The right software can make your job as a personal trainer easier, and help you grow your personal training business to new heights.
When you’re evaluating your options for personal trainer software, you will probably find that Trainerize and PT Distinction make the shortlist. They’re both fairly popular and have good features for personal trainers.
So which tool is the right fit for your unique needs and your personal training business?
In this article, we’ll compare Trainerize and PT Distinction and examine their strengths and weaknesses, so you can make the right decision for your company.
Trainerize and PT Distinction Compared
If you’re looking for a tool to help you manage projects, track issues, and collaborate on tasks, then Trainerize and PT Distinction are both valid options. However, despite some similarities, there are several fundamental differences in terms of their features, pricing, user-interface and more.
We will take each of these differences and dive deeper to see how PT Distinction and Trainerize are different.
While Trainerize and PT Distinction are both popular solutions, your choice is not limited to these two options. There are many other alternatives that can serve you just as well — or even better. As we compare these two solutions, we will also look at an alternative platform that may be a better fit for your business.
Below we provide a quick summary of differences between Trainerfu, Trainerize and PT Distinction.
Below the table we take each feature and look at it in more depth.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
So what’s better between Trainerize and PT Distinction? And how does Trainerfu compare? Let’s dive deeper into the software features called out in this table, and what they mean for your business.
Deep Dive: Workout Planner Performance
No matter what software you choose, the workout planner is most likely where you will be spending most of your time. Because of this, it’s really important to evaluate this feature and think about what would work best for you. Let’s see how workout planner is implemented in different personal trainer software:
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
Two Types of Workout Planners: Unified vs Fragmented
In a unified workout planner all the workout planning features are in one view. From this single view, you can:
- Create workouts
- Schedule workouts
- Review plans
- See exercise history
- See logged workouts
- And more
With a fragmented workout planner, the view where you create your workouts is different from the view where you schedule them.
So which type is the best? Unified workout planner, like the one in Trainerfu, is much more efficient than the fragmented workout planner for two reasons:
- No going back and forth between different views to build the workout plan.
- Much easier to build workout progressions because you can see other workouts in the plan and move around to edit them.
If you simply like to send workouts to clients and not schedule them, then a fragmented workout planner may fit your needs better. But if you want a way to quickly and easily build and schedule comprehensive workout plans, consider a unified workout planner.
Keyboard Shortcuts Support
How would you feel if the common shortcuts you used like CMD + V (CTRL + V) and CMD + C (CTRL + C) stopped working. Pretty frustrated, right? Keyboard shortcuts in the workout planner can help you efficiently build your workouts without your hands leaving the keyboard, saving you precious time.
Surprisingly, not all apps for personal trainers have this feature. If you think that keyboard shortcuts are a game-changer for your workflow, you’ll want to go with an app that offers this option.
Deep Dive: Mobile App Features Availability
Personal trainers are part of the deskless workforce – conducting most of their business away from their computers. Some personal trainer software have a fully-featured mobile app that makes this possible, while others have a bare-bones app that doesn’t offer the same mobile experience coaches need.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
Trainerfu has 90% of its features available on the mobile app. This is the most of any other personal training software. If working on the go is important for you, and you want a solution that performs just as well on mobile, Trainerfu is the obvious choice.
Deep Dive: Automation
Being able to automate some of the tedious tasks in your business saves you time and helps you deliver more value to your clients.
Here are a few examples of tasks you can automate for your business:
- Sending welcome messages on sign-up.
- Congratulating clients on milestones like completing 50 workouts.
- Keeping them accountable if they don’t log workout for a week.
- Educating them by sending them useful content.
Now you know how automation can help, let’s see how different personal trainer software implements automation.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
In date based automation, you can schedule automatic messages by date or days (like X days after joining). In event based automation, you can schedule messages by event. For example: schedule a congratulatory message after the client completes 50 workouts.
Some apps do not offer both types of automation, which limits what you can do. Out of the apps in this comparison, Trainerfu is the only app that supports both date-based and event-based automation _and _is one of the few that allows for multiple automation sequences for each client.
Deep Dive: News feed
Your trainer news feed is where you get to see what your clients are doing on a day-to-day basis. It enables you to easily provide your clients with support, motivation, and accountability, while also building a strong community, where clients can support each other.
Let’s see how this feature is implemented in different software.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
Two Types of Feed View: Simple vs Detailed
A simple news feed (or activity feed) tells you what activity your clients have completed, but that’s pretty much it. For example: If your client, Kate completes a workout, a simple newsfeed will only tell you just that, “Kate completed a workout.”
However, a detailed news feed will go one step further and show you details like the entire logged workout, PR achieved, achievement unlocked, and other interesting facts about that workout. A detailed news feed makes it easier to monitor how your clients are doing, so that you can provide them with more customized support and guidance.
Collaboration and Social Features
Just like in your social media accounts, some personal training apps will allow commenting and liking on the news feed updates. These features make it easy to interact with your clients and provide them with support and motivation.
Personal trainer software like Trainerfu has added features to turn news feeds into social groups. Clients can choose to share their updates on the feed for other clients to see and comment. This really helps build a community, especially if you are running a group training program. Coaches can also post on the news feed with announcements, education materials, or simply to share some fun content.
Deep Dive: Online Group Training
Online group training is a great way to expand your offerings and grow your business. The right software can help you deliver a successful online group training experience – if it has the right features. Specifically:
- Ability to get registration and accept payment using a sign-up page.
- Ability to assign the workout plan to the entire group.
- Ability to engage the group using news feed, group chat or forum.
- Ability to automate messaging and other tasks.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
Trainerfu and other platforms allow you to create and send group workouts, but Trainerfu is the only software that fully optimizes a group training program and allows you to engage the group with the most robust news feed and the best automation options.
Deep Dive: White Labeling
Having a fitness app with your own logo and design can help you stand out, earn trust, and boost your brand.
Trainerfu and a few others do offer white-labeling, giving you the ability to build your own branded app – but Trainerfu’s price point is much better, with custom-branded app plans costing just $75 per month.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
Deep Dive: Nutrition Coaching
Even if you don’t prescribe meal plans, coaching about nutrition is an important part of personal training. If you want to offer comprehensive nutrition coaching, here are some things to consider when comparing apps:
Setting macro goals: Does the software allow you to set daily macro goals for your clients? Can you track them?
MyFitnessPal integration: Can you see just the macros or the entire meal log logged by your clients in MyFitnessPal? Some apps have limited integrations with MyFitnessPal, while Trainerfu fully integrates so you can see all the important details of your clients’ meal logs like calories and macronutrients.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
Deep Dive: Habit Coaching
Habit coaching is generally not a part of traditional personal training. That isn’t necessarily because it’s not valuable, but because it requires a lot of back-n-forth check-ins between personal training sessions. Fortunately, the right personal trainer software can support habit coaching, and make it simple to add to your coaching plan.
Many of these platforms give you the ability to create, assign, and track habits for your clients. With Trainerfu, you can also use the reporting feature to get a bird’s eye view of how your clients are doing, and quickly see who might need extra encouragement or reminders.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
Deep Dive: Pricing
Some personal trainer software offer all the features at a single price point. While others charge a lower price for bare-bone functionality, and then charge additional price for add-on features. That is why it is important to know what features you will end up using and then calculate your monthly price. That way there aren’t any surprises, and you are confident you have all the features you need, and none that you don’t!
It’s also a good idea to consider how many clients you’ll be working with per month on your app – as many packages are priced by client count.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
Deep Dive: User Interface & Learning curve
User interface design and the learning curve for using the product is a very subjective criterion. Every trainer’s experience and opinion might be a little different. When figuring out which platform you like best, it can be helpful to try them all out. Having said that, let’s break down some of the criteria and how these three apps compare.
| Trainerize | PT Distinction | Trainerfu | |
|---|---|---|---|
With a simple interface you can get started easily and master the software without reading any tutorials. A complex user interface will require you to go through the tutorial, videos, and training to get started and master the software. With a complicated interface, there is a bigger learning curve to get started using the app.
Another thing to think about is efficiency. An efficient user interface makes it fast for you to complete your tasks. A simple interface can be non-efficient if it takes too many clicks to get the job done.
Trainerfu combines simplicity and efficiency, making the user experience intuitive and enjoyable. This is key for streamlining your business and saving you time and effort.
To sum it all up
The right personal trainer software can help you automate tedious tasks, provide your clients customized support, build fully online training programs, and more. Picking the right software for your business can be a challenge, and depends on your unique needs.
When it comes to Trainerize, PT Distinction, and Trainerfu, Trainerfu offers the most expansive features at the lowest price, making it a great option for any personal trainer. You can try out Trainerfu today – for free! – by signing up for a 14-day trial.