What to consider when choosing an online coaching platform

Whether you run an online coaching business or you’re comparing coaching vs online courses, you need to know how to evaluate online coaching platforms, so you can select one that will help you manage and grow your business.

Fortunately, Kajabi is here to help you find the right online coaching platform for your business. 

Keep reading to learn what to consider when choosing an online coaching program and why an all-in-one option is your best choice.

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What’s wrong with most coaching systems?

Until now, there hasn’t been an “all in one” solution for all types of coaches. 

Traditionally, you had to cobble together some semblance of a workflow with web hosting, a website builder, an email service provider, an online scheduler, and a host of other tools and services.

Then you had to hope that all of these things worked seamlessly together, set up workarounds for those that didn’t, and cross your fingers that you didn’t miss anything — which was almost inevitable. 

In an industry like coaching, where competition is fierce, you don’t want to have to worry about whether your systems will work. And you don’t want them to “kinda” work. You want them to provide such a good experience that your clients turn into raving fans.

What are the features that will help you handle your back-end business and your front-end client experience, all at the same time? Let’s take a look.

What to look for in an online coaching platform

Regardless of the type of coaching you do — business coaching, life coaching, executive coaching, or any other type of coaching — you need some basic tools for running your business, managing your sessions, tracking your clients’ progress, and improving your coaching skills. 

Start by thinking about the kind of client experience you want to create.

For example, do you want your clients to have a centralized login from which they can access their meetings with you? Do you also want them to be able to access your online store? Other products? Courses? 

What about a membership site? Do you want to provide a group coaching experience where members can work together and support one another?

Then think about the tools you need to manage your clients.

Do you want to be able to see individual client profiles, share resources with them, and track their progress as they work their way through your program to untangle their challenges? 

Most business coaching tools specialize in one specific area, which means you have to choose — do you want better back-end management, a better client experience, or a good set of marketing tools.

But a good coaching platform won’t make you choose. It will be designed specifically for knowledge entrepreneurs to manage and grow their business while providing a user-friendly interface that just works.

Look for an online coaching platform that gives you three features that are vital for growing a profitable coaching business:

• Smart administrative tools
• Ease of use for clients
• Simple content delivery

Let’s look more closely at each of these important features.

Smart administrative tools

As a coach, you need a variety of business tools that make it easier to promote your business and interact with clients. This includes the ability to market and sell your coaching packages, collect payments, schedule sessions, and track your clients’ progress. 

Since you need everything to work together, so you don’t have to invest hours of time (and money) making your workflow, well, work.  

The best coaching platform lets you manage everything from one dashboard. Ideally, you can create your coaching programs, build your landing pages and funnels, and manage your clients in one place. 

Automate and integrate

Your business needs a website that gives you a strong online presence. There, you can establish your authority and sell your coaching packages.

When a visitor purchases one of your coaching packages, you need to be able to automatically add them to your coaching program, subscribe them to your email list, and send them a confirmation email with login credentials.

You also need your new clients to be able to sign up for coaching sessions without endless emails comparing schedules. That makes life easier for you and your clients while keeping you both on track.

Create the coaching packages your clients need

As a coach, you’re going to have clients who are in different stages of their journey. You need to be able to offer different types of coaching — one-off sessions, coaching programs, or group sessions — to meet their needs. 

You should also be able to create complementary products that add more value and help them achieve their goals.

Simplify and streamline your coaching sessions

When you design your coaching program, you need to be able to create an agenda for each session. That way, you and your clients know exactly what you’re going to work on, when, and how. 

You need to be able to provide downloads and resources for your clients at the point in time that they’re ready for them. To do that, you should be able to add those resources to the specific sessions that they apply to.

And finally, you need to provide a place for your clients to take notes and give feedback. For this, it’s best to have a digital “notepad” built into your coaching platform, so you don’t have to keep track of random documents for each of your student’s sessions.

Manage your students’ progress

As you grow your business, you’re going to work with hundreds of clients. A good online coaching platform will make it easy to track their progress and manage their experience.

Look for a platform that tells you when they joined, what coaching programs they’ve purchased, and products they have access to. You should also be able to take notes on details that you’ve gleaned from your work with them.

Marketing and sales

You can create the most valuable coaching program in the world, but no one will know it exists if you don’t market and sell it. So make sure your coaching system has built-in marketing tools, such as landing pages, web pages, and a funnel builder. Bonus points if it also has email marketing software.

Ease of use for clients

To keep your clients long-term, you need to create a user-friendly coaching program that doesn’t make your clients jump through countless hoops to work with you. The best coaching program will give your clients one login and one place where they can manage their learning. It will give them a way to track their own progress, log their session notes, and keep track of their downloads.

Simple content delivery

In addition to having a single login to access your coaching program, clients also benefit from simple content delivery. 

Immediate access to your coaching program

When a client buys your coaching program, they need to be given immediate access to your coaching. Everything should happen automatically, and there should be no delay that makes your client wonder what they need to do next. 

Choose a platform that automatically adds your clients to your coaching program and triggers a confirmation email with unique login credentials.

Product hosting

Look for a coaching system that hosts your coaching resources, and makes it easy for your clients to download them. Some platforms require you to host your resources off-site. Then, it’s up to you to figure out how to get those resources into your clients’ hands.

Why choose an all-in-one business tool for coaching? 

As a coach, you probably spend as much (or more) time on running and promoting your business as you do working with clients. Having an all-in-one business tool for coaching can save you time and headaches.

One tab for your entire business

An all-in-one coaching platform means you can run your business from just one tab. You can build your offers, create marketing assets, build sales funnels, and publish content to build your business.

From that same dashboard, you can manage your clients, contacts, and manage your coaching practice. You can also track your results, your revenue, and other metrics.

With a true all-in-one, you don’t have to constantly click from one app to another. And you don’t have to waste time trying to make everything work together — because it was built to work together.

Less spending, higher profits

Building your own system, you’ll have to pay separately for web hosting, online calendar and scheduling functionality, file sharing, a website builder, analytics, an online shop and e-commerce shopping cart, and any other tools you may need. 

With an all-in-one tool, all of these features (and more) are already integrated, allowing your online coaching business to scale easily and affordably. You pay for one tool, and everything you need is included.

What makes Kajabi the best online coaching platform? 

We’ve spent hours reviewing other coaching systems, and none of them are a true all-in-one platform. They offer some of the features you need to run a successful coaching practice, but they don’t give you everything you need to grow your business. 

Let’s take a look at some of the features that make Kajabi your best business coaching tool.

More than a CRM

Many of the tools that call themselves an all-in-one coaching software are, in reality, a glorified CRM (customer relationship management) tool. They do an acceptable job of helping you book appointments, but they fall short when it comes to marketing your business. 

They don’t help you build your website, create an online newsletter or podcast, or scale your business by creating additional streams of income. 

Kajabi integrates your website, online store, and coaching on one seamless, distraction-free platform. Each of Kajabi’s tools has been built from the ground up to integrate flawlessly with the others, making it easy for you to build your business and your profits.  

No hidden fees

Many online coaching platforms take a cut of every sale you make on their platform, essentially penalizing you for being successful. Others require you to buy their premium package to get essential business-building tools.  

At Kajabi, your profits are yours. We never take a cut of your sales or penalize you for growing your business. And you get access to every business tool you need in every package. Nothing is held hostage.

That gives you the freedom to build your business your way. If you want a website, an email list, a podcast, and a coaching platform, you’ve got the capability for all of them. If you just want a coaching platform and a newsletter, you’ve got that too. 

Provide a stellar client experience

Kajabi gives your clients a single login, where they can access your training, purchase sessions, download resources, and take notes during their sessions with you.

You’ll never have to struggle to send PDFs, videos, audios or slideshows to your students. Kajabi hosts your resources, so you can easily add a download link to the appropriate session’s agenda. That makes it easy to deliver the right information to the right client with the right resources at the right time. 

When you create your coaching program, you’ll plan each session, including the downloads you want to give your clients in that session.

When your clients come to that session, they can easily download your resources and check off each agenda item as it’s completed. They also have a place to record notes and do any homework you’ve assigned.

Manage your clients 

Kajabi helps you stay on top of your clients’ progress and needs. Click on their name, and you can review their details, including the length of time they’ve worked with you, the revenue you’ve collected from them, their purchases, and your notes.

Templates and tools to build a valuable brand

As a business owner, you aren’t just offering coaching sessions. You’re building a brand. 

For that, you need to be able to create a unified look and feel that your clients easily recognize. Kajabi gives you templates and tools to create an iconic brand.

All you have to do is choose your color palette, a font collection, and a unique look and feel. With Kajabi, you’ve got the resources to express yourself your way.

Everything you need to grow and scale successfully 

With Kajabi, you can create as many coaching programs as you need, and build the pipelines to sell them on your website.

You can also create related products that complement your coaching practice, such as journals, a motivational calendar or other products, so you can build multiple streams of income and boost your profits.

The best coaching system for your business

Kajabi’s online coaching platform gives you the same flexibility and ease of use you’ve come to know and love from our course building and membership tools — designed specifically for coaches. 

If you’re looking for the best business coaching tool, get the industry’s leading all-in-one system for knowledge entrepreneurs. There’s no easier way to launch and grow a business that truly makes a difference. 

Check out our ebook resources or webinars, then start your free trial today! 

Further reading

How to become an online business coach
When to choose coaching vs online courses
How to improve your coaching skills