CoachUp

What is CoachUp?

CoachUp connects athletes with private coaches in pretty much any sport. In addition to creating the forum where coaches can advertise their services, the site covers coaches (and kids booking through them) with $1 million liability insurance policy.

How it works

Coaches apply, providing information about themselves and where they have coached before. Assuming you’re accepted to the platform, you’ll decide what sports to coach. And, you’ll create a profile, highlighting factors you think clients would want to see — i.e. you’ve coached people who are now professionals; or you coach high school students, etc.

You set your own rates and handle your own schedule.

Once signed up, the site shows potential clients your profile and they determine whether to contact you based on your rates and experience, as noted in your profile.

CoachUp review

CoachUp is a well-established site to list your coaching services in virtually any sport (except, notably, pickleball).

Although the site asks for your coaching experience and expects you to fill out an “application,” it appears that the site only has two restrictions on signing up to coach here. You must be a U.S. or Canadian citizen; and you can’t be an NCAA athlete because of NCAA restrictions.

Otherwise, you’re on the honor system when it comes to determining what you can coach. However, the site will assign you a “tier,” which appears to be CoachUp’s main quality-control system for coaches.

Tiers reflect how responsive you are to client inquiries; how likely your clients are to hire you again; ratings your clients have given you; the number of sessions you’ve booked through the platform in the past two months; and how likely clients are to book you, when they’ve reached out with a question.

So, if you’re not a good coach, your tier level is likely to fall, which indicates to prospective customers that you might not be their ideal coach.

Although everybody is going to start at a low tier, the concept is solid for causing the best coaches to rise to the top.

The site handles your client outreach and billing and pays pretty promptly — within a week — which is all attractive.

Costs

The bad part is how much CoachUp charges. The site hits each new client (the person you’re coaching) with a $25 “placement” fee.

In addition, coaches pay a $30 registration fee (which pays for the coach’s background check), $10 monthly, plus commissions on each gig they book. The commission schedule is graduated, with those who have earned the least money paying the highest commissions.

Specifically, on the first session booked with any individual athlete, you take home just 57% of the gross. The site takes the rest. However, the CoachUp commission drops with each subsequent booking with that same athlete.

The second session with the same athlete, you get 72% — the site takes the other 28%; the third session, you get 82% (the site takes 18%); the fourth session, you get 87%; the fifth and subsequent sessions with that same athlete, you get 94%. The site only takes 6% at that point.

After five sessions, the site takes just 6% of the booking amount.

CoachUp Pro

You can also choose to join “CoachUp Pro.” With CoachUp pro, you pay $30 a month (instead of $10). But, the site builds you a personalized website and drops the site’s commission to just 6% on all clients.

If you coach regularly on this site, the Pro option seems like a smart choice.

Pay

Coaches are paid by direct deposit within a week following a coaching session.

Recommendations

If you’re confident of repeat business, this site’s fees drop into a reasonable range pretty quickly. In fact, after the fourth lesson, the fees charged by this site are among the lowest in the industry. You can also mark up your service to make up for the CoachUp commissions.

However, you may also list your coaching services with Athletes Untapped and TeachMeTo or with tutoring giant Wyzant. Wyzant charges no upfront fees and just 25% of every tutoring sessions.

What their coaches say (from Yelp):

I’ve received over 50 new clients via Coachup over the past 3 years and they handle all promotion, payments, and background checks. I have the ability to set my own rates and accept/decline any clients requesting my services. This is really a great service for any private coach who enjoys 1 on 1 training or group training.

From Indeed

CoachUP does the marketing and handling of the finance, but the coach responds, schedules and works out with the player. Once the workout is completed, the coach completes it online and CoachUp pays you within a few days. So, the coach just needs to find a gym and establish their workout days and times. If you do a good job and the parents give you a good star rating, then you move up in the coaching ranking. The goal is to get to the top, so that you are the first coach they see.

One of the better companies for coaches to offer their services through. They take a good chunk of your fees, but they do handle the payment, provide liability insurance and allow you to edit your information on their site as you see fit. They require background checks. Some of the newer private coaching sites are not doing that yet.

From the Better Business Bureau:

Coachup does not understand what their own policies are. They falsely accused me of manipulating their system to get a higher percentage of a coaching session. And blamed me for offering an incentive that they have on their website. Their program allows people to invite new clients into Coachup so that you would have more clients for sessions. As an incentive, it clearly states that Coachup allows the client’s initiation fee to be waived. It also gives the coach a higher percentage from their session fee, provided that the new client signs up with them. That is what happened. I recruited a new client and she signed up. Coachup proceeded to restrict my account, without notifying me. According to Coachup, I violated their terms of agreement.

I am a sports coach in Baltimore, MD. and use CoachUp as a registration platform to collect payments from parents. As long as my event was private (not publicly listed via their website) and parents registered via my direct link, I was told they’d only take 3%. When I… received my payout, it was short $306, because they did not stay true to the 3% that was promised.

Staff are all incredibly rude and unorganized. Their pricing is ridiculous for essentially being a third party messenger platform.

Updated 8/10/2024