7 Best Online Coaching Platforms in 2024 (Free + Paid Options)

Last updated: December 10, 2023

Selling coaching online is an excellent way to expand your clientele and enable more people to benefit from your services while growing your business, establishing authority and recognition, and increasing your revenue!

Whether you’re a business, life, or fitness coach, taking your business online means you’ll have to invest in a coaching tool that will enable you to enrich your offerings, market your business effectively, and automate mundane administrative tasks, so you can focus on serving your clients and doing what you actually love.

If you need someone to guide you on your quest for the best platform for online coaching, you’re in the right place. In this post, we have singled out the top 7 online coaching platforms to help you pick the one that best matches your needs. Here you’ll find a quick overview of each platform’s main features, pros & cons, and pricing plans.

Top Coaching Tool Features You Need

Before we go over the list of the best online coaching platforms, let us give you a quick look into how we came up with our list. In other words, which are the features that made us say, “Oh, that’s a good one!”?

You may already have an idea of what you’re looking for, but keep in mind that conducting business online means that your needs might differ. So, let’s review what coaching software must offer to be qualified as “best.”

Online video coaching

Well, that wasn’t so hard to figure out! At the core of every successful online coaching program lie your real-time coaching sessions. It’s a no-brainer that your go-to platform must integrate with tools that enable synchronous video coaching meetings, either for one-to-one or group coaching, during which you can discuss client progress and reevaluate their coaching plan as needed.

Client management platforms and other coaching tools

No one likes bookkeeping (especially if you’re a one-person team and do it all by yourself), but when running a business, it’s a necessary evil. So you need a tool that enables you to overview client status, manage enrollments, and automate billing, invoicing, and scheduling.

Flexible payment

We’ve picked online coaching platforms that integrate with the most widely used payment gateways to ensure you can facilitate the payment process and never lose a client because they got stuck in the checkout process. On top of that, we’ve made sure that you’ll be able to offer flexible payment options, like one-off payments, subscriptions, and payment plans.

Ease of use for coaches and clients

You want to offer your clients (and yourself!) a smooth user experience when navigating the coaching platform. To this end, ease of use, clear navigation, and customization are prerequisites for you to create a beautiful online environment that reflects your branding and where your clients will feel at home.

Digital products

Coaches operate in a competitive market, which means that the more you can bump up your offerings, the better. Offer your clients additional resources and digital products, like an online course and downloadable eBooks and videos, to help them further enhance their skills and learn at their own pace. You could even build a membership site with gated premium content and exclusive events.

Marketing tools

Let’s face it – word-of-mouth can only get you so far. Your online platform should allow you to promote your coaching business and the digital products you’re selling in any way you like. Email and affiliate marketing, SEO optimization, offers, and coupons, are only a few of the features to look for.

Reporting

Staying in the dark can be relaxing, but when running a coaching business, you need to keep your eyes open and closely monitor sales and client behavior. Therefore, your coaching tool should be able to generate reports with valuable insights that will help you understand what’s working and what’s not before it’s too late.

7 Best Online Coaching Platforms for Successful Coaching Programs

With online coaching, eLearning, and remote work being massively popular in the last few years, there are so many online platforms that you could end up toggling between options for a while. The list below is by no means exhaustive, but it does include the top tried-and-tested platforms for your online coaching business.

Here are the list of 7 best online coaching platforms:

1. Payhip
2. CoachAccountable
3. Paperbell
4. Coaching Loft
5. Satori
6. Nudge
7. Thinkific

1. Payhip – Most Recommended for Online Coaching 🔥

Payhip is an all-in-one platform perfect for selling online coaching and building a thriving coaching business. Payhip features a Store builder that enables you to build customizable, branded pages and sections to sell coaching with your own domain name (or you can choose to use Payhip’s free customizable domain name).

Payhip has native integrations with Zoom and Calendly, enabling you to automate scheduling and host live coaching sessions without having to use a third-party tool (although you’re able to connect the tool you’re already using if you prefer).

With Payhip, you can organize your coaching program using Milestones. Milestones are designed to schedule meetings, set up video calls, share files with the client, or communicate directly via comments on the Milestone page. This feature will help you break down your coaching plan into smaller steps and set goals for your clients while keeping them accountable and motivated until your next meeting.

You can also add value to your services with other digital products such as online courses (which you can sell separately, in bundles, or via memberships). Payhip’s course creation tool enables you, among others, to drip-feed content, set prerequisite lessons, add quizzes to monitor client progress, create certificates to reward your clients for their journey, and build surveys to request feedback and course ratings. You can also build a blog to share valuable tips with your clients.

Payhip enables you to facilitate payment for your clients by offering one-off pricing, subscriptions, and payment plans — super convenient, especially for high-ticket services! Or, you can offer a course or product entirely for free if you feel like offering a goodie to your loyal clients or using it as a lead magnet.

You can accept instant payouts (no holding period!) via Stripe and PayPal without worrying a bit about security, as all transactions are encrypted. Additionally, you can connect your Payhip account with over 5000+ third-party apps like billing and invoicing tools through Zapier.

To help you monitor your business performance, Payhip also generates reports on sales, visitor sources, and conversion rates.

Payhip offers robust marketing tools like referrals, affiliates, coupons & cross-sells, upgrade discounts, customer reviews, social discounts, gifting, and more.

Payhip also integrates with several top email marketing tools (Active Campaign, AWeber, ConvertKit, MailChimp, and more), so you can build successful sales funnels to convert site visitors and build customer loyalty.

Advantages

• Free plan (forever and with all features available!)
• Automated session scheduling
• Ability to easily set up individual as well as global milestones or coaching sessions for all your clients
• Integrations with Calendly and Zoom
• Drag-and-drop website builder with free themes and custom domain
• Can be connected to your existing WordPress website (or any other websites for that matter)
• Intuitive and mobile responsive design
• Robust marketing tools
• Shopping cart for a seamless buying experience
• Flexible payment options for your clients
• Ability to establish new revenue streams from selling other types of digital products from digital downloads, online courses, memberships, and more!

Disadvantages

• No built-in session notepad
• No white labeling
• No multi-account functionalities

Pricing

Payhip offers three pricing plans, including a free plan with all features available:

• Free forever (+5% transaction fee per sale)
• Plus: $29/month (+2% transaction fee per sale)
• Pro: $99/month (0% transaction fee)

2. CoachAccountable

CoachAccountable is a coaching platform that enables you to build customized coaching plans for your clients. This tool takes a generous part of client management off your hands by sending automatic reminders, generating progress reports, and automating invoicing and billing.

CoachAccountable also offers the opportunity for clients to schedule their meetings with you. To enhance client engagement, the platform features a community and enables clients to interact in groups, during live sessions, or privately.

As the name suggests, CoachAccountable offers many features that enhance accountability, like checklists, journal prompts, session reflection, and tracking metrics. Coaches can take notes during sessions, while clients can monitor their progress via the client portal. It also features a centralized resource center for quick access, where clients can share their own resources.

Advantages

• Advanced coaching features
• Automated administrative tasks
• Easy reporting, also accessible to clients
• Ability to create personalized Worksheets

Disadvantages

• Outdated design
• Steeper learning curve
• Not easily scalable as the pricing gets more expensive as the number of your clients increases
• Limited to just selling coaching services (no features to sell other types of products such as eBooks, online courses, and more)

Pricing

CoachAccountable offers level-based pricing plans that increase in price based on the number of clients you serve. For instance:

• Starter plan (Single Coach and Team Edition): 2 clients – $20/month
• Level 1 (Single Coach and Team Edition): 5 clients – $40/month
• Level 2 (Single Coach and Team Edition): 10 clients – $70/month
• Level 3 (Single Coach and Team Edition): 20 clients – $120/month

3. Paperbell

Paperbell is an intuitive coaching software that wants to free up your schedule from repetitive admin tasks, like scheduling and reminders to clients, so that you can focus on your actual work. Customers get to sign their contracts online during checkout and choose among payment plans and subscriptions.

Paperbell enables you to build your store page and offer premade or custom coaching packages that include digital downloadables. It allows note-taking during sessions – plus, you can choose which notes you want to share with your client and which are for your eyes only.

You can conduct live sessions and cohort-based/group programs for greater accountability and add surveys from the built-in customer questionnaire at any point during the program. The platform also gives you access to a dashboard featuring each client’s payment status, appointment history, lifetime spend, notes, and more.

Advantages

• Advanced scheduling
• Robust client management
• Ready-made coaching packages
• Automated reminders
• Client discovery session (onboarding)

Disadvantages

• Limited reporting
• Lack of assessment tools
• Limited marketing tools
• No support for online courses
• No community feature

Pricing

Paperbell offers a flat rate of $57/month with all features included and unlimited clients.

4. Coaching Loft

Coaching Loft is addressed to the bigger players in the coaching industry with features like advanced booking options, a built-in invoicing system, and multiple calendar integrations. It also offers a Coaching App where you can register your profile and be discovered by clients.

Coaching Loft is highly efficient in promoting accountability as it has a goal-setting system (Actions, Goals & Milestones) that looks like a checklist where the coach can add a comment for the client. Coaching Loft also enables you to message clients directly on the platform.

The platform features a built-in assessment tool and question bank with 500 coaching questions to “break the ice” and avoid building questionnaires from scratch. On the Central Coaching Dashboard, you can find essential information about your activities, such as upcoming appointments, pending incoming payments, total sessions, and many more.

Advantages

• Goal setting and prompts
• Session notepad
• Built-in coaching questionnaire & assessments
• Mobile app
• Suitable for bigger coaching teams

Disadvantages

• No community features
• Doesn’t support course creation
• Limited marketing features

Pricing

Coaching Loft offers different pricing plans for Individual coaches and Business/Enterprise coaching teams.

For individual coaches:

• Basic: 2 clients – $1/month
• Core: 10 clients – $25/month
• Premium: 30 clients – $55/month
• Master: Unlimited clients – $95/month

For teams:

$95/month per coach

5. Satori

Satori is another coaching platform that focuses on automating daily tasks. For example, it supports automated recurring billing and advanced scheduling by enabling you to set one-off or repeating availability schedules, segment your availability based on location, client, or activity, and program changes in your availability. It also integrates with calendars and offers automatic time zone detention and conversion.

Satori enables you to create custom packages for your clients and facilitates payment with custom billing cycles, payment plans, and discounts. It features a coaching questionnaire for easy check-ins with the client, session note-taking, and supports live sessions. It also has an automatic follow-up system that reminds clients to schedule sessions, check in on their progress, and provide reviews of their experience when finishing their program.

Satori features a client-facing dashboard where clients can schedule appointments, review agreements, access their billing history, and update their profiles.

Advantages

• Automated admin tasks
• Coaching questionnaire
• One-click enrollment feature
• Client dashboard
• Free trial

Disadvantages

• Limited reporting
• No course creation capabilities
• No community feature
• Limited goal setting
• Limited marketing tools

Pricing

Satori offers a free trial and three pricing plans:

• Pioneer: 3 clients – $9/month
• Trailblazer: Unlimited clients – $39/month
• Pro: Unlimited clients (and advanced features) – $79/month

6. Nudge

Nudge differs from all other online coaching platforms in this list because it’s a mobile app. Nudge combines the flexibility of a mobile app with the accountability of communicating with a professional coach and has a straightforward goal-setting and built-in tracking system. Although we wouldn’t recommend Nudge for fully-fledged coaching programs, it’s a great fit for health & fitness coaches and similar services focusing on promoting well-being and helping clients build new habits.

The content is delivered via Cards, but Nudge also supports live sessions, video uploading, and file sharing. The Sequences feature allows you to build your program and drip-feed it, setting daily or weekly Goals for your clients. You can also message your client directly in the app and post content in the Community or a Group.

Nudge has an intuitive and beautiful User Interface. It offers pre-made templates to help you customize the look and feel of your app while it supports full white labeling at an extra cost. It’s also worth noting that customer support is available 24/7.

Advantages

• Goal tracker
• Community and groups
• Instant messaging
• White label
• Mobile app
• Free plan

Disadvantages

• No payment processor
• No assessment feature
• Not suitable for advanced coaching needs
• No marketing tools

Pricing

Nudge offers four pricing plans:

• Free: 5 clients
• Grow: 50 clients – $60/month
• Scale: 100 clients – $100/month ($1 per additional client/month)
• White label: request a quote

7. Thinkific

Thinkific is a user-friendly platform primarily addressed to creators that want to sell online courses from your own website, as well as digital downloadables, memberships, and coaching.

Thinkific allows you to build a branded website using pre-built themes, although there are some limitations to the customization options. It has strong course creation capabilities and supports multiple types of content.

Thinkific enables coaches to schedule and host coaching sessions via its integrations with Calendly and Zoom. It also offers plenty of sales and payment options, including installments, as well as quick checkout through Thinkific payments and Order Bumps to help you upsell. It also features analytics on sales, client engagement, and client progress.

Advantages

• Free plan (with limited capabilities)
• User-friendly
• Good sales options
• Easy payment processing
• Course creation

Disadvantages

• Limited customization options
• Limited assessments
• No goal-setting features
• Expensive compared to other options

Pricing

Thinkific offers four pricing plans. The free plan allows you to build one course and gives you access to limited features. The rest of the plans offer unlimited courses and more advanced features as the price increases:

• Free (1 course)
• Basic: Unlimited courses – $49/month
• Start: Unlimited courses – $99/month
• Grow: Unlimited courses – $199/month

So, Which Online Coaching Platform Impressed You the Most?

Choosing an online coaching platform isn’t easy, but we have hopefully made this task easier for you. Don’t hesitate to give it a go and start offering coaching online. Put together any learning material you already have, and start selling attractive coaching packages to differentiate from the competition. Read our guide on How to Start an Online Coaching Business for a comprehensive step-by-step guide to get started on your coaching business.

Sign up for a free (forever!) account on Payhip, with all features available – it’s super easy and fast to get started. And if you already have a website for your business, you can simply connect it to Payhip to sell your digital products and leverage our amazing marketing tools that will take your online coaching business to the next level!