You probably already know that online coaching represents a tremendous opportunity as a way to launch and grow your expertise-based business. In fact, the market value of the coaching industry is predicted to reach 1.34 billion USD this year.

Even if you have a solid understanding of what it takes to start an online coaching business, you may be struggling with how to scale your coaching model so it can become a profitable part of your portfolio of educational offerings.

But this is something most, if not all, coaches struggle with.  

That’s because it’s extremely difficult to manage more than a few clients successfully if you don’t have either a large staff or some significant automation and client self-service options in place—this is where online coaching platforms can help. 

An online coaching platform is a web-based platform that houses your entire online coaching business. It helps you create and store your content, communicate with your clients, store their information, track client progress, bill clients, and more.

But there’s a lot of variety when it comes to online coaching software, so it can be difficult to determine which specific features and tools you really need.  

That’s why I’m sharing a detailed round-up of some of the best online coaching platforms available to help you decide which one is right for you.

Let’s get started. 

8 Best Online Coaching Platforms for Online Coaches

Before diving in, it’s helpful to know that there are two ways to categorize coaching platforms—those that are dedicated online coaching platforms; and those that are a part of an all-in-one platform solution where coaching capabilities are offered in addition to things like creating, marketing, and selling online courses, digital products, membership, community, and more. 

Choosing which type of online coaching platform – dedicated or as part of an all-in-one solution – should be determined based on your individual goals and needs as an edupreneur.  

Either way, it’s a good idea to look at the options offered in both. 

So, let’s dive in.

Dedicated Online Coaching Platforms

Upcoach

Upcoach is one of the top online coaching platforms solely focusing on 1:1 coaching. The platform enables you to create, launch, manage, and scale your online coaching business without compromising your ability to deliver results.

The best part about Upcoach is its accountability and habit-tracking feature. This feature includes engagement tools like a habit tracker, to-do list, smart documents, and accountability groups.

With these tools, you can track your clients’ progress and provide individual feedback whenever they need help. Additionally, your clients can monitor each other’s progress, thus promoting social accountability in your coaching classes.

Another strong feature of Upcoach is its client management tools. As your coaching business scales, you need detailed reports on your clients to help you tailor and improve your courses. Upcoach provides you with a dashboard where you can access your clients’ information. 

This feature is important since it makes creating personalized one-on-one coaching courses for your clients easier. It also helps you analyze and identify the needs of each of your clients.

The platform is an excellent option for both newbies and advanced course creators interested in providing their clients with 1:1 coaching.  

Pros

• Beginner friendly
• Competitive pricing
• 24/7 live support and chat
• Built-in tool to house your community

Cons

• No free plan
• Some features are a little complex so there is a slight learning curve

Pricing

Upcoach has four pricing plans. The Launch plan ($29/ month), the Grow plan ($39/ month), and the Scale plan ($79/ month). The fourth plan is the Enterprise plan, which is similar to the Scale plan but has customized pricing since it allows for over 10 team members.

Upcoach offers a 14-day money-back guarantee if their services aren’t your cup of tea.

Coaches Console

Coaches Console is an online coaching platform created “for coaches by coaches.” It has everything you need to launch, coach, automate, and scale your online coaching business. And it has one of the most intuitive user interfaces enabling you to set up and launch your coaching business in as little as 30 minutes.

One of the most impressive features of the platform is related to its marketing features. Coaches Console offers resources and guidance to grow your list with ready-made tools and lead magnets. These marketing tools will help you find and enroll more of your ideal clients in your coaching business.

It also offers client management tools to help automate the onboarding process of new and existing clients. You can now send client agreements, automated onboarding messages, intake forms, and membership site access to your new client whenever they need them. 

Additionally, your client portal allows you to easily contact your clients and make, organize, and access your client notes seamlessly.

The Coaches Console calendar feature includes appointment types, confirmations and reminders, and appointment details. A good feature to note is the appointment type tool. It allows you to organize your clients automatically by type. This makes it easier for you to set up appointments with clients meeting particular criteria.

Coaches Console is a great platform for fledgling coaches who are looking to level up their coaching. It’s super easy to use and has everything you need to provide top-class coaching to your clients.

Pros

• 1:1 Zoom support
• A 30-day money-back guarantee policy
• Easy-to-use user interface

Cons

• Pricier compared to other options

Pricing

Coaches Console has two pricing plans. The Core Console System plan is $147/ month, and the Total Console System is $247/ month. 

Their annual subscription plan comes with a 15% discount.

Paperbell

Paperbell is a top online coaching platform designed as a scheduling, contract signing, billing, and project management tool. The platform boasts a strong reputation among coaching professionals as one of the few coaching platforms that cater to your business and administrative needs.

To start off, Paperbell has a built-in scheduling tool that allows you to set up your schedule according to your availability. To top it off, the scheduling tool allows your clients to self-schedule.

Another exciting feature is the client overview tool. The tool provides you with the history of your interactions with a particular client. You’ll have access to information like your client notes, client’s purchase history, past, and current appointments, etc. 

This feature saves you from wasting time digging through your emails, messages, and calendars looking for client information.

Paperbell allows you to create custom packages: single-session, multiple-session, or sessions-per-month packages. 

You also have the ability to create client surveys, which allow you to gather more information about your clients while saving you valuable time.      

Overall, Paperbell is an excellent platform for beginner and seasoned coaches focusing on 1:1 coaching or working with a small cohort.

Pros

• Free account until you add your first client
• Built-in automated email feature
• Has auto subscriptions for clients

Cons

• No feature to invoice your clients
• Features aren’t robust as others 

Pricing 

Paperbell has one of the most simplified payment plans among all the best online coaching platforms on this list. Rather than offering you different packages, they offer you access to their entire platform for an annual fee of $480 or a monthly fee of $50.

Satori

If you want a coaching platform that streamlines and automates your business without compromising user experience, Satori is your answer. 

Satori offers one of the best coaching management platforms combined with powerful, user-friendly features. These features include personalized coaching packages, automatic client follow-up, scheduling tools, and more.

One of the best features of Satori is client accountability and tracking. To track your client’s progress and keep them accountable, coaching check-ins with questionnaires help you collect client feedback. The session notes function complements the coaching check-ins function by helping you keep detailed notes of your client’s journey through your coaching program.

Satori’s other advantage is the ease by which you can onboard new clients. The platform helps you acquire new clients, collect payments, schedule appointments, send out emails and questionnaires, manage customer service, organize coaching programs, sequence customer progress, and more.

Satori is the best online coaching platform for coaching platforms looking for the most affordable all-in-one coaching management system.

Pros

• User-friendly
• Responsive customer support
• Can create public and private offers
• Variety of automation features
• Free plan and 2-month free trial on premium plan

Cons

• Lots of features so may take longer to get familiar with

Pricing 

Compared to other coaching management systems in the market, Satori is considerably low-cost for the value it offers. The platform even offers a 2-month free trial giving you ample time to learn how to use the platform.

Satori has two payment plans billed annually and monthly. The Trailblazer plan has a monthly charge of $39/ month and an annual charge of $32/ month. The Pioneer plan has a monthly charge of $19/ month and an annual charge of $15/ month.

CoachAccountable

CoachAccountable helps you spend more time focusing on your clients’ results and less time on day-to-day operational tasks. The platform offers you a range of features from client tracking, appointment and scheduling, a mobile app, invoicing and automatic billing, coaching contracts, course creation, branding tools, and more.

With CoachAccountable, you can offer various coaching packages and clearly outline what’s included in each one. This way, your clients can pick packages that are best suited to their needs.

CoachAccountable’s most powerful function is its group coaching feature. You can provide a secure group coaching environment for your clients where they can thrive together and form new relationships amongst themselves. 

CoachAccountable also helps you support clients with action plans, data, and metrics to show them their progress, automated drip delivery of content, and customizable assignments such as a daily tracker like the one below. 

Overall, CoachAccountable is an extremely versatile online coaching platform through which you can offer 1:1 coaching, group sessions, as well as courses. It’s a great option for coaching professionals looking for a platform that helps deliver better coaching programs, to more people, with little technical work.

Pros

• Robust reporting features
• An intuitive two-way communication system with your client
• Superior customer service
• Easy to automate administrative tasks

Cons

• The tiered pricing model makes it a pricier pick if you have a large number of clients
• There is a learning curve to the platform

Pricing

CoachAccountable has a unique pricing model that charges you based on your number of clients. This pricing model has 8 tiers billed monthly.

• Starter: 2 clients, $20
• Level 1: 5 clients, $40
• Level 2: 10 clients, $70
• Level 3: 20 clients, $120
• Level 3.5: 35 clients, $200
• Level 4: 50 clients, $250
• Level 4.5: 75 clients, $340
• Level 5: 100 clients, $400

The platform also offers a 30-day free trial.

All-In-One Platforms with Online Coaching Features

Kajabi

As a popular all-in-one course platform, Kajabi is an attractive option because it eliminates the need for unnecessary external integrations, allowing you to access different parts of your expertise-based business in one place. 

Kajabi’s coaching capabilities allow you to create single-session or multi-session packages with an option to upsell more sessions even after they are set up. 

There is also a built-in scheduler and video calling feature that eliminates the need for integrating services like Calendly or Zoom. 

Additionally, you can easily create and track details related to coaching sessions with notes, resources, and agenda items.

Again, Kajabi is an excellent choice if you want to leverage it as an all-in-one solution for scaling a variety of different areas of your education business—not only related to coaching.  This includes online courses, digital products, memberships, communities, podcasts, and webinars. 

• 24/7 live chat and tech support
• Powerful marketing tools
• Easy to create products and offers

Cons

• Cost might be a limiting factor, particularly if only interested in coaching capabilities

Pricing

Because of its extensive features, Kajabi is a pricier option compared to most dedicated online coaching platforms. Kajabi offers you three plans. The Basic plan ($119/ month), the Growth plan ($159/ month), and the Pro plan ($319/ month).

You also have the option to test out the platform using the 14-day free trial.

Podia

Podia is another great all-in-one online platform with robust coaching capabilities. Like Kajabi, Podia allows you to create and sell online courses, digital products, coaching, and memberships. 

And, interestingly, Podia actually started as a coaching platform (formerly called “WithCoach”) and it morphed into a course/all-in-one platform over time, eventually being re-branded. With roots in coaching, Podia is an established and stand-out option offering great value for the price,

One of the things that stands out for Podia is the easy-to-use user interface. It’s very easy to set up and doesn’t have a steep learning curve so you’ll be able to make the most of it in no time. 

The Podia coaching feature allows you to sell your coaching services as a standalone product or you can bundle coaching with other products like online courses or memberships. This flexibility enables you to provide a high-end coaching service and create multiple income streams. This is a great advantage, especially for newbie online coaches who have yet to establish their brand. 

Podia has another unique feature that enables you to embed content from over 1900 platforms into your coaching program. With this feature, you don’t have to recreate your high-quality content that is on other platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, and Daily Motion. 

With all these features, Podia is an excellent all-in-one platform with coaching capabilities and a less-expensive all-in-one alternative to Kajabi.

If you’re having trouble deciding, check out our post where we compare Podia vs Kajabi.

Pros

• Free plan for life (not a trial)
• Instant payouts
• Can track student progress
• Low-cost plans
• Built-in email marketing tool

Cons

• No personalization fields in the email tool
• Limited customization options for your coaching website

Pricing

Podia also has a free plan, but you won’t get all of the features you may want. You can only sell one coaching product and are only able to draft your courses and webinars. You’ll need to upgrade to a different plan in order to actually sell them. But this is a great way to test out the platform before committing to a paid plan and it’s free forever, not a trial. 

Podia has very affordable plans. Its paid plans start with the Mover plan at $33/ month, the Shaker plan at $75/ month, and the Earthquaker plan at $166/ month.

Teachable

Teachable is another highly rated course creation platform and with their online coaching feature, you’re getting the best of both worlds. 

One great feature of online coaching with Teachable are the built-in intake forms. This feature eliminates the need to use Google forms and type forms to collect your client’s information when preparing for that first call. It also makes it easier for you to store your client’s information in one central location, thereby making data collection and review very convenient.

Another attractive capability for online coaches using Teachable is that it offers access to powerful course-creation tools. Bundling your coaching service with a course is one of the best ways to deliver value to your clients.

And, you can seamlessly add an upsell for 1:1 coaching in targeted areas of your online course, another advantage of using an all-in-one platform.

A course enables you to provide your client with additional materials that’ll give them a better understanding of what you’re teaching. This not only improves your clients’ progress through your coaching program, but it also ensures you have more time to engage your clients on a more personal level.

All of these features make Teachable a top online coaching platform that allows you to focus on student learning experiences.

Pros

• A built-in payment processing system
• Access to an iOS app
• Equipped with upsell features
• Powerful reporting and tracking tools

Cons

• Transaction fees on their free and basic plans
• Doesn’t support communities

Pricing

Teachable boasts one of the most affordable pricing plans. They have a free plan, a Basic plan ($29/ month), a Pro plan ($99/ month), and a Business plan ($249/ month).

It’s important to note they charge transaction fees on sales on their free plan ($1+10%) and Basic plan (5%).

Still can’t decide if Teachable is the right option for you? Check out our posts where we compare Kajabi vs Teachable and Podia vs Teachable.

Which Is The Best Online Coaching Platform For You?

It can be difficult to say exactly which online coaching platform is best for you because that really depends on where you are in your coaching and expertise-based business journey. 

But hopefully this post gives you the information you need to figure out which coaching or all-in-one platform will meet your needs to grow and scale a thriving online coaching business.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, here are some of my top picks by category:

• Upcoach: Best All-Around
• Coaches Console: Best For Marketing
• Satori: Best Value
• Kajabi: Best All-in-One
• Teachable: Best For Coaching + Courses

Remember, most of these coaching platforms offer free trials so I encourage you to take a few for a spin and see what works best for you. 

ABOUT YOUR HOST

Learning Revolution founder Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.