It's 6:14 on a Thursday evening. Mark is in his pickup truck in the parking lot of the Phoenix public range, the AC running, his last lesson done twenty minutes ago. His phone is open to an email from Skillest. The subject line: "Mark — your coach profile is 73% complete." A previous student tagged him in an Instagram swing-tip post last week, Skillest's outreach team picked up his name, and now there's a half-finished coach profile sitting in their dashboard waiting for him to claim it. He's been staring at the email for a minute. He keeps starting to tap the link, then stopping. The 15% commission is the part he can't move past. Or maybe the part he can't move past is what the 15% buys. He's not sure yet which one.
That hesitation is what this post is for. Most listicles about online golf coaching platforms compare Skillest, GOLFTEC, Me And My Golf, CoachNow, and "your own website" as if they're five versions of the same product. They're not. They're four different products that share a category name, and the right answer depends entirely on what month of your business you're in. Below is the coach-side comparison the SERP doesn't have.
The five platforms coaches in 2026 actually use
Most listicles compare Skillest and CoachNow as if they're competitors. They're not. They're not even the same product. That's the earned opinion this whole post hangs on.
Here's the honest categorization:
- Marketplaces — Skillest, TeachMe.To. Directories that route students to coaches and take a per-lesson cut.
- Employment — GOLFTEC. A W-2 job, not a platform you list on.
- Consumer-facing membership — Me And My Golf. A subscription consumers pay; coaches don't apply here.
- Tools-only — CoachNow, plus your own website. Software you use to deliver coaching, no commission.
Pretending these are five flavors of the same thing is how most coaches end up making the wrong pick. The first question is which category, not which name.
Skillest — the marketplace model
Skillest is golf-only. Coaches set their own rates. The platform takes 15% per lesson per their public coach page, and Skillest's own data claims top earners pull $300k/year through the platform. No monthly fee. No subscription tier. Just the per-lesson commission.
What Skillest is good at: customer acquisition. A coach who shows up on day one with no email list and no audience can have five paying students through Skillest within thirty days. That's not a small thing. That's the entire reason the platform exists.
What Skillest is not good at: retention from your point of view. The student signs up on Skillest's app. Skillest owns that email. Skillest sends the renewal nudges. If the student doesn't renew, Skillest shows them five other coaches in their search results. The relationship was never yours.
TeachMe.To — the multi-sport marketplace
TeachMe.To is the same shape as Skillest but multi-sport. Tennis, pickleball, golf, swimming, all in one app. The take is 20% per lesson plus a location-dependent matchmaking fee. The trade is fast payouts — same-day Venmo, PayPal, or bank transfer per their 2026 coach guide — plus the platform handles booking, insurance, and tax forms.
The math TeachMe.To publishes for a part-time coach: $80/hr × 4 sessions/week = $1,280/mo gross. After the 20% take, that's $1,024/mo net. Realistic for a coach picking up evening and weekend work on top of a day job.
The catch is the same as Skillest's. The platform owns the email. The platform sets the search results. The coach delivers the lesson and walks away with 80%, not 100% — and not the customer.
GOLFTEC — the W-2 employment model
GOLFTEC isn't a "platform you use" the way Skillest is. It's a job. You're a W-2 employee, the company sets the lesson rates ($75-135 per lesson, swing evaluations starting at $125), and you teach in their booth at their facility. The coach gets benefits, a salary, and predictable hours. The company gets the brand and every customer relationship.
GOLFTEC is the right call for: coaches who want career stability, don't want to handle billing, marketing, or customer acquisition, and are okay with the company keeping the brand equity. It's the wrong call for: anyone trying to build a book of business they own.
Me And My Golf and the content-membership confusion
Me And My Golf charges $199/year Standard or $499/year Elite per their pricing page. That's a consumer-facing membership — students pay Me And My Golf, watch their content library, and follow their training plans. Coaches don't get paid out of this.
The reason coaches confuse this with a coaching platform is the branding overlap. "Me and my golf coach" sounds like a coaching service. It's not. It's a media company that happens to be in the golf coaching space. They don't have a coach payout structure. They don't list third-party coaches in a directory. They are the product.
CoachNow + your own website — the "you're the platform" model
CoachNow is $24.99/mo for the CoachNow+ tier, $19.99/mo for the entry plan per G2's pricing data. No commission. No customer acquisition. You bring the students, CoachNow handles the video upload, the chat, the telestration, the workflow. Pair it with your own website ($99-200/mo for a custom site with booking and payment) and your total stack is $125-225/mo.
That stack keeps 100% of every lesson and 100% of every email. You set the rate. You own the relationship. You also have to fill the calendar — there's no marketplace pushing students at you.
Worked example. Twelve monthly subscription students at $129/mo. On Skillest, after the 15% commission, the coach nets $1,316/mo. On their own site (CoachNow $24.99 + website $99 = $123.99/mo overhead), the same twelve clients net $1,548 - $124 = $1,424/mo. The own-site model wins by $108/mo at twelve students. At twenty students, it wins by $282/mo. At forty students, it wins by $632/mo. The math compounds. The email list compounds harder.
For the website side of that stack — what it actually costs and what's included — see the website that hosts the booking page if you go own-site.
| Platform | Coach pays | Per-lesson take | Owns email | Sets rate | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skillest | $0/mo | 15% commission | Platform | Coach | New coach building audience |
| TeachMe.To | $0/mo + matchmaking fee | 20% commission | Platform | Coach | Multi-sport coach, fast payouts |
| GOLFTEC | N/A — W-2 | Salary, no commission | Company | Company | Career stability, no business ops |
| Me And My Golf | Not a coach platform | — | Company | — | Don't apply here as a coach |
| CoachNow + own site | $24.99/mo + ~$99/mo site | 0% | You | You | Established coach with a book |
The break-even between Skillest's 15% and the own-site stack is roughly 5-7 active subscription students at $129/mo. Below that, the marketplace is cheaper. Above it, the own site is, and the gap widens every quarter you keep growing.
The decision framework — which platform fits which coach
I told coaches for two years to skip Skillest. I was right for the wrong reason. The 15% isn't the problem. Using Skillest as your only layer is. Both can be true at once. Pick the right one for the right month.
The decision tree:
- New coach, no email list, no audience. Start with Skillest or TeachMe.To. The platform's customer acquisition is worth its commission. Build the email list separately from day one — even if it's just a Google form linked from your bio.
- Established coach with a book of business. CoachNow plus own site. The marketplace fees are now more expensive than the customer acquisition value. Migrate students off-platform on a schedule.
- Coach who wants a W-2 job, not a business. GOLFTEC. Apply, work the booth, take the salary and benefits. Different question, different answer.
- Coach building a content empire. None of these. You're building the next Me And My Golf. Different product, different post.
For the broader picture — how the platform decision fits inside the full remote coaching practice — see the full pillar on building a remote coaching practice. For the year-by-year compounding math on when the platform-versus-own-site decision flips, see the platform-vs-own-site decision. And for the rates and retention numbers across all five setups, see the rates-and-retention comparison.
The 2026 trend that's running underneath all of this: a recent Onform report tracks coaches moving from pay-per-lesson to pay-for-access subscriptions. The platform you pick determines whether those subscriptions live in your customer relationship or someone else's.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
Depends what stage you're at. For lead-gen and customer acquisition with no email list, Skillest is the cheapest entry. For ownership and long-term unit economics, your own site plus CoachNow is the cheapest at scale. The right answer for most coaches is both — Skillest for new students, your own site for retention.
15% per lesson, per Skillest's public coach signup page. No monthly fee, no subscription tier. The 15% is the entire cost of using the platform. The unspoken cost is that Skillest owns the student email and the customer relationship, which only shows up on your P&L at year three.
Skillest is golf-only and takes 15%. TeachMe.To is multi-sport and takes 20% plus a matchmaking fee, but pays out same-day via Venmo, PayPal, or bank. Coaches who only teach golf usually pick Skillest for the lower take. Coaches who teach multiple sports or want fast payouts pick TeachMe.To. Both own the customer relationship — that part is the same.
Yes. The full off-platform stack is roughly $125-225/mo: CoachNow at $24.99/mo for video review and workflow, a website with booking and payment at $99-200/mo, and a payment processor. You keep 100% of every lesson and 100% of every email. The trade is customer acquisition — without a marketplace bringing you students, you have to build the audience yourself through SEO, content, and word of mouth.
For coaches who want a salary, benefits, and don't want to run a business, yes. For coaches who want to own a book of business and the customer relationship, no. GOLFTEC sets the rates ($75-135 per lesson) and owns every customer. Think of it as a teaching job, not a coaching platform — that's the cleanest way to compare it to the others.
Skillest claims top earners pull $300k/year, per their public coach page. That's the top of the distribution. The median is far lower — most coaches earn under $30k/year through any single platform, including Skillest. The high earners almost always run multiple channels: Skillest plus their own site plus a content layer. One platform isn't a business.
Both, in sequence. Marketplaces solve customer acquisition at month one — they bring you students you couldn't have got on your own. Your own site solves retention and email-list ownership at month twelve. The successful 2026 setup is using both: marketplace as the lead-gen channel, your own site as the home base, and a deliberate migration of students from one to the other on a schedule.
We sell websites, not online coaching platforms. The "your own site" slot in the comparison table above is what we make. We're biased about that. We're not biased about the rest — Skillest, TeachMe.To, GOLFTEC, CoachNow are all real options, and which one is right for you depends on the month of your business, not on what we sell. If the website side is the part you've been putting off, the team's full pricing math is on the pricing page. Or book the 15-minute call if you'd rather talk through your specific stack.
Mark, by the way, claimed the Skillest profile that night. He also bought a domain on the way home. He's running both.
Last updated .
Keep reading
