In this guide, we list the essential online coaching platforms you need to grow your practice and build client engagement.
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed people to find new ways to further their careers and personal development. In the “before times,” most learning opportunities required physical attendance, be it in corporate coaching programs or extracurriculars. In the post-2020 world, online coaching practices are booming.
According to a global coaching study conducted by ICF, the North American continent saw a 54% increase in the number of coaches when comparing 2019 to 2022. Whether you specialize in life coaching, business coaching, fitness coaching, nutrition coaching, or anything in between — now is better than ever before to run a coaching business online. But with more clients coming through your virtual doors, it’s important that you work smarter, not harder. The goal is to spend as many quality (billable) hours with your clients as possible and not get lost in the time-consuming admin work, like managing your contact lists or scheduling sessions.
A variety of online coaching platforms and other online tools can help you streamline your work. But how do you choose the best ones without wasting hours on research?
In this guide, we list the best online coaching platforms for 2024. This list of platforms and tools will help you grow your practice and build client engagement, regardless of the type of coaching you do.
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The 13 best online coaching platforms for 2024
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Related: If you’re coaching at scale, you may want to check out these Enterprise Coaching Platforms.
The 13 best online coaching platforms for 2024
In your search for the best online coaching platforms for 2024, you’ll find a wide range of platforms, each with its own unique tools and features. Some are genuinely all-in-one platforms designed to be a one-stop shop. Others are designed to get you 80% of the way there, and for what they don’t offer, they make up for in cost savings.
As you look through today’s best online coaching platforms, consider each platform’s features, and think about how essential they are to your business and how you’d like to use them (whether within your coaching platform or through an integration).
- Online education: Online courses are a natural next step for online coaches looking to create high-value digital resources for their clients. If you plan on offering this or expanding your business in the future, check to make sure the platform you choose will allow it.
- Project management: Proper project management tools will help you manage scheduling, calendars, and time-tracking. If you currently use tools like Google Calendar or Calendly, check for available integrations.
- Social media management: In 2024, having a social presence is essential for any online coach. A social media management tool will help make managing that presence much easier.
- Graphic design: Many online coaching platforms have templates and intuitive editors. But you’ll still need to create some visuals, so finding a strong design tool is necessary.
- Video conference: While some platforms offer native video conferencing, others don’t (more on that later). So, if you opt for a platform that doesn’t meet all of your needs, you’ll need to integrate with other tools.
- Customer relationship management (CRM): Most platforms offer some CRM features but to varying degrees. Ensure that potential features will help you manage your customers.
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.
While traditional, one-on-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 either one-on-many online coaching programs or creating a coaching community (or both!). 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 and collaborative communities.
Thinkific Communities for coaching
Thinkific Communities are online learning environments that empower your clients to come together to build meaningful relationships with each other — leaving you with more time to build your business. Whether you’re looking to grow your coaching business, connect with your clients, or streamline your workflow, Thinkific Communities is an excellent solution.
Key highlights:
Support valuable connections: Create a space where clients can connect with like-minded peers, learn from one another, collaborate in meaningful ways, and reach their goals together — all without constant reliance on you.
Spend less time on admin: With one central place for clients to see answers to common questions, you can spend less time responding to direct inquiries and more time creating new content.
Focus on what matters most: Gather valuable feedback through discussions, Q&As, and threads to better understand and deliver the coaching content your clients actually want.
Maximize your impact: Reach more clients quickly and build lasting connections with live events like group discussions, workshops, and 1:1 coaching. Your clients get more value while you save time.
Online courses for coaching
Thinkific is also a flexible and powerful platform for creating online courses. It provides all the essential features for creating a customized and 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.
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 communicating with clients via in-app messaging easy.
You can also easily connect your course with your community on Thinkific, delivering a seamless, integrated learning experience for your clients across multiple learning features — something you won’t find on other online courses or community platforms.
Features
- Drag-and-drop online course builder
- Coaching website builder, with built-in payment processor
- Dozens of beautiful, fully customizable themes
- Facilitates both individual and group coaching sessions, live meetings, digital downloads, and recurring 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
- $99/month for a Start plan that includes unlimited courses, a custom domain, 1 community, live chat support, and more so you can quickly launch your first course
- $199/month for a Grow plan with advanced course-building features (e.g., bulk student emailer and bulk enrolments) and removes Thinkific branding
- For enterprise clients that need scale and custom modifications, there’s Thinkific Plus
- Users also have the option to pay annually for a 25% discount.
Related: How to Plan a Productive Coaching Session (Free Coaching Session Template)
Practice takes its spot as the second best platform for online coaching. It’s a client-dedicated platform that helps small businesses manage clients and their business in one central location. Your clients can access the platform via the web or a dedicated iOS or Android app, making connection and engagement a breeze.
Coaches can also implement a pricing structure that works for them and their clients with Practice’s diverse range of pricing models. You can also collaborate on tasks and to-do lists or co-coach the same client, making Practice a reliable software for online coaching regardless of how many coaches your business has.
Features
- White labeling options are available for premium plans
- Integrates with Google for scheduling and reminders
- Allows coaches to create packages, invoices, payment plans, and more
Pricing
All Practice pricing plans offer unlimited contacts, unlimited storage, automated workflows, and no additional transaction fees. However, the ability to add seats, digital contracts, and proposals, create a custom domain, and integrate with Zapier is limited to the two higher-tiered plans. Here’s a breakdown of each plan:
- The Basic plan starts at $35 per month with a 20% discount for yearly plans. This plan includes unlimited contacts and storage, automated workflows, and online support.
- The Pro plan starts at $60 monthly and offers an annual discount. This plan includes all features from the basic plan in addition to digital signatures, a custom domain, and branding tools. You’ll also receive one additional seat for your account.
- The Teams plan begins at $99 per month and allows members to set permissions, create assignments, share tasks and to-do lists, and create up to three included seats.
Managing a coaching business has many moving parts, and it can be overwhelming to keep track of it. You’ll often have multiple tools to schedule meetings, process payments, and send contracts.
Paperbell eliminates the overwhelm and simplifies your process with its online business coaching tools. It’s an all-in-one tool that allows coaches to schedule appointments, create multiple coaching packages, process payments, sign contracts, and keep track of every client.
Features
- Set different availabilities for different offerings
- Create A/B week schedules
- Create and sell single or multiple-session packages
- Offer free sessions and coupon codes
- Integrate onboarding processes with e-signatures provided by HelloSign
- Visual dashboard where you can get a bird’s eye view of your appointments, client notes, and signed contracts
Pricing:
Unfortunately, Paperbell’s pricing structure does not offer multiple plans for you to choose from. However, it simplifies things by providing one monthly plan with all its features.
Its one plan starts at $47.50 per month when billed monthly. Opt for annual billing, and you’ll receive two months free.
Profi is another online coaching platform that gives coaches everything they’ll need and then some. This platform offers the expected video calling, messaging, calendar sync, and form creation features. But it also allows coaches to cater to individual clients or groups, deliver a branded client experience, and create programs and curricula.
Features
- Allows coaches to create schedules, bookings, and forms
- Offers native video calls and client messaging
- Community features coming to the platform soon
Pricing
Profi’s pricing plans are slightly more expensive than other online coaching platforms in this list. But while this platform is more costly, it also boasts a more hands-on approach as it provides personalized onboarding assistance at the start of your plan. It also offers more flexibility and features at the enterprise level. Here’s a breakdown of Profi’s plans:
- The Profi Solo plan starts at $119 per month when billed monthly. This plan includes up to 100 clients, custom branding, and a training session to help you get started.
- The Team plan starts at $119 per month per team member. Businesses with this plan can manage unlimited clients, co-manage clients, and enjoy centralized scheduling and billing.
- Corporate and network plans are available for enterprise-level clients looking for software for online coaching. These plans will grant you access to enhanced features like an admin panel, advanced security compliance features, and an API.
Bonsai is primarily known for its client CRM and finance tracking abilities. The platform boasts comprehensive contract templates, intuitive and capable invoice tracking features, and native scheduling and forms tools.
So, while it lacks features dedicated coaching platforms may have, like video calls, community, or client messaging, it makes up for it by helping coaches manage all other aspects of their business with minimal effort. Used with free tools like Calendly, Zoom, and Facebook groups, Bonsai is as close as you can get to a free online coaching platform.
Features
- Makes client management easy with contract templates, native forms and scheduling, and a client CRM
- Helps coaches manage projects with team collaboration, time tracking, and invoicing features
- Allows coaches to track their finances on the same platform, tracking payments and expenses, and helping with taxes
Pricing
Bonsai is a very affordable platform, with monthly plans ranging from $25 to $79.
- The Start plan begins at $25 per month and includes all templates, unlimited clients and projects, invoicing, time tracking, scheduling, a client CRM, forms, and expense tracking.
- The Professional plan costs $39 per month and includes workflow automation, a branded client portal, unlimited event scheduling, Quickbooks, Calendly, and Zapier integrations.
- The Business plan starts at $79 per month and includes everything from the previous plans. It also provides subcontractor management, 1099 contract templates, subcontractor onboarding resources, and more.
In addition to the platform’s three plans, Bonsai also offers add-ons, creating an a la carte customer experience. These add-ons allow account holders to add collaborators, partners, or tax assistants. Each add-on is $10 per month.
Kajabi is a robust all-in-one platform for online coaching programs creators of all kinds, including coaches, course creators, and community leaders. This platform allows coaches to create and sell online courses, coaching programs, membership programs, communities, and podcasts.
You can create websites, landing pages, automated marketing funnels, email campaigns, and even a mobile app when marketing your digital content. Track the performance of your creations using Kajabi’s native contact and analytics tools. While Kajabi is more expensive than other platforms in this list, it is an extremely capable platform and an excellent choice for established online coaches.
Features
- Kajabi’s AI Hub and customizable templates help creators launch products faster
- Create and manage online courses with the platform’s drag-and-drop editor
- Automate your sales funnels with advanced marketing automation features
Pricing
Kajabi hosts some of this list’s most expensive plans, beginning at $149 monthly. It’s worth noting that all plans boast 0% transaction fees.
- The Basic plan starts at $149 per month and allows coaches to create three digital products, three funnels, unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, and manage 10,000 contacts and 1,000 active customers.
- The Growth plan begins at $199 per month. This plan increases the amount of products and funnels coaches can create to 15. It also raises the contact limit to 25,000 and active customers to 10,000. Customers at this level will also be able to remove Kajabi branding.
- The Pro plan starts at $399 per month. At this level, coaches can create 100 products, 100 funnels, have 100,000 contacts, and 20,000 active customers. They can also run 3 websites and have 25 admin users.
Related:
- Thinkific vs Kajabi – A detailed comparison
- Kajabi vs LearnWorlds
- Kajabi vs Teachable
- Kajabi Alternatives (free and paid)
Like Bonsai, HoneyBook is an all-in-one platform for small to medium businesses. It helps you manage your clients, track their progress with invoices or contracts, organize records, manage invoices, and communicate with clients.
Because this platform doesn’t offer native video calls, online courses, or online coaching programs, its integrations are critical. HoneyBook lets you integrate with Zoom, QuickBooks, Zapier, Gmail, and Google Calendar. This means you can effectively manage your business from one central hub and at a low cost.
Features
- Create professional-grade and, legally vetted contracts for clients
- Integrate with popular tools like Gmail, Quickbooks, and Zapier
- New AI technology lets you respond to clients faster and generate images
Pricing
HoneyBook’s pricing plans are highly affordable, ranging from $19 to $79 per month. Opt for annual billing, and you’ll receive a 50% discount, making the cost even sweeter. Here’s a breakdown of HoneyBook’s plans.
- The Starter plan begins at $19 per month and includes unlimited clients and projects, invoicing and payment tools, proposals and contracts, professional templates, basic reports, and more.
- The Essentials plan starts at $39 per month and includes a native scheduler, automations, two team members, expense tracking, and more.
- The Premium plan begins at $79 per month and includes unlimited team members, priority support, multiple companies, an onboarding specialist, and more.
Additional Tools
To run an effective coaching business, you need a system that makes managing all the information you come across easy. This includes meeting notes, tasks and projects measuring client 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’s an all-in-one software for online coaching and It can be used to host documents, project workflows (e.g., kanban boards), client details, and much more.
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 business with prospective clients
- Keep all information related to your business in one place
Pricing
- Notion offers a free online coaching platform 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.
We all know how important visual content is in nearly every aspect of an online business, from website branding all the way to social media.
Unless you’re a graphic design coach, chances are that 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 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
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, promote your online coaching programs, 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 reply from your desktop quickly.
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
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. For example, you can 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
These days, arranging meetings is like a never-ending game of ping-pong — you just keep emailing back-and-forth forever it seems. Multiply that by the number of meetings you need to schedule on an ongoing basis, and this could 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.
In your search for the best platform for online coaching, you’re likely looking for a platform with native or integrated calling. While some platforms have this feature built in, others offer Zoom integration.
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 and 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 $15.99/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.
- A Business Plus plan is $25/month per license, with the same perks of the Business plan but with workspace reservation, translated captions, and unlimited regional phone calls
- An Enterprise plan allows up to 1,000 participants and up to 30 hours per meeting. This plan has all the perks plus more, and unlimited cloud storage. Pricing is tailored to business needs.
What’s next?
Now that you have a handy toolkit of online coaching platforms and tools, you’re ready to scale your digital coaching program.
Visit thinkific.com to get started for free. We make it easy to scale your online coaching business by offering self-guided coaching courses and membership sites. Our easy-to-use course design platform helps coaches, educators, and digital content creators build custom, engaging eLearning experiences and grow sustainable online businesses.
This blog was originally posted in April 2022, it has since been updated in February 2024.
