Every successful coach reaches a point where admin, paperwork, and marketing take up more time than actual coaching. When that happens, the search for a reliable online toolkit begins—but is Paperbell the right software for you?
This article includes all you need to know about Paperbell: reviews, pricing, and what you can expect from its alternatives. If you’re wondering whether to try it out or keep looking, read on!
Features of Paperbell
Paperbell offers a range of coaching and practice management features such as appointment scheduling, basic reports, and billing.
While it doesn’t offer much in the way of mental healthcare tools, it comes with some useful marketing tools including a landing page builder and automated client emails.
We’ve listed the main features of Paperbell in this table:
Feature | Yes/No | Details |
Coaching Management | ||
| Appointment Scheduling | ✓ |
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| Billing & Invoicing | ✓ |
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| Insurance Claims Management | ╳ | |
| Note-taking and Document Management | ✓ | |
| Multiple Providers | ╳ | |
| Practice Management Reports | ✓ |
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| Inventory Management | ╳ | |
Mental Healthcare | ||
| Client Portal | ✓ | |
| E-Prescriptions | ╳ | |
| EMR/EHR | ╳ | |
| Custom Forms | ✓ |
|
5 Customer Reviews
Looking at the reviews of Paperbell users, many found the user interface clean, easy to use, and appealing:
“I like the aesthetics of the Paperbell platform for myself and my clients using the portal. It is simple, clean, intuitive, and relatively user-friendly.” — Capterra
The wide range of coaching admin features was also popular with online practitioners:
“I love that this software allows you to have everything in one spot. Programs, Group Coaching, Clients, Scheduling, Payments (Pay in full, bi-weekly, monthly, subscriptions), Client Notes, Contract Signing, Appointment Tracking, Surveys, Private Content, Direct Emailing to Clients.” — Capterra
Others found some of the coaching tools to be limited in functionality, however:
“The Survey option has only paragraph-style answers instead of multiple-choice or checkboxes. There is an option to use a link to a Google Form. Emails sent through the portal show sender as Paperbell which is confusing to client if you don’t give them a head’s up.” — G2.com
Some really missed the convenience of in-app messaging between coaches and clients:
“The one feature that is lacking is in-app messaging between the coach and client. I’d love to have a central private area where I can asynchronously message my clients, share links and notes with them.” — G2.com
One really appreciated feature was the ability to track ICF coaching hours automatically:
“I also appreciate the ICF client coaching log feature that automatically tracks hours…one less thing to manage!” — G2.com
Pricing and Target Audience
Paperbell is designed specifically for coaches, with tools for most of the basic admin and coaching management tasks such as scheduling, billing, and payment processing.
While you can add an unlimited number of clients, appointments, transactions, and service offerings, it does not offer features to support collaboration across teams.
Therefore, it’s a good option for:
- Solo coaches, and
- Small businesses
There are two payment options available:
- $40/month paid annually
- $50/month paid monthly
Alternatives: Paperbell vs. HoneyBook vs. Quenza
Thinking about switching to or from Paperbell from another platform?
Our Paperbell vs Honeybook vs Quenza comparison show how its interfaces, customer service, pricing, and integrations compare to other coaching apps.
HoneyBook | Paperbell | Quenza | |
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| Pricing | $39+/month | $40+/month | $49/month |
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Coaching App and Client Portal
Paperbell is a web-only platform at this point, with no iOS or Android apps for either clients or practitioners.
The practitioner Dashboard offers quick access to the platform’s main tools and metrics:
- Appointments
- Availability
- Packages
- Clients
- Sales.
Here’s how we experienced the software on our test drive.
Coaching Management
Paperbell offers free accounts as well as paid accounts. The former has full functionality, however you can add only one client for free before you are required to upgrade to a paid plan.
After signing up for a free Paperbell account as a solo coach, we registered our first client; inside each client profile, you’ll see a handy overview of their appointments, purchased packages and amount spent, contracts, surveys, notes, and email logs. We particularly liked the convenience of the “Private Content” section, where you and your client can share videos, media, and important files through the platform.
Because the app integrates with Google Calendar, we were able to display our availabilities and let our clients schedule their own appointments through the Paperbell client portal.
One downside was that the software does not have an iOS or Android smartphone app. However, like many reviewers, we found the web app easy to navigate and liked the clean and intuitive interface very much in comparison to some other online coaching management platforms.
For us, the main advantage of Paperbell as a coaching management tool is the ease with which it allowed us to centralize “back-end” processes such as:
- Appointment scheduling and reminders
- File-sharing
- Landing pages (see the next section)
- Billing and payment processing, and
- eSigning of coaching contracts
Coaching
With Paperbell, you can also create coaching packages of multiple sessions to sell to your clients and attach content such as links, file downloads, or videos to each.
This content is shared with clients on purchase or according to a schedule that you decide on, allowing you to deliver both self-paced and structured programs made up of sessions and uploaded content.
Packages that you create can be displayed in your shop, meaning that clients can easily purchase them through the platform.
Another great feature, as shown below, is that Paperbell allows you to create surveys, coaching contracts, and automated emails for each package. Because you can program the platform to send these resources according to specific triggers, these can be a great way to save time if you would like to remind clients of an upcoming appointment or congratulate them on reaching key milestones for each package.
One thing we missed was the ability to design personalized coaching exercises and worksheets online.
Because Paperbell lacks a sophisticated Activity builder or customizable coaching tool templates, you’ll still need to manually design and build PDFs and other coaching tools before uploading them to the platform.
For us, this was a distinct drawback.
On the whole, however, the software itself was simple to navigate, both for practitioners and for clients. The ease with which we could create, sell, and earn from basic coaching packages without the need for multiple tools was a clear advantage, and we could see this being a useful feature for online coaches with no marketing experience.
15 Advantages and Problems
Based on our experience and on reviews from other users, we’ve summarized the key Paperbell problems and advantages in this table:
Advantages | Disadvantages |
Coaching Management | |
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User Experience | |
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Final Thoughts
If you’re new to coaching and keen to design, deliver, and sell packages straight away, Paperbell is definitely one of the more helpful toolkits you could have.
We liked the platform as an easy introduction to online coaching management, especially with its automated email features and convenient scheduling functions.
What we feel it lacks the most is Activity design capabilities and an easy way to create personalized, unique coaching programs with ease. Try out Quenza’s $1 30-day trial and tell us how you think it compares!
