SimplePractice vs Simply Coach: Which Fits Coaches in 2026?

If you are weighing simplepractice vs simply coach, the short version is this: SimplePractice is a clinical practice system built for therapists and licensed health practitioners, and Simply.Coach is a practice platform built for coaches. For most coaches, Simply.Coach is the closer fit of the two, because SimplePractice charges for insurance billing, clinical notes and e-prescribing that coaching does not use. SimplePractice only wins when you genuinely need a signed HIPAA business associate agreement for clinical work.

Neither tool covers the whole coaching business, though. Neither one runs habit tracking and daily check-ins between sessions, a community, courses and a website with funnels in the same login. That gap is why this comparison ends with a third option, Coachful. We make Coachful, so read that section with that in mind; we have tried to be just as specific about where it falls short. Everything about SimplePractice and Simply.Coach below comes from what each vendor lists on its own pricing and product pages in October 2026 and from what public reviewers report. We have not run hands-on tests of either product.

What is the short answer to SimplePractice vs Simply Coach?

Pick Simply.Coach if you are a coach who needs contracts, booking, programs and a client portal at a low entry price. Pick SimplePractice only if you are a licensed clinician who also coaches and needs insurance claims, clinical documentation and a HIPAA business associate agreement.

Here is the same answer split by use case:

• Life, career, business or executive coach, solo: Simply.Coach over SimplePractice. You avoid paying for clinical features, and Simply.Coach's contracts, programs and coaching journeys map to how coaching engagements actually run.
• Health or wellness coach who is not a licensed provider: Simply.Coach over SimplePractice in most cases. Coaching is not treatment, and you do not bill insurance.
• Therapist, dietitian or other licensed clinician who coaches on the side: SimplePractice for the clinical caseload, because it signs a BAA automatically at signup and handles claims.
• Coaching firm with sponsors and program managers: Simply.Coach's business tiers, which list sponsors, program managers and automated reports. SimplePractice is not built for corporate coaching programs.
• Coach who delivers programs with daily work between sessions, plus courses, community and a website: neither fits well. That is the case for the third option covered below.

How do SimplePractice and Simply.Coach compare side by side?

SimplePractice is broader on clinical administration, and Simply.Coach is broader on coaching structure. The table below adds Coachful as the third column because many coaches comparing these two are really looking for one tool to replace several.

How we ranked: one login for the whole client journey, delivery between sessions, total stack cost once add-ons and extra tools are counted, and setup effort (including whether someone will build it for you).

Two things stand out. SimplePractice's strength, the HIPAA agreement and insurance tooling, is something most coaches never use. Simply.Coach's weakness is the caps: every solo tier below Leap limits active coachees, contracts and programs, so the plan you start on is rarely the plan you stay on.

How much do SimplePractice and Simply.Coach cost?

As listed in October 2026, SimplePractice runs $49 to $99 per month per clinician, monthly billing only, before payment fees and add-ons. Simply.Coach's solo plans are listed at $9, $29, $49 and $69, with business tiers from $79 to $289 per active coach.

A few details change the real cost.

SimplePractice fees and add-ons. Card payments through SimplePractice cost 3.15% plus $0.30 per transaction. Insurance claims are $0.39 each, and AMA CPT code access is $20 per clinician per year. Optional add-ons include Care Aide at $59/month, Note Taker at $35/month and ePrescribe at $49/month plus an $89 setup fee. The pricing page also showed an offer of 50% off for three months if you start a paid plan within the first 7 days of the 30-day trial.

Simply.Coach billing period and refunds. The solo pricing page does not state the billing period next to the headline prices (an older profile treated them as monthly). It advertises "save up to 52% on annual," but only Essentials shows an annual figure, $290 per year. USD prices are tax-inclusive, and an INR option is available. Simply.Coach states it does not refund mid-period cancellations, and automated invoices were marked "Coming Soon" on the solo pricing page. Transaction fees and payment processors are not stated on the pricing pages.

An illustrative example. Say a coach collects $3,000 a month from 10 client payments of $300. On SimplePractice Essential, the card fees at 3.15% plus $0.30 come to about $97.50 a month, on top of the $79 plan, so roughly $176.50 before any add-on. The same coach with 10 active clients would sit on Simply.Coach Growth at a listed $49, plus whatever their payment processor charges. These numbers are an example, not a quote; your mix of payments will differ.

For a deeper look at one side, our Simply.Coach pricing breakdown walks through every tier and cap.

What is SimplePractice built for?

SimplePractice is practice management for therapists and health practitioners: clinical notes, insurance claims, e-prescribing and HIPAA-covered client records. Its design assumes a clinical visit.

That focus is the reason it suits clinicians and the reason it sits awkwardly with coaches. The features that justify the price, CPT codes, claims at $0.39 each, ePrescribe and clinical note templates, are features a coach is not allowed or not expected to use. What SimplePractice does not include, by its own feature set, is anything coaching-shaped: no coaching programs, no courses and no community. Group sessions are an extra $20 per month on Essential.

Public reviewers are mixed. SimplePractice held a 2.6 rating on Trustpilot from 1,616 reviews when checked on 29 October 2026. Treat that as a prompt to read recent reviews yourself, not a verdict.

Data export: the export steps sit behind a bot check on SimplePractice's help pages, so we could not confirm the exact process. Ask support what format you get before you commit years of records.

Pick it over Coachful if you are a licensed clinician who needs a signed business associate agreement, insurance claims or e-prescribing. Coachful is not HIPAA-certified and does not do insurance billing, so clinical records belong in a clinical system like SimplePractice.

If you are a coach who started on SimplePractice and wants out, our list of SimplePractice alternatives for coaches and the version for health coaches cover the options in more depth.

What is Simply.Coach built for?

Simply.Coach is a coaching practice platform: contracts, programs, sessions, booking pages and a client portal, with business and enterprise tiers for coaching firms. It speaks the language of coaching engagements rather than clinical visits.

On the solo side, Starter already includes 1:1 and group coaching, booking pages and survey forms, but only for 3 active coachees, 1 contract and 1 program. Growth adds multiple calendars, recurring sessions, your logo and onboarding. Leap removes the caps on coachees, contracts and programs and white-labels the platform on your own domain.

The business tiers are where Simply.Coach differs most from SimplePractice. They are priced per active coach and add program managers, sponsors, coach payouts, coach matching, NPS surveys and automated reports on Optima. If you run a coaching firm that reports to corporate sponsors, that is a real feature set.

The trade-offs: caps on every solo tier below Leap, no refunds for mid-period cancellations, automated invoices still marked as coming soon, and payment processing details that the pricing pages do not spell out. Simply.Coach has no Trustpilot presence; an older profile from September 2026 recorded 4.8 on G2 from 146 reviews. The site states all data can be exported to spreadsheets.

Pick it over Coachful if you run a coaching firm that needs sponsor seats, program managers, coach matching and NPS reporting in one place, or if you have three clients or fewer and only need a contract, a booking page and one program.

Our full Simply.Coach review goes further into the feature set, and Paperbell vs Simply.Coach and CoachAccountable vs Simply.Coach compare it with the other coaching-first tools.

How do scheduling, contracts and payments compare?

Both tools handle booking and getting paid. Simply.Coach handles coaching contracts as a core object with per-plan caps, while SimplePractice handles payments and claims with clear published fees.

Scheduling

SimplePractice schedules client appointments and charges extra for group sessions on Essential. Simply.Coach includes booking pages on every plan, with one calendar on Starter, multiple calendars from Growth and recurring sessions on Growth. For a coach running a weekly group call, Simply.Coach's structure is closer to how coaching is sold.

Contracts

Contracts are where Simply.Coach is clearly more coaching-shaped. Its plans count contracts: 1 on Starter, 3 on Essentials, 10 on Growth and unlimited on Leap. SimplePractice's paperwork serves clinical practice, and coaching agreements are not part of what it lists. If you want a sense of what a coaching agreement should contain, see our page on coaching contracts.

Payments

SimplePractice publishes its card rate, 3.15% plus $0.30, and runs payments through its own SimplePractice payments service. Simply.Coach does not state transaction fees or processors on its pricing pages, and automated invoices are flagged as coming soon. Ask Simply.Coach's sales team which processors are supported for your country before you move billing over.

Which handles programs, courses and between-session work better?

Simply.Coach does, by a wide margin, because SimplePractice has no coaching programs, courses or community features at all. Simply.Coach's programs and journeys give a coaching engagement shape, though they are capped by plan below Leap.

The question worth asking is what your clients do between calls. Coaching outcomes tend to come from what happens on the other six days of the week: the habit, the reflection, the small task. SimplePractice is not designed for that, since clinical care has its own documentation rules. Simply.Coach lets you assign programs and survey forms, which covers structured homework. Neither tool, from what they document, runs daily habit tracking, morning and evening check-ins, streaks and a community feed as part of the client's everyday routine.

If programs are the core of what you sell, see what group coaching software needs to do for cohorts, and compare that list with each vendor's feature page before you decide.

Does either one cover HIPAA and health coaching?

SimplePractice does: its business associate agreement takes effect automatically at signup. Simply.Coach does not state HIPAA coverage on its pricing pages, so ask before storing anything clinical there.

Whether you need HIPAA at all depends on who you are, not on the word "health" in your title. HIPAA applies to covered entities, such as health care providers who bill insurance electronically, and to their business associates. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services explains who counts as a covered entity. Many health and wellness coaches who are paid directly by clients are not covered entities, but this varies by situation, so check with an attorney if you are unsure.

A scope line matters here. Coaching is not medical care, therapy or treatment. A health coach supports behaviour change toward goals a client sets; a clinician diagnoses and treats. Refer a client to a doctor or licensed therapist when you see signs of a medical condition, disordered eating, a mental health crisis, thoughts of self-harm, or anything that needs diagnosis or a prescription. If you hold a clinical licence and treat clients, keep those records in a HIPAA-covered system such as SimplePractice, and keep your coaching work separate.

For a related comparison on the wellness side, Practice Better vs SimplePractice asks whether coaches need either one.

What do clients experience in each?

With SimplePractice, the client side is organised around the clinical appointment: booking, paperwork and payment. With Simply.Coach, clients get a coaching portal where they see their contract, sessions and program, branded with your logo from Growth and white-labelled on your domain from Leap.

For coaching clients, the difference shows up in tone. A clinical system asks clients to act like patients: forms, consents, invoices. A coaching portal asks them to act like participants in an engagement. Simply.Coach's portal is the better match for a coaching relationship, and its white-label option on Leap and the business tiers lets the experience look like your brand rather than the vendor's.

What neither documents is a daily home for the client: a place they open each morning to see today's task, log a habit, answer a check-in and see the community. That is the job a coaching app does between sessions, and it is the main thing the third option adds.

Which should you pick for your type of coaching?

Match the tool to how you deliver, not to the brand you have heard of. The table below sets out the honest pick by coach type.

If you are an executive coach, our Simply.Coach alternatives for executive coaches list goes deeper on corporate-facing tools.

Is there a third option? Coachful, honestly

Yes. Coachful is a coaching platform where one subscription covers booking, payments, contracts, program delivery with habits and check-ins, courses, a community, a website with funnels and email, and an AI assistant, with one login for you and one branded app for your client. It beats both tools when you deliver programs, not just sessions; it does not beat SimplePractice for clinical work.

What Coachful is, who it is for, and how to start

Coachful is built for coaches who deliver programs, solo coaches growing into a small team, and coaches replacing four to six separate tools. The company is based in Tallinn, Estonia, and holds a 4.5 rating on Trustpilot from 21 reviews. You start with a free trial, and the team will build your setup for you at no cost through the white-glove service described below. Current plans: Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients.

What it does not do: Coachful is not HIPAA-certified and signs no BAA, so it is not for clinical record-keeping or insurance billing. It has no PayPal and no permanent free plan. The client app runs under the Coachful listing with your branding, not under your own App Store account. It has no Garmin, Fitbit, Whoop or Oura sync, and it has no multi-stage sales deal board or Salesforce and HubSpot integrations for large teams.

Where Coachful beats both

Between-session delivery. Multi-week programs come with weekly goals, daily tasks, habits, morning and evening check-ins, goals with progress bars and streaks. This is the layer neither SimplePractice nor Simply.Coach documents.

Here is a short walkthrough of how programs are built and delivered:

Booking and sessions. Booking pages support availability rules, buffers, minimum notice and time-zone detection, with two-way Google, Apple/iCloud and Outlook calendar sync. Sessions use built-in video or auto-created Zoom, Meet or Teams links. Reminders go out by email, plus SMS at 24 hours and WhatsApp at 1 hour once messaging is enabled. You can sell paid sessions and session credits and ask intake questions at booking. See the scheduling software page for detail.

Payments without a platform cut. Payments run through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account: one-time, subscriptions, payment plans, order bumps, coupons, refunds, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and Stripe Tax. Since August 2026 the platform fee is 0%, so you pay only Stripe or Razorpay processing. Every transaction gets an invoice, and you can send manual invoices too, which is the piece Simply.Coach still lists as coming soon.

Contracts. Coaching agreements with e-signature go out before the first call and are stored on the client record, with no per-plan contract cap.

The client's daily home. Courses, downloads, videos, books, AI tools, events and bundles land in the client's branded home and app, next to their program, sessions and community. Cohort groups are created automatically when someone enrols in a program.

The client record. Each client record holds goals, check-ins, habits, notes, intake answers, tags, payments and sessions, with an AI briefing per client and a status of thriving, active, quiet or at risk. Michelle, the built-in AI assistant, works from that live data to brief you before a session, summarise recorded sessions, draft emails and build programs. Questions and planning are included in your Coachful membership; confirmed builds and changes use AI credits.

Marketing in the same login. A section-based website builder with a blog, custom domain, SEO settings and 30 designed homepage templates; booking, application, lead-magnet and checkout funnels; email lists, broadcasts and multi-step sequences. Neither comparison tool includes this. See the coach website builder for more.

ICF hours. Coachful counts your coaching hours and distinct clients against ACC, PCC and MCC thresholds and exports an ICF client coaching log with paid and pro bono hours. Details are on the ICF hour tracking page.

Health and fitness coaches. The Fitness and Nutrition pack adds a workout builder with an illustrated exercise library, client workout logging with set history and PRs, nutrition targets, meal plans, barcode food lookup, private progress photos and weekly check-ins. You attach your own demo videos; there are no stock exercise videos. It is built for coaching, not clinical nutrition care. More on the health coaches page.

Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. From Create, then "We'll build it for you," you describe what you want built: a website, funnel, offer or sales page, program, course outline, coaching flow, email sequence, form, link in bio or something else. You can attach up to 8 reference links and up to 10 files such as logos, photos, brand guides and copy. The Coachful team builds it inside your own account, usually within about 24 hours, and invents nothing: no fake credentials, testimonials or prices, with gaps left for you to fill. It does not include recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing. One recent example: a leadership coach with a Squarespace renewal days away got one clean homepage with a repeated "talk with me" button. Another, a business mentor for beauty professionals, got a 12-week mentorship sales page, a free start-up-guide funnel and rewritten follow-up emails. Read more about the free white-glove service.

Where Coachful does not beat them

• Clinical practice: SimplePractice wins outright. Coachful is not HIPAA-certified, has no BAA and does not bill insurance.
• Corporate coaching programs with sponsors: Simply.Coach's Surge and Optima tiers list sponsors, program managers, coach matching and automated reports. Coachful has team plans with coach seats, per-coach availability and staff permissions, but no sponsor portal is part of its documented feature set.
• PayPal: Coachful does not support it.
• Your own App Store listing: Coachful's client app carries your branding inside the Coachful app, not under your own developer account.
• A tiny caseload with no programs: if you have three clients and only need a contract and a booking page, Simply.Coach Starter's listed price is hard to argue with.

For a direct two-way view, see Coachful vs Simply.Coach.

How do you switch without losing clients?

Export first, move one client group at a time, and keep the old account open until every active client has signed a new agreement and paid through the new system. Simply.Coach states its data exports to spreadsheets; for SimplePractice, confirm the export format with support before you cancel.

1. Export everything. Client list, notes, contracts, session history and any program content you wrote. Save copies outside the tool.
2. Separate clinical from coaching. If you are leaving SimplePractice but still treat some clients clinically, keep those records in a HIPAA-covered system.
3. Set up the new tool before you announce. On Coachful, clients, programs and content are imported for you during onboarding, and the white-glove team can build the website or funnels.
4. Move new clients first. Start every new engagement on the new system, then move existing clients at their next renewal.
5. Time the cancellation. Simply.Coach does not refund mid-period cancellations, so cancel just before renewal. SimplePractice bills monthly.

Our guide on how to migrate from Simply.Coach covers the steps in detail.

Frequently asked questions

Is SimplePractice good for life coaches?

Usually not. SimplePractice is built for therapists and health practitioners, so much of what you pay for, such as insurance claims, CPT codes and e-prescribing, does not apply to coaching. It also has no coaching programs, courses or community features. A coaching-first tool fits a life coach better.

Is Simply.Coach cheaper than SimplePractice?

At the entry level, yes. As listed in October 2026, Simply.Coach Starter is $9 for 3 active coachees and Leap is $69 with unlimited coachees, while SimplePractice runs $49 to $99 per month plus 3.15% plus $0.30 per card payment. Simply.Coach's business tiers, priced per active coach, can cost more for a firm.

Does Simply.Coach offer HIPAA compliance?

Its pricing pages do not state HIPAA coverage or a business associate agreement. If you need one, ask Simply.Coach directly and get it in writing. SimplePractice's BAA takes effect automatically at signup.

Do health coaches need HIPAA-compliant software?

It depends on whether you are a covered entity or a business associate of one, which usually involves billing insurance or working under a clinical provider. Many coaches paid directly by clients are not covered, but situations vary, so check the HHS guidance and an attorney. Clinical records always belong in a clinical system.

What is the free trial for each tool?

SimplePractice lists a 30-day trial with no card required, and Simply.Coach lists 14 days with no card required. Coachful also offers a free trial.

Can I run group coaching on SimplePractice or Simply.Coach?

Simply.Coach includes 1:1 and group coaching on every solo plan. SimplePractice supports group sessions as a $20 per month extra on Essential. Neither documents a community feed or automatic cohort groups.

Does Coachful replace both SimplePractice and Simply.Coach?

It replaces Simply.Coach for most coaches and adds programs with daily habits and check-ins, courses, community, a website, funnels and email. It does not replace SimplePractice for clinical work, because Coachful is not HIPAA-certified and does not bill insurance.

What is Coachful's free white-glove service?

From Create, then "We'll build it for you," you describe what you need, such as a website, funnel, program or email sequence, and attach links and files. The Coachful team builds it in your own account, usually within about 24 hours, without inventing credentials, testimonials or prices. It is free on every plan.

Can I export my data from Simply.Coach and SimplePractice?

Simply.Coach states all data can be exported to spreadsheets. SimplePractice's export steps sit behind a bot check on its help pages, so confirm the format with support before you cancel. Coachful exports a full ZIP of roster, notes, check-ins, goals, habits, sessions and form responses.

Which is better for a coaching business with several coaches?

Simply.Coach's business tiers are built for firms with sponsors and program managers. SimplePractice adds practitioners at $74 per month each on Plus, which suits clinics rather than coaching teams. Coachful's team plans add coach seats with per-coach availability and staff permissions (Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients).