Best Life Coaching Software & Platform to Start Using Today

With online coaching continuing to grow, technology now plays a crucial role in building relationships with clients (Lungu, Jun, Azarmanesh, Leykin, & Chen, 2020; Lungu, Boone, Chen, Chen, & Walser, 2021).

Digital tools offer alternatives to in-person sessions and new opportunities to scale coaching, while handling communication and knowledge sharing with existing clients more effectively (Braddick, 2021).

Emerging platforms are transforming how therapists and coaches engage with their clients while improving many organizational processes that previously weighed them down.

This article looks at coaching software and platforms that help the busy life coach reach and manage more clients – more effectively.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free. These science-based exercises will explore fundamental aspects of positive psychology including strengths, values, and self-compassion, and will give you the tools to enhance the wellbeing of your clients, students, or employees.

Why Use a Life Coaching Platform? 10+ Benefits

Whether in the form of digital aids or complete coaching solutions, technologies are now available that resolve specific challenges in the coaching workflow.

Coaches can use digital life coaching platforms to encourage increased, tailored contact with their clients while they scale their business (Braddick, 2021).

Indeed, users of the online tool Quenza describe how this easy-to-use solution removes many of the pain points and practitioner challenges associated with running modern coaching or therapy practices, instead enabling them to:

• Know how people are doing between sessions
• Measure the impact of coaching
• Streamline the work on other aspects of the business that they don’t get paid for, allowing more time for client focus
• Keep in regular contact with clients

Much of the change within clients takes place outside of sessions, when clients return home to face their problems and the coach or therapist is not present. Tools such as Quenza help the therapist engage with clients between sessions.

So, what does a life coaching platform give us?

Perhaps most importantly, the right software can help the coach focus attention where it is most needed: on the client.

Not only that, life coaching platforms (to varying degrees) typically:

• Streamline the management of the coaching process
• Include business administration tools
• Offer the ability to build, market, and share coaching plans and programs
• Provide a library of tailorable coaching tools and worksheets
• Collect and manage potential leads and follow-ups
• Manage and track payments
• Maintain a booking system that handles availability and manages bookings
• Share homework and follow up on work not completed
• Scale the business to offer additional services to more clients
• Offer improved, repeatable communication, scheduling the right messages at the right time
• Connect with video coaching tools
• Facilitate engagement with clients through daily and weekly check-ins

Putting appropriate systems in place can help the therapist make better use of their time and avoid reinventing the wheel. Mental health professionals should be building their businesses and engaging with clients, rather than spending time crafting emails and PDFs.

The overarching aim of life coaching software and platforms is to help produce a successful and profitable coaching business that benefits the client.

9 Things to Look for in a Life Coaching Portal

With over 25 years of coaching experience, Carol Braddick describes the human coach–human client relationship as a working alliance crucial to success.

And with developments in technology and the increasing use of remote video technology, it is shifting towards a blended approach – a mix between human and digital coaching (Lungu et al., 2020; Braddick, 2021).

The framing of this changing alliance must consider how technology affects the therapeutic relationship. Coaches considering implementing online life coaching tools will benefit from asking themselves the following (modified from Braddick, 2021):

• In what context will it be used?

For example, who are the clients (e.g., students, private, business)? What are their expectations? And how will they be met?

As users of digital tools from computers to smartphones, we all spend time personalizing and interacting with them. However, even as extensions of ourselves, we must be confident in their ability to maintain privacy and recognize their value (Braddick, 2021).

It must be clear to clients that their needs and lifestyle will be considered and met by the introduction of a life coaching portal. The benefits should be evident in their personal contexts.

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of digital technology and tools relative to human coaches?

We must recognize that introducing a digital portal does not replace the human coach, but rather improves the process and communication of those engaged in the life coaching process.

A life coaching portal is most effective when it benefits the coach’s and client’s ability to communicate, share information, and track progress.

• What expectations do clients and coaches have regarding digital coaching experiences and communications?

A positive expectation of any digital assistant or tool might be to “help things get done in the external world” (Braddick, 2021). After all, life coaching is goal directed. When the client recognizes the life coaching platform as facilitating progress rather than impeding access to the human coach, we have a positive engagement.

• What is the potential for maintaining or increasing empathy?

Introducing a digital platform should not and must not replace human interaction.

Instead, with an improved life coaching process and workflow, the coach and client can become more present and focus on building engagement and a relationship that delivers and meets objectives.

Knowing the answers to such questions will inform the selection, tailoring, and implementation of a life coaching portal.

But what precisely should the mental health professional look for in a life coaching platform?

Feature and functionality requirements will vary based on the coach themselves, their clients, and how they see their business growing. Yet digital tools might be expected to handle the following:

• Administration
  Scheduling meetings, defining and agreeing on contracts, and taking payments are administrative burdens that implementing the right toolset can reduce.
• Communication and messaging
  Sending SMS messages and integrating with or making telephonic and video coaching tools available are essential for online and blended therapy.
• Data collection
  While not necessary for all practices, some coaches may wish to track lifestyle and biometric data through smartphones and wearables. Connectivity with the online portal may be helpful or even a requirement.
• Measurement, data monitoring, and analysis
  Coaches will typically wish to track the progress of their clients. This may include oversight of homework completed and regular check-ins on how the client is progressing.
• Content delivery and knowledge sharing
  Homework, resource sharing, and follow-ups from coaching sessions can be easily managed and tailored through a well-thought-out platform.

Return to the Why Use a Life Coaching Platform? section to create a checklist of the specific features and functionality required by your business.

Use it to assess which platform is most effective for your needs.

What Is the Best Online Life Coaching Software?

Several digital life coaching apps and platforms are available that offer a range of features to manage existing clients and grow your business.

While it is essential to consider how you want to work with your existing clients, grow your business, and balance your life, we have identified Quenza as the best all-around online life coaching software. We also offer two alternatives for your consideration.

Quenza

Our clear favorite online life coaching software is Quenza.

“Quenza is for practitioners who want to be of more value to their clients by offering digital and automated support,” say its creators.

And, according to its users, it’s a total game-changer, offering coaches, therapists, mental health practitioners, workshop facilitators, counselors, social workers, and healthcare professionals the ability to automate and digitize many aspects of their coaching practice.

One of Quenza’s many strengths is its ability to combine the benefits of face-to-face coaching with digital technology to create a blended care approach.

And it does this by enabling the coach to create new or leverage existing activities that they can build into unique or re-usable pathways.

According to Hugo Alberts PhD, psychologist and cofounder of Quenza, the platform is ready out-of-the-box to begin digitizing, automating, scaling your practice, and achieving the goal of making positive changes in your clients’ lives.

Below we will explain how to use Quenza and list all of its benefits.

Next, we explore two of the best alternative platforms, with a summary of some of their key features.

My Coach Office (MCO)

The MCO team describes their platform as a business management system to help coaches grow their businesses.

Not only is it simple to get started (a 10-minute setup according to their website), but it provides what is needed to scale your client base and grow your life coaching offering.

Key features include:

An admin center with the following business tools:

• Calendar with meetings
• Invoicing
• Emails
• Reporting

Coach and client access to an interactive platform for coaches to nurture relationships with their clients, including tools to:

• Manage client files, including session notes and homework
• Create coaching groups
• Manage homework assignment and tracking

Business growth tools with marketing and business resources to help scale services, including training and support to help:

• Start up the business
• Produce a successful marketing strategy
• Create and diversify products
• Plan and advertise social media content

Perhaps most notably, it is geared for fast learning and setup. It also offers branding for your business, pre-filled coaching frameworks, and integration with other websites.

Nudge Coach

This configurable online app makes it easy to focus on coaching and your clients by building your life coaching program into an app with no coding.

Nudge enables coaches to create an in-app experience that meets your clients’ and your team’s needs, and encourages social engagement through in-app messaging while building personalized branding.

Key features include:

• Tracking – Helps keep clients accountable.
• Sequences – Offers a method for scheduling entire programs in advance and then delivering them automatically.
• Goals – Enables you to set daily and weekly targets for your clients.
• Messages – Used to send private, group, or community messages for encouragement or news updates.
• Groups – Encourages community interactions and segmentation of your growing client list.
• Cards – An interactive way to communicate with clients and stay visible in the uncluttered app.

All the features are managed in one central location within Nudge Coach.

How to Use Quenza’s Platform for Life Coaching

Since Quenza is the best online life coaching software that we’ve come across, we look at several of its features to show you the incredible power and potential of the tool.

Personal dashboard

The personal dashboard provides a valuable overview of what has happened between you and your clients. For example, it includes notification of clients’ activities, responses to life coaching questions, and comments posted within the community chat.

You also see the latest tools and worksheets (known as expansions) that can be added to your library.

Pending activities lists those actions or tasks that are yet to be completed by your clients and may require a follow-up.

Clients

You can easily invite new clients to use Quenza over email if they have not already installed the mobile app.

There are several crucial benefits to using the app, including a central location that means communications will not become lost in a busy email inbox.

Push notifications can be sent so app users see when a message is received or homework is overdue.

Creating activities

This is where you will spend most of your time, building activities that you can send out to your clients.

Video help is available on the activity builder page to guide you through the process.

The platform allows you to share activities with your clients using the following steps:

• Open the activity builder. Create a new activity by dragging and dropping text, videos, or audio files to share micro-teachings and psychoeducation with your clients. Or create digital assessments, feedback forms, homework exercises, contracts, and terms of service.
• Copy and paste text instructions into the activity to share with the client.
• Over time, you will end up with a comprehensive library of activities to use with your growing client base.

Pathways

Pathways are series of activities you can build and send out to your clients. Video help is also available.

While you can send out activities individually, you can also bundle them up and send them out at pre-arranged intervals as a sequence of actions.

For example, you may begin with a psychoeducation on stress, followed by an assessment. The client receives them either via email or the coaching app on their phone, tablet, or desktop.

Expansion library

The expansion library contains a list of popular science-based activities and pathways that you can add to your library without building them yourself.

Each activity can be added to a new or existing pathway.

Support section

The support section provides valuable answers to questions and articles and the ability to connect with other like-minded professionals using Quenza. You can contact support for help or request an additional feature.

All coach and client data is held securely, and the platform is HIPAA and GDPR compliant.

16 Unique Benefits of Quenza’s Coaching Software

What makes Quenza so unique that we recommend it as the best life coaching platform?

This user-friendly online tool has been designed and implemented to meet the needs of both coach and client by providing a feature-packed, intuitive experience that:

• Offers clients value beyond one-on-one sessions
• Reduces time spent by the coach managing email and record-keeping
• Keeps your clients engaged and on-track with their activities and homework
• Helps you scale your practice by supporting a growing client base, digitally
• Stores all client data safely and securely
• Enables you to run your practice on the go from any device

And it does this by enabling the coach to create new or leverage existing activities that they can build into one-off or reusable pathways.

This unique tool improves the client experience by allowing the coach to:

• Easily build activities (including exercises, psychoeducation, intake forms, reflection prompts, and surveys) through an intuitive drag-and-drop process.
• Choose from a wide range of pre-made, popular science-based exercises, assessments, tools, and activities.
• Create, tailor, and send clients an automated series of care pathways within the tool to avoid them getting lost in email noise.
• Get real-time results to monitor and stay on top of the client’s progress.

The best client experience is essential. They will get not only more focused contact, but also clear, results-driven exercises and homework that they and the coach can track and use to create dedicated follow-ups.

From the client perspective, clear benefits include:

• Custom homework exercises, activities, reflections, meditations, and interventions.
• Focused and tailored psychoeducation, micro-learnings, and course materials as text, video, PDFs, and audio.
• Online completion of questionnaires, surveys, and scales that assess and track their progress.
• Easy onboarding with digital intake forms, contracts, and terms of service.
• Ability to provide actionable feedback on sessions and increase engagement with the coach.
• Inspirational coaching quotes, videos, and messages appropriate to their goals and needs.

A Take-Home Message

For most mental health professionals, time is their greatest challenge. How do you remain focused and give your client the appropriate attention and care they require and deserve while maintaining and growing your business?

The answer is the same as for many other professions: automation. Repeatable processes can be captured and re-used across multiple clients, tailoring as required. Such an approach allows coaches to share important learnings, track progress, and send out individualized, timely interventions.

The time freed up for the coach or therapist is priceless. While allowing focus on marketing and growing a customer base, it can also help reduce the risk of burnout, leaving mental health professionals better equipped to offer their best care to their clients.

While several solutions may be appropriate for your business now, it is essential to look ahead to where it will be next year or in five years. Any solution must consider and promote opportunities to grow users’ reach and potentially expand the coaching team.

Quenza continues to evolve through a team of dedicated technology professionals working closely with mental health experts and practitioners. With new features in the pipeline, it continues to revolutionize the potential to give more clients the extra support they need. Give Quenza and some of the other tools a try, and consider your future plans before selecting the most appropriate solution.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free.