Do Your Athletes Need to Pay for Training Software?

You’ve found a training platform you love. The programming tools are solid, the exercise library is comprehensive, and you’re ready to onboard your first athletes.

Then you hit the pricing page and realize: your athletes have to pay too.

Per-seat licensing. Client subscription fees. Charges that make your $30/month coaching software actually cost $200/month once you’ve got 10 athletes on the platform.

This isn’t an edge case. It’s the standard model for most coaching software. And it’s a problem worth understanding before you commit.

The Hidden Cost of Per-Athlete Pricing

Let’s do the math on a typical per-seat pricing model.

Assume:

Platform charges $5/month per athlete
You coach 15 athletes
You’re on a $40/month coach subscription

Your actual monthly cost: $40 + (15 × $5) = $115/month

That’s nearly triple what you thought you were paying. And it gets worse as you grow. At 30 athletes, you’re paying $190/month. At 50, it’s $290/month.

Some platforms obscure this by making athletes pay directly. This creates a different problem: friction. Every athlete you onboard has to enter payment information before they can see their training plan. Some won’t. Some will start a free trial and forget to cancel. Some will churn when the bill shows up.

You’re not just paying more. You’re losing athletes because of billing friction that has nothing to do with your coaching.

Why Platforms Charge Per Athlete

Software companies aren’t being evil here. There are real reasons for per-seat pricing:

Infrastructure costs: Every active user consumes storage, bandwidth, and compute resources. More users = higher costs.

Support burden: More users mean more support tickets, more onboarding questions, more documentation.

Revenue scaling: Charging per athlete aligns the platform’s revenue with your business growth.

These reasons make sense from a business perspective. But they create a misalignment with coaches, especially those who are building their client base and need to keep costs predictable.

The Alternative: Free Athlete Access

At PlyoPlanner, we took a different approach: athletes never pay.

Here’s how it works:

You (the coach) subscribe to PlyoPlanner
You invite athletes to join your team
Athletes create free accounts
They see every training plan you assign them—forever, at no cost

Your monthly cost stays exactly what you expect, whether you coach 5 athletes or 50.

Why This Works for Everyone

For coaches: Your costs are predictable. You can onboard unlimited athletes without calculating whether each one is “worth” the additional platform fee. Growing your business doesn’t mean growing your software overhead.

For athletes: Zero friction. They create an account, accept your invite, and immediately see their training. No credit card, no trial period, no surprise charges. Just the training plan you built for them.

For the coaching relationship: When your athletes aren’t paying for the software, they’re not comparing your coaching fee to a separate platform fee. You’re not justifying why they need to pay $10/month just to see their workouts.

How We Make It Work

We optimize aggressively for efficiency. PlyoPlanner is built lean—fast loading, minimal bandwidth, streamlined infrastructure. We also focus on the coach experience rather than building enterprise features nobody uses.

This lets us offer sustainable pricing without passing per-seat costs to your athletes.

The Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Platform

If you’re evaluating coaching software, here’s your pricing due diligence checklist:

1. What do athletes actually pay?

Not “what’s the athlete tier pricing”—what does an athlete on your roster actually pay to use the platform? Some platforms have confusing tiers where basic access is free but anything useful (like seeing workout notes or logging progress) requires upgrading.

2. What’s included in “free” athlete access?

Some platforms advertise free athlete access but limit features. Athletes might be able to see workout names but not exercise details. They might not be able to log completions or track progress. Read the fine print.

3. How does pricing change as I grow?

Run the numbers at 10, 25, and 50 athletes. If the platform charges per seat, your costs could 5x as your business grows. Make sure you’re comfortable with that trajectory.

4. Is there billing friction for athletes?

If athletes need to enter payment info—even for a free trial—some will drop off. Ask about the onboarding flow.

5. What happens if an athlete cancels?

If athletes are paying, what happens to their data and access when they stop? Can they still see historical workouts? Will you need to re-invite them if they resubscribe?

The Real Cost of Cheap Tools

We should acknowledge the counterargument: maybe the $5/athlete/month platform has better features that justify the cost.

Sometimes this is true. If a platform offers something genuinely valuable that others don’t—and your athletes will actually use it—the per-seat cost might make sense.

But often, you’re paying for features you don’t need:

Video hosting when you use YouTube anyway
Messaging when you already use WhatsApp or text
Nutrition tracking when that’s not your specialty
Complex analytics dashboards nobody looks at

Be honest about what you’ll actually use. A simpler tool that covers your real needs, without per-athlete fees, often delivers better value than an enterprise platform with per-seat pricing.

What Athletes Actually Need

After working with hundreds of coaches and thousands of athletes, we’ve found that athletes need surprisingly few things from training software:

See their workout: Clear, easy-to-read training plan on their phone
Understand the exercises: Demo videos or clear descriptions
Track completion: A way to mark workouts done
Log progress: Optional ability to record weights, times, or distances
View history: Access to past workouts for reference

That’s it. Athletes don’t need complex periodization tools (that’s your job). They don’t need team management features. They don’t need exercise library editing.

If a platform is charging athletes monthly for features they don’t use, that’s a bad deal.

Making the Decision

Here’s our recommendation for evaluating training platforms:

If you’re just starting out: Prioritize low fixed costs and zero per-athlete fees. You need room to experiment, onboard trial clients, and grow without software costs eating your margins.

If you have 10+ consistent clients: Calculate your real monthly cost at current roster size, then at 2x that size. If per-athlete fees make the growth math uncomfortable, it might be time to switch platforms.

If you’re established and growing: Consider the opportunity cost of billing friction. How many potential athletes don’t complete onboarding because of payment requirements? That’s invisible churn.

The Bottom Line

Your athletes came to you for coaching, not to pay for another software subscription. The best training platforms recognize this and don’t make your clients foot the bill.

At PlyoPlanner, athletes train free. Your costs stay flat. Your athletes face zero friction.

That’s how coaching software should work.