4 best client engagement apps for coaching

Coaches have always competed based on their unique approaches and past client success. Given the changing demands of consumers today, there is yet another way to stand out — by using modern coaching applications to enhance the entire client experience. 

Whether you’re a life coach, business coach, sports coach or wellness coach, you might be noticing that to stay relevant, you have no choice but to consider some of the ways that you can modernize the delivery of your coaching services. 

In this post, we’ll share a list of some great coaching apps that can help enhance client engagement in your coaching practice. 

Want to learn about coaching software instead? Read this blog on how to choose the right coaching software.

Key takeaways

• Creating or investing in a coaching app can be a fantastic way to speed up client communication, track client progress, and deliver better online coaching services.
  
• Some coaching applications exist as part of the suite of all-in-one coaching platforms that offer you all the features you need to run a coaching business. Other apps can be created through dedicated app builder tools.
  
• The top coaching apps offer completely different features that can include secure client messaging, group chats, and unique ways to track client progress.
  
• To figure out which solution is best for you, you’ll need to evaluate which features are the most important to you and what your goals are for your coaching business. 

4 of the best coaching apps for maximizing client engagement 

From career coaching apps to life coaching apps, here are 4 of our top picks and why we like them:

1. Quenza coaching app (all-in-one software feature) 

Quenza is an example of an all-in-one tool that helps you manage several different processes for your coaching business like client management, payments, invoicing, and setting up coaching packages. 

As far as the app goes, here’s why we like it:

Activity-based tasks

The coaching app comes with a list of existing activities you can send your clients to complete like mindfulness training, self-love exercises, or simple meditations. You can also create custom activities. 

Clients using the client app will get notified when you send them activities to complete in between your coaching sessions. The Quenza app will also send automated reminders to complete the activities as the deadline approaches.

On your end, you’ll get notified via the app when the activities are completed, and you’ll be able to view how your client scores as well as get an overview of how many activities they’ve completed and how many are outstanding for your coaching program. 

Group coaching features  

Quenza is a great pick if you offer online group coaching services thanks to its group and group chat features that allow you to create groups of up to 50 clients. 

You can easily send the same activities to numerous people in your coaching program while simultaneously facilitating interaction between clients without having to send them to an external Facebook or WhatsApp group. 

2. Practice coaching app (all-in-one software feature) 

Practice is another all-in-one tool coaches use to centralize client management and business operations in one dashboard. One of Practice’s best features is a client portal that’s available for your client to access as an app on both Android, iOS, or web. 

A couple of features the portal provides you with include: 

Secure chat messaging

Rather than having to search for SMS messages, WhatsApp messages, or emails, you can centralize all client communication within the practice app. On top of having it all in one place, you can also rest assured that confidential information is protected with added layers of security and encryption. 

What we like about Practice’s chat is that it mimics the features of other popular messaging platforms you might be used to, so you can react to messages, send emojis, and even send voice messages. 

Shared action items  

When using the app, both you and your clients can view shared items like a to-do list, session notes, client notes, and other action items that each of you needs to complete in between your coaching sessions for the best results. This is a great way to help keep your clients (as well as yourself) accountable! 

3. Nudgecoach (app builder)  

Nudgecoach is a popular option for coaches because of how user-friendly it is for coaches to set up their apps. Here are a few reasons why it made our list: 

Interactive cards

Nudgecoach helps you create mini learning modules which it calls cards to engage your clients with through the app. These cards look like more interactive emails that you can customize to include images, videos, forms, and tasks for your clients to complete. 

Setting up the cards is easy since you can choose from its extensive library of templates or customize cards from scratch. 

Customized client tracking metrics

Just like Nudgecoach lets you customize your cards, you can also customize client tracking metrics. Let’s say you want your client to input their stress levels out of 5 every day, or if you’re a health or fitness coach, maybe you want them to log their food diary or servings. Nudgecoach makes all of this extremely easy to set up, and simple for clients to respond to. 

If you prefer to go with a white-label approach to building your coaching app, then Nudgecoach also offers this option. When you build a white-label app with the help of Nudgecoach, you’ll end up with an app that you can customize completely and that looks like your very own app without any Nudgecoach branding on it. 

4. Passion.io app (app builder) 

Passion.io is a popular app builder for creators. It offers one too many impressive features to mention in one post, but here are a few that make it a top choice for life coaches, health and wellness coaches, training coaches, and other coaching professionals:

App templates

Building an app through Passion.io means you don’t have to worry about any coding or figuring out wireframes. All you have to do is choose from the most relevant templates that suit your coaching business and start dragging and dropping the content you want to display on your pages.  

Interactive content

Passion.io offers the widest range of interactive content for you to choose from and offer to your clients to maximize engagement and accountability. Just a few things you can include within your app are:

• Daily journals
• Fitness tracker (for fitness coaches)
• Quizzes
• Worksheets 
• Calculators
• Timed exercises (for fitness coaches)
• Group-based challenges 

Just like Nudgecoach, Passion.io also offers a white-label option with Passion.io Plus.

How to pick the right app for your coaching business

We’ve covered 4 of the best apps for coaching in this post and there are so many more to explore. So how do you know which app is best for your coaching business? Here’s some advice on how to choose:

1. Understand the difference between an all-in-one platform VS app builder VS white-label 

Quenza and Practice are examples of all-in-one tools that you can use to streamline several processes in your coaching practice. Some of these platforms offer a mobile app as part of their full package. If you feel like you need a tool to help you with your operations and also want an app to engage your clients with, then an all-in-one platform is the right move.

If you use a mix of different tools to run your business and just want to build an app, then an app builder like Passion.io or Nudgecoach might be all you need. These providers are really good at helping you build a customized app. 

If you want to build an app and make it look like your very own app without any provider branding on it, then you might want to consider building a white-label app. With a white-label app, you have complete freedom to customize features and add your branding as much as possible. It’ll cost you more for this option though! 

2. Decide on a budget

This brings us to your budget, which may limit your options. To give you an idea of the apps we’ve shared in this post:

All-in-one platforms like Quenza and Practice can cost between $40/month to $150/month on a subscription model.  App builders like Passion.io and Nudgecoach cost between $60/month to $240/month depending on your plan. And building white-label apps is typically the most expensive given the amount of customization that goes into it. You can expect to be paying $600/month for this. 

3. Confirm what your goals are 

Before investing in any tool, pause to ask yourself what you’re looking to accomplish out of it. Are you looking to boost team morale? Sell online courses? Keep clients accountable? Host group coaching platforms? Or increase client interactions? Once you know what you want, it’ll be easier to pick out the features that you need in your app. 

4. Determine what the most important features are to you

If you know for a fact that you want to offer group coaching or will be coaching teams, then you’ll need to prioritize going with an option that offers you group chats and groups. 

If keeping clients accountable is important to you, then you’ll want to make sure your coaching app has goal-setting features to help you track their performance. If you regularly discuss sensitive or confidential information, then secure messaging and encryption might be at the top of your list. 

Looking for coaching software to help you manage your coaching practice instead? 

In this post, we’ve covered some of the best coaching apps for client engagement, but there's plenty more coaching software around to help you run your coaching business better as a whole. 

To discover more helpful software, read How to choose the right software for coaching.