One of the most important aspects of running a coaching practice is booking and managing clients. When you’re first starting out in your coaching career, it’s a bit easier to track a handful of clients at a time. But as your business grows you’ll need to employ more tools to help you stay organized.
There are many platforms in the market that are well-suited for coaching professionals, but they all serve different needs. To simplify this, platforms like Vagaro offer all-in-one solutions to help you easily book new clients, manage services, and communicate with current clients.
Let’s take a look at the best features of Vagaro and then explore a few alternative platforms you might consider.
What is Vagaro?
Vagaro is an all-in-one business management platform and online marketplace for service-based businesses — like coaching. Its features include online appointment scheduling, customer relationship management, email and SMS marketing, and detailed business reporting. It also integrates with other software platforms, like QuickBooks, Zoom, and Facebook, so you can keep your business tools in one place.
Vagaro goes far beyond typical appointment scheduling; it provides video streaming services, a website builder, and eCommerce capabilities, which is a game-changer for coaches who offer virtual sessions and sell courses or products.
Top 7 Features Offered on Vagaro
The Vagaro platform offers over 20 features that benefit coaches across all industries. For this review, we’ll focus on the top features that have the biggest impact on coaching businesses.
Let’s take a look at a few of the most important features for coaches.
Online Scheduling and Bookings
Vagaro’s online booking system allows you to set up appointment types, manage availability, and automate booking confirmations and reminders. Once you’ve set your hours and made your calendar live, your clients can easily book a session or service without your help.
Other key aspects of online booking include automatically accepting appointments or requiring clients to send a request for you to accept, reschedule, or deny an appointment. And, you can keep clients’ credit cards on file to hold their online appointments.
Marketplace
The Vagaro Marketplace is a powerful tool that can actually help you attract new clients. When you list your coaching practice on the Vagaro website and app, it increases visibility and allows potential clients to find and book your services without extra marketing. Additionally, the ‘Get Featured’ option boosts your business’s exposure even further.
The Marketplace is free to use and, according to Vagaro, gives you the potential to earn up to $75,000 annually from booking new clients.
Forms
The forms feature in Vagaro offers easy customization through an intuitive drag-and-drop builder. You can create forms for all kinds of things, like new client intake, liability waivers, and feedback surveys. And you can create forms using multiple choice, short answers, and even photo uploads.
This feature also allows you to automate form requirements based on service type or booking and add necessary HIPAA compliance disclosures to protect sensitive client information.
Live Streams
Vagaro supports live streaming, so you can conduct one-on-one, virtual consultations or group classes. One of the most important aspects of live streaming is the ability to monetize your streams. You’ll receive a payment per session, when your client prepays for the scheduled session.
You also have the option to create recurring revenue by offering replays of previous live streams to new clients via a membership.
Online Store
The online store feature allows coaches to sell products, services, and packages directly from their Vagaro website. This provides an additional revenue stream for coaches who offer supplemental materials like books, courses, or branded merchandise.
It’s easy to set up and manage products and inventory. The online store also offers secure payment processing with your booking system as well as automated order confirmations and tracking.
Vagaro Pay Later
Yes, Vagaro has a Pay Later feature that is similar to Klarna and AfterPay. This feature lets clients finance their coaching sessions. This make’s it an attractive option for coaches that offer high-ticket services who want to make their services more accessible.
The best part is you’ll receive your payment in full while the client makes interest-free payments over a set amount of time.
Vagaro Capital
If you’re looking to scale and grow your coaching practice, Vagaro provides funding options for your business. The loan is based on your business activity and you can receive between $1,000-$300,000 in funding within 2 days of approval.
Payments are flexible and taken as a small percentage each of your bookings or sales.
4 Vagaro Alternatives
Dubsado
Dubsado shines in two areas — client management and automation. The platform has business tools that range from lead capture forms to invoicing and contract management. This is why it’s ideal for coaches who have complex client interactions.
With Dubsado, coaches can set up workflows that automate various processes like sending follow-up emails, scheduling discovery calls, and sending custom contracts and proposals. This saves so much time especially if you are juggling multiple aspects of your coaching practice.
Due to the extensive amount of features, Dubsado requires you to invest time in learning the platform to get the most out of its capabilities. A few other drawbacks are the limited scheduling capabilities and the monthly subscription cost of $200 per year.
This tool is best for coaches who:
are experienced with a larger, more complex clientele.
have time to learn the platform.
can afford to pay more for a subscription.
Booksy
Booksy is known for being user-friendly. The platform guides you through each step of setting up your profile. This makes it an attractive choice for people who are not tech-savvy. Clients find it easy to use, too.
The Booksy platform extends beyond just booking services, it offers a feature called ‘Boost’ that’s designed to help attract new clients. This feature promotes your services within the app to increase your visibility. In return, you pay a commission on new bookings generated through the feature.
On the downside, the commission on bookings through the Boost feature adds up overtime especially for high-volume coaching businesses. Also, Booksy is great for simple scheduling. But, it lacks the depth of features that are available on Vagaro. This is especially true for advanced customization and integration options.
This tool is best for coaches who:
have low volume clientele.
don’t require additional branding and integration capabilities.
Acuity Scheduling
Acuity Scheduling shines with its range of customization options that help coaches design their scheduling page to reflect their branding. It also integrates with tools like Canva to further expand its design capabilities. Other integrations include Google Calendar, Zoom, and payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
While Acuity offers great customization options, it lacks resources for small coaching startups. It only offers a 7-day free trial, and after that, you have to choose a paid plan. In comparison to Vagaro, Acuity Scheduling doesn’t offer as many features that are specific to service-based businesses, like POS and helpful marketing tools.
This tool is best for coaches who:
only offer coaching sessions.
are looking for a low cost option for booking appointments.
don’t require additional features to support memberships, products, etc.
Calendly
Calendly is known for its simple intuitive interface that makes it easy for coaches to set up and manage their schedules. The platform eliminates the back-and-forth emails by allowing clients to book appointments directly based on your availability. With reminder and follow-up automation features, Calendly helps coaches save time and improve client engagement.
While Calendly is easy to use, it lacks some of the advanced customization options available in other platforms like Acuity. Coaches looking for highly tailored scheduling pages might find Calendly’s customization capabilities limited. The platform also doesn’t have a built-in payment processor.
This tool is best for coaches who:
offer coaching sessions only.
are new to the coaching space.
want to get up and running quickly.
Vagaro is for Coaching Professionals
Vagaro is one of the best business tool hacks for coaches. Not only does it offer the basic tools you need to run your coaching practice, it also provides resources to help you create additional passive income streams while still booking more clients. The user-friendly set up and ease of use makes it the perfect platform for new and experienced coaches.
Although there are good alternatives available, when it comes to supporting coaching practices, Vagaro takes the title.
