upcoach Reviews

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 :).

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.