Coaching Stats
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The stack tax

A typical fragmented coaching stack costs $539–$600+ a month, which is $6,500 to $7,200 a year before a single session is delivered. Most coaches have never added it up.

  • Calendly ProPurposeScheduling and bookingMonthly$12
  • Zoom ProPurposeVideo sessionsMonthly$14.99
  • StripePurposePayment processingMonthly~$150 (~3%)
  • Kit (ConvertKit)PurposeEmail marketingMonthly$25–$79
  • DocuSignPurposeContracts and e-signaturesMonthly$25
  • Google WorkspacePurposeEmail, storage, documentsMonthly$12
  • NotionPurposeClient notes and CRMMonthly$10
  • LoomPurposeAsync videoMonthly$12.50
  • Canva ProPurposeContent designMonthly$13
  • Later or BufferPurposeSocial schedulingMonthly$18–$25
  • KajabiPurposeCourse and programme hostingMonthly$149
  • SkoolPurposeCommunityMonthly$99
  • TotalBefore a single session is deliveredPurpose12 separate subscriptionsMonthly$539–$600+

Est · Estimate

The cost that is not on the invoice

The subscription total is the visible half. The other half is coordination: copying client data between systems, tracking which contracts are unsigned, chasing unpaid invoices, re-entering session notes in a second place.

Coaches on multi-tool stacks report spending 6–10 hrs more per week on administration than coaches on integrated systems. At a $150 session rate, ten recovered hours a week is worth considerably more than the entire stack costs.

Our publisher makes an integrated coaching platform, so treat the framing of that second paragraph with appropriate suspicion. The underlying hours figure is the report’s, not ours, and it is a practitioner estimate rather than a measured study.

What to actually do with this

Add up what you pay now. Most coaches are surprised by the total, and about a third of the list is usually something bought for one project and never cancelled.

Then count the tools that hold client data. Every one of those is a place a record can go stale, and the coordination cost scales with that count rather than with the price.

Consolidating is not automatically right. A specialist tool you use daily earns its line item. A specialist tool you use monthly, which also duplicates something else you pay for, does not.

Elsewhere