The Nigeria-founded platform helping more than 15,000 African creators and freelancers turn their expertise into businesses has processed over ₦1 billion in transactions through digital products, paid sessions, live classes and multi-currency payments.

“We realised we were not just building a booking tool. We were building infrastructure for an entire category of businesses that did not have it.”

— Sharon Onyinye, founder and CEO of Coachli

For a growing number of African creators, attracting an audience is no longer the hardest part of building a knowledge business.

A coach in Lagos can find clients through LinkedIn. A tutor in Nairobi can reach students through Instagram or YouTube. A consultant in Accra can serve customers across several countries. A designer in Johannesburg can find clients halfway around the world.

The harder question comes after the audience has been built: how do you turn that attention into a reliable business?

Taking bookings, selling digital products, hosting classes, sending invoices, managing subscriptions and, perhaps most importantly, collecting payments can require creators to stitch together several different platforms.

For years, much of the software available to solve these problems was built primarily around markets where payment infrastructure is mature, international cards are widely accessible, and settlement in dollars, pounds or euros is relatively straightforward. Unlike these markets, Africa lacked such payment infrastructure and accessibility and Coachli was built to solve this problem.

Founded in Nigeria in 2022 and publicly launched in March 2023, the platform began with a relatively simple proposition to help coaches schedule one-on-one sessions and get paid. As users began asking for more ways to package and sell their expertise, the product evolved.

“The MVP was incredibly simple, but our users showed us what they actually needed, and it turned out they needed far more than we initially planned for,” said Onyinye.

What started as a booking and payments solution has since expanded into a broader business platform for creators, coaches, tutors, consultants and freelancers. According to the company, more than 15,000 active creators have used the platform and more than ₦1 billion has been processed through it.

From Booking Tool to Business Platform

The evolution of Coachli came largely from observing how its users were actually trying to make money.

A coach needed bookings, so booking functionality was built. An online tutor needed to get paid, so regional payment options were integrated. Creators wanted to sell e-books, templates, audio products and other digital downloads, so digital product sales were added and the pattern continued.

Today, creators can use Coachli to sell digital products and subscriptions, schedule paid one-to-one sessions, host live classes with up to 1,000 attendees, list professional services, send invoices and payment links, automate emails and manage their businesses from a single platform.

The result is broader than a conventional coaching platform. It brings together a storefront, scheduling, payments, product delivery, services and audience communication around the way a modern knowledge-based business actually operates.

Solving the Payment Problem

Payments remain one of the biggest barriers for African creators selling to global audiences. Many international platforms expect their users to have access to international cards, foreign bank accounts or payment processors that support the creator’s country and preferred settlement method.

Coachli’s approach is to make regional and international payments part of the core infrastructure rather than something creators have to solve separately. The platform supports payment infrastructure including Paystack, Flutterwave and Stripe, allowing creators to accept payments across local and international markets. It also supports multiple currencies, including Naira, US dollars, Pounds, Euros, Cedis, Rand, alongside over thirty other international currencies.

For freelancers in particular, this removes some of the hurdles associated with serving international clients. Rather than setting up foreign banking arrangements or maintaining virtual cards simply to receive payments, freelancers can list their services on Coachli and allow clients to pay through their supported payment methods.

Whatever freelance services you offer, from design and content writing to typesetting, ghostwriting, digital marketing, UI/UX design, video editing, motion graphics, web development, social media management, etc, it can be sold on Coachli.

Coachli also operates without a monthly platform subscription. Its model is transaction-based, meaning the platform earns when creators make sales. The absence of a recurring subscription lowers the upfront cost for someone testing a new business idea.

How Coachli compares with Stan Store, Kajabi, Skool and other global platforms

The global creator economy already has a crowded software market.

Platforms such as Stan Store focus heavily on creator storefronts and link-in-bio commerce. Kajabi and Teachable offer more extensive tools for courses, coaching, memberships and knowledge businesses. Skool places community at the centre of its product, while Kit, formerly ConvertKit, is built around email, newsletters, audience automation and digital products. These platforms serve different needs, and there is no universal winner for every creator.

The more useful question for an African creator is often not which platform has the longest feature list, but which one fits the creator’s product, audience and payment environment. A sophisticated course platform may still leave a creator figuring out how to accept payments from customers in different African markets. A storefront may solve the selling experience without solving settlement. An email platform may be excellent at audience communication while leaving bookings, invoices and payments to other tools.

Coachli’s differentiation is therefore less about trying to replace every specialist platform and more about combining several of those functions while making African payment infrastructure central to the experience. It brings together digital products, services, bookings, live classes, subscriptions, invoicing, email automation and payments in one environment.

For creators looking for alternatives to global platforms such as Stan Store, Kajabi, Teachable, Skool or Kit, Coachli is their best bet.

Fewer Tools, One Business

The second problem Coachli is solving is operational complexity. Every additional tool a creator uses introduces another subscription, login, integration and potential point of failure. For a solo entrepreneur, those costs can quickly become significant, not just financially but in time and attention.

Coachli’s pitch is that many of those functions can live together. A creator can have a public page for an offer or service, collect payment, schedule a session, deliver a digital product, issue an invoice or build a subscription without having to construct the entire workflow across several disconnected platforms.

That matters because most creators and freelancers are not technology companies. They are coaches, consultants, tutors, designers, writers, freelancers, educators and specialists who happen to have knowledge or skills that other people are willing to pay for. The technology should therefore make it easier to run the business rather than becoming another business the creator has to manage.

Building on African Terms

Coachli’s development reflects a broader pattern in African technology. Some of the continent’s most significant technology companies have grown by identifying problems created by infrastructure that was designed elsewhere and adapting the solution to local realities.

Paystack and Flutterwave addressed payment challenges. Andela built infrastructure around African technology talent. Coachli is approaching a similar problem from the creator economy: what does the business infrastructure for African creators need to look like?

The answer is not simply to reproduce a Silicon Valley product in an African market. It requires taking payment methods, currencies, settlement, pricing and affordability seriously from the beginning. That is particularly important as more Africans build careers around knowledge and digital services.

The creator economy is increasingly expanding beyond traditional influencers. Coaches, consultants, tutors, freelancers, educators, designers and other specialists are turning their expertise into products and services and building audiences around them. The infrastructure supporting that economy will determine how easily those businesses can grow.

What Comes Next

With the core selling and payment infrastructure in place, Coachli is now looking towards deeper integrations and more tools for audience growth and monetisation. The platform is already integrating with tools and platforms creators use to reach and serve their audiences, including TikTok, Meta, Telegram and Google Meet.

The next phase, according to Onyinye, is about helping creators move beyond simply having a place to sell.

“We have built the foundation,” she said. “Now we are thinking about how to help creators go deeper, not just use Coachli to run their business, but use it to scale beyond what they thought was possible.”

“Our goal is to give our users clearer pathways to go from side income to primary income. Our motivation from Day 1 is still the same. We’re building the infrastructure for African creators, coaches and freelancers, built on African terms, designed for African economics,” she added.

The challenge now is execution. Creators will ultimately judge the platform on whether payments work reliably, whether the product remains easy to use, whether customer support is effective and whether new features genuinely help them earn more without adding complexity.

However, the company’s transaction milestone provides an early indication that there is demand for infrastructure designed specifically around these realities. More than ₦1 billion in processed transactions does not, by itself, determine how large Africa’s creator economy will become, however, it demonstrates that thousands of people are already willing to use locally designed infrastructure to turn their knowledge and skills into income.

For Coachli, the opportunity is to keep making that journey simpler — from expertise, to offer, to payment, to a business that can grow.

About Coachli

Coachli is a Nigeria-founded platform that helps coaches, creators, tutors, consultants and freelancers monetize their knowledge and skills. The platform enables users to sell digital products and subscriptions, list services, run paid one-to-one sessions and live classes, automate emails, issue invoices and payment links, and accept local and international payments.

Founded in 2022 and publicly launched in March 2023, Coachli says more than 15,000 active creators have used the platform and more than ₦1 billion has been processed in transactions.

Learn more: www.coachli.co

Press contact: [email protected]