Josh Thursby
Founder & CCO · 8 May 2024 · 5 min read
Reviewed by
Adam Rhodes
Owned a gym for eight years before founding Create
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Online coaching is an increasingly popular way for fitness professionals to either shift entirely away from the gym floor, or to add an extra income stream to their fitness business. Advances in technology are what have really enabled this to happen, so we took a look at some of the best apps for online coaches.
There are literally thousands more apps you could use, these are just a few that we have used. We’d encourage you to trial them before committing as they may not be right for you, take advantage of free trials and offers to work out what suits you.
Apps are great ways to streamline your business and provide a more user-centred approach to your clients. Sometimes it can be beneficial to use numerous apps to perform different roles but be mindful of keeping it simple for your clients and always welcome feedback to make informed decisions. You also want to keep your costs under control!
So what are our 6 best apps for online coaches…
If you’re going to choose just one app this should be it. It may not be the single best for programming, selling, organising or communicating, but it does do a good job of all of them. It is also designed for regular PT’s too, so if you still work on the gym floor and do some online coaching, this is a great way to manage both lines of your business.
Their intuitive workout builder enables you to build individual workouts that you can then add to different programmes, making it easy to tailor programmes to different clients without having to redo all the work each time.
You can easily create nutrition plans with macros and calories automatically calculated for you, and it makes it super easy to track your clients nutrition progress.
You can add custom branding, bill clients directly from the software, integrate with wearable tech, manage your calendar, hold clients accountable, track client progress and loads more.
Of all the apps out there, this is one of the best apps for online coaches!
Cost: £55 per month flat fee for as many clients as you want and all features, or £48 per month if you pay annually.
We have a partnership with MyPTHub offering you a 30 day free trial and 50% off your first 3 months, click here to redeem.
If you want a separate app just for programming, this is our favourite. It does not have all the other features of MyPTHub but if you’re just after the best programming tool, this is the best on the market in our opinion.
The simple user interface means you save loads of time designing programmes and the library of exercises is pre-populated with thousands of exercises each with their own instructional video to support your clients. It is customisable so you can showcase your own brand, and it is versatile for use with individuals or groups making it easy to scale your business. These features make it one of the best apps for online coaches when it comes to programming.
Pricing is in $USD and is tiered based on the number of clients you have. $25.99/month up to 5 clients, $63.99/month up to 20 clients and $128.99/month up to 50 clients. If you want to pay annually you’ll save up to 24%.
A large part of the role of an online coach is helping clients with their nutrition. As discussed above, MyPTHub does a great job of nutrition tracking, but if you want a standalone app just for nutrition tracking, MyFitnessPal is definitely one of the best apps for online coaches to use with their clients.
The free version includes the majority of the features you and your clients will need, however they have recently moved some of the useful free features into their paid subscription. The most notable of which is the barcode scanner which enables you to scan the barcode of any food item and it will automatically enter the nutritional information for that item.
The cost of the premium service is £15.99 per month or £64.99 per year.
This is another great coaching app, predominantly geared towards delivering programmes at scale to large groups. It has great features for keeping clients accountable and tracking their progress, in particular through great connectivity with wearable fitness trackers. The app can be completely white labeled (for a hefty price tag) to your own branding and has great community building features built in too.
If you’re keeping their branding, it is free for the first 5 users, $60/mo up to 50 users and $100/mo up to 100 users.
Managing your own online coaching business can require a fair bit of design skill too. Luckily Canva is one of the best apps for online coaches making it super easy to put together professional looking designs in no time.
The free version has everything you need to get started, however the Pro version does include some handy tools to make life a bit easier. Such as storing your brand colours for easy access, premium content and tools to help make your designs look even better. At £13/mo we think it is a worthwhile upgrade, but you’ll definitely be able to get started for free!
There is a lot to video editing, and we are far from professionals, but this app makes it super easy to quickly put together slick videos ideal for use on social media or compiling photos into more of a reel.
It’ll automatically add subtitles for you, is very easy to use, and has built in AI tools to speed up the editing process.
Prices start at £18/mo if paid monthly or £120 for the year for the basic package and goes up to £55/mo for the business package.
When first starting out in any business it is important to try to keep your costs down, so try to use free versions and free trials to get you started before committing to a bunch of expensive software. That being said, these apps are designed to make your life easier and your customer journey better. We’d recommend My PT Hub as one of the best apps for online coaches, as it does a lot of what other apps charge for separately.
If you’re looking for help with online coaching, whether it be picking up new clients, retention, systems and processes or anything else check out our Online Coaching course at just £699 for 55 modules packed with all the information you need to build a successful business.
Josh Thursby
Founder & CCO
Josh qualified as a personal trainer in 2008 and spent twelve and a half years training clients face to face, delivering 45 to 55 sessions a week at his peak. He co-founded Create and writes about the commercial side of the job.
Reviewed by Adam Rhodes, Owned a gym for eight years before founding Create.
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