The best life coaching software for evidence-based coaching

Thankfully, there are plenty of life coaching software options available to help you manage your clients, track progress and even deliver evidence-based coaching that gets your coachees better results.

Below, we’ll go over life coaching software tools that every coach should have. And if you yourself are looking for online life coaching, we have a solution for that too!

But first, let’s establish a definition.

What is life coaching software?

Life coaching software is any digital tool that helps you run your business better or enhances your clients’ results in coaching. This can be a video conferencing app like Zoom or a full-fledged diagnostic tool and online coaching platform like Fingerprint for Success. We’ll describe both (and more!) in detail below.

13 must-have life coaching software & tools to enhance your business

Diagnostic tool and online coaching platform

F4S

The life coaching software options featured later in this list do a great job of helping you with the admin tasks of running a business, but I wanted to mention Fingerprint for Success (F4S) first because it’s the only app on this list that uses evidence-based and AI-powered solutions to enhance your clients’ results. And after all, isn’t that what you want to deliver as a life coach?

F4S is an online coaching platform designed and founded by renowned coach Michelle Duval and leverages 20 years of research on the motivations that drive each human being. Whether your coaching practice focuses on wellbeing, relationships, career development, spirituality, financial well-being, or all of the above, F4S is powerful at using data to identify natural tendencies and motivational biases that hold a coachee back in those areas.

When you first start working with a coachee, use the F4S assessment as a diagnostic tool for cognitive biases, barriers, or blind spots that get in the way so that, through your coaching, your coachee can overcome the things that hold them back.

All your coachee has to do is spend 15 to 30 minutes completing the F4S assessment, and then you’ll both be able to instantly access the results (at no cost to either of you!). You can then use that data to create transformational breakthroughs, making the change process easier.

What’s more, F4S has a one-of-a-kind AI coach (Coach Marlee) that excels at developmental and performance coaching, helping your coachee work through cognitive biases while you do what human coaches do best: transformational coaching. It’s the perfect partnership for high-impact coaching practice.

F4S stands alone in its power and impact, as it can identify the blind spots that get in the way of self-esteem or other limitations in your coachee. It also points out their ideal working environment and can help them unearth why they’re feeling burned out.

While there are many life coaching tools that are mobile apps that focus on habit-forming techniques or mindfulness, F4S goes beyond that by making recommendations on specific goals. What makes F4S unique is the 20 years’ worth of cognitive-behavioral positive psychology coaching models trained into humans and now trained into AI-driven Coach Marlee.

As for the Coach Marlee online self-paced programs, they cover topics all across life, not just career, including health, personal development, and relationships. So whatever goal your client has, Coach Marlee can help coach that.

Communication

Zoom

If you’re coaching online, choosing a reliable and affordable video conferencing app is essential for your coaching sessions. Zoom has proven to be a leader in this arena, and it’s the video app many people are familiar with. On top of that, one-to-one calls are free. If you do a lot of group coaching, keep in mind that for video chats with more than two attendees, Zoom limits those to 40 minutes, unless you upgrade to a paid plan.

Top Zoom features for life coaches

Free for one-to-one video coaching sessions
Group coaching sessions are free for up to 40 minutes
Record coaching sessions and send them to your client so they can review the videos and take better notes.

Whereby

If you want a browser-based alternative to Zoom, check out Whereby. It lets you simply share a link that, once clicked, will open up the video meeting space in whatever browser your client is using.

WhatsApp has two major advantages over SMS text messaging or emails:

It’s free to use, regardless of which country your client is located in.
It’s more immediate than email and lets you easily send voice messages.

Top WhatsApp features for life coaches

Send texts, photos, videos and voice messages all in one app.
No charges for international texts and calls
It has a video conferencing feature that can be an alternative to Zoom.

Online course and membership tools

Podia

Many life coaches uplevel their business by designing an online course or membership so they can deliver their expertise at scale. If you’d like to do this, consider using Podia, which is an intuitive, all-in-one platform for creating and promoting your services and products online.

Top Podia features for life coaches

Online courses: Build an online course with text, images, videos, audio, PDFs, and quizzes. ‍
Memberships: Create a paid membership community and have the option to bundle your coaching sessions with the membership or even with your online course.‍
Sales pages: Promote your online courses, coaching sessions, or membership with a sales page that you can build inside Podia without any technical skills.

Kajabi

Kajabi is another powerful platform for creating monthly recurring revenue streams for your life coaching business. Like Podia, Kajabi helps you build, launch and manage online courses and membership sites. Kajabi comes with a product builder, which is a blueprint for your online course or membership that you just plug your knowledge into--- no technical expertise needed!

Product generator: Create your membership site or online course by following Kajabi's blueprint.
Analytics and reports: See key metrics such as churn rate, student progress, and revenue to track how well your membership and course are doing.

Custom coaching app creation

Quenza

If you’re looking for an all-in-one coaching platform that maximizes your client outcomes, look no further than Quenza

Quenza is the most engaging way to scale your practice, while still providing automated and personalized care for your clients.

Some of Quenza’s key features include

HIPAA-compliant messaging
Hundreds of pre-made (and customizable) activities, worksheets, and intake forms for your clients
Extensive white-label rights
An easy-to-use client mobile app that can send reminders, activities, and to-do’s for the next coaching session

Are you intrigued? Try it yourself for $1 today.

Nudge Coach

If you want your clients to be able to easily access your coaching program in one place, consider Nudge Coach. It’s a software tool that helps anyone build a coaching app without needing to know how to code.

Top Nudge Coach features for life coaches

Deliver interactive course content: Instead of sending out a course over drip emails, you can create a more interactive experience right within your custom coaching app.
Send and receive messages in a centralized place: Keeping track of coachee messages across multiple apps and platforms is confusing. With Nudge Coach, you can keep client communication all in one place.
Set goals: Creating change within your coachees is all about setting good goals. In Nudge Coach, you can set daily and weekly goals that your coachee can check off upon completion.
Create groups: Segment clients based on your programs and create communities within the app.

Booking

Calendly

Create a calendar with all your bookable appointments and easily share a link with your coachees so they can book a coaching session.

Top Calendly features for life coaches

Shareable booking link: Once you set your availability on your Calendly calendar, you get a shareable link that you can send to anyone who wants to book time with you.‍
Payments: Want to collect payment before someone books a coaching session? Calendly integrates with Stripe and PayPal so you can do just that.‍
Reminders: Calendly saves you time by automatically sending reminders to clients who book a time with you through the software.

Invoicing and payments

PayPal

PayPal makes it easy to collect payments online. Just send an invoice through the platform, and your clients can pay with a debit card, credit card, bank account or their PayPal balance. It also integrates with many apps, including a few on this list, such as Calendly and Podia.

Contracts

PandaDoc

Add this one to your collection of free life coaching software: PandaDoc lets you collect unlimited e-signatures without paying a dime. This is perfect for sending over coaching agreements to your clients and having them sign electronically.

Top PandaDoc features for life coaches

Document uploads: You can upload unlimited documents, such as coaching agreements.‍
Electronic signatures: Send your agreements and collect unlimited signatures electronically.‍
Payments: Accept credit card, PayPal, or ACH payments.

Life coaching client management software

If you’re looking for a more full-featured, all-in-one app for managing your clients, below are three options to consider.

HoneyBook

HoneyBook says it provides "all-in-one client management for life coaches" and has all the features of many of the apps in this list centralized in one platform.

Top HoneyBook features for life coaches

Communication: The secure online portal allows you to keep all your client communication in one place.‍
Onboarding: HoneyBook streamlines the client onboarding process by automating follow-ups, gathering info via coach intake forms and collecting signatures for contracts.‍
Invoices: Send invoices and even set up recurring invoices as needed, along with automatic reminders. ‍
Payments: Replace PayPal entirely with HoneyBook's online payment software, which charges a 3% fee for credit or debit cards and bank transfers.‍
Mobile app: HoneyBook has a mobile app for iOS and Android where you can communicate with clients, create projects, and more from your phone.

Coaching.com

Another robust life coaching client management software is Coaching.com. It has many features that can enhance a coaching practice, including integrated video conferencing, reporting and custom program templates.

Top Coaching.com features for life coaches

Scheduling: Coaching.com syncs with major calendars such as Google, iCal and Outlook. You can set availability and let clients schedule sessions online.
Program templates: Customize pre-made programs to fit your coaching clients’ needs.
Built-in video conferencing: Instead of using Zoom or Google Meet, you can host coaching sessions right within Coaching.com, thanks to its built-in video conferencing.
Mobile app: Use Coaching.com on the go; you can even host video sessions through the mobile app.

Paperbell

Paperbell is an all-in-one platform for you to manage your entire life coaching business-from invoices to scheduling to contracts.

Top Paperbell features for life coaches

Scheduling: Add your availability within Paperbell, sync your Google Calendar and allow clients to book the time that works best.
‍Payments: Paperbell integrates with Stripe and PayPal, and client bookings will only be confirmed once they've paid. ‍
Contracts: Upload your contracts to Paperbell. Then, send your client a link where they can complete the onboarding process (including signing contracts) right within Paperbell.‍
Digital products: Sell digital downloads such as eBooks, digital planners, workbooks, spreadsheets, and more. ‍
Group coaching: Sell group coaching online. Plus, easily add access to a private Facebook group or Voxer through your group coaching program.

Life coach certification options

Though not required, getting a life coach certification can grant you additional training and help you stand out from the competition. Here are a couple of options to consider:

The F4S Coach & People Leader Certification Program

This certification would be particularly helpful for life coaches who focus on career development for their coachees. We regularly host trainings for life coaches wishing to complete our F4S Coach & People Leader Certification Program. It consists of three modules that help you leverage our world-class F4S platform to spark transformational and developmental change in your coachees.

In module one, you'll learn about the F4S assessment and understand the 48 attitudes and motivations that it assesses. You'll also learn how to use this knowledge to unlock potential in your clients.

In module two, you'll learn how to apply what you learned in module one in the area of entrepreneurship and business success.

And lastly, module three takes everything you learned in modules one and two and empowers you to create specialized coaching interventions for founders, co-founders, accelerators and enterprise clients. It'll also show you how to help individuals achieve specific business outcomes.

Coach Training Alliance

If you want to be a Certified Life Coach, Coach Training Alliance also offers a training program approved by the International Coach Federation. This one takes six months and focuses on three skillsets: coaching, marketing, and business. The coursework typically consists of 60 to 90 minutes of tele-sessions per week, along with studying and homework that takes about two to five hours weekly. Class sizes are limited to 12 participants max.

The biggest difference is that this coach certification program doesn't focus only on coaching. It also shows you how to run a business, such as going over information on coaching fees and record-keeping systems. Plus, it touches on marketing, covering topics such as building trust and clear communication.

Are you looking for online life coaching for yourself?

You may have landed on this article not because you want to run a life coaching business but because you’re looking to participate in life coaching online.

And the good news is that we have a solution for you too! And it’s free. You aren’t required to have a human coach to use F4S. In fact, our founder built this platform specifically to make coaching available to the masses, regardless of their ability to pay.

F4S has a powerful suite of online coaching programs led by Coach Marlee, our AI-powered app. Here are a few recommendations depending on your life coaching goals!

Goal Catcher

Goal Catcher is a program that helps participants achieve their goals in four to nine weeks. Simply identify a goal, and Marlee will walk you through the various steps to narrowly defining the goal, coming up with a plan to achieve it, and even committing to a way to celebrate your success along the journey.

Vital Wellbeing

Ever wish you could bounce back more easily from life's challenges or feel better about yourself? Vital Wellbeing is a nine-week program that helps you build emotional resilience, boost your self-esteem, and improve your life satisfaction. Learn how to manage your personal boundaries and overcome self-sabotage to live the life you've always dreamed of.

Increase EQ

Emotional intelligence is a crucial life skill that can help you better understand yourself and others. In our Increase EQ program, Coach Marlee will walk you through evidence-based steps to increase your self-awareness, better communicate your emotions, read the emotions of others and forge deeper connections.

Anyone who desires high-quality life coaching but can’t invest in a human coach can benefit from giving AI-powered Coach Marlee a try.

Life coaching software that delivers results for your clients

As you can see, life coaching software spans a wide range of features. Some take care of admin tasks such as invoicing, while others are more robust, all-in-one features.

It’s rare for coaching software to include the most important piece of coaching: evidence-based programs that deliver results for your clients. For that, F4S is the best option, as it’s based on 20+ years of motivation research and features done-for-you AI-based programs that your clients can complete for free and are proven to deliver results.