CoachBase vs SimplePractice: what happens when therapy software meets a coaching practice
SimplePractice is one of the most popular practice management platforms in health and wellness. Over 250,000 practitioners use it. The interface is polished, the mobile apps are well-reviewed, and the platform has been around since 2012. It's stable, mature software with real infrastructure behind it.
But SimplePractice was built for therapists. The features, the terminology, the templates, the integrations — all of it assumes you're running a clinical mental health practice. Insurance billing. Diagnosis codes. SOAP notes. Treatment plans tied to DSM criteria.
Coaches use SimplePractice. Some make it work. But using it means paying for clinical infrastructure you'll never touch and working around a system that doesn't speak your language.
CoachBase was built for coaches from the start. No clinical baggage. No insurance billing you won't use. Just the tools a coaching practice actually needs: scheduling, payments, session notes, goal tracking, client timelines, and AI-powered session summaries.
This comparison covers what each platform does, where they differ, and who each one actually fits.
What SimplePractice does well
Before getting into the mismatch, SimplePractice deserves real credit for what it gets right.
The interface is genuinely good. Across review sites, this comes up first and most often. The platform looks modern, feels responsive, and doesn't require a week of training. Most practitioners are comfortable within a day or two. In a category full of software that looks like it was designed in 2008, SimplePractice stands out.
The mobile apps are strong. Both the practitioner and client apps carry 4.7+ star ratings. You can manage your schedule, review notes, message clients, and handle billing from your phone. For coaches who work from multiple locations or don't want to be chained to a laptop, that flexibility matters.
The documentation system is thorough. Notes are tied to individual appointments — not just dumped into a freeform text box on a client profile. You can build templates, load the previous session's note to maintain continuity, and mark notes as private or shared. The structure is there, even if the default formats are clinical.
Intake forms handle complexity well. Conditional logic, e-signatures, automated delivery during onboarding. If you have a detailed intake process, SimplePractice manages it without needing a separate form tool.
Scheduling works the way you'd expect. Booking pages, calendar sync with Google, Apple, and Outlook, automated reminders (including SMS), recurring appointments, group sessions, timezone detection. Solid execution on the fundamentals.
And the platform is mature. Twelve years in market. A quarter million practitioners. Real backing, real infrastructure. It's not a startup that might fold next year. For practitioners who've been burned by smaller tools shutting down — Practice, for instance — that stability carries weight.
Where SimplePractice stops short for coaches
SimplePractice's core problem for coaches isn't that it's bad software. It's excellent software built for a different profession. The mismatch shows up everywhere once you start using it.
You're paying for a therapy practice you don't run
SimplePractice includes insurance claim submission, diagnosis code integration, treatment plan builders with over 1,000 pre-written clinical goals tied to DSM diagnoses, ePrescribe functionality, HIPAA-compliant faxing, and a therapist directory listing.
None of this applies to coaching. You don't file insurance claims. You don't assign diagnoses. You don't write prescriptions.
But you're paying for all of it. The platform's pricing reflects the cost of maintaining clinical compliance infrastructure that coaches never touch. On the Essential plan at $69/month, a meaningful portion of what you're subsidizing — insurance billing, claims management, clinical treatment planners — sits unused in your account.
It's like renting a commercial kitchen because you need a good stove. The stove works fine. But you're also covering the walk-in freezer, the fire suppression system, and the health inspection certifications you'll never need.
The terminology works against you
SimplePractice calls session documentation "progress notes." Note templates default to SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan), DAP, and BIRP — clinical documentation formats designed for medical records.
You can create custom templates. But you're building them from scratch inside a system where every default assumes you're a therapist. The help articles reference clinical workflows. The template library is clinical. The knowledge base speaks a different professional language.
This isn't cosmetic. When the software's mental model doesn't match your work, you spend cognitive energy translating. "Progress notes" aren't what coaches write. Coaches write session notes — what happened, what the client committed to, where to pick up next time. The framing shapes the tool. And this tool was framed for someone else.
No goal tracking
This is where the gap matters most.
Coaching is forward motion toward something specific. A client hires you to help them get somewhere. That requires tracking goals, marking milestones, seeing progress.
SimplePractice has "measurement-based care" — which sounds related but isn't. It's clinical outcome measurement: standardized depression or anxiety scales administered before appointments, scored automatically, graphed over time. Designed for tracking symptoms, not coaching goals like "launch my consulting business by Q3" or "improve my leadership presence."
There's no way to set a goal with a client, track progress toward it, mark it as achieved, or look back at what you've accomplished together over six months.
When a client asks "what have we actually achieved since we started?", you're reconstructing the answer from memory or scrolling through months of clinical-format notes trying to piece it together.
CoachBase has goal tracking built in. Set goals, track progress, mark achievements, see the full history in context with session notes and payments. The platform assumes your clients are working toward something — because they are.
The client portal costs extra
SimplePractice's client portal — where clients book sessions, view invoices, complete intake forms, and send you messages — is only available on the Essential plan ($69/month) and above.
On the Starter plan ($49/month), your clients get no portal. No self-service booking. No secure messaging. You're back to emails and manual scheduling for everything.
For coaches, the client portal can make a meaningful difference between self-service and running everything through your inbox. CoachBase's client portal is still on the roadmap.
Video quality has become a real issue
SimplePractice includes built-in telehealth on Essential and Plus plans. On paper, that's a strength — no need for a separate Zoom account.
In practice, users have reported declining video quality since 2024. Connection drops, audio static, clients getting disconnected mid-session. One long-time user on Capterra noted that clients "make jokes about how unreliable the telehealth features are."
Many practitioners have switched to using Zoom alongside SimplePractice anyway, which defeats the point of built-in video. You end up paying for telehealth infrastructure inside SimplePractice while conducting sessions somewhere else.
CoachBase includes built-in video on every plan (up to 60 minutes on Solo, unlimited on Pro and Practice). Pro and Practice add AI summaries without leaving the platform.
AI notes cost $35/month extra
SimplePractice offers an AI Note Taker that transcribes sessions and generates draft notes. The technology works. Users report real time savings.
But it costs $35/month on top of your plan price. On the Essential plan, that puts you at $104/month before transaction fees. And the AI generates notes in clinical formats — SOAP, DAP, BIRP — designed for therapy documentation, not coaching session summaries.
CoachBase Pro is $59/month with AI session notes included. No add-on. The summaries are designed for coaching conversations: key themes, client commitments, action items, suggested focus for the next session.
What changes when software fits your profession
Here's what a typical session looks like on SimplePractice as a coach:
You open the platform before a session. You find your client's profile, scroll past the insurance and billing sections you don't use, and try to locate last session's notes. They're in the progress notes feed — formatted in whatever clinical template you customized months ago. You scan them, open Zoom in another tab because the built-in video has been unreliable, and start the session.
Afterward, you type up notes manually in SOAP-adjacent format. You try to remember what the client committed to doing. There's no goal tracker to update, so you add a line about it at the bottom of your notes and hope you remember to check next time. Total post-session time: 15-20 minutes.
On CoachBase Pro, the same session looks different. You pull up the client. Their full timeline is right there — last session's notes, active goals, payment history, everything in one view. You click "Join Call" from the platform. Session happens. AI generates the summary afterward — key themes, commitments, action items. You review it, update the client's goals, and move on. Post-session time: maybe three minutes.
Over a week of 15 sessions, that difference adds up to hours. Over a month, it's a full working day you get back.
Feature-by-feature comparison
Scheduling
Both platforms handle scheduling well. Booking pages, calendar sync, reminders, recurring appointments, group sessions. SimplePractice offers SMS reminders (at $0.04 per text). Functionally comparable.
Payments and invoicing
Both use Stripe. Both handle packages, recurring billing, and automated receipts. SimplePractice charges 2.95% + $0.30 per transaction. CoachBase charges Stripe's standard processing rates plus a 1% platform fee. SimplePractice also includes insurance billing — critical for therapists, irrelevant for coaches.
Client management
SimplePractice has client profiles with contact info, tags, session history, and billing records. CoachBase adds a full client timeline — every session, note, payment, and goal in a single view. CoachBase goes further here.
Session notes
Both tie notes to individual sessions. SimplePractice defaults to clinical formats (SOAP, DAP, BIRP) that coaches need to work around. CoachBase's notes are built for coaching: searchable, pinnable, with a timeline view across the full relationship.
Goal tracking
SimplePractice: none for coaching purposes. Measurement-based care tracks clinical symptoms, not coaching goals. CoachBase: built in. Not a close comparison.
Video
SimplePractice: built-in telehealth on Essential and Plus plans, but widely reported quality problems. Not available on Starter. CoachBase: built-in video on every plan, with AI summaries on Pro and Practice.
AI features
SimplePractice: $35/month add-on generating clinical-format notes. CoachBase Pro: included in the base price, designed for coaching conversations.
Integrations
SimplePractice: Google, Apple, and Outlook calendars, Zoom, Stripe, Zapier, plus clinical integrations (insurance clearinghouse, ePrescribe, Wiley Treatment Planners). CoachBase: Google Calendar, Stripe, and Zapier/webhooks. Zoom integration is coming soon.
Pricing
SimplePractice Starter: $49/month (no portal, no telehealth). Essential: $69/month. Plus: $99/month. AI add-on: $35/month extra.
CoachBase Solo: $39/month (includes video, session notes, and unlimited custom fields). Pro: $59/month (adds AI session notes and automation).
At the Essential + AI tier, SimplePractice runs $104/month. CoachBase Pro is $59/month and includes everything — plus it skips the clinical features coaches don't use.
Who should choose which
Choose SimplePractice if you're a therapist or licensed clinician who also does some coaching on the side. If you need insurance billing, clinical documentation formats, HIPAA-level compliance for regulatory reasons, or a therapist directory listing, SimplePractice was built for exactly that. The platform is mature, the mobile apps are excellent, and the clinical infrastructure is thorough. If you're already embedded in the SimplePractice ecosystem and your coaching work is secondary to clinical practice, staying put makes sense.
Choose CoachBase if coaching is your primary work — financial, executive, wellness, life, or business coaching. If you want software that speaks your professional language instead of therapy terminology. If you need goal tracking, client progress timelines, and AI session notes without a $35/month add-on. If you don't want to pay for insurance billing, diagnosis codes, and clinical infrastructure that sits untouched in your account.
There's also a middle ground worth acknowledging. Some wellness and health coaches work in spaces where HIPAA compliance matters and clinical-adjacent documentation is genuinely useful. If that's you, SimplePractice's compliance infrastructure has real value. But for the majority of coaches — the ones helping clients build businesses, lead teams, find direction, or restructure their lives — the clinical layer is overhead, not protection.
The honest answer: SimplePractice is the better tool for therapists. CoachBase is the better tool for coaches. They serve different professions. Choosing the one built for yours saves time, money, and daily friction.
The bottom line
SimplePractice is excellent software. For therapists, it's one of the strongest options on the market — polished, mature, comprehensive.
But coaching isn't therapy. The workflows differ. The documentation differs. The goals differ. Using SimplePractice for coaching means working around clinical features, customizing templates designed for someone else, and subsidizing infrastructure you don't need.
CoachBase was built for coaches from day one. Session notes that match how coaches actually document. Goal tracking that reflects what coaching produces. AI summaries built for coaching conversations. No clinical overhead.
The right tool is the one designed for the work you actually do.