The Best Online Tutoring Software for Your Business
From Teacher to Small Business Owner
When I first started tutoring online, there was a question that weighed heavily on my mind, “How can I run a successful tutoring business when I have NO business experience whatsoever?”
I went to graduate school to become a teacher, not a business owner. In fact, the idea of running a business felt selfish or sleazy. In my mind, I needed to be greedy in order to be a successful business owner.
Two years later, I understand that is untrue. I feel gratitude that my business is my ministry. I use my business as a tool to serve other people, and I receive money in return!
I have to admit I spent WAY TOO MUCH time in my first year of business trying to figure out the perfect tools. As someone that values efficiency, I had not found information online that answered my question of how to run my business smoothly and efficiently.
So for that reason, I am happy to share some of the best online tutoring software for your business! Now, let me add that there is no perfect software, but with experience, I have found these tools & software work very well.
I have included both free online tutoring software and software that costs money. You can pick and choose what is most important to you.
This blog post covers three topics: video calling software, online whiteboard software, and online tutoring scheduling software.
I don’t want you to be overwhelmed by all the information in this post, so I created a free guide with all the online tutoring software I recommend.
VIDEO CALLING SOFTWARE
My favorite tool for video calling is called Zoom. Zoom has both free and paid plans.
Zoom Basic (Free): If you are tutoring students one-on-one, then the free plan of Zoom will meet all your needs!
Zoom Pro ($14.99/mo): If you are conducting group sessions, you may need the Zoom Pro plan. The free plan of Zoom allows you to conduct up to a 40-minute group session. After you reach the time limit, all the participants will be kicked out of the call. This is not ideal if you are trying to run a successful tutoring business. Therefore, the Zoom Pro plan is the best option if you are conducting group sessions.
Summary - If you are tutoring students one-on-one, Zoom’s basic (free) plan is more than enough. If you conduct group sessions, I recommend Zoom’s Pro plan, which is $14.99/mo.
Bookmark my “How Online Tutoring Works” Page with common questions about using Zoom!
ONLINE WHITEBOARD SOFTWARE
Zoom Whiteboard (Free) - Zoom Whiteboard is one of the features of Zoom’s video calling software. It is a free feature, which is nice, but its capabilities are very limited. If you are using a whiteboard very infrequently just to quickly illustrate something, it might meet your needs.
Bitpaper (starts at $8/mo) - BitPaper is an amazing online whiteboard software that has enough features to conduct an entire tutoring session. If you are looking for an all-in-one platform for conducting sessions, BitPaper has the following features: real-time collaborating with students, lifetime access to each unique URL, screen sharing, audio, and video calling. It’s made by online tutors, for online tutors.
Bookmark my “How Online Tutoring Works” Page with common questions about using BitPaper!
ONLINE SCHEDULING SOFTWARE
Calendly - Calendly has both free and paid plans. I started with a free plan when I first started my tutoring business.
Using the free plan, you can integrate with one of your calendars. Calendar connections help prevent students from scheduling tutoring sessions at times you are unavailable, so this is an important feature. It allows you one “event type” for example, “45 Minute Tutoring Session” can be one event type. Under this event, you can adjust the session length, your specified dates & hours of availability, and schedule as many events as you’d like.
The limitation is if you wanted to schedule different tutoring session lengths. For example, I have a 45-minute session length and a 30-minute session length. On the free plan of Calendly, I could only have one of these.
Calendly is incredibly user friendly and I find that clients can schedule sessions quickly and easily.
Acuity Scheduling (Starts at $15/mo): While there is technically a free plan of Acuity Scheduling, it does not allow you to integrate with your calendar, which I think is an integral part of having a scheduling software. Therefore, I am not going to discuss their free plan.
The Emerging Entrepreneur Plan ($15/mo) allows clients to schedule appointments, get reminder emails, convert to their time zone, and lots of fun integrations. One nice thing is integrating your Zoom account with Acuity. I have my Acuity account set up so that when someone schedules a session with me, they instantly receive an email that includes directions on how to use Zoom along with a unique meeting URL.
The Growing Business Plan ($25/mo) is the plan I used while tutoring full-time. Some of the added features of this plan are: selling packages & worldwide text message reminders. I had the cell phone numbers of my students stored in Acuity, and they would receive a text reminder an hour before our session. This cut down on no-shows significantly! Also, since my clients pay for tutoring a month in advance, the package option helped me keep track of things.
Want the full list of my favorite tools & software? You can download it below:
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This blog contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you purchase one of these resources. This helps support my business at no additional cost to you. You are in no way obligated to use these links.
