Transform more lives in less time

I've been on a journey to find the best tools for building and nurturing my online community, and my quest led me to UpCoach. While I was excited about what it could offer, I've realized it has one significant drawback: a lack of gamification.

Todd, the founder, doesn’t believe in using gamification in coaching programs, and while I respect that stance, I was hoping to use UpCoach as a community-building alternative to Skool, which excels at making interactions fun and engaging.

Skool’s strength lies in its points system that incentivizes participation. Members earn points for engaging with content and one another, which can unlock courses, resources, or even cash prizes. This approach keeps the community vibrant and reduces the drop-off that often follows initial excitement on other platforms.

Sure, some argue that a quality program should naturally encourage engagement, but let's be honest—people respond to incentives. Without them, many will lose interest and drift away in search of something more stimulating. It’s a reality we can’t ignore.

For this reason, even though I own a lifetime deal for UpCoach, I’ve opted to pay $99/month for Skool to foster my community. The effectiveness of its gamified engagement strategies is simply too compelling to overlook. I hope that UpCoach considers adding similar features in the future, as I still see its potential. But for now, it’s sitting on my shelf while Skool takes the lead.

In summary, if you’re looking at UpCoach for community engagement, be aware that its current lack of gamification might hinder its effectiveness. If you value incentives to keep your community active and engaged, Skool may be the better choice for now. UpCoach has promise, but Skool is where my community thrives.

Just a thought: are you open to allowing us to stack "1 Year Annual Plans"? This would benefit you by increasing sales now and provide the AppSumo community a chance to "lock in" at the AppSumo pricing. Just a thought.

Let me start by saying that, in many ways, UpCoach stands out among platforms I’ve tried over the years. What makes it special for me is its ability not only to serve as traditional LMS but also as highly flexible coaching platform. Unlike most LMS tools, UpCoach lets you truly individualize learning and training journeys for each participant. I greatly appreciate the modularity – after years of wrestling with solutions like LearnDash on WordPress, maintaining endless updates and server configs, working with UpCoach often feels like a breath of fresh air.**
However, my enthusiasm crashes headfirst into a brick wall built of two critical shortcomings:**

The first is the **ongoing absence of GDPR compliance.** This was promised over (two???) years ago during the initial AppSumo campaign. While I understand that such things can take time, this protracted delay – years! – is simply unacceptable. It erodes trust and leaves me questioning UpCoach's commitment to its users, especially those in the EU. Frankly, it's hard to believe that such important legal consideration is not addressed at all, after such a long time.

But the real kicker, the thing that **genuinely angers and frustrates me, is the misrepresentation of the "Whitelabel" feature.** Let's be clear: it's NOT a true whitelabel solution. What's the point of having a branded front-end (e.g., "MyBrand") when all outgoing emails come from "[something@upcoach.com](mailto:something@upcoach.com)" instead of "[hello@mybrand.com](mailto:hello@mybrand.com)"? **I consider this, frankly, to be bordering on deceptive advertising.** This issue was raised years ago, and promises were made to address it, but nothing has changed.

These two issues are so fundamental that they **render UpCoach unusable for my intended purpose.** As an external provider of corporate training in the EU, I simply can't risk operating without GDPR compliance or with emails originating from a non-branded domain. In fact, these two issues prevent me using UpCoach at all, because:

1. No GDPR compliance;
2. Corporate IT departments use email white lists of allowed domains – and I cannot ask my corporate clients to whitelist some random UpCoach domains, since my front-end is supposed to be "MyBrand", not Upcoach.

And despite repeatedly raising these concerns – roughly three times a year – UpCoach has, regrettably, completely ignored my feedback and requests over the years.

**On a brighter note, the UpCoach support team is outstanding!** They are consistently friendly, responsive, and helpful. Whenever I've encountered a bug or needed assistance, they've provided prompt and effective solutions. The support experience is easily in my top 10 across the many SaaS tools I've used over the past two decades. They are truly accommodating and communicative.

Ultimately, it's these two crippling issues that prevent me from fully embracing and recommending UpCoach. It's doubly frustrating because tools like this are rare, and UpCoach has so much potential. If these two things were resolved, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone. But as it stands, I can't.

I have had Upcoach for quite a while now and am just starting to properly use it again (since the uteach debacle really).

It does have a bit of a learning curve, but once you do understand it you realize it was made by a coach (or coaches) for coaches!

No frankensteining software and platforms together, clients get a seamless experience once you have set up the tech side (see below).
You still need to do a bit of work but it's important to reduce friction and frustration down the line with clients who don't know where to go or what to do when they are meant to work with you - and that is taken care of here.

You get client intake forms and goal setting forms all inside the platform - and you can always check what clients filled in in the past to hold them accountable - not as easy when you work with Typeform, email or Word docs to send back and forth.

They also have habit trackers - clients often need to form new habits to improve, and that takes a bit of tracking and gentle pressure from you.

And all of that is integrated with courses and events that you can set up via Zoom or any other meeting link, while they access it all from that one platform.

Since I got this deal 2 years ago they have added Stripe as a payment provider integration - that's slightly limited, but working with the API or the invite link you can use almost any payment service you want, and for various ones they have clear step by step instructions now.

There are many more improvements that I can't all list, but they are clearly working on it.

Speaking of the tech side: you need to have your own video storage. That is a dealbreaker for some people, but it makes the platform a lot more financially stable and avoids issues that other LMS platforms have had.

However, what I really, really appreciate is that they are very quick to integrate video solutions.
You can add YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, Loom (plus Muse and Searchie that I don't know), all of which either come at a cost or have their logo integrated. And being an Appsumo fan I have Komododecks and also Vento that have been or are on as lifetime deals.

So I asked whether that was an alternative, and they were incredibly quick to integrate those for their video block rather than just html embed them, so it looks a lot better.

This alone is worth five stars!

The only drawback I have is the UX for the coach or course designer.

Being a returning coach to upcoach, I still get confused where I am in the environment sometimes, in the program designer, course designer or where I need to go to see or do certain things.

So some breadcrumbs, a button, help balloon, or extra links would be helpful to enable me to go back to a "home" from where I can access all that.

But then - as a software company you are much more immersed into a software than a regular user, so I would imagine if I mention that it will be implemented in some way - or already is on the roadmap.
Guess I'll ask :).

Probably my favorite AppSumo product of all time, and I've bought a lot. Thanks to the team that works on this, I know a lot of effort and epic coaching background went into this.

Sometimes coaching software is needed to track students' progress. This app combines online teaching, videos, and tracking performance, which can be used in my business.

I think the deal is great, especially compared to other online course platforms. I like the idea of creating more engagement e.g. with smart docs, tasks, habit trackers, and the communication options.

The design could be more customized in the online course area, but it's ok.

What I found a bit confusing was the fact, that it's not possible to just create online courses and sell them. You always have to create a program and there create the online course. Maybe it's because the idea is to focus on coaching and not on online courses, so tasks etc. are included.

This app looked great. But they keep adding appointments to my calendar to learn how to use it. And no matter what I do, these appointments keep coming back onto my calendar. I keep declining, declining all future events, etc. MAKE IT STOP.

I got a refund on a product I wanted to use because this "onboarding" was so intrusive. I literally in actuality lost client time, because they show up as an accepted appointment on my calendar. Nothing makes it stop and this has been going on for months. Every Wednesday and every thursday, a new appointment shows up. AND I CANNOT EVEN SEE WHO SEND THE DAMN APPT. I coach apps, this is simply the worst customer experience I have ever had with any app of any kind. Unbelievable.

Potential - BUT!!!
The Problem is: Terms of Service - Intellectual Property Rights
I basically wanted to transfer everything I do in 1 to 1 coaching and group coaching to UPcoach. I see that there is great potential here. I haven't had much contact with the support myself, so I can't judge it. Since I wanted to get at least one more full stack for other areas of my business, I came back to appsumo and read the reviews. With shock I became aware of what is written in the "Terms of Service". What is written there actually makes it impossible to use Upcoach. What other users have already told here has not been changed or adapted as of 25 January 2023. I have either developed many of my courses myself and put decades of research work into them, or I have learned the knowledge in dozens of sometimes cost-intensive courses. I have also licensed material for thousands of dollars. I have no desire to simply transfer my material without restriction and without compensation to a company as it is written in the "Terms of Service". In the case of systems licensed to me and in my name, I could not grant a right to third parties. This means that I cannot use it on Upcoach either. What scares me even more is that even sensitive data I receive from my clients is not protected. Basically, Upcoach could use all the material without me knowing that they are doing it and secondly, I would have no way to stop them. It is not possible to protect my clients' data in this way. I would also not be able to delete this data once it is in the system at the request of my clients. So really? How is a business owner, coach or the like supposed to build a trusting business relationship with these "terms of service" here? This is not how Upcoach is to be used for me. I give 2 stars for this reason because I hope that this will be improved. However, the system deserves 0 stars because no sensible person and owner can accept these "Terms of Service". I have never found such conditions on a platform and really wonder what this is all about. Please Upcoach Team I would like to give the opportunity here for the upcoach team, especially the managing director or owner, to comment on this. If upcoach becomes usable for me, I will gladly increase the star rating, but this is a waste of money.

I popped in here to upgrade my original purchase as I am very happy with the Upcoach software and the support their team provides.

I use the chat box to ask my questions. Responses are not instant but they do come back fairly soon and they are always friendly and helpful. I've had good help from different people there and Burak even made a couple of Loom videos suggesting good ways for me to structure my program).

The weekly calls are late for European time so I watch the recordings and ask my questions though the chatbox. The Q&A calls are so interesting as I can learn from others and see how they are structuring things in their programs. They're also quite fun as the host always keeps things light.

There have been product updates since my original purchase so the software definitely continues to improve. The 'Habits' feature is the reason for me switching from an LMS training software and I'm really looking forward to being able to scale up from one-to-one training/coaching to impactful group programs thanks to the Hbits feature, the community and other features.

Time for my review after 6 months of regular - day-to-day use of Upcoach.

To say it's the best platform in the world is a huge exaggeration.

It does its job to a certain extent, but falls short in many ways. Those things might be a stop show for some people... luckily I've been using upcoach on a small scale project, so no huge situations. However, I would probably not use it for anything larger, where automation and depedability is required.

What I LIKE about upcoach:
- relatively flexible and easy to use
- simplicity of design
- good structure - programs and courses
- ability to edit text, format it in many ways
- embeding HTML - works pretty well, but would rather see more options for native video embedding
- habits function - one of the main things that convinced me to buy... it's pretty good and would miss this should I move to another platform

What doesn't work:
- cannot see exactly where someone is in terms of individual course - which lessons they skipped.. only the % of the whole they've done
- lack of ability to change blocks to one's desire - size, etc - some items are changable, some aren't
- support - keeps coming back with canned responses, no real respect for your true issue.. no real intent to deliver beyond or even within the scope of question
- 3 admins is a joke if you want to run a bigger organisation (canned response expected here from the team, yeah!)
- support - bugs that have been reported months ago still have not been fixed
- support - they will keep asking you to provide a video showing the error, even though you've described it in every possible, minute detail.. and then when you submit the video - nothing will happen with that bug!
- Support- they also pride themselves on offering zoom calls with the owner (their line: noone in the industry does it - hmmm... ok) - but if you live in Europe, these calls are at 11pm, which is definitely not the time most people are willing to go on a zoom call... watching recordings is their solution... but maybe i want to ask questions? Oh well..
- bugs: website freezes on certain actions, such as text editing
- bugs: cannot edit certain elements, where I'd imagine it should be possible
- lack of updates - even though upcoach pride themselves on a huge number of updates, these things are usually not what I need and not as frequent as portrayed.
- lack of updates - the "coming soon" section in their modules has not changed since I joned in August 2022 - so basically for 6 months.. things such as Stripe, menu... not to mention not being able to integrate upcoach with most mailing platforms, only convertkit, which may work for some, but not for most.
- automations - poor selection - only 4 triggers and basically one action - email+ delay.. or add to convertkit (not an option to us), cannot change automation's name, once it's been chosen
- etc - out of available space here...

OVERALL - STRONG 3 TACOS - if things don't go the right way very soon, I will be moving to another platform

Upcoach could be such a perfect solution for coaches and I really wanted to love it, but there are unfortunately several downsides:

- they are potentially selling your content and data
"In addition, when you submit, email, text or deliver or post any material, you are granting us, and anyone authorized by us, a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, copy, modify, transmit, sell, carry-out, create derivative works from, distribute, and/or publicly perform or display such material, in whole or in part, in any manner or medium, now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose."

- it is not possible to delete user, e.g. in many countries you can not use the software in a compliant way

- the platform is buggy

- the support is not really interested in solving problems