Resources Compare · Sportplan
A Sportplan alternative that runs the session on court.
Sportplan, CoachThem, and The Coaching Manual are good at a real job: they are drill libraries and drawing tools, big catalogs of diagrammed, animated drills with a canvas for sketching a session. If browsing drills and drawing up practices is what you want, they do it well. Where they stop is the same place for all of them: the plan is a document, and it has no idea which lesson you booked, who is enrolled, or what you measured last time. Upswing starts from the booked session and builds the plan onto it, inside the product that already handles the booking, the credits, and the payment.
A good library that stops at the document
A planning tool like Sportplan gives you two genuinely useful things: a large stock of drills you can browse, many with diagrams and animation, and a canvas to lay out a session. Plenty of coaches keep one open in a browser tab for exactly that. The limit is not the quality of the drills. It is that the finished plan is a page. It does not connect to your calendar, your roster, your packs, or any record of the player, so once you have drawn it, running it and recording what happened is back on you and whatever else you use.
A plan attached to the session you booked
In Upswing a plan is attached to real work. You can point a plan at one specific session, make it an offering's default, or hand it to a whole program week so every clinic in the term runs the same structure. Because the plan and the booking are in one system, the plan knows the session it belongs to and the players enrolled in it. You never retype the roster or match a PDF to a calendar entry, because they were never apart.
It runs on court, and the benchmark lands on the record
This is the part a drawing tool cannot reach. When the session starts you run the plan live from your phone: the current block, the time left on it, the next block on deck, and one tap to move along, with drift shown honestly as "2 min over" rather than hidden or auto-advanced. When the plan reaches a benchmark block, the capture opens prefilled with that benchmark, and the number you log lands straight on the player's record beside every earlier result. The hour you designed is the hour you teach, and the measuring happens inside it instead of on a sticky note you meant to transcribe.
Shared with families, at your choice
A plan is private by default. Per session you decide whether the enrolled families see what the lesson covers, before it, after it, both, or never, and when you share, they see the block labels, kinds, durations, and equipment, and never your private coaching notes. A standalone planner has no family side at all, because it does not know who the families are. Upswing does, because the same product took the booking.
One product instead of three subscriptions
The deeper difference is the shape of the stack. With a planning tool you are running a plan library plus a separate booking tool plus a separate way to take payment, and stitching them together yourself. Upswing is one product: the booking link, the credit packs and autopay, the cancellation and no-show policies, the player record, and the session plans that run on top of all of it, at one flat price by roster size with no transaction fee on your lesson money.
What Sportplan-style tools have that Upswing doesn't
Be fair about the trade. Sportplan, CoachThem, and The Coaching Manual ship large stock libraries of drills, many diagrammed and animated, that you can browse for ideas and drop into a session. Upswing deliberately ships none of that. It has no content library at all: a plan is a structure you fill with your own material, and per-sport starter plans seed only as fully editable examples. If a big catalog of ready-made drills is the thing you are shopping for, those tools have it and Upswing does not. Some coaches keep one for browsing drills and run the session itself in Upswing.
| Sportplan-style planners (public materials, mid-2026) | Upswing | |
|---|---|---|
| Booking | Not included; a separate tool | A public booking page families use themselves |
| Payments | Not included; a separate tool | Cards on file, autopay, receipts, no transaction fee |
| Credits & packs | Not included | Packs that deduct as lessons are booked |
| Client records | Not included; the plan is a document | Benchmark curves, match log, milestones, written reviews |
| Plan building | Drill library and a drawing canvas | Ordered timed blocks linked to your own benchmarks |
| Run mode | None; the plan is a page to read | Run live on court with honest timing and benchmark capture |
| Family visibility | None; no family side | Shared per session at the coach's choice, before or after |
| Drill content library | Large stock catalog with diagrams and animations | None by design; plans are the coach's own material |
Questions
Can I keep using Sportplan alongside Upswing?
Yes, and some coaches do. Browse Sportplan for drill ideas and its drawing canvas, then build the session as an Upswing plan so it attaches to the booked lesson, runs on court, and logs the benchmark to the record. The two do different jobs.
Does Upswing come with drills?
No. Upswing ships no drill or video content library, by design. A plan is a structure you fill with your own coaching, and per-sport starter plans seed only as fully editable examples. If a stock drill catalog is what you need, a planner like Sportplan has one and Upswing does not.
I only want the planning part. Is Upswing overkill?
If a plan library is genuinely all you want, a dedicated planner is the lighter buy. Upswing earns its place when you are tired of the plan, the booking, the payment, and the record living in separate tools, and you want the plan wired into the session you actually booked.
Can I switch mid-season?
Yes. Contacts import, pack balances carry over, and your booking link is live before the switch costs a lesson. Your existing plans are quick to rebuild as Upswing plans, and from then on they run on court and feed the record.
