Every coach who's grown past 25 clients eventually thinks: "I should just build my own app." Then they get the dev agency quote ($30K-$100K), the timeline (6+ months), and the maintenance reality (~$300-500/mo forever). Cadence solves the same problem in 24 hours, $299 setup, $99/mo all-in.
Under 100 clients? Cadence Coach is $99/mo flat with a real branded app. Trainerize Pro is $20-77/mo without a branded app — to get one you'd need their $250/mo Studio plan. Cadence ships in 24 hours; Trainerize's branded build takes 2-4 weeks.
Public benchmarks for custom mobile app development from agencies (Clutch, Upwork, agency rate cards as of 2026).
Comparing the median custom dev agency build vs Cadence Coach for a coach with 25-100 clients.
| Feature | Custom DIY Build | Cadence Coach |
|---|---|---|
| Time to launch | 6-9 months | 24 hours |
| Year 1 total cost | $60-100K | $1,488 ($299 + 12×$99) |
| Year 1 cost ratio | ~40-67x more expensive | Baseline |
| Code ownership | ✓ 100% | SaaS license |
| App Store / Google Play presence | ✓ Yes (after review) | PWA, instant install |
| AI plan generation | Build from scratch (~$10K extra) | ✓ Claude Haiku, included |
| Brand customization | ✓ Total (it's yours) | ✓ 6-field white-label |
| Maintenance burden | All on you | All on us |
| Update speed | Weeks per OS update | Continuous, instant |
| Risk of project failure | High (40%+ in industry) | Low (live in 24 hrs) |
Patterns from coaches who tried the custom route and either failed or wished they hadn't.
"Spent $80K and 14 months on a custom app. By the time it launched, my coaching business had pivoted twice and the app didn't fit anymore."
— Coach who later moved to Cadence
"Maintenance ate me alive. iOS 18 broke our app, dev agency wanted $15K to fix it, app was offline for 3 weeks."
— Coach who shut down custom app
"Project scoped at $35K. Final invoice was $87K. Dev agency had 'discovery' costs I didn't see coming."
— Coach reflecting on agency build
"Building was actually the easy part. The hard part was the AI features — we never finished the adaptive plan generation. App shipped without the feature that drove the original spec."
— Custom-app coach
"After 18 months I had an app I owned but no users — all my clients had moved to other coaches because of the launch delay."
— Coach learning from delay
Honest read. There are real reasons to go custom — they're just rarer than people think.
| If you need... | Pick |
|---|---|
| You have $100K+ committed dev budget AND in-house engineering talent | DIY Build |
| You need features fundamentally different from coaching (e.g., wearable hardware integration) | DIY Build |
| You're a fitness brand with VC funding building a category-defining product | DIY Build |
| You want a branded coaching app live in 24 hours for under $1,500/year | Cadence |
| You want to test product-market fit before sinking $60K into a custom build | Cadence |
| You're a solo or small-team coach who needs to ship and scale, not engineer | Cadence |
Export your roster + programs from DIY Build as CSV. Drop them into Cadence. Your branded app is live in 24 hours from your brand call. Existing client subscriptions migrate without a missed payment.