Fitsly vs Trainerize

Trainerize is the platform most coaches try first, because almost every certification course mentions it. The reason coaches start comparing it with something else is rarely the training tools. It is the bill: the plan price is only part of what you pay, and the features you assumed were in the product turn out to be add-ons with their own monthly charges.

This compares the two platforms on what each one costs at a real client count, how the feature sets differ, and what a week of coaching looks like on each. All Trainerize figures are list prices from their pricing page as of 9 September 2026.

Pricing at 50 clients

The comparison most coaches care about is the one at their own client count, so here is 50 — roughly a full-time online roster.

Two things to read alongside the table. Fitsly does not have in-platform video calling, so the $10 Trainerize add-on buys something Fitsly does not sell; coaches on Fitsly run calls on Zoom or Google Meet. And Trainerize has a permanent free tier for one client and a $10 a month Grow plan for two, where Fitsly's entry point is $39 a month for up to 20 clients. At two clients Trainerize is cheaper. What the $39 buys is the whole product from the first client — nutrition, payments, forms, automations — so the price you start on is the price structure you keep, and nothing gets added to the invoice when your roster gets serious.

The gap widens in the middle. Fitsly's ladder runs $39 for 20 clients, $69 for 50, $99 for 75, $159 for 125, $229 for 200 and $419 for 500, with everything included at each stop. Trainerize's Pro plan tops out at 200 clients before you move to Studio Plus, which starts at $275 a month for up to 500 members and does include all the add-ons. So at the very top of the range the two structures converge; it is the 30 to 200 client band, where most full-time online coaches live, where the add-on stack costs the most. The full working at 10, 50 and 200 clients is in Trainerize pricing explained.

What "included" means on each platform

This is the real difference between the two products, and it is worth being precise about.

Trainerize's model is a base plan plus four paid add-ons. Advanced Nutrition Coaching is $20 a month on Grow, Pro 5 and Pro 15, rising to $45 a month from Pro 30 up to Pro 200 — so the add-on gets more expensive at exactly the point your business does. The Business add-on at $25 a month covers scheduling, referrals, payments and on-demand coaching. Stripe Integrated Payments is a separate $10 a month. Video Coaching is $10 a month and includes 50 hours of calling and 100 hours of streaming. All four are included on Studio plans.

Fitsly has one add-on, and it is not a feature — it is white label at $199 a month, which replaces the Fitsly client app with your own app on the App Store and Google Play. Everything else — training, nutrition, payments, check-in forms, habits, automations, messaging, community, the content vault, your own branding in the client app — is on the $39 plan and every plan above it.

A coach who only writes programs today is not paying extra for nutrition or payments on Fitsly; they are on the same plan, at the same price, and the day they add macros to the service there is nothing to switch on and nothing new on the invoice. A coach doing full-service work — training, macros, weekly check-ins, taking payment — is assembling most of Trainerize's add-on list, and that is where the $146 a month gap comes from.

Training and programming

Both platforms do the core job, and if programming is all you need, this is not the section that will decide it.

Fitsly splits programs into two kinds, which is worth understanding because it changes how you work. A structured program is a fixed day-and-week grid copied once onto a client's calendar. A phased program is a multi-phase, week-based program delivered either as a per-client copy or as a subscription, scheduled to real dates or left as an on-demand library the client works through at their own pace. The distinction matters when you sell the same 12-week block to forty people: with the subscription model, an edit to the master reaches everyone who has not started that week yet.

The other Fitsly detail worth knowing is that an assignment is a snapshot. Once a workout is on a client's calendar, later edits to your library version never reach it. That is deliberate — it stops a library tidy-up from silently rewriting what someone is doing on Thursday — but it does mean fixing a typo across forty assigned workouts is forty edits, not one.

Neither platform will hold you back on programming. Choose on which builder you prefer to sit in for two hours a week, and both trials are long enough to find out.

Nutrition coaching

This is the clearest split.

On Trainerize, meal plans, recipes and macro tracking sit behind Advanced Nutrition Coaching at $20 or $45 a month depending on your plan. It is a line item that scales up when your roster does.

On Fitsly, nutrition is in the base product. You get a verified food database, custom foods, a recipe library with AI drafting, multi-day meal plans built as days → meals → options → foods, and per-client macro targets with a variance band and date overrides. Clients log by search, barcode scan, or straight from the meal plan they have been assigned, and calories, macros and micronutrients roll up on both sides.

If macros are half your service, you are looking at $45 a month on Trainerize at a full roster against nothing extra on Fitsly. If you refer nutrition out today, the tools are there at no cost for the day a client asks.

Check-ins and client data

Both platforms do weekly check-ins. The difference is in how much you can do with one form, and how long a week of them takes to get through.

Fitsly's forms cover twelve question types in one builder — text, numbers, ratings, progress photos, signatures and body metrics among them — and the same builder produces three different things: a recurring weekly or monthly check-in, a one-off questionnaire that appears when the client opens the app, and a public link you can put on a website to capture leads who do not have an account yet. Body-metric and progress-photo answers write straight to the client's profile rather than sitting inside the submission, so a weight logged in a check-in shows up on the weight chart without you re-entering it.

Coaches who have moved from Trainerize tell us the thing they notice first is how little it takes to review a week of check-ins: the form answers, the photos, the week's training and the food log are on one screen, so the reply is written in the time it used to take to find the data. The public-link form is the other one that surprises them, because the same tool handles both the weekly check-in and the enquiry form on the website.

Payments

If you want to take money through the platform rather than invoicing separately, Trainerize needs the Business add-on at $25 a month and Stripe Integrated Payments at $10 a month.

Fitsly includes it. You build packages — one-time programs or weekly, monthly or yearly subscriptions, with optional setup fees, free trials, fixed lengths, minimum commitments and a cap on client slots — and share a public storefront page. Someone buys with a card through Stripe, their client account is created and linked automatically, and subscriptions bill on schedule. Coupons, refunds and payouts are managed from the same area.

Both run on Stripe, so the card processing fees are Stripe's either way. The difference is the $35 a month of add-ons standing between you and the same outcome.

Coaching from your phone

Most of the week a client is not in a session and not filling in a check-in. What happens in that gap is where retention is won, and it is also where most of a coach's admin actually happens: ten minutes between sessions, the drive home, the couch at 9pm.

Fitsly's coach app on iOS and Android does everything the desktop does. Build and assign a program, write a meal plan, review a week of check-ins, take a payment, set up an automation, message a client — none of it waits for a laptop. Coaches who have moved across tell us this is the change they feel most in the first month: the work that used to pile up for Sunday night gets done in the gaps it belongs in. Trainerize publishes a coach app; open the trial on your phone and try to do a full week on it — build a program, read a check-in, change a client's plan — before you decide.

Two Fitsly tools live in that gap between check-ins. Habits are daily behaviours you assign — steps, water, sleep, whatever the client's actual problem is — with streaks and reminders, and the completion history shows on the client's profile so you can look at it before you open the check-in rather than asking how the week went and being told "fine". Automations handle the messages you would otherwise send by hand: the welcome sequence, the nudge when someone has not logged in, the check-in reminder. On Trainerize the equivalent tools are spread across the base plan and the Business add-on rather than sitting in one place.

Branded apps

Both platforms offer something called a branded app, and they are not the same product.

Trainerize's Pro Custom Branded App is a one-time $169 setup fee that puts your logo and colours on the Trainerize app. Your clients still download Trainerize. That is custom branding, and it is the thing Fitsly includes on every plan at no cost: your logo, colours and name inside the client app from the $39 plan up.

White label — a standalone app on the App Store and Google Play under your own name, with no vendor branding anywhere — is a different purchase. On Trainerize it is the Studio Custom Branded App, on Studio Plus from $275 a month with a 500-seat minimum and an Apple Organization account. On Fitsly it is a $199 a month add-on on any plan, from 20 clients up, published under your own developer accounts. Fitsly builds and submits it; you go through a five-step application and the launch team handles the store side. App updates to a newer Fitsly version are $100 each with a 60-day cooldown. Across the category Fitsly's $199 sits in the middle: Kahunas bundles white label into a $99 plan, Hubfit charges $469, and Everfit and TrueCoach do not sell a true white label at any published price.

Compare the two on what you are actually trying to achieve. If you want your look inside the client app, Fitsly has that included and Trainerize charges $169 once. If you want your own store listing, Fitsly gets you there from $39 plus $199; Trainerize starts at $275.

Where Trainerize suits a coach

Three cases:

• You have one or two clients and want to pay nothing yet. A free tier and a $10 a month plan for two clients cost less than a $39 entry point until the roster grows.
• Calls run inside the platform. Trainerize's Video Coaching add-on covers it; Fitsly does not.
• You depend on a specific integration. Check your list against Trainerize's before you move — and against Fitsly's, which includes Apple Health.

Switching

If you do move, the work is not the export — it is the clients. Programs and templates have to be rebuilt or re-imported, and every client needs to download a new app and get a new login, which is the point where a switch usually loses people. Do it between program blocks rather than mid-block, tell clients a week before rather than the morning of, and rebuild your three most-used templates before you invite anyone across. The full process is in how to migrate clients to a new coaching platform, and the other platforms coaches move to are compared in Trainerize alternatives.

One more thing coaches who have switched tell us: the product keeps moving. Requests get built, and updates arrive in weeks rather than on an annual roadmap, so the thing you asked for in a trial tends to be there by the time you have moved the roster across.

Fitsly has a 14-day trial with every feature switched on, which is enough to rebuild a program and run one real check-in cycle before you commit. The pricing page gives you the number; the trial tells you whether the tool fits.