Comparison
CoachCheckIns vs TrueCoach
TrueCoach is built for coaches delivering written training to remote clients and reviewing their lifts, while CoachCheckIns is built to catch the client who has stopped doing the training at all.
Comparison
CoachCheckIns vs Trainerize: Check-Ins or Full Platform
CoachCheckIns suits a trainer who already programs somewhere they like and needs the weekly check-in to run itself, while Trainerize suits a coach who wants programming, client app delivery, and messaging under one roof.
The short answer
CoachCheckIns does one job. It sends the weekly check-in, scores adherence, and tells you which clients are drifting before the cancellation note arrives. Trainerize is a full coaching platform, built for coaches who want programming, client app delivery, and day to day communication in one system. If you already have a programming method you trust and your real problem is silence between sessions, the narrow tool wins. If you want a single login for the whole practice and are willing to move everything into it, the platform is the better fit.
CoachCheckIns and Trainerize side by side
| What you are deciding | CoachCheckIns | Trainerize |
|---|---|---|
| What the product is built around | The weekly check-in itself: questions go out on schedule, answers come back scored, drifting clients surface first. | A broad coaching platform where program delivery, client app, and communication sit together. |
| Programming and exercise library | None. You keep building blocks in whatever you use now and link the current program inside the check-in. | Program delivery is central to what the platform covers. |
| Adherence view | Each reply produces a score from sessions completed, protein and step targets hit, sleep, and soreness, tracked week over week. | Progress views are shaped around logged workouts and the platform data clients enter. |
| At-risk detection | A flag fires on a missed check-in, a score falling three weeks running, or a sudden drop in reported sessions. | You read client activity and decide who needs a nudge yourself. |
| What the client does | Answers a short web form on a phone in about ninety seconds, with no download and no password to recover. | Uses a mobile client app for training, logging, and contact with the coach. |
| Time to switch on | Import the roster, pick a question set, set each client send day. An afternoon of work for a full book. | A practice migration: clients, programs, and billing move together, so plan for a proper changeover. |
| Who it suits | One coach or a small team with 10 to 60 clients who lose people to silence, not to bad programming. | Coaches and studios who want the whole client relationship inside one product. |
| Pricing shape | Flat monthly plans by roster size at $29 for Side Hustle, $59 for Full Time, and $129 for Studio. | Priced as a full platform rather than a single workflow. Check their site for current terms. |
Everything in the right hand column describes the general shape and intent of Trainerize as a product category, not a priced feature list. What a product covers moves over time, so verify where it stands today. CoachCheckIns is published by MLJ, SASU and this page is written by Jimenez Julien.
Choose CoachCheckIns when
- If your programs live in a spreadsheet, a PDF builder, or a whiteboard photo you like, add check-ins without moving any of it.
- If clients go quiet in weeks five to eight and you only notice when the card fails, you need the drift flag more than another app.
- If you coach 10 to 60 people and cannot read every message thread on a Sunday night, one scored list beats scrolling.
- If half your clients are in-person and never open a training app, a web form they answer in the parking lot gets replies.
Choose Trainerize when
- If you want programming, client app, and coach messaging under one login, a full platform is the simpler answer.
- If your clients expect their workouts on a phone with video demos and set logging, that is what a delivery platform is for.
- If you are building a studio with several coaches sharing one client base, a broad system carries more of that structure.
What each one assumes about your week
Trainerize assumes the coaching relationship happens inside the product. The client trains from the app, logs the set, and messages you there, so the platform is where you look when you want to know how someone is doing. That works well when every client is remote or hybrid and willing to live in the app.
CoachCheckIns assumes the opposite: your coaching already happens in a dozen places, some of it on a gym floor at 6am, and what you lack is one honest weekly signal per client. The form arrives on the day you set, the answer is scored the moment it lands, and Monday morning gives you a short list of names rather than a full inbox.
Where the two actually overlap
Both give you a place for clients to report how the week went, and both make that reporting repeatable rather than something you remember to ask for. If you are already running a check-in habit inside a platform and clients answer it, adding a second tool is not obviously worth the extra tab.
The overlap ends at what happens with the answers. Our adherence score and at-risk flags exist to rank the roster, so a coach with 40 clients can spend the same fifteen minutes and land it on the six people whose next four weeks are actually in doubt. If ranking the roster is not your problem, the overlap is small enough that you can skip us.
Running both without duplicate work
Plenty of trainers keep a delivery platform for programming and point the weekly check-in at CoachCheckIns. The pattern that works: the check-in link is the last item in the client program note, the check-in asks only what the platform cannot see, and the coach reply goes back through whichever channel the client already reads.
Avoid asking the same question twice. If sessions completed are already logged in your delivery app, ask about the barrier instead: what got in the way, what felt heavy, how sleep and appetite tracked. That is the material that predicts month two and month three, and it is the part no logged set can tell you.
Questions people ask before they choose
Can I keep programming in Trainerize and use CoachCheckIns for check-ins?
Yes, and that is the most common setup we see. Keep the program where the client already trains from and let the weekly check-in run on its own schedule. Put the check-in link at the end of the week in the client program note so answering it becomes part of finishing the week.
Do my clients need another app or login?
No. The check-in opens in a phone browser from a personal link, and the client answers and closes it. For in-person clients who never installed a training app, this is usually the difference between a reply rate you can work with and no answers at all.
What happens to my history if I already ran check-ins elsewhere?
You can bring past answers in as a simple spreadsheet so the adherence trend starts from real history rather than week one. Export your data from CoachCheckIns at any time in the same shape. Nothing about your program library needs to move.
Other comparisons on coachcheckins.com
Comparison
CoachCheckIns vs Google Forms
Google Forms is a genuinely good free form builder and a fine place to start, while CoachCheckIns is what you buy when the sending, chasing, and scoring around that form have become your Sunday.
Test this head to head on your own roster
A comparison table only takes you so far, because the answer turns on how many of your clients train with you in person and how many silent weeks your book can absorb. Give us your roster size and your honest reply rate and we will walk through where the weekly check-in and the at-risk flag would have caught your last three cancellations. Twenty minutes, and nothing about your programming has to move.