By: Eric Leider, CFP Ⓡ, RLP Ⓡ, BFA ™️
July 27, 2023
In this day and age, there are so many apps for self-employed personal trainers to utilize for their business and personal needs.
While we know that being a self-employed personal trainer is all about real human connection, personal touch, and a deep understanding of your clients, it is also true that technology can be a compliment to the noble work that you do.
We’ve previously written about and mentioned a few personal finance fintech apps in our article, “11 Personal Finance Tips For Personal Trainers That Are Self-Employed“. However, it makes sense to go even deeper on this topic for self-employed personal trainers. You deserve it!
With that being said, we thought it would be helpful to highlight and describe the best (and most useful) business & personal finance fintech apps For Self-Employed Personal Trainers.
Key Takeaways:
- Business & personal finance fintech apps for self-employed personal trainers should aim to make your work & life easier, and more efficient, and complement all that you are doing.
- There are SO MANY apps for self-employed personal trainers to choose from. Always do your research and find out what makes sense for your personal preference and business needs.
- With business software & apps for self-employed personal trainers, focus on current business needs, cost, and future growth plans.
- With personal finance apps for self-employed personal trainers, find out what works for you (and your family or partner) and keep it simple. Eventually, grow and evolve with different tools.
- There is no perfect tech stack when it comes to business & personal finance fintech apps for self-employed personal trainers. Have fun and be okay with testing things out over time.
Business Software & Apps For Self-Employed Personal Trainers
There are many different facets of your business that make everything run smoothly. While each self-employed personal trainer is going to prioritize different things over another, we can all agree that there is a need for at least some level of business software or apps.
Below is a long list of the key areas to consider and several options to think about, all within the main category of business software & apps:
Client Communication, Scheduling, or All-In-One
With so many companies niching into certain industries, it is important to see what is out there. Once you survey the different offerings within the fitness niche tools noted below, it may make sense to find someone that actually uses these tools in practice.
None will be perfect all of the time, but there certainly are some great technologies, software, and apps being built. Don’t be afraid to try any of the apps for self-employed personal trainers noted below.
Most Popular
- TrueCoach: This software claims to be the best personal trainer software trusted by over 20,000 personal trainers, coaches, and gym owners worldwide. The “glue-it-together” days of spreadsheets, email, YouTube videos, and text messages are in the past. When your client list grows, you shouldn’t be punished with more hours managing more spreadsheets. You can stop the time-sucking admin tasks that pull you away from your clients and start providing a professional, one-to-one, personalized coaching experience that scales your business. Some of the more prominent businesses that use TrueCoach include Barbell Logic, Power Monkey Fitness, Invictus, and more.
- Mindbody: At its most simple form, Mindbody provides cloud-based online scheduling and other business management software for the wellness industry. In particular for self-employed personal trainers, Mindbody aims at helping you deliver amazing client experiences. One of the key functions that would pertain to self-employed personal trainers includes teaching personal training sessions online. In addition, you can also leverage software that does the marketing for you, a custom app that elevates your brand, free business listing on the world’s largest wellness network, tracking client progress, booking & scheduling clients, and so much more.
- Trainerize: The purpose of Trainerize is to help trainers and fitness businesses reach new clients, build stronger relationships with their existing ones, and promote a healthy lifestyle for everyone. For self-employed personal trainers, they do this with their technology – which has the do-it-all functions of building training programs, tracking client progress, managing client nutrition, in-app payments, engaging your clients, building your brand, and so much more.
Up-And-Coming or Niche
- TotalCoaching: This app touts itself as the best personal trainer software and can help you deliver all of your programs directly to your clients’ iPhones, Android devices, iPad, tablets, and computers.
- PTminder: This all-in-one app allows you to streamline online training, client management, online bookings, and accept payments. In essence, PTminder is a business management platform designed for Personal Trainers. Train your clients online with ease.
- Practice Better: This app and software is the complete nutrition practice management platform for health & wellness professionals. With focuses and features around client management, client accountability, scheduling, and billing, Practice Better does it all.
- The Training Notebook: The complete app for personal trainers – manage client data, create customer workouts, track client progress, and more. All of the tools you need to grow your personal training business.
- GAIN Trainer (GAIN Fitness): At GAIN, they believe that personal trainers are the most effective way to get and stay fit. But, they aren’t always accessible or affordable to everyone. With GAIN, you can use their software & app to scale your expertise, improve client relationships, and drive better results – across a larger client base.
- FitSW: FitSW is a fully integrated app for personal trainers and gyms. We bring together all the tools needed for fitness, health, and wellness professionals to run their businesses. Whether it’s through our suite of tools and features or the content that we provide, we truly care about being there for the community.
- My PT Hub: My PT Hub is an online web and mobile app that enables personal trainers, coaches, and gym owners to manage their clients with ease. You can create workout and nutrition plans tailored to each individual client while tracking their progress and achievements.
Scheduling (primarily)
- Vagaro: Vagaro is your all-in-one business software for the fitness industry. We’ll handle online booking, scheduling, payment processing, marketing, and staff management so you can focus on what matters most to you.
- Calendly: Calendly is the modern scheduling platform that makes “finding time” a breeze. When connecting is easy, your teams can get more done.
- Acuity: Online appointment scheduling software. Clients schedule appointments, pay, and complete intake forms online 24/7.
- Timely: Nurture your business with Timely wellness software. So much more than just beautiful wellness software; Timely will help you manage your business, connect with your peers, and access exclusive education from global industry leaders.
Website Builders & Apps For Self-Employed Personal Trainers
- WordPress: At its core, WordPress is the simplest, most popular way to create your own website or blog. In fact, WordPress powers over 43.3% of all the websites on the Internet. Yes – more than one in four websites that you visit are likely powered by WordPress.
- Webflow: Webflow is a visual content management system that appeals to web designers who want to create and customize websites and have hosting, security, and website performance taken care of. Webflow gives you complete design freedom, whereas WordPress is restricted by templates or coded from scratch
- Carrd: Carrd is a free service for building fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything. Whether it’s a personal profile, a landing page to capture emails, or something a bit more elaborate, Carrd has you covered. Simple, responsive, and yup – totally free.
- GoDaddy: GoDaddy’s website builder, formally called Websites + Marketing, is an online editing and publishing tool that helps you make a responsive website with no technical knowledge required.
- Squarespace: Squarespace provides software as a service for website building and hosting, and allows users to use pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to create and modify webpages.
- Wix: Create your own professional web presence – exactly the way you want with Wix. They provide a world-class platform to over 200 million users worldwide, empowering anyone to express themselves and build their online presence. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, designer, developer, musician, photographer, or restaurant owner, you’ll find specialized features to create a professional website and manage your business.
Email Newsletters, Content, Social Media, & More
Marketing All-In-One & Email Newsletters
- Convertkit: ConvertKit is the go-to marketing hub for creators that helps you grow and monetize your audience with ease.
- Mailchimp: All-in-one marketing automation platform and email marketing service for managing mailing lists and creating email marketing campaigns to send to customers.
- Constant Contact: With Constant Contact, you can create effective email marketing and other online marketing campaigns to meet your business goals.
- Mailerlite: MailerLite is a cloud-based email marketing solution. Key features include campaign reporting, email automation, subscriber list management, and result tracking. The solution helps users to design email campaigns in the form of newsletters.
- Klaviyo: Klaviyo, an email marketing and SMS automation platform automates your email campaigns and integrates SMS, and social advertising to help your business scale.
Social Media
- Buffer: Buffer helps you build an audience organically. They’re a values-driven company that provides affordable, intuitive, marketing tools for ambitious people and teams. People spend, on average, almost 2.5 hours on social media every day. Let them find your brand more easily through Buffer’s four simple steps – analyze, publish, engage, and celebrate.
- Hootsuite: Manage all your customer care channels—SMS, social media, WhatsApp, Live chat, and apps—from one simple platform.
- Hubspot: Spend more time connecting with the people who matter most with time-saving tools that help you prioritize your social interactions.
- Sprout Social: Our all-in-one social media management platform unlocks the full potential of social to transform not just your marketing strategy—but every area of your organization.
Course Creation & Education
- Thinkific: Thinkific is a software platform that enables entrepreneurs to create, market, sell, and deliver their own online courses.
- Teachable: Join the more than 100,000 creators who use Teachable to share their knowledge. Easily create an online course or coaching business with our powerful yet simple all-in-one platform.
- Mighty Networks: Create communities, sell memberships, and grow your course sales. It is all possible on a Mighty Network. You’ll own the community and your members can access it across every platform, under your own brand.
- The Coaching Market: The first community-led, democratized, mainstream E-Learning platform and marketplace for the fitness, health & wellness space. A platform created with the infrastructure and tools to both create content and sell it on the open market to those eager to learn. A platform that offers resources that allow teachers to create a culture, build a company, and monetize from it.
- Passion.io: Online courses reinvented for a mobile-first world. Create communities, courses, challenges & upsell journeys in custom branded apps.
Personal Finance Fintech Apps For Self-Employed Personal Trainers
Personal finance and the needs of your business from a financial perspective should be top-of-mind for you as a self-employed personal trainer.
From personal & business banking, accounting & tax preparation, budgeting, investing, managing debt, financial planning, estate planning & legal, insurance, charitable giving, the behavioral side of money, and even password managers – we cover it all below.
Enjoy!
Business Banking
- Novo: Novo is a powerfully simple business banking platform with no hidden fees built for small business owners. Simplify your business finances with Novo.
- BlueVine: Bluevine’s Business Checking, Bill Pay, and Line of Credit are built for small businesses like yours. Better business banking solutions, made simple.
- Lili: Lili offers a checking account for sole proprietors and single-member LLCs, with no minimum balance requirement, no hidden fees, fee-free ATM withdrawals at 38,000+ locations, mobile check deposits, competitive spending limits, and a Visa Business Debit card with cashback rewards. By combining banking with accounting software and technology to optimize tax liability, Lili is designed to save time, money, and energy for anyone who runs a business on their own.
- Rho: Rho Business Banking is a digital banking service that provides full-service digital banking solutions that integrate with the tools and services used by entrepreneurs in running their businesses.
Accounting, Tax Preparation, & Payments
Bookkeeping & Accounting (primarily)
- Quickbooks: All things accounting in one place for small businesses. Easily manage your money, track time on any device, and get paid anywhere with QuickBooks. From simple income and expense tracking to powerful cash flow management and reporting, QuickBooks keeps your finances organized and in view.
- Xero: Xero is a powerful online accounting software solution. Run things smoothly, keep records tidy, and make compliance a breeze. Automate tasks like invoicing and reporting, get a full financial picture of your business, and make end-of-year tax returns easy.
- Wave Accounting: Tax season doesn’t have to suck with Wave Accounting. This tool helps you track your income and expenses – painlessly. When everything is neatly where it belongs, tax time is simple. Wave’s smart dashboard organizes your income, expenses, payments, and invoices.
- Freshbooks: Accounting software for self-employed professionals. With every dollar accounted for, you’ll always know where your business stands. Business health and financial reports in FreshBooks show your profitability, cash flow, and where your money is going.
- Zoho Books: Zoho Books is online accounting software that manages your finances, automates business workflows, and helps you work collectively across departments.
- Bench: From bookkeeping to tax filing, Bench is the all-in-one financial toolkit your business can count on. A year-end package with everything you need to file comes standard with Bench. Upgrade your plan, and cross even more off your to-do list. With Premium, you get expert tax prep, filing, and year-round tax advisory support.
- inDinero: Outsourced accounting for every sized business. From real-time inventory management to cash or accrual basis accounting, online bookkeeping services simplify the financial challenges of a business to accelerate growth, transparency, and tax mitigation.
Tax Preparation & Filing
- TurboTax: Most people are familiar with TurboTax, which is the #1 best-selling tax preparation software to file your taxes online.
- TaxFyle: Trusted by over 40,000 people, Taxfyle is an on-demand tax filing app that connects you to a tax professional within minutes. We’re here to make filing taxes easy, efficient, and more affordable for you.
- TaxSlayer: TaxSlayer is a cloud-based DIY tax preparation software that includes all the forms, calculations, and resources you need to file your federal and state taxes electronically with the IRS.
Payments
- Square: Flexible business solutions and tools that connect every side of your business. Several solutions for your business around commerce, customers, banking, staff, and more. For self-employed personal trainers and other service-based businesses, Square can help you get paid faster, deliver a better client experience, improve cash flow, and streamline workflows.
- PayPal: Manage your business onsite or on the go with the PayPal Zettle POS solution. Track sales, manage staff, monitor inventory, and more.
- Shopify: Create an eCommerce website backed by powerful tools that help you find customers, drive sales, and manage your day-to-day.
Cash Flow Management, Budgeting, & More Apps For Self-Employed Personal Trainers
Most Popular
- Mint: Take charge of your finances with Mint’s online budget planner. Their free budget tracker helps you understand your spending for a brighter financial future. Get a full view so you know where to save. Track spending, detect fraud and keep tabs on rising subscription costs. Mintsights™ automatically helps find savings you missed, so you can make your money go further without breaking a sweat. Improve your spending habits with custom goals that keep you going. Save for a home, conquer debt, and prepare for the future.
- YNAB (You Need A Budget): YNAB (pronounced Why-nab) is a multi-platform personal budgeting app based on the envelope method. Today, YNAB is driven by a small (but growing!), passionate team. We are building the best budgeting software out there. We hear reports every day of lives being changed: debt paid off, marriages saved, opportunities seized, stress eliminated and sleep rediscovered! When you gain control of your money, you gain control of your life and it feels great.
- Tiller Money: Tiller is the only automated personal finance service for Google Sheets and Excel. Connect your banks to your spreadsheets and gain powerful insights about your money. This is a gamechanger for anyone that already loves living in spreadsheets. If you want flexibility in managing your cash flow and budgeting needs, Tiller Money is a great option.
- Truebill: Truebill is the easiest way to find subscriptions, manage bills, and even cancel recurring charges with a single click.
As a self-employed personal trainer, it is important that your budget and cash flow management reflect the values and priorities that you have – likely in support of a healthy & balanced lifestyle. The apps noted above can help!
Less Known, But Still Exceptional
- Monarch Money: Monarch helps you know where your money is going. It tracks how you’re spending every dollar, identifies unwanted subscriptions, and discovers trends in your spending to figure out how to improve.
- Zeta Money Manager: A free budgeting app designed for couples. Zeta helps you stay on top of your finances together, making money talks easier than ever.
- Copilot Money: Do money better with Copilot. Finally, an app that puts you in the driver’s seat. Copilot Money integrates with your banks and favorite services, helping you track your spending & boost your savings. Copilot’s smart monitoring lets you know when something needs your attention with alerts that actually help you.
- Wally: Wally aims to help you reach your goals faster by centralizing all your accounts so you can learn, manage, and improve your finances.
- Spendee: Manage all your money with ease from one place with Spendee. Track your income and expenses, analyze your financial habits and stick to your budgets.
- PocketGuard: PocketGuard makes it easy to take control of your money, optimize your spending and grow your savings automatically. This app categorizes and organizes your expenses, monthly bills, and subscriptions into clear, beautiful tabs and graphs, so you will always be on top of your finances.
- Goodbudget: Goodbudget is a budget tracker for the modern age. Say no more to carrying paper envelopes. This virtual budget program keeps you on track with family and friends with the time-tested envelope budgeting method.
- Honeydue: Honeydue is the simplest way for couples to manage money, together.
Investing
Newer Age or DIY
- Public: Public is an investing platform that helps people be better investors. Join our investor community to discuss and trade stocks, ETFs, and crypto.
- Stash: Stash is a personal finance app that can help anyone improve their financial life. From budgeting to saving for retirement, Stash unites banking, investing, and advice all in one app that helps over 6 million reach their financial goals–all for one low monthly price.
- Digit: Digit budgets, saves, and invests for you. Our mission is to make financial health effortless, so we designed a smart bank account that constantly guides your money in the right direction. Digit plans for today, tomorrow, and way, way later by making spending, bills, savings, and investments all work together.
- M1 Finance: M1 touts itself as “The Finance Super App®️” and aims to help you manage your money with ease. Invest, borrow, and spend on one intuitive platform. Customize your strategies, automate the big picture, and let The Finance Super App®️ take care of the day-to-day—commission-free.
Financial Planning, Robo Advisors & Full-Service (with fintech-tilt)
- Facet: Facet is a financial technology company that provides personalized and accessible financial planning services. Through their platform, they connect clients with dedicated certified financial planners, making financial expertise more attainable and convenient. Facet offers tailored advice and solutions to help individuals and families achieve their financial goals, encompassing areas such as investment strategies, retirement planning, tax optimization, and more. By leveraging technology and human expertise, they aim to democratize financial planning, ensuring that clients receive high-quality, comprehensive financial guidance without the traditional barriers of cost and complexity.
- Betterment: Betterment can help grow your money by making saving and investing easy. Invest in a tailored portfolio, set buckets for your goals, and earn rewards.
- Wealthfront: Expand your investing with a diversified portfolio, customized with all the things you care about. We’ll automate it to help maximize your returns and minimize your taxes.
- Acorns: Acorns helps you save & invest. Invest spare change, bank smarter, add Bits of Bitcoin to your ETF portfolio, and more.
- Personal Capital: We don’t believe in a “one size fits all” portfolio. Our approach is tailored to you and your goals. Together, we’ll create a plan that’s based on your preferences, and what stage you are in your life.
Niche or Specialized
- EarlyBird: Invest in the children that you love – Introducing the simplest way for parents, family, and friends to collectively invest in a child’s financial future. EarlyBird is an UGMA account. Unlike a 529, which must be used for qualified educational expenses, UGMA accounts allow families to use funds for anything that benefits the child.
- Capitalize: Capitalize is the only retirement savings platform that makes sure your money moves to the best place for you. We’ll manage your entire rollover from start to finish, then help you track and adjust your retirement plan for life.
Outside of actually investing money in the market, we always encourage self-employed personal trainers to make sure that they are also investing in themselves. By investing in yourself, you will provide momentum in your life & business, leading to success on all fronts.
Managing Debt & Credit
- Tally: Tally has saved people millions of dollars on credit card interest and late fees since 2015. Every day, their team (and app) are focused on empowering you to break free from debt so you can focus on what truly matters in life.
- Credit Karma: Credit Karma offers free credit scores, reports, and insights. Get the info you need to take control of your credit.
Financial Planning, Goal-Related, FIRE, or Retirement
- Facet: Facet is a financial technology company that provides personalized and accessible financial planning services. Through their platform, they connect clients with dedicated certified financial planners, making financial expertise more attainable and convenient. Facet offers tailored advice and solutions to help individuals and families achieve their financial goals, encompassing areas such as investment strategies, retirement planning, tax optimization, and more. By leveraging technology and human expertise, they aim to democratize financial planning, ensuring that clients receive high-quality, comprehensive financial guidance without the traditional barriers of cost and complexity.
- Personal Capital: Personal Capital’s robust financial planning and retirement planner tools allow you to get deep insights into your goals, success rates, and more. You have the ability to run different scenarios, add multiple income events, plot out ongoing & large expenses, and ultimately see how you’ll be able to achieve the success that you want (with any goal – from retirement to paying for college).
- Monarch Money: Monarch is the modern way to manage your money, serving as an all-in-one platform that brings together everything you need to optimize your finances. With Monarch, you can create a financial plan in minutes. Forecast your cash flow monthly and annually to know where you’re headed. Monarch will notify you if you get off track so you can make adjustments.
- ChroniFI: ChroniFI aims to show you your financial plan and personal finances in terms of time. The ethos and mission of ChroniFI is to help plot your course to financial independence and build a happy life you don’t have to escape along the way.
- Maybe: While not fully live yet, Maybe is shaking things up and has a modern and very tech-forward approach to financial planning & investment management. Maybe isn’t a budgeting tool or a simple stock tracker. It’s the entire view of your finances and investments … the 30,000 foot view that helps you understand where you’ve been and where you’re going.
Estate Planning, Business, & Legal
- Trust & Will: Estate planning with Trust & Will is the easiest way to create, edit, store, and share your Trust or Will legal documents. The mission of Trust & Will is aimed at securing families, legacies, and loved ones with plans for everyone.
- LegalZoom: LegalZoom is an online legal technology company that helps its customers create legal documents without necessarily having to hire a lawyer. Available documents include wills and living trusts, business formation documents, copyright registrations, and trademark applications.
- Rocket Lawyer: Rocke Lawyer provides individuals and small to medium-sized businesses with online legal services—including incorporation, estate plans, and legal document review.
Insurance
- Lemonade: Insurance built for the 21st century, providing term life insurance, renter’s insurance, homeowner’s insurance, car & auto insurance, and pet insurance.
- Policy Genius: Policy Genius provides free quotes tailored to your needs with support from licensed agents, helping you get insurance coverage fast so you can get on with life. With Policy Genius, you can find coverage for life insurance, homeowner’s insurance, car & auto insurance, disability insurance, renter’s insurance, pet insurance, health insurance, long-term-care insurance, and more.
- Bestow: Strictly providing and offering Term Life Insurance, Bestow uses data to remove doctor visits and paperwork of traditional life insurance, offering you an affordable plan without the hassle.
- Olive: Olive is an extended car warranty company. At olive.com, we protect your vehicle and your wallet against expensive auto repair bills! Our goal is to be transparent with potential buyers, while providing you with valuable information, and never rushing your purchasing decision. By providing affordable vehicle repair plans that can be purchased and managed 100% online, olive.com helps customers adventure with confidence.
- Ladder: Affordable, 100% digital term life insurance from $100k to $3 million with the ability to adjust your coverage as life changes.
Giving, Charitable, & Tithing
- Daffy: Daffy is a not-for-profit community of members who have the commitment to put money aside for those less fortunate than themselves.
- Overflow: Overflow is designed to be a simple and efficient way to donate stock to your favorite nonprofits. Its user-friendly platform provides donors and nonprofits with greater autonomy in how they give and receive stock donations. Overflow is in many ways complementary to a Donor-Advised Fund.
- Givelify: Givelify is the leader in mobile and online giving for Churches and Non-profits. Collect donations with the best-rated giving app, websites, and QR codes.
Behavioral, Emotional, & Psychological
Values & “What Is Most Important To You?” Frameworks
- George Kinder’s Life Planning website, exercises, & resources:
- Think2Perform’s Values Exercise: Living in alignment is about matching your “real” behaviors with your “ideal values.” Living out of alignment is a source of stress, dissatisfaction, and poor decision-making. An exercise like this, through Values Cards, provides an interactive way to define what you value most and set the stage for behaviors and performance more closely aligned with your ideal self.
Money & Other Personality Assessments
- Zeta’s Money Personality Quiz: Your Money Personalities have a lot more to do with values than it does with who keeps the tightest budgeting spreadsheets. By understanding your money personalities, it may be able to help you both understand each other’s money stories and ultimately open the doors for better communication.
- Myers-Briggs Financial Personality Quiz: Created in collaboration with The Myers-Briggs Company, this assessment is designed to uncover your financial personality based on your financial habits. It could also help you uncover the strengths and challenges you may face when it comes to managing your money.
- MoneyMind® Assessment: MoneyMind® helps you understand how you think and feel about money. The way you think and feel about money affects the financial decisions you make every day. When you understand what your money means to you, you can make clear, smart choices about your financial life.
- The Enneagram: According to Ian Cron, “the Enneagram is a personality typing system identifying nine types of people and how they relate to one another and the world.” Understanding your personal relationship with money could lead to a more fulfilling and less stressful life. Have you ever thought about what exactly drives your money-related actions, feelings, or thoughts? The Enneagram will help you find out. Here are several Enneagram assessments to look into:
Password Managers
- LastPass: LastPass is a secure password manager that stores all of your usernames and passwords in one safe place. Your vault is your central hub of all stored data. After you save a password to your Vault, LastPass always remembers it for you.
- 1Password: 1Password is a password manager developed by AgileBits Inc. It provides a place for users to store various passwords, software licenses, and other sensitive information in a virtual vault.
- Dashlane: Dashlane is an app that lets access and shares business and personal passwords anytime, anywhere.
We know there is a lot to digest here!
Take it one step at a time when it comes to apps for self-employed personal trainers.
Remember, there’s no perfect tech stack.
Thank you for reading this long and in-depth listing of business & personal finance fintech apps for self-employed personal trainers. In summary, our goal was not to overwhelm. Instead, we hope to provide a summary of the endless options that technology can open up for your personal and business life.
Feel free to contact us with any questions.
Additional Reads & Resources:
For additional resources, you can always visit The MVMT Life Planning Blog, The Human Potential Podcast, and the Life Planning For Personal Trainers podcast.