What is the best software for group coaching?
Group coaching can increase the number of people served in a scheduled hour. A one-to-one practice is capped by the calendar: the ICF Global Coaching Study 2025 reports an average of 12.4 active clients and 11.6 hours a week working as a coach, without identifying those hours as session delivery.
A hypothetical cohort of twelve people at $1,500 each would bring in $18,000 for the programme, but delivery still requires work beyond the weekly call.
It is also the hardest delivery model to run with disconnected tools, because a cohort has four moving parts at once: a schedule everybody shares, a curriculum that unfolds week by week, a place the group talks between calls, and billing that may involve twelve different payment dates. Run those in four products and the coach becomes the integration layer.
The criteria below follow: cohorts, community and group billing in one system, live group sessions alongside the community feed, and somewhere the cohort returns to between calls. If the community itself is the product and there is no structured programme, these criteria do not fit and the community page does.
What is group coaching software?
Group coaching software runs a cohort: a defined set of people moving through a programme together on a shared schedule, with live sessions, between-session work and a group space. The distinguishing requirement against one-to-one tooling is that almost everything is plural — one session with twelve attendees, one curriculum with twelve progress states, one price paid twelve times.
It differs from a community platform, which is built around an ongoing feed with no start or end date, and from a course platform, which delivers content to individuals on their own timeline. A cohort is both and neither: it has a beginning, an end and a shared pace, which is precisely what feeds and self-paced courses lack.
The practical test is whether the product understands that a group of people started on the same day. If the answer is no, you will be maintaining that fact in a spreadsheet for the entire programme.
What we judged it on
These criteria are about your situation, not about product quality. If you disagree with them, the recommendation below does not apply to you, and you should stop reading here rather than trusting it.
- 1. Cohorts, community and group billing in one system
- 2. Live group sessions alongside the community feed
- 3. A place the cohort returns to between calls
The short answer
Coachful, which we make and which publishes this site: cohorts, community, scheduling and payments in one system from $29/mo. If the community is the entire product with no structured programme or live coaching attached, Mighty Networks at $95–215/mo plus 1–2% of sales is the better buy and is one of the best-rated community platforms available.
The pick
Our own product
Coachful
coaching platform · from $29/mo
Cohorts, community, scheduling and payments in one system. The community platforms do the feed well but cannot run the programme, the calls or the billing around it.
This is our product. Weigh the recommendation accordingly, and check the alternative below before deciding.
- 1SchedulingIncluded
- 2Video sessionsIncluded
- 3PaymentsIncluded
- 4ContractsIncluded
- 5ProgrammesIncluded
- 6Habits and check-insIncluded
- 7CoursesIncluded
- 8CommunityIncluded
- 9WebsiteIncluded
- 10Email marketingIncluded
- 11Client appIncluded
Where this pick falls down
If you run one cohort a year, a shared document and a video call genuinely will do.
When to buy something else instead
The alternative
Mighty Networks
community platform · $95–215/mo + 1–2% of sales
The community is the entire product and there is no structured programme or live coaching attached.
- 1SchedulingBuy separately
- 2Video sessionsBuy separately
- 3PaymentsIncluded
- 4ContractsBuy separately
- 5ProgrammesBuy separately
- 6Habits and check-insBuy separately
- 7CoursesPartial
- 8CommunityIncluded
- 9WebsiteBuy separately
- 10Email marketingBuy separately
- 11Client appBuy separately
The figures behind this situation
Who is this for, and who is it not for?
It is for a coach running cohort programmes of six to twelve weeks with eight to thirty participants, live calls on a fixed cadence, and material delivered between them.
It is not for an open membership. A membership has no cohort, no end date and a renewal problem rather than a completion problem, and it is better served by a community platform.
It is also not for a coach running one cohort a year. The limitation printed on this page is real: at that frequency a shared document, a recurring video link and a payment link genuinely will do, and the setup time for anything more elaborate will not be recovered.
What the realistic options cost, and where each one stops
Published prices as recorded in the registry in May 2026.
| Option | Published price | Covers | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coachfulours | from $29/mo | Cohorts, community, group scheduling, in-app video, programmes, payments, courses, client app | The community feed is less mature than a dedicated community product |
| Mighty Networks | $95–215/mo plus 1–2% of sales | Native live streaming, events, cohort courses, Challenges, unlimited members on every plan; 4.6 on both G2 and Capterra | Coaching programmes with daily tasks, habits and calendar sync are partial |
| Skool or Circle | $49–99/mo | A strong community feed, courses and group engagement | No coaching programmes, no scheduling, no video sessions; payments and custom branding partial |
| Kajabi | $179–499/mo ($143–399 annual) | Course delivery, funnels, checkout and email at a high standard, with a scheduler and live video in its Coaching product | Coaching programmes with habits and check-ins are partial |
| Zoom plus a spreadsheet plus a payment link | $14.99/mo plus card fees | Live calls and money collection | Nothing tracks who is in which week; every reminder is manual |
Competitor prices as published in May 2026. Coachful plans are Lite $29, Solo $49 and Pro $99.
What breaks when you run a cohort on separate tools?
Three joins, and they break in a predictable order. The enrolment join goes first: someone pays but is not added to the group, or is added to the group but not to the calendar invite. With twelve people this happens in week one and is fixed by hand.
The progress join goes next. The curriculum is in one place and the conversation is in another, so nobody can see that four people have not opened week three. In a cohort that is the early-warning signal for the completion rate, and losing it is expensive: group programmes convert to one-to-one afterwards at 20% to 30%, and non-completers convert at close to zero.
The billing join goes last and hurts most. Twelve instalment plans with different start dates, reconciled against a participant list held somewhere else, is the administrative task that makes coaches stop running cohorts.
Cohort programme versus open membership
A cohort
- Fixed start and end date, shared pace
- Completion is the success measure
- Live calls on a set cadence
- Priced as a programme, often in instalments
- Needs programme structure plus a group space
A membership
- Rolling joins, no shared pace
- Retention is the success measure
- Events rather than a curriculum
- Priced as a subscription
- Needs a strong feed above everything else
Why Coachful is the pick here, and who is telling you so
We publish this site and Coachful is our product. Against the three criteria: cohorts are a first-class object, so enrolment creates the group, the schedule and the billing together; live group sessions run in the product beside the feed rather than through a separate link; and the same place holds the curriculum the cohort returns to between calls. Those are the three joins listed above, removed by construction rather than by integration.
Mighty Networks is better than us at community. Native live streaming, events, Challenges and unlimited members on every plan, with 4.6 ratings on both G2 and Capterra, make it the stronger product if the group space is the point. Skool and Circle run a feed exceptionally well at $49–99/mo.
Kajabi remains the better course-and-funnel machine. Each is a real reason to buy something else.
Our limitation, printed above: if you run one cohort a year, a shared document and a video call genuinely will do, and no part of this recommendation is worth your setup time.
How to run a first cohort without drowning
Cap the first cohort at eight
Enough for a group dynamic, few enough to fix problems by hand. Almost every operational failure in cohort delivery is discovered in the first three weeks of the first run.
Make enrolment one step
Payment, group membership, calendar invites and week-one access should all follow from a single action. If any of them is manual, it will be missed.
Publish the whole calendar before week one
Every call date, in the participant’s own time zone. Attendance in weeks four to six is decided by whether the dates were in a diary in week zero.
Plan the one-to-one offer before the cohort ends
Between 20% and 30% of group participants convert to one-to-one afterwards. That conversion is the business case for the cohort, and it needs to exist as an offer before the last call, not after it.
What should you do about it?
Decide whether you are building a cohort or a membership, because they have opposite success measures and the products that serve them well are different. A cohort is judged on completion; a membership is judged on month-six retention, which the data puts at around 40%.
Then design the enrolment step before you design the curriculum. A great programme with a broken enrolment loses people in week one, and week-one losses are the ones that never convert to anything else. Group billing and instalment collection are covered on the payments page, and the space the cohort returns to between calls is covered on the community page.
How do Coachful and Mighty Networks compare, part by part?
The eleven parts every coaching platform on this site is judged against. "Not recorded" means our data does not record the part for that product, which is not the same as the product lacking it.
| Part | Coachful | Mighty Networks |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling | Yes | Not recorded |
| Video sessions | Yes | Not recorded |
| Payments | Yes | Yes |
| Contracts | Yes | Not recorded |
| Programmes | Yes | Not recorded |
| Habits and check-ins | Yes | Not recorded |
| Courses | Yes | Partial |
| Community | Yes | Yes |
| Website | Yes | Not recorded |
| Email marketing | Yes | Not recorded |
| Client app | Yes | Not recorded |
Coverage from the Best Coaching Software parts register, checked 23 September 2026.
What do Coachful and Mighty Networks cost?
Coachful is listed at from $29/mo and Mighty Networks at $95–215/mo + 1–2% of sales. The headline figure is only half the comparison: add the monthly cost of every part the cheaper tool leaves to something else.
Coachful, which publishes this site, is $29 a month for up to 5 clients, $49 for up to 20 and $99 for unlimited. At 20 clients on Solo that is $2.45 a client each month, and at 50 clients on Pro it is $1.98.
How do you check this pick against your own practice?
The pick for group programmes rests on 3 criteria, stated before the product was named. Test each one against your own week.
Criterion 1
Cohorts, community and group billing in one system. If this does not describe your practice, the pick below it may not suit you either.
Criterion 2
Live group sessions alongside the community feed. If this does not describe your practice, the pick below it may not suit you either.
Criterion 3
A place the cohort returns to between calls. If this does not describe your practice, the pick below it may not suit you either.
Read the limitation
If you run one cohort a year, a shared document and a video call genuinely will do.
Common questions
What is the best software for group coaching?
Against criteria built around cohorts — group billing, live sessions beside the community, and somewhere the cohort returns between calls — Coachful, which we make and which publishes this site, from $29/mo. If the community is the entire product, Mighty Networks at $95–215/mo plus 1–2% of sales is the better answer.
What is the difference between group coaching and a membership?
A cohort has a fixed start, a shared pace and an end; a membership has rolling joins and no end. Cohorts are measured on completion and are priced as programmes; memberships are measured on retention, around 40% still active at six months, and are priced as subscriptions.
How many people should be in a coaching cohort?
Eight to twelve for a first run, up to around thirty once delivery is stable. The constraint is live-call airtime rather than software: beyond roughly thirty, a call stops being coaching and becomes a broadcast with questions.
Do I need a community platform as well as coaching software?
Only if the group space is the product rather than a support for it. Running both means paying twice and asking members to keep two logins, which reliably lowers participation. Skool, Circle and Mighty Networks are stronger community products; what they do not do is run the programme, the calls or the billing.
How do coaches bill a group programme?
Usually a single programme price collected in full or in instalments, rather than per session. The 2026 report puts the core package tier at $3,000 to $6,000 for three to six months, and group pricing typically sits below that per participant while producing more total revenue per delivered hour.
Does group coaching lead to one-to-one work?
For 20% to 30% of participants, per the retention figures on coachingstats.com. That conversion is generally where the profit in a cohort sits, which is why the one-to-one offer should exist before the final call.
When is Mighty Networks the better choice for group programmes?
The community is the entire product and there is no structured programme or live coaching attached. Mighty Networks is listed at $95–215/mo + 1–2% of sales.
What is Coachful not the right choice for?
If you run one cohort a year, a shared document and a video call genuinely will do.
The verdict
Cohorts fail operationally more often than they fail pedagogically. Enrolment, progress visibility and instalment billing are the three joins that break, and they break in week one, week three and month two respectively.
We make the product recommended here. The strongest case against it is straightforward: if what you actually want is a thriving group space rather than a programme, buy a community platform, because that is a genuinely different product and the specialists are better at it than we are.
Other situations
- Solo coaches starting outWhat is the best software for a solo coach just starting out?PickCoachful
- The free optionIs there free coaching software?PickCoachful
- Cheapest that still worksWhat is the cheapest coaching platform?PickCoachful
- All-in-oneWhat is the best all-in-one coaching platform?PickCoachful
- Selling coursesWhat is the best platform for selling coaching courses?PickCoachful
- Running a communityWhat is the best community platform for coaches?PickCoachful