Best Online Coaching Platform

Coaching platforms are critical for coaches who want to start or grow their business. Whether you’re looking for a platform that offers a video chat with your clients, automated scheduling, built-in invoicing, or all of the above, you have lots of options. So, which is the best coaching platform for you? I’ve reviewed and collected the best online coaching platforms to help you pick the right one.

Coaching has grown significantly since the 1980s, not only in sports but in almost any area of human endeavor. Professional coaches now help clients reach their goals in areas as varied as health and wellness, business and executive development, and financial management.

There are now numerous high-quality programs offering certificates or degrees in coaching (Edblad, 2020). There is also a growing body of peer-reviewed literature on best coaching practices (Journals, 2020). As coaching practices grow, the need for effective practice management increases.

In this article, we will explore the best online coaching platform to help coaches manage their practices and connect with clients in innovative and impactful ways.

Types of online coaching platforms and tools you need to grow your practice

All online coaches can benefit from setting up the following essential systems:

• An online education platform for carrying out virtual coaching sessions
• A project-management app to keep track of tasks and notes
• A social media management platform
• An email marketing software
• A design tool
• A tool for setting up and keeping track of meetings
• A reliable video conferencing software

These tools can help your business generate profit and operate at high efficiency. Below, we look into all of these categories in a bit more detail.

Thinkific: Sell online courses, and memberships, and manage a coaching community

While traditional, one-to-one coaching might be the cornerstone of your business, it comes with a significant limitation — the time you can spend with your clients. And increasing prices for your services can only get you so far.

A better way to scale your coaching business is by creating one-to-many online courses. This way, you can reserve your one-on-one coaching sessions for high-profile opportunities, while having your core coaching program accessible to many clients through online coaching platforms.

You have all the features you can think of to create a custom engaging learning environment. Your courses on Thinkific can be live or on-demand and include all kinds of mixed media, from video and images to text, quizzes, and surveys. You’re only limited by your imagination.

Once you build an online course with Thinkific, you can easily create a landing page to promote it. The software also automates payment processing and makes it easy to communicate with clients via in-app messaging.

Features

• Drag-and-drop online course builder
• Dozens of beautiful, fully customizable course themes
• Ability to create standalone courses, bundles, digital downloads or memberships
• Progress tracking tools
• Student engagement tools: community forums, quizzes, assessments, and certificates
• Your own domain and tool integrations

Pricing

• Use all the core features for free to get started
• $49/month for a Basic plan that includes unlimited courses, a custom domain, live chat support and more so you can quickly launch your first course
• $99/month for a Pro plan with advanced course-building features (e.g. members-only pages, assignments, prerequisites), subscriptions and a community forum
• $499/month for a Premier plan with complete white-labelling, unlimited community forums and API access
• For enterprise clients that need scale and custom modifications, there’s Thinkific Plus

Users also have the option to pay annually for a 20% discount.

Notion: Keep track of tasks and notes

To run an effective coaching business, you need a system that makes it easy to manage all the information you come across. This includes meeting notes, tasks and projects that measure how clients progress, a CRM with client data, etc.

In the past, you needed multiple tools to do all that. Think: a dedicated project management tool like Trello, spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel, editing software like Google Docs, a CRM like Salesforce. Today, you can bring everything together in a note-taking and project management app like Notion.

Notion is the only workspace professional coaches need to manage their business. It can be used to host documents, project workflows (e.g. kanban boards), client details, and much more. The possibilities are truly endless.

Features

• Connect clients to their dedicated projects in Notion to track their progress
• Write down and review coach and client meeting notes at any time, on mobile and desktop
• Create a custom roadmap and milestones for every client
• Share FAQs or descriptions of your practice with prospective clients
• Keep all information related to your practice in one place

Pricing

• Free for individuals
• $5/month for Personal Pro with unlimited guests and 30-day version history
• $10/month per user on a Team plan with collaborative spaces and sharing permissions
• Custom quotes for other enterprise needs

Annual subscriptions reduce the monthly price for a Personal Pro plan to $4 and a Team plan to $8.

Canva: Design marketing assets with ease

We all know how important visual content is in nearly every aspect of business, from website branding, all the way to social media.

Unless you’re a graphic design coach, chances are, creating design assets is something you’d be happy to delegate or simplify.

Canva is a design platform that makes it easy to create beautiful images, videos, presentations, print collateral and much more — without advanced design skills. It features presets for any medium you can imagine and lets you put together high-quality designs in minutes.

Features

• Thousands of templates for any use case to get you started
• Real-time collaboration on designs with others (for example, someone on your team or an external designer)
• Testing, sharing and printing your results instantly

Pricing

• A Free plan includes over 250,000 templates across more than 100 design types (e.g. social media posts, presentations, letters)
• A Pro plan costs $12.99/month for teams of up to 5 people and adds even more templates and 100 million free stock photos, videos and audio tracks
• An Enterprise plan is $30/month per person for a minimum of 25 people and features brand kits, workflows, and unlimited asset storage
• Education institutions and nonprofits can use Canva for free

Buffer: Manage all social channels

Being active on social media — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and/or LinkedIn — is essential for coaches building a personal brand online. Social media can help you find your audience, establish connections, and generate leads for free.

The caveat is that if you devote too much time to social media, it’ll consume you whole and leave no time for your actual business. So you have to establish boundaries. The sweet spot is checking the feed less often and scheduling posts in advance, while still being quick to respond to any comments and DMs.

Buffer is a social media management platform that helps you do it all. You can queue social media posts for any platform (e.g. Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn) on a custom schedule, analyze engagement, and get notified about any comments to quickly reply from your desktop.

Features

• Publish and schedule content for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn from one place
• Analyze performance for every social channel and create easy-to-read reports with a few clicks
• Quickly reply to comments on any social channel
• Create a mobile-friendly landing page to use in social media bios to present your coaching services, sell products, book appointments, and more

Pricing

• A Free plan comes with basic publishing tools for up to 3 social network accounts
• An Essentials plan costs $6/month per social network account and includes publishing, analytics and engagement tools
• A Team plan is $12/month per social network account and adds unlimited team members and reports

Mailchimp: Send engaging emails

Email marketing is known to have a very high ROI — it doesn’t require a big upfront investment, but it can be essential for converting leads into paying customers. You can, for example, use social media to sign up people for your newsletter and then send valuable content (e.g. blog posts, ebooks, insights) and CTAs (e.g. register for a course, book an appointment) straight to your contact list’s inboxes.

Mailchimp is an industry-leading email marketing tool that makes it easy to create outstanding newsletters using its drag-and-drop platform and analyze the performance of your email campaigns down to a click.

Features

• Start with an email template or build your own with a drag-and-drop editor
• Create branded designs on the fly with Mailchimp’s Creative Assistant
• Improve your copy and layouts with the automated Content Optimizer
• Build behavior-based automated client journeys to drive engagement
• Relax knowing that your email will reach its destination with Mailchimp’s outstanding delivery rate
• Analyze every aspect of your email campaigns with detailed reports

Pricing

• The Free plan allows you to send up to 10,000 emails a month (more than enough for most coaching businesses)
• The Essentials plan starts at $11/month and includes a custom journey builder
• The Standard plan starts at $17/month and includes behavioral targeting
• The Premium starts at $299/month and features various testing and reporting features

Calendly: Easily schedule meetings

These days, arranging meetings is like a never-ending game of ping-pong — you just keep emailing each other forever. Multiply that by the number of meetings you need to schedule on an ongoing basis, and scheduling might end up taking hours of your time every week.

Calendly is an automated solution for scheduling all your meetings. Just share your Calendly link with a client, and it’ll display every available slot on your calendar — and let them schedule either in-person or virtual meetings at a time that works for everyone. Problem solved!

Features

• Create a shareable calendar that lets your clients know when you’re available and helps them book meetings
• Connect up to 6 calendars
• Create meeting polls where multiple clients can easily agree on a perfect time for a group coaching meeting
• Embed your calendar on your website
• Accept payments for appointments through PayPal or Stripe

Pricing

• Basic features are available for free
• The Essentials plan costs $10/month and automatically connects to your calendar
• The Professional plan costs $15/month and features advanced integrations and customizations
• The Teams plan costs $20/month per person for efficient team collaboration
• Custom Enterprise plans are available for teams of over 30 people

Annual discounts are available.

Zoom: Meet with clients online

Chances are, you’re already using Zoom for virtual meetings. Its popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic has skyrocketed, and the app is now ubiquitous in nearly every organization.

Zoom allows you to quickly create and join audio and video meetings from any device. It works just as well with one or 100 participants, features collaboration tools, screen sharing, chats and more. If you’re thinking about offering virtual meetings for your coaching practice, Zoom is a perfect tool for it.

Features

• HD video for all participants
• Free VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls to join meetings from over 55 countries
• Screen sharing and meeting recording
• Group chat with searchable history and file sharing

Pricing

• A free Basic plan is limited to 100 participants, with a 40-minute cut-off for group meetings and 30 hours for one-on-ones.
• A Pro plan is $14.99/month per license and expands the limit for group calls to 30 hours. It also includes 1 GB of cloud storage for recording meetings.
• A Business plan is $19.99/month per license and allows company branding, recording transcripts and up to 300 participants in group meetings.
• An Enterprise plan is also $19.99/month per license (minimum 50 licenses) and lets you host up to 500 participants and use unlimited cloud storage.

The Benefits of Using a Coaching Management Platform

Advantages for coaches using online platforms include:

• Cost-effectiveness
  Online practice can involve significant savings on commuting, travel, office rental, and supplies.
• Time savings
  An effective coaching management platform can streamline activities such as developing client content, creating contracts, and billing, leaving you more time to help your clients.
• Ready access to coaching tools and client data
  This includes activities for clients to complete between coaching sessions and data to monitor progress.

Potential disadvantages of online coaching, depending on the platform used, can include:

• Slow, buggy chat and other communication tools on less sophisticated or reliable platforms.
• Lack of reliable encryption or other safeguards to protect the confidentiality of client information.
• Clients’ preconceptions about or past negative experiences with online coaching could lead them to avoid even the best and most effective online platforms.

6 Things to Look for in a Life Coaching Platform

A quality coaching platform should be visually attractive and easy to use, for both coach and client.

It should include features and content that meet the core coach and client needs.

To be comprehensive, a coaching platform should arguably include the following features (adapted from Gambill, 2021).

1. Administrative tools such as contract drafting, invoicing, and scheduling meetings with individuals and groups.
2. Remote communication tools such as text messaging, chat, and video conferencing.
3. Data monitoring and analysis to measure individual or team progress toward goals and determine best resource allocations and next steps, etc.
4. Content delivery tools to provide clients with activities, interactive classes, training modules, presentations, etc.
5. iOS and Android compatible.
6. Data Security — All processes and content should be encrypted and HIPAA and/or GDPR compliant so that coaches and clients are assured of confidentiality and information security.

What Is the Best Online Coaching Platform?

A credentialed positive psychology coach recently reviewed several online coaching practice management platforms.

Regardless of this variability, the one platform that received a highly favorable review is Quenya.

Quenya stands out, with:

• An excellent combination of visually attractive, user-friendly, streamlined functions
• Helpful administrative tools
• Innovative, science-based content and activities for clients
• Affordability

To date, Quenza has received very positive reviews from several software review sites, including G3, Capterra, softwareadvice.com, and nudgecoach.com (Gambill, 2021).

It has also been highly rated by individual customers, who often cite its elegant design, user-friendly features, time savings, and outstanding client support (Quenza reviews, n.d.).

How to Use the Quenza E-Coaching Platform

Quenza’s stated goal is to provide a user-friendly online coaching platform that will maximize your client outcomes.

The best way to explore whether Quenza is a good fit for your coaching management needs is to take a test drive.

Signing up for Quenza is fast, simple, and only $1 for an initial one-month trial.

If you decide to use Quenza following this trial, there are several plan options for a variety of needs: Lite, Standard, and Unlimited.

• The Lite version supports a 15-client roster, 20 coached Activities, and 5 “Pathways” (automated sequences of activities that address a given client’s need in-depth).
• The Standard version supports a 50-client roster, 100 coached Activities, and 20 Pathways.
• The Unlimited version provides the best value for money. There is no limit to the number of clients supported, Activities, or Pathways.

With an annual subscription, the first two months of any of the above versions are free.

You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel a subscription at any time.

Exploring Quenza

Let’s explore Quenza through the tabs or pages you can use to develop and manage a practice.

These tabs appear vertically on the left side of the Quenza screen, in a top-to-bottom sequence that follows a natural workflow for coaching management.

Dashboard

Clicking on the Dashboard tab will provide an at-a-glance orientation of your overall practice.

This includes:

• Any notifications you have received since last checking the site?
• Practice information such as:
  • The number of active clients you have
  • Client Activities in progress
  • Client Pathways in progress
  • The latest Expansions (additional pre-made content for clients)

Scrolling down the dashboard, you will find the latest blog posts on topics such as Quenza features and how to use them. You will also find the latest community posts from others using and discussing Quenya. Support staff promptly responds to posts by coaches seeking help or making suggestions.

The next tab is for building and managing your roster of clients.

Clients

The Clients tab allows you to add clients to your roster, view lists of active or inactive clients, and search for specific clients and their data.

Once you’ve added your first client to the system, you can start using Quenza in earnest to manage your practice.

Chat

Next comes the Chat function.

This is a very popular feature, based on feedback in community posts by coaches using Quenya.

Here, you can select the client with whom you want to chat and begin sending secure messages.

Activities

The Activity section has a helpful “show me how” tab with a brief video tutorial that walks you through the steps needed to send Activities to clients, tailored to their needs.

The Activities section includes pre-made, science-based activities applicable to a range of client needs. These are tagged by categories such as Evaluation, Exercise, and Meditation.

These Activities can be selected from given categories and sent by coaches directly to clients to build awareness and strengths in specific areas and monitor client progress.

For example, one particular exercise explores and clarifies a client’s “Five Most Important Values.”

Activities can be brief, like the “Three-Minute Breathing Space” in the Meditation category.

Activities can also be more in-depth, like an exercise encouraging clients to imagine and interact with “Your Best Most Resilient Self.”

There are numerous items in the Evaluation category. These include a Session Rating Scale, where clients can rate various aspects of their last coaching session, including the fitness of the coaching approach to them and the overall quality of the last session.

In addition to a bank of pre-made Activities, this section allows you to build your coaching Activities for clients.

A nice feature here is the drag-and-drop function, allowing you to pull customizable Activity blocks quickly into your new content, making it easy to construct and edit Activities.

For example, when building a self-report questionnaire on a client’s core values, you can drag a block for questions you want to be answered in short or long format, yes/no responses, or number scale responses. A text field enables you to write your question for the client, editing tools allow you to adjust font size and type, and a pre-set answer box collects client responses.

You can then add an image for this question and further customize it by making the questions required or optional.

You can also add section markers to your Activities and page breaks that require a button to be pressed before moving to the next item.

Using the drag-and-drop feature, I found it quick and easy to build a cognitive health questionnaire with 10 items, in 3 distinct sections. I used the time saved on formatting my form to create the questions themselves.

If you’re like me and prone to occasionally leaving a document without saving the latest edits, there is a handy auto-save function to back up your Activities documents.

Your next decision might be to build an automated, scheduled sequence of Activities for a client, called a Pathway.

Pathways

For this, you move to the Pathways tab.

Here, you find a Pathway builder that allows you to create a sequence of Activities of a given type that will be automatically sent to clients on a predetermined schedule.

Pathway content can include documents or activities for intakes, onboarding, building strengths, and evaluating progress. Reminders to complete each task in a Pathway can also be sent automatically.

Expansions

The Expansion section contains more pre-made science-based content, regularly updated with new materials for the Activities and Pathways you send your clients.

Support

The Support section contains a searchable knowledge base, community message board, and tabs for suggesting new Quenza features and contacting the support team.

Based on a review of coaches’ questions and the support team’s responses, questions are usually answered within 24 hours. For more complex questions, the support team communicates clearly where a given question stands and when a fuller or more definitive response can be expected.

Client Portal

Your clients can also sign into their accounts on Quenza, where they’ll find notifications from you about Activities sent, an undated to-do list, and a list of Activities completed or pending.

Additional features

Other features worth noting were either recently added or are in the works.

These include:

• White label branding.
  Allows coaches to send Quenza emails and documents to clients under their brand.
• Wheel of life.
  Graphically tracks client progress toward personal goals in various areas, with the wheel of life, a fundamental starting point for many coaching sessions.
• Groups.
  Coaches can send Activities and Pathways to multiple clients.

At the time of writing, the following components are still being made available:

• Group chat.
  Coaches can chat with several clients in a group at once and allow those clients to chat among themselves.
• Files.
  Coaches and their clients will be able to share PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, and other documents securely.
• Multilingual client app.
  Initial support will be added for client communications in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Dutch. More languages will be added based on demand.
• Video conferencing.
  Coaches will be able to make and record secure video/audio calls with clients.

5 Key Benefits of Quenza Coaching Software & App

One immediate benefit of using the Quenza platform is having a visually attractive, user-friendly platform for your clients to see and use.

The interface with clients is enhanced by the white label function, which brands Quenza emails and documents you send to clients with your logo or practice identifier.

Another key benefit of Quenza is its organizing capacity. Quenya allows you to intake clients, maintain a client roster, access and develop Activities for clients, sequence these Activities as needed into Pathways, stay in touch with clients remotely by app, and track client progress, all within one integrated and streamlined system.

Perhaps the most important advantage of using Quenza is time and energy savings.

The computer software and app are meant to help you build and organize your client base, send and receive client content, and monitor client progress with the fewest clicks possible each time.

A major time and effort saver is the store of pre-made, science-based Activities and Pathways for use with your clients.

The drag-and-drop feature is also a time and energy saver when creating your Activities and Pathways for clients.

The Pathways feature is not only helpful for having clients complete Activity sequences, but it can also help you be more thoughtful as a coach about building an integrated series of Activities with synergy toward client goals, instead of relying on standalone Activities with potentially less client impact.

Importantly, Quenza keeps your practice and client information highly secure. The platform uses a PIN sign-in that is convenient and useful as an added security layer.

Quenya also uses AES 256-bit encryption, which provides top-level information security and helps keep your practice HIPAA and GDPR compliant.

Best coaching platform FAQ

What are online coaching platforms?

Coaching platforms are software that help coaches manage their business and communicate with clients. They can be used to communicate with clients, schedule appointments, track payments, send invoices, and more.

Which is the best platform for online coaching?

There’s no easy answer to this question, as different platforms offer different features and benefits. All of the platforms on this list are the cream of the crop, but you may find that one suits your specific needs and coaching style better than another.

Delenta is a robust and versatile platform that you can customize to your own use, while Noomii helps you connect with new clients via its marketplace. If you want to start an online course—Kajabi would be a great choice. If you are a personal trainer or healthcare professional, you might prefer Nudge Coach. Check out the features of each platform to decide which one would be best suited to your coaching business.

What do you look for in a coaching session platform?

Coaches need a platform that is reliable and easy to use. You might look for a platform that helps you connect with clients video conferencing, chat, or voice calls. Many coaches also need a platform with helpful tools and resources like calendars, file sharing, and task management. This includes:

• A private messaging system for coaches and clients
• Coaching tools, such as goal setting, progress tracking, and reflection tools
• Client files that can be stored and accessed online
• A calendar system to keep track of coaching appointments
• A payment processing system to accept payments from clients

What should be included in a coaching program platform?

A comprehensive coaching platform should also include tools to help with goal setting, action planning, accountability, and feedback. Without these essential pieces, a coach’s ability to help their clients improve will be more limited.

When you’re looking for a coaching platform, it’s important to make sure that it includes all the essential components you need to tailor a plan for your clients.

What makes a great coaching program work?

The most successful coaches are creative, supportive, and motivating. They’re able to use their expertise to tailor customized programs for their clients and help them get results. Plus, they help clients identify their goals and come up with and stick to a plan to reach them.

How do you run a successful coaching session?

A good coaching platform goes a long way toward helping you run a successful coaching platform, as it augments your ability to communicate with and help people. The best online coaching platform will have all the features and tools you need to  implement engaging, interactive lessons and activities for your clients.

A Take-Home Message

Online coaching platforms have the potential to both streamline and expand your practice.

Gone are the days when you had to give a client an assignment and wait a week for its return to assess it. With online assigned homework, activities, and instant feedback, you can impact a client positively each day, helping them attain their goals quicker.

By keeping to online appointments instead of having to wait for another client who is running late, you can accommodate more clients in a day, more efficiently. Cost savings can be achieved by reducing office staff, space, equipment, and supplies.

Your clients will appreciate the closer contact, the security of chatting with you only by logging into the platform, and the efficiency with which you respond to their assignments. Not to mention, there’s no need to trek through traffic to meet their weekly appointments.

For a win-win situation, Quenza is the best online coaching platform with crucial administrative, client activity, and tracking tools. It is also a rapidly evolving platform, adding new and impactful features in response to user feedback.