coaching tools as Kajabi is really optimized for course creators.
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Podia
Podia is another course platform that’s praised for its simplicity and easy-to-use interface. It offers plenty of plug-and-play course templates so that even first-time coaches can quickly create and sell a program.
If you get stuck along the way, Podia offers plenty of resources to help you navigate the platform.
It also offers a basic community platform, and you can build a simple website to drive leads to your coaching program.
The drawback of Podia’s simplicity is that it doesn’t offer many customization options. In addition, those who take a hands-on approach to coaching will have to integrate with other coaching tools (such as community platforms for accountability, habit trackers, and other apps).
Pricing
Choosing The Best Life Coaching Software For Your Needs
Hopefully one of the life coaching platforms above fits your needs. While each one is suitable for different use cases, plenty of life coaches have told us that they love upcoach for a few key reasons:
- It is a truly all-in-one platform that hosts program content, automates busy work, and provides tools to assist with the coaching process and track client progress.
- It’s ideal for group coaching and even one-on-one coaches that want to add another level of value with accountability groups.
- It’s easy for anyone to set up in just a few minutes and is intuitive enough that clients require virtually no onboarding.
Overall, it’s one of those solutions that just works.
To see for yourself if upcoach can give you back some of your time and help you provide a better client experience, sign up for a demo or try it out risk free!
