There are so many amazing tools that can save you valuable time, money and hassle when managing your coaching business. However, it is key to know which tools to use at which stage of your business so you don't end up with lots of expensive subscriptions that you don't need.
That's why we have collected a list of tools that are great for new coaches and won't break the bank. They help you automate your business while still keeping the cost low.
Many of the links below are affiliate links, which means we may get a commission if you purchase. However, we only recommend tools that we use ourselves and absolutely love. Plus, the price never increases if you purchase through our links. In fact, we even have negiotiated special deals for you on some tools!
1. Best Website Builder
What we love about Brizy: Brizy is the easiest drag-and-drop website builder we have ever worked with. No need to hire a developer to launch your website, just use their amazing templates and customize with a few clicks afterwards. At the Confident Coach Club, we previously worked with Wix, Squarespace, and Wordpress but when we found Brizy, we were extremely impressed and started building all our new websites with it. Wix is really slow when working in the dashboard which means it takes forever to build your website. Wordpress is way too complex for beginners knowing nothing about it and not worth wasting time trying to figure it out when all you need is a great looking website with a few pages (plus if you really want to work with Wordpress, just get the Brizy plugin and you have the best of both!). And Squarespace is great BUT still relatively expensive compared to Brizy (Brizy is $49 per year!!!!).
Pricing: $49 per year for one website
2. Best All-in-One Client Management Tool
What we love about Paperbell: There is SO much we absolutely love about Paperbell. The obvious: It allows you to manage your entire coaching business with ONE tool both on your laptop and from your phone all in one place - scheduling, payments and billing, contracts and e-signatures, intake forms, on-boarding and session reminder emails, integrated video calls for sessions, client management dashboard, client portal for worksheets etc. (plus sales pages for your coaching programs and the ability to sell digital products like ebooks). This saves you a ton of $ and time not needing to pay for multiple subscriptions and constantly switching between tools (and setting up integrations between tools!!). Secondly, you can get started absolutely for free with your first client and only need to start paying once your coaching business takes off. Last but not least, we adore the founder Laura Roeder - she is the founder of the social media management tool MeetEdgar, co-creator of the Marie Forleo B-School and a business coach herself.
Pricing: Free forever with one client, from $40 per month for unlimited clients
3. Best Scheduling Tool
TidyCal is one of our secret discoveries. Most coaches work with expensive tools like Calendly or Acuity to manage their calendar and slots for sales calls and coaching sessions BUT we found a much better alternative that most coaches don’t know about: TidyCal. It was created by the team at AppSumo who are the masters of lifetime deals. They have copied all the best features of Calendly and Acuity and packaged them in one easy-to-use tool which you can get at an unbeatable price of $29 FOR LIFE (!!!). At the Confident Coach Club, we use TidyCal both internally to book meetings with each other, as well as to coordinate our paid coaching sessions (you can take payments with Stripe and Paypal).
Pricing: $29 Lifetime Deal (just one payment to get access to all features for life)
4. Best E-Singnature Tool
What we love about Signaturely: Say goodbye to sending pdf contracts, printing them out, signing them and then scanning them again to send to your clients - manage all your coaching contracts online with legally binding e-signatures through Signaturely. We love it because it saves sooo much time and sooo much paper!! And the best part: when you are just starting out, you can stay on the free plan and sign up to 3 documents for free per month.
Pricing: Free for 3 documents per month, $16/month for unlimited signatures
5. Best International Bank Account
What it is: International bank accounts in multiple currencies that allow you to cheaply transfer and receive money abroad and hold and convert different currencies.
What we love about Wise: The dream of every coach is to work with clients from all over the world (and maybe even FROM all over the world). And while that all sounds great, the reality of handling payments with multiple currencies can often be quite complicated - AND loose you a lot of money when you are not smart about it. That is why we recommend every coach to immediately set up a Wise account in their home currency as well as the currencies they expect to charge their clients in (USD, EUR, GBP). It’s the only place we know where you can easily set up a USD bank account even though you are not in the US. And through the account, you can receive payments in USD, plus pay for expenses like software subscriptions in USD as well. This saves you a TON of currency conversion fees compared to operating just with your home currency account.
Pricing: Free, only a transfer fee when making cross-currency transfers
6. Best Video Call Software
Zoom is a video conference software that allows you to record your calls, share your screen and all the other good stuff. You can even host webinars or video calls with multiple people. It's audio and video quality is better than Skype and Google Hangout - even when your internet connection is weak. Also, your clients can dial in from their phone as well.
Pricing: Free for 1-on-1 Calls
7. Best E-Mail Marketing Tool
MailerLite is the easiest way to grow your email list and stay in touch with your subscribers through newsletters and automated email series. We previously used MailChimp at the Confident Coach Club but were not happy because it got very expensive, very fast. At MailerLite, the free plan (up to 1,000) subscribers gives you access to all the features you need to get started (landing and sign-up pages, automations, scheduled sending etc.) whereas most other tools charge for these premium features. Plus, we simply love the interface - it’s beautiful and easy to use, unlike most other tools.
Pricing: Free for the first 1,000 subscribers
8. Best E-Mail, Calendar & Cloud Storage
GSuite is the perfect low-cost solution to organize your business: Get an email account, calendar, store your documents, sheets and presentations online on GDrive and create client intake forms with Google Forms. I love working with GMail and GCal because they integrate with every single other tool - scheduling tools like TidyCal and Calendly.
9. Best Design Tool
Canva is simply genius. It's a drag-and-drop design tool that allows you to create all your marketing materials for free without any design skills. Whether it's logos, branding guide, social media posts, newsletters, flyers, ebooks - anything! Just select a template and be done with it in no time.
10. Best To-Do List Tool
Amazing Marvin is our secret weapon to get more done in your coaching business. It allows you to manage all your tasks in one place, create recurring tasks and checklists and stay on top of your daily tasks. It's highly customizable so you can adapt it to your needs and working style.
Read more about how we use it here.
Use code TXLIZ to get another month for free after your 30-day trial.
Bonus: Best Online Course Platform
Podia
Podia contains all the features you need to create and sell online courses, membership sites and digital downloads like ebooks. We are hosting our "How to Start a Coaching Business" course on Podia because the tool makes it super easy to turn your knowledge into a digital product and offers a great experience for our students. The best thing about Podia is that it is a course hosting platform, email marketing tool, online shop and sales page tool all in one which saves you a lot of money, time and hassle. Furthermore, their pricing is great for new coaches - you can get started from just $39 per month whereas competitors like Kajabi, Teachable and Thinkific are way too expensive if you are just starting out and don't have a bestseller course yet.
Further Recommended Tools
Database Tool
Airtable is one of our favourite tools at the Confident Coach Club. It is best described as a fancy, more powerful version of Google Sheets. Hence, it's great to manage all sorts of databases: client lists, editorial calendar for podcast or blog, email list etc. With an insane database of templates, it's super easy to get started too.
Freshbooks
FreshBooks is the all-in-one accounting software that makes running your coaching business easy, fast and secure. It's super simple and intuitive to use so you'll spend less time on paperwork and more time coaching clients. We love their automation features for tasks like invoicing, organizing expenses and client follow-up.
Password Manager
Keeping your client's data and session notes is highly important as a coach. Thus, you need to make sure all your documents are stored safely. LastPass helps you do that by storing all your passwords in one vault.
Form & Quiz Maker
We love Typeform because it allows you to create beautiful client application and feedback forms as well as quizzes.