Top 8 Best CRMs for Life Coaches

Are you looking for low-cost, full-featured CRM software to help you reach a wider audience? Check out our list of the five best CRMs of life coaches. In this article, we discuss the pros, cons, and pricing plans of each software. We also examine the features that could raise the bar for your life coaching business.

As most of you reading already know, the bulk of your life coaching business revolves around your customers. Involving more than just maximizing the time spent in a session, you need to develop deep and lasting relationships with your clients. A CRM is just the right tool to help you achieve this goal, raising your profile and increasing the success of your business.

CRMs are extremely helpful in managing clients and keeping track of their progress. They’re excellent appointment scheduling tools, serving as digital personal assistants. Furthermore, CRMs can help you impress leads, gain new clients and grow your business. All things considered, a CRM is an indispensable tool for life coaches.

What is Important to Look for in a CRM for Life Coaches?

Few businesses require as deep a client relationship as life coaching. Because of this, your CRM needs should revolve around client interaction and communication. Your budget should also be a top priority if you want to increase profits. Here are the top factors to consider when choosing a CRM.

1. Low cost
   
   As a life coach, you’re often a solo enterprise with modest capital. Consequently, you must manage your budget carefully and choose CRMs that wouldn’t break the bank. Therefore, we recommend looking for CRMs with free or low-cost entry plans.
   
2. Full feature set
   
   Low-cost software is often of poor quality and contains few features. However, this doesn’t have to be the case when choosing a CRM for your enterprise. Several CRMs out there provide a full feature set for little to no cost. Many of them only require a subscription plan as your business grows. As such, you should look for fully featured software that meets all of your CRM needs.
   
3. Easy to use
   
   The best CRM for Life Coaches must be easy to use without external help. It should have adequate customer support and tutorials on how to use its features, along with a highly responsive user interface that is easy to navigate.
   
4. Plenty of integrations
   
   As a life coach, you use several other software to run your business. For example, Zoom can be used to teach an online class or Calendly to book appointments. Any CRM you choose must provide seamless integration support for these software. This would help you save on hiring developers to provide these functionalities.

Quick Comparison for CRMs for Life Coaches

The Top 5 Best CRM Software For Life Coaches Are:

1. ActiveCampaign
2. Engagebay
3. Zoho CRM
4. Apptivo
5. Gist
6. Hubspot
7. Paperbell
8. Delenta

1. ActiveCampaign

Founded: 2003
HQ: Chicago, Illinois, United States

Topping our list is ActiveCampaign, which is arguably the best all-in-one CRM software of 2023. It’s very popular among small-scale businesses due to its affordable starting price of just $9. Using an automated customer engagement pipeline, ActiveCampaign helps you forge deeper relationships with your clients and grow your life coaching business.

ActiveCampaign’s selling point is its smart automation system, the most advanced automated pipeline of CRM on this list. This tool allows you to create complex flowgraphs that send email campaigns, track customer behavior, and automatically nurture your leads. According to an online training platform, Smart Gets Paid, ActiveCampaign’s sales automation has halved the time spent on administrative tasks. As a result, they have grown their contact list by more than 2700 percent.

While ActiveCampaign may not have a free plan, the sheer number of features in the starter plan is an adequate compromise. The Lite plan provides integrations with more than 850 apps, so you can be sure that your favorite teaching software is properly supported. You can also send unlimited emails, subscription forms, and newsletters to your clients. What’s more, ActiveCampaign’s webhooks, API, and developer tools are available within this plan, giving tech-savvy customers total control over the software.

Another of ActiveCampaign’s features is the landing page builder that helps convert prospects to full clients. This drag-and-drop tool is very easy to use and customize. It also provides several templates to customize and create branded forms and landing pages. Before you commit to this software, you should know that ActiveCampaign requires you to be on the Plus plan or higher to access the landing page builder. Nevertheless, in light of the additional features in this plan, the upgrade is worth its price.

ActiveCampaign has consistently topped any comparison list it’s found on, and for a good reason. While it may not offer the most amount of features, the ones on display are, more often than not, more advanced than competing products. With nearly two decades of experience providing SaaS products, it's safe to say that ActiveCampaign is the gold standard of CRMs.

2. EngageBay

Founded: 2018
HQ: Wilmington, Delaware, United States

EngageBay is an upcoming, general-purpose CRM software currently giving Hubspot a run for its money. It offers the Marketing, CRM & Sales Bay, and Service Bay software packages which you can get individually or as an all-in-one bundle. EngageBay also offers a free plan that allows you to manage up to 500 clients. This is one of the reasons why EngageBay has cultivated a loyal customer base of 29,500 users in just a few years.

EngageBay allows you to create responsive landing pages that promote your services. This feature ships with the free version of this software and is extremely easy to use. Using an intuitive drag-and-drop designer, you can develop engaging content within minutes. Furthermore, the landing page builder is flexible and customizable, allowing you to choose your own fonts, colors, and elements. Also, EngageBay provides several blog posts and tutorials on how to use this feature.

As a life coach, much of your business involves one-on-one sessions with your clients. To that end, EngageBay provides appointment scheduling software that helps you manage online meetings. This system includes an integrated calendar, automated scheduling, and an interface allowing your clients to book appointments directly. What’s more, it syncs to your Office 365 or Google calendar and sends reminders and notifications to all parties participating in the meeting.

EngageBay provides many more features that are useful to your life coaching business. For example, the 360-degree customer view tracks customer behavior and preferences. It also pulls data from their social media profiles, giving you an insight into their perception of your company. All customer data is stored in a central location, so all your employees and team members have easy access to them.

EngageBay’s free plan and cheap starter plan contain features that address most of your business’s needs. However, if you need advanced features like integrations with teaching software and sales automation, or you simply need to increase your contact limit, you have to switch to higher subscription tiers. EngageBay’s most expensive CRM plan is under $50, so this upgrade shouldn’t break the bank.

3. Zoho CRM

Founded: 2005
HQ: Austin, Texas, United States; Chennai India

Zoho has a long-standing legacy as a SaaS provider for small businesses. Over 25 years, it has gathered more than 80 million paying customers that use the 50 applications in its software packages. Zoho CRM offers most of the free plan, allowing you to enjoy this fully-featured software without breaking the bank. In fact, you only need to upgrade to Zoho CRM’s paid subscriptions as your business grows.

Zoho CRM’s Omnichannel is a tool every life coach should aim to get their hands on. It’s a real-time communication suite that hosts multiple channels under a single platform. To begin with, Omnichannel integrates your email inbox within the app. Additionally, the Phonebridge integration connects you with over 50 telephony companies, so you can make calls, log calls, and receive notifications all within Zoho. The Omnichannel also connects your social media profiles so that you can track conversations about your business on the internet.

Zoho CRM allows you to embed Omnichannel’s live chat service and web forms within your website. Using these features, you can instantly capture leads that visit your web pages and convert them into life-long customers. Moreover, it provides a self-service portal to create, edit, and comment on their information.

Each client has different needs, so you must adopt a unique approach when dealing with them. Using Zoho CRM’s marketing automation tool, you can segment customers based on various parameters and send them personalized messages. This feature is especially helpful with lead nurturing, ensuring you remain up to date with potential clients and developing deeper relationships with them. In addition, the marketing automation tool allows you to scan business cards and import them into the app, so you never lose another lead’s contact.

Most of the features a life coaching business needs from Zoho CRM are available in the free plan. As such, you only need to upgrade to the paid plans if you need advanced features like AI insights, data encryption, and customer segmentation. The mobile app is free to use and retains all the functionality of the web-based app. Furthermore, the paid subscription plans are very affordable, unlocking all of Zoho CRM’s features for a $45 monthly fee.

Zoho CRM’s ratings are average compared to other software on this list. This is largely due to limited integration support, outdated UI, and subpar customer service. Nevertheless, you should note that Zoho CRM still scores highly on ease of use and setup. It has a loyal customer base and is a cost-effective solution for small businesses.

4. Apptivo

Founded: 2009
HQ: Fremont, California, United States

Apptivo’s collection of marketing tools, HRMs, CRMs, and other applications make it the most modular platform on this list. With Apptivo, you only pay for what you use, allowing for an affordable and highly customizable experience. The number and categories of apps you can install on Apptivo depend on your subscription tier. For instance, you can get the entire CRM and marketing suite for just $20 on the Ultimate plan.

If you’re budget-conscious and looking to save money, you can try Apptivo’s free plan, which offers useful features like appointment scheduling, call logging, and task creation. However, this plan can only handle a fraction of your business activities with just eight free apps. You’d have to upgrade to higher subscription plans to get more powerful features like third-party integrations, email tracking, and marketing campaigns.

Appttivo’s My Agenda tool is an excellent appointment-scheduling application. It provides a calendar view of all events, tasks, and follow-ups, allowing you to identify and complete them quickly. In addition, the task system provides powerful sorting and filtering functionalities that you can use to view pending tasks by status, priority, CRM role, and user-defined tags. The event system is quite similar, but with the added functionality of assigning attendees.

Apptivo has high ratings on G2, with its highest-rated features being customer support, flexibility, and task management. Despite some criticisms of UI and email templates, many customers praise its versatility and customization options. This software is very intuitive to use, and several tutorials on the website guide you on how to use its features. A satisfied customer states that what they like best about Apptivo is that:

“I am always able to get an agent through the embedded chat widget. It is like having a teacher or assistant sitting beside me all the time.”

5. Gist

Founded: 2020
HQ: Newark, Delaware, United States

Gist is a general-purpose CRM software that scales small, medium, and large-scale businesses. It is popular for the advanced marketing and automation tools that make client onboarding a smooth experience. Gist has earned its place on this list, offering an easy-to-understand user interface and email automation.

Gist’s most appealing feature is the free plan it offers. This plan provides a live chat and bot, team inbox, web forms, and mobile app integration, making it a perfect fit for life coaches looking to improve communications with clients. The 100 percent money-back guarantee Gist offers on their paid subscriptions is even more appealing. What's more, if your company has less than ten members, you can apply for a discount that saves you up to 93 percent on the $99 premium plan.

Gist’s impressive range of features promises to replace several apps in your toolkit. It combines live chat, calendar scheduling, lead generation, and market automation under a single platform, saving you the cost of subscribing to multiple software services.

Gist follows a three-step approach to increasing your customer count and boosting productivity. It provides a simple but powerful drag-and-drop form builder for targeted customer engagement. In addition, the chatbot software allows you to program engaging bots that automatically respond to customers and alter their behavior to match each customer. Lastly, the appointment scheduling software serves as a personal assistant, helping you to book meetings and manage your schedule. All of these features are automated so that you can focus on other aspects of your business.

Another of Gist's outstanding features is the marketing automation system that provides multiple ways of sending email campaigns. You can use the Visual Workflow Tool, an intuitive flow graph that allows you to define triggers, decisions, and parallel paths in executable blocks. On the other hand, the simpler Automation Rules offers a more linear and easily understood format. These tools can help you save time and money when running your company.

Despite its young age, Gist has converted many customers from other CRMs. Many customers on G2 state that they have abandoned their old CRM solutions in favor of Gist, with one customer urging prospects to:

“Make the switch - you’ll get the Gist of it quickly.”

Gist’s free plan has played a major role in facilitating this switch. Nevertheless, customers are willing to pay for more features, urging the development team to improve this software. With more than 10,000 paying customers in just two years, Gist is a strong contender for the best CRM for life coaches.

6. Hubspot

Founded: 2006
HQ: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Hubspot's appeal lies in its modularity; it offers hundreds of features in software packages called hubs. The Marketing, CMS, and Service hubs are particularly important to life coaches. Most of Hubspot's features are available in the free plan, making it one of the most affordable software on this list.

The Marketing hub offers email marketing, landing pages, contract management, live chat, and several other features needed to put your life coaching business on the map. You can automate email marketing for just $45 per month, giving you enough time to manage other aspects of your business. This tool also offers a knowledge base where you can publish blogs and videos that educate prospects about your business. It also provides marketing analytics and performance reports.

Hubspot helps deepen customer relationships through its client portal, omnichannel messaging, and VoIP calling. These features allow you to have voice calls with prospects and clients from within the app. Hubspot can record these calls and automatically generate text transcripts. The omnichannel is a unified platform for all text messaging media. It allows you to switch seamlessly between multiple messaging channels and keeps a single inbox for all correspondence from each unique client.

Hubspot’s content management system is built for marketers, developers, and IT teams. This software features a drag-and-drop website builder with hundreds of pre-built content and templates. Hubspot's websites contain a fully-featured CRM that tracks visitors and creates personalized experiences. This allows you to use your websites as a growth engine for your business. Interestingly, Hubspot provides an API that empowers tech-savvy developers with advanced tools like serverless functions and code alerts.

Few software can match the sheer number of Hubspot’s features, earning it a reputation as one of the Big Three of CRMs. However, its pricing model leaves a lot to be desired. Hubspot entices new users with a free and cheap starter plan, but the cost increases drastically for more advanced features. Nevertheless, most life coaching businesses will remain fully satisfied with Hubspot’s starter plans.

7. Paperbell

Founded: 2020
HQ: Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom

Paperbell was built from the ground up to help coaches schedule and sell their businesses. Designed specifically for coaches that work online, this software offers a fully-featured free plan with zero hidden charges.

Paperbell offers seven major features that are indispensable to any life coaching business. First, the scheduling software eliminates the need for third-party tools like Calendly or Doodle. It also offers self-service to your clients, allowing them to set up their own appointments. This smart CRM allows you to announce your availability, limit last-minute bookings, and create buffers between appointments. In addition, the scheduling software provides integrations with digital calendars like Google Calendars and iCal.

The client management dashboard helps you keep a complete and organized profile of every client in your system. It shows a complete history of all client transactions, including purchase history, total spend, and survey answers. The dashboard also lists all upcoming appointments, showing which appointments are left in each client package. Paperbell offers built-in client questionnaires and intake forms, allowing you to collect relevant information before each session. Moreover, thanks to the built-in digital notepad, you can create private client notes for each client.

If you’re looking for a centralized platform to sell your coaching business online, look no further than Paperbell. Its billing software allows you to sell single or multi-session packages while listing your payment plans. You can also integrate coupon codes and discount services. Many customers report that this feature has significantly improved their bookkeeping workflow. Paperbell offers several payments to your clients, including Paypal and online credit cards. It also supports multi-currency payments.

At first glance, Paperbell’s e-document support seems just as good as any other CRM for life coaches. However, it integrates with HelloSign for full legal protection at no additional cost. You can upload custom contracts and store them for future reference. Likewise, additional documents are stored in each client’s custom portal for easy downloads. Paperbell supports a wide range of document formats, such as PDFs, spreadsheets, and even audio files. It also stores templates for landing pages, email campaigns, and many more.

As a young software company with less than two years of operation, Paperbell has a relatively small customer base. Yet, it is quickly gaining traction and has nearly caught up to older software like Active Campaign and Hubspot. Unsurprisingly, it has excellent reviews on G2 and Capterra, with hardly any complaints. Aside from some lacking email functionalities, Paperbell is a great all-in-one solution for life coaches.

8. Delenta

Founded: 2020
HQ: Newark, Delaware, United States

Delenta was created to address the disconnect between coaches and their clients. Designed for tech novices and “reluctants,” this CRM is very intuitive and features a simple user interface. It boasts a one-hour startup time from registering your account to launching your business.

Delenta’s client management software helps to improve customer and affiliate relations and increase workplace efficiency. It offers automated lead generation and client nurturing to convert prospects into clients. The CMS keeps all client interaction in one place and provides a dashboard for a quick overview of each client. Moreover, it offers an automated email marketing tool that helps you send personalized campaigns to each prospect. You can also sell coaching packages using the built-in payment portals.

Another of Delenta’s powerful features is Whitelabel, which you can use to create custom branding for your business. It allows you to add personalized messages, company logos and colors, emails, and other templates that welcome new clients to your coaching service. In addition, Whitelabel helps you create onboarding videos and personalize each customer’s private portal. You can preview all custom content in your email using the Send to Myself button.

Scheduling appointments and booking meetings have never been easier than with Delenta's self-booking solution. This personalized client appointment system handles all the complexities of managing your schedule, freeing you to improve your clients' lives. This tool includes a live analytics dashboard which you can use to track appointments and other coaching statistics. Additionally, the appointments system automatically converts timezones for every client, ensuring that you, or they, never miss any meetings.

Delenta offers several other features and functionalities that earn it perfect scores on G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot. It provides integrated calendars and bookings, custom landing pages, and a course creation and selling platform. These features, coupled with affordable pricing plans and excellent customer support, make Delenta a top contender for the best life coaching CRM.

How To Pick the Right CRM for your Life Coaching Business

Choosing a CRM is hard, but it doesn’t have to be so for you. As a life coach, your CRM needs are unambiguous, so making the right choice often boils down to preference. Nonetheless, if you’re looking for a tie-breaker, you should consider their offering of customer engagement tools and integrations with teaching software.

We have extensively researched each software on this list and tried them out for ourselves. Yet, as a final note of caution, it would be best to corroborate our claims with trusted review sites. You can also try out the free plans and free trials of these CRMs and choose the one you’re most comfortable with.

Our Pick - Active Campaign

Active Campaign’s ease of use, advanced automation system, great value for money, and extensive integrations make it Toksta's top CRM software for life coaches in 2023.

Try Active Campaign Free

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Meet the author - Ademilade Shodipe-Dosunmu

Ademilade is a versatile and multi-faceted content writer with over 5 years of expertise in SaaS, technology, business, finance, travel, and entertainment journalism. During his years in the dynamic content landscape, he has worked with a variety of clients across various sectors, providing high-quality reviews and content.

As a content writer for Toksta, Ademilade works in collaboration with the research team to develop in depth SaaS breakdowns that help entrepreneurs choose the best option for their small business or startup.

Meet the author - Benjamin Carter

Ben is a digital marketer and content writer based in Brighton. He got his degree in English Literature from Sussex University and has written content and copy for multiple clients across a variety of sectors.

After decades of refining his writing ability, he's developed an acute understanding of what makes a great piece of content. Recently, he’s begun focusing more on SaaS, namely, enabling businesses to choose software suited to their specific needs. As co-founder and content manager of Toksta, Ben ensures all written content meets our typically high standards