Passion.io is a mobile-first LMS platform that empowers coaches and trainers to build custom mobile apps tailored to their coaching and training needs.
Are you a coach in fitness, yoga, arts, or photography?
If so, you’re going to love this platform!
This app is designed to promote community, accountability and prompt active student participation.
With features like challenges and accountability mechanisms, Passion.io is perfect for coaches who strive for student transformation and want to take their course-completion rates to the next level. 🚀
But before we dive in, let’s take a quick look at the key highlights of this powerful platform.
For a comprehensive breakdown, refer to the table below.
| Features | Passion.io |
| Type | No code LMS app builder |
| Target audience | Transformational result-oriented coaches |
| Free Trial | 👉 Claim Passion.io 14-days Free Trial |
| Pricing | Starts from $97/mo – See all the pricing details |
| Discount | If you choose annual billing, you can save up to $696/year discount. |
| Native live streaming | Available. You can connect with students in real-time with their YouTube Live integration. |
| Community features | It is pretty basic. It just has threads, posts, and members. |
| Payment gateway | Has its own gateway – Passion Payments. Or you can use Stripe integration |
| Explore all features | Explore more on Passion.io |
Prefer watching a video?
🚨 Note: This video was recorded in late 2021. Not a lot of things have changed on the platform since I recorded this video, apart from some bug fixes and feature enhancements.
Quick decision
What do we like about Passion.io 👍?
- User-friendly interface/builder: Creating LMS apps is a breeze with Passion.io’s user-friendly interface. No coding knowledge is required. You have various templates to get started based on your usecase.
- Unlimited courses and coachings: There are no limits on the number of courses or coachings you can create.
- Great versatility: Passion.io apps offer great versatility in terms of device compatibility. They work across iOS, Android, laptops, TV, desktop, and more. They also have a web app as well.
- Group challenges and progress tracking: Boost user engagement with Passion.io’s group challenges and built-in progress tracking. It helps students stay motivated and accountable.
- Motion-based exercises with sequences: Passion.io’s unique “sequences” feature allows you to create motion-based exercises, making it ideal for fitness/yoga courses. It also includes timed interactive exercises.
- Branded mobile push notifications: You can use PassionMessaging, Passion.io’s built-in messaging tool, to send branded mobile push notifications to target audiences based on segment groups. These notifications have higher open rates than emails.
- Fully white-labeled: The apps you create with Passion are truely whitelabel.
What we don’t like about Passion.io 👎?
- Limitation: One app per subscription: You can only create one app per subscription, which may be restrictive if you need multiple apps for your business.
- Limited customization options: The platform’s customization options and widget choices are limited, especially when compared to dedicated page builders. This can make it limiting to create welcome and sales pages.
- Missing course completion certificates: Passion.io lacks the ability to automatically issue course completion certificates. If you need to provide certificates, you will need to manually issue them using a Zapier trigger when a course is completed.
- Transaction fee and plan limitations: The basic plan ($97/mo) charges a 3.9% transaction fee on Passion Payments and has limits of 100 subscribers, 100 videos, and 1,000 push notifications per month. To have unlimited access, you would need to upgrade to the Ultimate plan, which costs $297/month.
- Limited integrations: It has integrations with only Zapier and ClickFunnels. Unlike other LMS platforms, there are no built-in integration with other tools like email marketing tools, webinars, or CRMs.
Upfront bottomline ✨
Passion.io has carved a niche in the course platform industry, catering to coaches who prioritize student engagement and interaction.
There was a lack of an LMS app in the market that came with options like timed exercises, motion tracking, and other advanced features, especially catered towards fitness, meditation, and wellness coaches, to promote active engagement from the students.
Passion.io fills this gap!
Unlike other platforms that mainly offer pre-recorded videos, Passion.io focuses on fostering active participation and accountability. It is particularly beneficial for fitness and wellness coaches who want to take their course completion rates and student transformation to new heights.
Although it may not have all the features of specialized course platforms (like say Teachable or Thinkific), the platform’s emphasis on engagement and accountability sets it apart.
Who’s behind Passion.io?
Daniel Harvey created Passion.io apps that are fully white-labeled, helping you design apps that align with your brand identity. He is the CEO and co-founder, a seven-figure entrepreneur.
Austin Distel is the CMO, who is also the CMO of Jasper (previously Jarvis), an AI writing assistant.
Since 2016, Dan and his team have launched over 200 apps and online programs at Passion.io. Several of these products have generated six-figure revenues, and two have generated $1 million in revenue.
Supported apps
You can create apps either by choosing a template or from scratch.
Passion.io app templates
There are templates available for:
- Audio app
- Fitness app
- Travel app
- Coaching app
…or you can start from scratch.
Their most popular template is the coaching app, which enables you to create a coaching app for high ticket consultations and mentorship.
With this app, you can perhaps target an ultra-specific niche with significant pain points, run Facebook ads, and easily convert potential clients.
With this kind of ad, your potential customers can convert with one click of a button, enquire by leaving your message, and whatnot.
Also their Calendly integration will be real handy here, allowing people to inquire and book appointments with you directly on their mobile devices.
You need to remember that you can only build one app for iOS, Android, and web per subscription with Passion.io. However, you can create unlimited products and courses within the app.
Bottomline: Passion.io makes your job simpler by providing ready-made app templates. You just need to add the content, and you are good to go. But the major downside is you are limited to just one app per subscription.
App builder
Passion is a platform designed for coaches to build mobile apps. With Passion, you can create apps that offer features such as course creation, community building, activity tracking, and more.
It provides a drag and drop app builder that includes various modules, enabling you to easily develop your apps.
With the app builder, you can create:
- The landing page that people will see in the discover tab of the app.
- Courses in the learn tab.
- Community (create threads, posts, and message the members)
While there may be a limited selection of modules available for building your app, they have been carefully designed. They do not overwhelm you with features, and you can get started quickly without needing any technical expertise.
During the app-building process, you can switch between mobile and desktop views to ensure your app is responsive.
It’s worth mentioning that Passion not only supports iOS and Android apps, but also offers a web version of their app that can be accessed on desktop devices.
Sales page building
They provide a lightweight landing page builder for creating a sales page that users will see after installing the app. The landing page builder offers a few widgets, including a feature list, FAQs, and carousel list.
The focus is on simplicity, as most users will view the landing page on mobile devices.
One major drawback is the lack of a testimonial widget, which would have been great. Additionally, there is no countdown widget available.
For the call to action, you can simply drag and drop the pricing plan or multi-pricing blocks. Map it to a pricing plan that you have set up under the pricing plans section of the app, and you’re good to go.
They have embraced minimalism, which is good for some people!
Alternatively, you can also use your own checkout pages or sales funnels instead of Passion.io’s.
- For checkout, you can integrate tools like ThriveCart, SamCart, or ClickFunnels. These tools also make it easy to set up sales funnels to nurture the leads into customers.
- All external purchases will automatically result in a new account being created for the client.
However, for all these integrations, you may need to rely on Zapier as it does not have native integrations with any of these tools. Additionally, the the builder does not include a custom HTML block feature, preventing you from embedding any external service inside your sales page, which is a significant drawback.
Let me discuss about how to create your own training courses.
Online courses (LMS apps) in Passion
As I told earlier, Passion is not a specialist course creation platform.
Refer to the table below to see the availability of course builder features:
| LMS features | Availability |
| Unlimited courses, lectures & lessons | ✔ |
| Supported lesson types | Images, Audio/video, Text files, PDF, Quiz, Surveys, Etc |
| Offline or download mode | ✔ |
| Drip scheduling | ✔ |
| Live streaming | ✔ |
| Course completion certificates | ❌ |
| Course pricing options | Recurring/one-time/free |
| Embedding custom codes inside lessons | ❌ |
When you’re creating a course, you need to first select a template.
You have:
- One-level structure (for mini-courses).
- Two-level structure (best for online courses), and
- Weekly live Q&A templates for niches like health & fitness, travel, sports, etc.
Course lessons
Similar to other course builders, you need to create lessons inside modules or sections inside Passion as well.
And inside each of these lessons, you can have multiple formats of content.
In addition to conventional content formats like video, text, audio (for meditation tracks for example) and files, you can also include:
- Stopwatch: Incorporate a timer to help users complete the lecture within a specific time range. This feature is especially useful for fitness demonstrations, exercises, and yoga/workout practice sessions, promoting proactive learning.
- Buttons: Include interactive buttons that prompt users to click and take action. These buttons serve as timely calls-to-action.
- Typeform: Create and integrate forms, surveys, quizzes, and worksheets. Consider using graded assessments, engaging quizzes, and multiple-choice questions (MCQs) to make the content more interactive.
- Calendly: If you offer one-to-one coaching sessions or group coaching calls, embed a Calendar using Calendly to make it easy for users to book their sessions.
I really like how they have strategically integrated with Typeform.
It not only embeds the form, but you also have the option to make it mandatory to fill in the embedded form to mark the lesson as complete.
Apart from these blocks, if you want more flexibility, you may encounter limitations.
For example, if you are using other form builder apps like Paperform or calendar booking apps like Cal.com, you won’t be able to embed them.
I really hope that they roll out a feature to embed custom code.
But when it comes to lessons, there are 3 main features that I really like:
- Free content preview: You can set any lesson as free content, allowing potential prospects to preview the content even before purchasing the course. This helps in building trust and showcasing the value of the course.
- Drip feeding lessons: You have the ability to drip feed lessons, meaning you can schedule when each lesson becomes available to students after they enroll in the course. This allows for a structured learning experience and prevents overwhelming students with too much content at once.
- Downloadable lessons: You can enable the option to download any lesson, allowing students to download the lessons while they are online. This way, they can watch the lessons even when they have limited internet connections, similar to how they would do on YouTube.
Sequences
The lessons feature may be more appropriate for conventional courses when you’re just selling a set of pre-recorded videos.
But Passion? It is for building a proactive learning app.
Can you create a new lesson you can mark it as sequence.
For example, as a Fitness Coach, you can enable students to go through a sequence of reps during a fitness course.
Allow me to explain:
You can use this to add content related to movements, workouts, and exercises. You can also combine multiple exercises into one sequence, such as for HIIT workouts.
There are two typesof sequences available:
- Interactive sequences: These have the timer set as a stopwatch. Students can practice the exercises as much as they wish and then move to the next lesson.
- Timed interactive sequences: These have a timer set as a countdown. Students cannot proceed to the next lesson until it times out.
Interactive sequences have the timer set as a stopwatch ⌚. Students can practice the exercises as much as they wish and then move to the next lesson.
While timed interactive sequences have a timer set as a countdown, students cannot proceed to the next lesson until it times out.
You can use the mentioned features if you want users to complete each exercise seriously. These features are particularly essential in health, fitness, and lifestyle niches, such as uploading workout videos, dance moves, music tutorials, or cooking demonstrations.
Timed interactive exercises are very much helpful for fitness trainers.
Here is the case study of Tiffany Wilkerson, a fitness trainer who earned $60k in annual revenue by selling a 6-week fitness challenge to just over 50 subscribers using Passion.io.
Tiffany utilized timed interactive exercises and her own custom-branded apps to provide step-by-step training to her clients. You can find inspiration from 10+ more case studies here and discover how coaches and creators are making a living with their own apps.
Bottomline: Although Passion is not a specialist in course creation, it offers many strategic features that allow you to command proactive engagement from your students as a transformational coach. Features like Sequences, integration with Calendly and Typeform enable you to implement accountability mechanisms directly within the mobile app. If you require a more comprehensive course creation platform with additional features such as gamification (including challenges and points) and a reliable mobile app, Kajabi may be the better choice for you.
Communities in Passion.io
Passion has a basic communities feature.
Passion’s community supports channels (similar to spaces or groups), posts, comments, tagging/mention, and private messaging.
Passion does not offer a wide range of specialist features for community building.
For example, it lacks:
- Rich member profiles.
- Matchmaking features.
- Gamification features like points, rankings, achievements, and leaderboards.
- Member tags and segmentation.
Not completely true.
It has some gamification features!
Every member in the community has a profile page that includes their lesson progress, streaks, and also metrics on how long they were in the app. There’s nothing much to it.
If you require more specialized features, you may need to consider dedicated community platforms such as Circle.so or Mighty Networks.
Alternatively, if you are looking for an all-in-one platform that includes excellent community features, including gamification, Kajabi would be the ideal option.
Goal tracking
It’s one of the best features of Passion.io that makes the app more interactive.
Users are motivated to track their progress within the app and stay on top of their performance.
Above are a few examples of the goal-tracking challenges you can assign to members.
Users can track their progress and log their check-ins to analyze their performance over time. Each member can view the check-ins submitted by their peers, which encourages learning from others and staying motivated.
By combining timed interactive exercises with goal tracking, more opportunities are created. These exercises allow you to identify who is actively participating and who is not. Users are motivated to practice the sessions as they cannot proceed to the next lessons until the timer expires.
Users can share their tracking reports publicly in the community or keep them to themselves as well.
Based on these reports, you can provide personalized guidance and training to members who are falling behind or unable to achieve their goals.
Setting pricing plans
With Passion, you have the ability to create different pricing plans. You can create one-time payment plans as well as subscription plans.
These plans allow you to assign access to various communities, courses, and tracking features based on the user’s chosen plan.
You need to map these plans to call-to-action buttons that will be included on your sales page.
Furthermore, you have the option to offer a free trial for your product.
You can offer a free trial for 7 days, 14 days, or even 30 days on your products. When offering these types of trials to your users, consider drip-feeding important lessons in your course to prevent them from binge-watching or pirating your content.
Customization features
Passion offers custom branding and white labeling functionalities. When it comes to design customization, there are limited features available.
You can choose from preset color palettes (templates), set custom brand colors and also upload your logo under branding options.
However, to remove Passion branding, you must choose Ultimate ($297/mo) or Ultimate Plus plans.
PassionMessaging
It allows you to send push notifications for your customers on branded apps (both iOS and Android, but not on web apps).
Here are a few of the scenarios for sending notifications:
- Users who signed up but didn’t subscribe
- Users who did not complete a lesson for days
- Users who did not open the app for a days
Note: Currently, you can only use the scenarios available within the app. If you would like to create custom scenarios, please submit your request through Canny.
Alternatively, you can use Zapier’s integration to automate this process.
Through Zapier’s triggers and actions, you can automate this process on your own.
For example: When a user:
- Completes the lesson; you can send congrats email.
- Purchases a plan; send them a voucher for the next purchase.
- For new chat messages, you can trigger push notifications.
- Cancels the subscription; send them an email with access to the coupon.
- Etc
Reports and analytics 📈
Passion’s built-in tool – PassionMetrics allows you to analyze user and payment metrics effortlessly.
- You can see metrics like – total users, subscribers, active users in the last 30 days, and the number of users who have completed in-app activities.
- This data gives you valuable insights into user engagement and behavior, allowing you to make informed decisions about how to improve your app and grow your user base.
To make things easier, Passion.io allows you to filter the user’s data based on factors like pricing plans or subscription platforms like iOS, Android, Stripe, and so on.
You can even export the data as CSV for analysis and use it to add and sync email lists to your email marketing platform.
If you need more detailed analytics, you can integrate Passion.io with external tracking apps like Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel.
By embedding the tracking code, you can analyze the data and gain even more insights to help improve your app.
Passion.io review – Integrations
Passion has very few native integrations.
- YouTube Live: Stream coaching sessions or events live on your app to engage with your students in real-time.
- Stripe: Securely accept payments from your students for coaching services or courses.
- Typeform: Use Typeform to create interactive forms, surveys, quizzes, and worksheets within your course
- Calendly: Simplify the scheduling process for coaching sessions or group calls (good for high ticket selling)
- ClickFunnels: Create high-converting landing pages, sales pages, and checkout processes for your coaching programs or courses using ClickFunnels.
- Zapier: Connect Passion with 1000s of different apps
To accept payments from clients, you can use:
- PassionPayments – For this, you should connect Passion with Stripe. There is a 3.9% transaction fee associated. On web app purchases, credit/debit card payments are accepted.
- In-app purchases (iOS/Android) – Apple and Google will handle payment processing relevant to the payment mode user has set up in the store account.
- External checkout – Using Zapier, you can connect with ClickFunnels, ThriveCart, PayPal, etc., and automate subscription purchases using Zapier triggers. We have discussed this already in the previous sections.
Bottomline: Passion has very limited native integrations. They strongly recommend using Zapier to integrate it with your other email marketing software. Additionally, they do not provide the ability to include any custom HTML embed code within your lessons or or on sales page. This limitation is frustrating.
Passion.io pricing and support
Pridcing plans explained
Passion.io is a premium platform with pricing starting at $97/mo. This Pro plan restricts to 100 subscribers, 100 videos, and 1,000 push notifications/mo. Note that it also lacks content dripping, community, and external checkout features.
To access these features, you have to go with either Ultimate (at $239/month) or Ultimate Plus plans.
In this regard, it may not offer the best value for money. However, if you require unique features such as interactive lessons, sequences, and an app builder specifically designed for transformational coaching, then Passion may be the right choice for you.
There is currently no competition for them in this particular market segment.
Passion.io Done for You apps
You can choose their done-for-you service if you don’t have time to create apps from scratch.
It handles everything for you, including creating, managing, and launching your app. If your courses are already hosted on another app, Passion can migrate them for free.
Passion.io discount
Passion.io discount
On the annual plans, you will get a discount of $696 per year. On the Pro plan, you can save $216/year, while on the Ultimate plan, you can save $696/year.
Passion.io trial
To get your hands on the tool, you can try its 14 days free trial.
Click on this link to activate the trial. Create the account and get started.
Passion.io review – FAQs❓
What is Passion.io?
Passion.io is an app-building platform that helps you create your own iOS, Android, and web apps for coaching.
How many apps can I create with Passion.io?
You can create only one app per subscription.
Are there any limitations on the courses I create?
No. You can create unlimited products or courses with Passion.io.
Do they have a free trial?
Yes, they have a 14-day non-advertised free trial. You can claim your free trial using this link.
Does it have a money-back guarantee?
Yes, they have a 30-day money-back guarantee if you don’t like the platform.
Wrap up
Passion.io is an app-building platform that caters to transformational coaches who aim to provide real, tangible results to their students through a mobile-first approach.
This app is ideal for coaches in various fields such as fitness, professional development, meditation, mindfulness, and more.
With features like interactive lessons, goal tracking, and sequences, Passion.io enables coaches to create engaging and proactive learning experiences for their students.
Although it may not be the most comprehensive course creation platform, Passion.io offers unique functionalities that promote accountability and engagement. If you are a coach looking to create a mobile app that delivers transformative experiences, Passion.io could be the right choice for you.
