Platform Comparison
Commission platforms take 20% of every lesson. Here's what the flat-fee alternatives actually cost and what they include.
If you're an independent golf, tennis, or softball coach doing consistent volume, the commission model is quietly one of your biggest expenses. At 20%, a coach earning $3,000/month in lessons hands $600 to the platform every month — before Stripe fees, before taxes. That's $7,200 a year for booking infrastructure that costs a fraction of that to provide.
The commission is easy to ignore because it never shows up as a line item. You just receive less than you charged. But the math is straightforward, and so is the alternative: a flat monthly fee that doesn't scale with your earnings.
Here's a factual look at which platforms charge commissions, what the commission-free alternatives actually include, and where the partial solutions fall short.
TeachMe.to's CEO confirmed a 20% commission rate in a TechCrunch interview. The platform provides coach discovery, booking, and payment processing. For a coach doing $3,000/month, that's $600/month — $7,200/year — going to the platform on revenue you already earned.
CoachUp operates on the same 20% model as TeachMe.to. It offers marketplace visibility and handles payments, but the commission structure means your effective rate stays at 20% regardless of your tenure on the platform or how many students you bring yourself.
MINDBODY's base subscription starts around $139/month for the Starter plan and scales significantly from there. Their Promote marketplace layer adds additional fees on top of the subscription. The total cost for an active coach with marketplace exposure can exceed $400/month before accounting for processing fees.
These platforms charge a flat subscription. What you earn stays yours minus Stripe's standard processing fee (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, which most coaches pass to students at booking).
Built specifically for independent sports coaches. Includes a branded booking site at your own subdomain, direct Stripe payouts (CoachCore never touches the money), lesson package management, student messaging, Google Calendar sync, and parent/child account support for youth coaching. No marketplace — you bring your own students. The only all-in-one flat-fee platform designed for sports coaching specifically.
Handles scheduling well and integrates with payment processors, but has no coaching-specific features — no packages, no student management, no lesson history, no parent accounts. Good for a coach who just needs a booking link and can handle payments separately. Becomes a patchwork of integrations at scale.
More feature-rich than Calendly with better package and voucher support. Still a general-purpose scheduling tool — no student portal, no coaching-specific workflows, no built-in student messaging. Works best as part of a larger stack rather than a standalone coaching platform.
Strong payment processing and a decent booking interface, but designed for service businesses broadly (salons, fitness studios). No student management, no lesson packages per se, no parent accounts. Square's processing fees apply to every transaction. Better than cash and Venmo, but not built for coaching.
Calendly, Acuity, and Square Appointments are all solid tools. They solve the scheduling problem reasonably well. But independent sports coaching has specific operational requirements that general-purpose tools weren't designed for:
Piecing that together from Calendly + Stripe + a CRM + a messaging app is doable, but it's a cobbled-together stack that breaks in unexpected ways. CoachCore is the only platform in this list that was purpose-built for independent sports coaches and handles all of it under one flat subscription.
It's worth being direct about the trade-off: CoachCore is not a marketplace. There's no coach directory, no discovery algorithm, and no platform traffic sending new students your way. If you're still building your client base and relying on marketplace visibility, a commission platform's discovery network has real value.
CoachCore is built for coaches who already have students and want to stop paying a percentage on every transaction. If that's you, see the full cost breakdown to see what the switch is worth at your revenue level.
Stop paying commission on lessons you already earned
First 100 founding coaches lock in $59/month for life. No setup fee, no commission, no commitment.